When NOT to Use Points for Travel- Five Times We Paid Cash

~9 min read · Last updated: August 2026

Room 506 at the Kimpton Palladian in Seattle. King bed on a corner, alley view, one broken blind, and a bedside card telling you where the earplugs are, which is the kind of detail a downtown hotel only prints after enough people have asked.

We were there four nights, April 30 to May 4, and we paid for the room two completely different ways. Nights one and two went through the Chase travel portal, prepaid, at $717.21. Then $500 came off it. Two $250 credits posted to Shana’s Chase Sapphire on January 11, two days after she booked: one from The Edit, one the card’s hotel credit. The cash that actually left our account for those two nights was $217.21. That is $108.61 a night. Nights three and four went on 100,000 IHG points, and the two were not priced the same: 54,000 for the Saturday, 46,000 for the Sunday.

Run the standard math on the points half and it passes, with a caveat that turns out to matter. Nobody ever priced nights three and four in cash, so the only rate available to divide by is the $717.21 the first two nights cost. On that borrowed figure, 100,000 points works out to 0.72 cents per point, and published valuations for IHG points run from 0.5 to 0.7 cents, so the redemption clears the bottom of that range comfortably and the top of it by about two percent.

Treat that 0.72 as soft at both ends. The award prices were not equal- 54,000 for the Saturday against 46,000 for the Sunday- and IHG reward pricing tracks cash, so the second pair of nights almost certainly did not cost what the first pair did. The $717.21 was a promotional prepaid rate as well, not a standard one. I am using it because it is the only cash number this stay ever produced, not because it is the right one.

And that is the whole verdict cents per point has to offer here. It is close to useless even before the caveat, because the same room cost us $108.61 a night forty-eight hours earlier.

At a Glance

🎯 What this covers

five bookings across two 2026 trips where the charge did not go on points

💳 Programs involved

IHG One Rewards, Hilton Grand Vacations club points, Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts, Southwest, United

📍 The clearest case

Kimpton Palladian, Seattle, four nights, two on credits and two on points

💰 Cash side

$717.21 for two nights, less $500 in stacked credits, so $217.21 out of pocket

💰 Points side

100,000 IHG One Rewards points for the other two nights, 54,000 and 46,000

💰 Cents per point on the redemption

0.72, against published IHG valuations of 0.5 to 0.7

🏨 Status held

IHG Platinum Elite, which got the room acknowledged and not much else

⭐ Our take

the credit stack was cheaper than a redemption that only just cleared its benchmark

The Setup: When Not to Use Points for Travel

Cents per point is a good rule and it beats guessing. Take the cash price, divide by the points, multiply by a hundred, compare to a published valuation. Above the line, book on points. Below it, pay cash.

The trouble is the price it uses. Cents per point measures your points against the street rate, which is what somebody with no cards, no status and no portal access would pay walking in off the internet. If you hold the kind of card that earns transferable points, that is not your price and it never was. You are carrying credits, certificates, elite rates and portal discounts, and every one of them lowers the number your points have to beat.

So the redemption gets measured against the worst price in the room. It usually wins that fight. What it should be measured against is the cheapest way you personally can pay, and that number is harder to look up because it depends on what is left in your own account.

Five bookings, and what each one actually cost.

How We Booked It, Five Different Ways

Seattle, the four-night split. The one above, and the one that changed how I run this. Worth adding: it was not a free choice. The Edit credit requires a prepaid booking of two nights or more, and Chase will not let two Edit credits land on the same booking. What it will let you do is stack one Edit credit with the card’s separate $250 hotel credit, which is exactly what happened: both went onto that one two-night prepaid booking and that is what the $500 was. Once they were spent there was nothing left to reach nights three and four, which is why those went on points. Points were a reasonable answer to the nights the credits could not reach. The error would be reading 0.72 cents per point as proof that points were the right way to buy that room, when the cheapest nights of the stay were bought with neither cash nor points.

