Frequent Miler on the Air - Book ultra-premium suites cheap

Episode Date: June 22, 2019

Greg and Nick discuss multiple options for booking ultra-premium suites with points. Also: Is there any value to booking hotels through Citi anymore?

we're live hey what's going on how are you hey I'm good today I'm sitting in a live in Buffalo New York it's a it's called the Reichert Hotel it's a it's in the Marriott portfolio and really nice little hotel we got an awesome triple-a rate so even though I thought about using points I ended up deciding just to pay for it because it was they wanted 25k points a night versus triple-a rate was something like 135 a night so I couldn't I couldn't make just the points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, we might have to end this and go back. Let's see what's going on with Nick. Now you're back. Oh, you disappeared. Well, one of us disappeared. I thought it was you, but maybe it was me.

I don't know. It might have been me. But I was going to ask you what category the Buffalo property was because I'm from New York State, but I rarely get that far west. So I was just curious. I never really taken a look. 25K a night. So it would be category four. Yeah. Yeah. So of course I heard that Greg was coming to New York, so I got out of New York today and I'm in Connecticut at just a Hyatt house. So 5,000 points a night though. You can't beat that.

I mean 5,000 points versus a cash rate of like 130 or something. So I was happy to get some value out of a Category 1 stay. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. So, all right. So today you posted about the City Prestige. Well, you posted about the Thank You Portal. And so it got me thinking about whether or not it's worth using thank you points to book rooms at all.

Because, of course, you have to book them through the thank you portal. And as you showed today, values aren't always great through the thank you portal. So what's your opinion? Is it ever worth booking hotels through the thank you portal or no? It's really tough to do now because, as I showed today, they're always higher than other portals, including the Chase portal. chase points and you want to book a hotel you know the the price and points you pay is based on what they say the cash rate is and city is saying the cash rate is about 10% more than than chases and so whatever you think the value is of your of your thank-you points you're getting less practical value because

they're starting from a higher paid price. Now that's true generally speaking, but all right, let me ask you this. So is it worth using Chase Points to book through the Chase Portal? Because you have the Sapphire Reserve, you get one and a half cents a point. Is it worth booking a hotel through the Chase Portal for one and a half cents a point? I mean, you do it sometimes, right? Yeah, I would do it if Especially when when I'm booking a hotel, that's not a chain where I care about earning points or if If I have elite status or want to get elite status Both of those things tend to be off the table

When you book through any, you know, online travel agency, including Chase. So if I'm booking like a, you know, boutique hotel or something that's an independent or, you know, then yes, I'm happy to get the 1.5 and go from there. And so of course, you know, my side of the argument then is that if we can agree, and I'll agree with you, I think sometimes it is worth taking the one and a half cents in value and book through the Chase portal because I'm usually booking someplace where I'd like to have free breakfast or I'd like to be earning elite credit. But on the rare occasion when that's not the case, sometimes it isn't, then I will book through the Chase portal now and then for one and a half cents a point. And if you, you meaning the audience out there, if you agree with that being a decent redemption, a good enough redemption to take, then I think that you shouldn't totally dismiss the Citi Thank You Portal. Now, I think it only works for people in a specific set of circumstances. If you got the prestige card and you have the

premier card, then you're able to get this theoretical 1.67 cents per point. Though as Greg showed in the post today, you're not really going to get that much because Citi is charging an inflated rate for most of their hotels. So realistically, he showed you get a little bit less than one and a half cents a point. But a reader pointed out in the comments, and it was a great point, that if you've also got the Citi Rewards Plus card, you get an annual rebate 10% of your points back up to 100k points spent So I would argue then that on that first 100k worth of points It's not necessarily a bad deal to book the fourth night free through the thank-you portal Because you're gonna actually get a little bit more than one and a half cents a point

We've already established that's not a bad deal So you can get a little bit more than one and a half cents a point for the first hundred K Points, I think it's worth taking a look at the thank-you portal, even though I'll be honest I've never booked one through the thank-you portal I'm not going to do it because I don't have the premier and the rewards plus but if a reader dies I think it's not a bad idea Yeah Little bit of a counter-argument there is that for one thing once you spend the 100k on your hotels if you then transfer points to a transfer partner anymore because you

already use it up right right right so so it's not like you know if you know you're let me put it another way. If you know you're going to be spending 100K thank you points anyway for the year. I don't think it's reasonable to then count that rebate as as improving your point value because you're that 10K is the limit. And so that's all you're going to get. That's a good point. Yeah. I can do that more with that. The other thing I want to point out is, but even with that, I think your first point is still right, that you're getting close to 1.5 value with the Prestige plus the Premier using both of their sort of capabilities.

And you've got to have the points pooled to get that. You have to have the accounts combined within your thank you account for that to work. You're getting close to 1.5, even accounting for the higher hotel rates, right? But that also means that you're staying exactly four nights. You're booking exactly a four nights day so yes i agree with you that in this sort of weird outlier situation where you have both cards they're pulled together uh and you're booking exactly four nights day and it's not a hotel chain where where you want to earn points or use elite benefits. Right, right, right. There's definitely a niche thing.

But if you hold the prestige card, likely you do have more than one four-night stay, or probably, because that's one of the key benefits of the card, right? So you probably are somebody who has that. And really, I'd say that if you use that just one time a year, $150 airline credit, you're probably in decent shape as far as getting good enough value to justify hanging on to it, I think, for 5X at restaurants and on flights. Yeah, I mean, I actually think the 5X at restaurants, if you eat out a lot, is enough to justify it without having to worry about the fourth night free benefit um but yeah i mean i i think given what we just talked about how rare it is for all those things to line up that you for you to want to use the

fourth night i mean if if it comes up a lot where you can use it great but um i you know, for me personally, if I were to try to use after September when they've devalued have that exact situation often enough that you're gonna feel like yay by doing all these things i'm getting basically the same value that i would get just having a sapphire reserve yeah i it's not necessarily a bad argument i i can't can't argue hard against you there but where i will say it might be worth it again is if you like to book premium rooms. Because the advantages of booking through the Chase portal or the Citi portal is that you can use your points to book exactly the room type you want.

Whereas typically, if you're using Marriott Points, for instance, you can probably only book the standard room. I don't know if you're in a standard room tonight or while you book for the trip. If you want to book a really nice suite in most chains, you just got to pay for it in cash. You could use the points in order to get a suite if you're booking through the city portal or the course, whether or not that is worth it to you depends on whether or not a suite is worth it. We wrote a lot about suites this week. What do you think?

Is a suite really important? Does anybody care? I mean, we spent a lot of ink this week on suites. Does anybody really care about staying in a suite? Does it matter? Does it matter to you? Yeah. Well, it's a funny thing about suites, right? Is when you haven't booked them in advance and you get that upgrade at the desk, it's almost always when you least need it, right? Right, right.

You go, like for me, it most often happens, I'm traveling alone, it's a one night stay. I'm only gonna be in the room for, you know, maybe six hours or something because I would early flight the next day and woohoo. Both of my best upgrades have been that way. Right? So yeah, I mean, a lot of them are nothing more than bragging rights, right?

Where you can say, oh, I got the presidential suite or whatever. And it doesn't really help you at all. In fact, I had one kind of hilarious situation where I had been upgraded to a suite. And it sort of backfired on me in the long run, because I had gone into the bathroom, and there wasn't any toilet paper in the bathroom. So I called down to the desk, said, you know, hey, no toilet paper, can you send some up? And so I went out for a while, come back to the to the room look in the bathroom I still don't see any toilet paper in there so I call the desk again and they're so sorry we're gonna send more you sent some points up also so it

turned out that they had put rolls of toilet paper on the bed in the separate bedroom, which I hadn't gone into. So they had brought it up and I didn't know that. And so I called back, was like, you know, tell them, don't worry about it.

But it was too late. Cause I went back out again. I come back and there's toilet paper all over my suite. They put some in the bathroom. They're like, I'm gonna make sure he doesn't miss it this time. Well, I think they must have been like pissed off, like we already brought him in.

I don't know. But no, I mean, you know, is it worth it? I'll tell you, there are some times where it's been incredibly worth it. There are some hotels where a suite really means you're getting two complete rooms. So when we've been traveling with friends and family, so a bigger group, there's the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Florida, for example, is one that does this, where I've gone with a bunch of people. And if we know we can upgrade to a suite ahead of time it means we could actually book half as

many rooms as we would otherwise because you literally get connecting rooms with separate doors to the hallway each has a complete you know full bath and everything so so you literally can save half as many points or cash depending on how you booked it. Those are great. When you get a much better view, or like you did, you get your own private pool. Or you get two pools. Two pools.

Two pools. Private indoor, private outdoor, just in case. You never know. That seems worth it to me. I don't know. I don't know about you, but. It was worth every sentence of the three sentence email asking if they had a room with a slightly more direct sea view. I couldn't believe that's what they came up with. You know, and so if anybody didn't see it this week, we got this crazy upgraded domes of Alunda. We were there seven nights and after

the first five nights they just sent an email asking if we get something with a more direct c view and you know somebody in our facebook group mentioned you know maybe it's just because i'm a blogger that i got this great upgrade and i guess i don't know if they knew i was a blogger or not although they certainly didn't give me that for the first five nights so i don't think that that was what led into it. Honestly, they were just nice. And I asked, and sometimes you just ask and you get something really nice. And I mean, that was, that was amazing.