The paid nights also carried more than the room, on a second and completely separate set of credits. The Edit’s $100 property credit landed on the folio, and the hotel added a $10, another $10 and a $5. That is $125, and it turned $224.53 of bar and restaurant charges- two nights at Penny Royal and a breakfast at Shaker + Spear- into $99.53 on the card. None of it reaches the points nights, and none of it shows up in a cents-per-point calculation either.

Worth saying plainly, because it is the honest negative and it is in our own notes: the room had poor sound insulation, a broken blind, an elevator key reader that did not work (one of two elevators that didn’t work on check-in, and two of two elevators that didn’t work at check-out), and a welcome amenity they forgot until we went back and asked, at which point it turned out to be a bag of BBQ Lay’s, a Kind bar and a Perrier. On the capture sheet for this hotel we ticked Best For Couples, Solo and Business. We did not tick Points Travelers. That was written before any of this analysis and it turned out to be the right instinct.

Outrigger Reef Waikiki, three nights, no points at all. Two Platinum cards, so two rooms, booked separately through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts. Each room: $1,420.62 prepaid, $178.08 due at the property, and $300 back in FHR credits, so $1,298.70 net. For the pair that is $2,841.24 up front, $356.16 at the desk, $600 back, and $2,597.40 all in for three nights, which is $432.90 a night per room. Compare that like with like. The room itself was $1,196.67 before tax and fees, or $398.89 a night, against a member rate of $457 a night on the same basis- so we were roughly $58 a night under what a member pays before the FHR credit came off at all. All in, after tax, resort fees and the $300 back, it was $432.90 a night for a room better than the one we booked. FHR moved us from a standard room to a double upgrade, partial ocean view with a king and two queens, and the note Shana wrote at the time is that the upgraded room landed below the rate we paid. Each room also carried a separate $100 on-property credit, $200 across the two, and it was real money rather than a line on a folio: we spent it at the hotel grill and at Merriman’s on the property. Zero hotel points went into this stay and I do not think spending any would have improved it.

Ask for Kanani at check-in; she ran the most thorough arrival we had all trip. The elite amenity gift never arrived, and we were prepared to let it go. Then we went back to Chris, the membership manager, to thank him for his help, and he asked how we had liked it. We were not going to lie to him, so we told him the truth. He apologized and brought it to us himself: a top-of-the-line reef-safe sunscreen he was visibly proud the Outrigger gives its elite members, and he wanted us to have it for the stay. The property forgot; the person who had nothing to do with the miss fixed it in the time it took to walk back.

Denver to Kona, four seats, cash both directions. We flew four people to the Big Island in May and paid cash out and back. Four award seats on one flight is a different problem from one award seat. Availability that exists for a solo traveler often does not exist times four, and splitting a family across two itineraries to chase it carries a cost that never appears in a cents-per-point calculation.

Kona to Honolulu, one flight, three ways of paying. The inter-island hop on Southwest is the strangest line in our booking record. Shana used points. Max used a flight credit he already had. I paid cash, and so did the fourth person with us. One aircraft, four people, three funding sources, and it was correct for each of them, because the question is never whether the group should use points. It is what the cheapest way is for this person to be on this plane, and the answer differed by traveler.

King’s Land, prepaid, then club points next door. The Hawaii trip opened with seven nights at King’s Land on a $1,695 prepaid package and continued with four nights at the Grand Islander on Hilton Grand Vacations club points. Two Hilton-family properties a week apart, and the right currency was different at each. That one has its own post coming, because the club-points side needs more room than a paragraph.

The Numbers: What Each Night Actually Cost

Booking	What we spent	What it replaced	The math
Kimpton, nights one and two	$217.21 after $500 in credits	$717.21 portal rate	$108.61 a night out of pocket
Kimpton, nights three and four	100,000 IHG points, 54,000 + 46,000	no cash price was ever quoted; $717.21 borrowed from nights one and two	0.72cpp on that borrowed figure, so $500 to $700 of value at published rates
Outrigger Reef, two rooms, three nights	$2,597.40 all in after $600 in FHR credits, no points	member rate $457 a night before tax	$432.90 a night per room, plus a double upgrade and $200 of on-property credit
Denver-Kona and Honolulu-Denver	cash, four seats each way	award seats we could not get four of	availability was the binding constraint
Kona-Honolulu, four travelers	points, a flight credit, and cash	n/a	three answers to one flight

Sit with the Kimpton rows. Those 100,000 points bought two nights in a room that, forty-eight hours earlier, had cost us $108.61 a night. At the 0.5 to 0.7 cents the published tables assign IHG points, 100,000 points is worth somewhere between $500 and $700. Against the $217.21 those same two nights cost on credits, we spent $500 to $700 of points to avoid spending $217.21 of cash.

That is a gap of $283 to $483 across the two nights, and cents per point never reports it, because cents per point never sees the $108.61. It only ever sees $358.61.

Here is the part that took longest to accept. Measured against $717.21 for the two nights- the best cash figure this stay produced, and the same basis as everything else in this paragraph- the redemption was fine, though not by much at the top of the range: $500 to $700 of points against $717.21 of cash saves anywhere from $217 down to $17. Both things are true about the same two nights. Which one is the real answer depends on whether the credits were still available, and they were not.

Was It Worth It?

Four of the five, yes, and we would run them the same way again. Cash for four seats to Kona was right. The Southwest split was right. Outrigger on FHR was the one I would repeat most happily, because $600 of credits and a double upgrade brought a $457 member rate down to $432.90 a night, with another $200 of on-property credit on top, and that beats any hotel-points redemption I have run at that price.

The Kimpton points nights are the one I would change, and only narrowly. With the credits exhausted, 100,000 points against the best cash figure we have was defensible, and the arithmetic above says so. What I would change is the order of the thinking. I ran the cents-per-point math first and looked at the benefit stack second, and it goes the other way around every time.

Before you value your points, find out what the night costs you with every credit, certificate and portal rate you are already paying an annual fee to hold. That is the number your points have to beat. Skip it and you are comparing your balance against a price you were never going to pay.

If you want that arithmetic run against a specific trip instead of in the abstract, that is the thing we do for clients.

What We’d Do Differently

Run the credit stack before the redemption math. I had it backwards on the Seattle booking and the cost of being backwards was between $283 and $483 across the two points nights. That is not small. The reasoning error is worse than the money, because it scales with the stay and it hides behind a number that says you passed.

Read the benefit terms before the trip rather than after it. The Edit’s two-night prepaid minimum and the one-credit-per-booking rule decided how that stay got structured, and we learned both of them afterward. Chase publishes them plainly on The Edit’s own page.

And stop treating a party of four as one booking decision. Kona to Honolulu taught us that faster than anything else on the trip.

We have written up single redemptions before, including a Hilton free night certificate in Breckenridge that was a clean win, and a Breckenridge Grand Vacations trial membership that was a great deal more complicated. This is the other side of that ledger. There was more of it than I expected when I started counting.

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Frequently Asked Questions

When should you not use points for travel?

When a card credit, certificate or portal rate drops the cash price below the value of the points you would spend. Our Seattle stay is the case: 100,000 IHG points, worth $500 to $700, bought two nights in the room that had cost $217.21 two days earlier once two $250 credits were applied. Check the benefit stack first.

Is 0.72 cents per point a good IHG redemption?

It depends whose table you read, which is the point. Published 2026 valuations for IHG One Rewards run from 0.5 cents at The Points Guy to about 0.7 at Bankrate. Against 0.5 the redemption looks comfortable; against 0.7 it clears by about two percent. One cents-per-point number was never going to settle this booking in either direction, and a benchmark you can move by picking a different website is not a benchmark.

Should everyone in a group pay for a flight the same way?

No. On one Kona to Honolulu flight, Shana used points, our son used an existing flight credit, and two of us paid cash. Every traveler carries a different balance, different expiring credits and different constraints, so the cheapest answer is per person rather than per booking.

Why pay cash for flights you could book with miles?

Usually availability. Four award seats on a single flight is a much harder ask than one, and splitting a group across separate itineraries to find them carries real costs a cents-per-point calculation never captures. We paid cash both directions to Hawaii for exactly that reason.

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