That was an amazing room to have with your own private pool and whatnot. But, but in all of my years traveling, that is the only time I think I've ever had a room with its own private pool. So, so that's not something you can really count on. Yeah. So if you could have paid double points or something for that suite, would you do it? As a general question, yeah, I think I would. Hands down, it was amazing. It was two levels, like I said, indoor, outdoor pool. I didn't even realize that next to the indoor pool, there was like a heated lounger chair. It was initially, I didn't realize it was heated. I mean, that place was amazing. However, that property is now 85,000

points per night. I don't think I would spend 170,000 points a night on that suite. I don't think I would. I don't know. It's kind of a tough question though. Well, it was two bedrooms, the second bedroom had two twin beds. First bedroom had a king bed. Upstairs though, there was a sleeper sofa or two probably. And I mean, it was big. So I guess if I was going without one of the people, maybe. That's what I was, so suppose, well, all right. I know you probably don't think, or you've actually said in your post, you wouldn't pay 85K points for that property because it's cheaper to just pay cash. I mean, as far as it would be bad value for your points, but let's just pretend for a second that

the point rate is a good value, is a good rate for it's say let's say we were both planning to go the same week would it be better for us if it was an option uh it's not but if it was an option to pay double the points for that one suite so we can lock it in and each get our own and hope for an upgrade hands down in a place like that too you know with a really massive really massive suite like that, you have plenty of room to entertain. You know, it was really lucky. I ran into a couple of frequent my little readers at the domes of Alunda. I was really surprised. It was cool meeting folks.

And so I, I just, one of them happened to, I happened to meet like the day we got that upgrade and they said, oh, you know, maybe we can get together for a drink later on. And I said, when I got the upgrade, I said, well, we just got this amazing upgrade. You want to come up? And we were able to entertain and, you know, relax and have fun. So that was really, yeah, it was really nice for that kind of thing. So I can imagine if we went with a group of people, yeah, that'd be totally worth it.

You know, I never used to value sweets at all, really. I mean, I liked getting them like anybody else does for the bragging rights, I guess, but it didn't matter to me because when I went to travel, I wanted to go see the place and get out and see things. Traveling with a family, with a baby, it's really helpful to have some extra space. A, so when he's napping during the middle of the day, we can still relax and not worry about waking him up. And B, when he goes to sleep early at night, again, we got room to relax and hang out. We have a baby, we're taking some more family trips than we ever did before and for family trips,

like you said, yeah, I mean, it'd be awesome to be able to book that on Double the Points. But of course you wrote about it, we're gonna be able to maybe do that this week, huh? I did, I did. So as I wrote about, with Hyatt now offering premium suites available for twice the points of a standard room, there are some really spectacular opportunities out there. Not always, right? Many of the hotels we looked at, a premium suite was just really a regular suite, right? Like maybe the standard suite is a junior suite

and then premium suite is what we think of as a regular suite with a living room and bedroom. And that's nice, but it's not spectacular like the kind of suite you had. However, we did find a few that did look spectacular. I was especially excited by the one in Casablanca. I mean, that one, you are getting what looks like an amazing, I think that one was called a diplomat suite, maybe, if I'm remembering.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Or a pastor suite or something. You're getting the two bedrooms, so you could, you know. Definitely. Shoot, if I was going with another couple, I so you could you know definitely shoot if I if I was going with another couple I would definitely you know say let's just party sweet right I don't know if I was going even my you know myself with my wife I might do it just for the for the fun of it for the fun of it because it's not that expensive of a hotel in points yeah so you could get get this ginormous living room two bedrooms and a butler I mean

what do you do with a butler I know stated a couple of things we do with the butler yeah I don't know so so I've had a couple experiences where I've had suites where butler service is included, but not a dedicated butler. So, for example, a St. Regis in New York, butler service is included. And they do things like they will iron your clothes for you, which is really nice. They'll shine your shoes. I had a pair of shoes with me that never been, I'd never gotten a shoe shine in my life, to be honest, until then, but they look awfully good now. So that was, I don't know. I don't know what else you would do. Someone figured it out if you're there for a few days and, uh, asking them to sew a button or something. So I guess things like that would be

cool. Um, you know, maybe it'd be pretty wild. And it's a good redemption too, because you can get to Casablanca for 44,000 at to hide points, membership rewards and city. Thank you. Points transfer partner. You can fly business class where LRM rocked for 44 K one way, and then stay in a pretty out of control suite for not a lot of points i mean talk about it like a baller vacation on like you know a a very limited points budget seriously yeah um so yeah i'd be very tempted to do that um so yeah and then you know of, as you know, I wrote about it.

I thought I had found the mother alert of all deal, right? Because... So did I. When Greg emailed this, I was like, all right, it's done. I'm not even gonna look anymore. He found it. Yeah. There was a property in Egypt where they listed the royal villa as a premium suite. Now, I found out

after doing that by contacting the Hyatt concierge that just because something's listed as a premium suite on the website does not mean that it's bookable as a premium suite with points. Big time bummer. Darn it. Yeah, because that thing not only came with a butler and a private pool,

but airport transfers. There pool but uh airport transfers it it was just ridiculous uh it's a gigantic house that you basically get on your own uh for 10k points per night which is absurd but but of course that wasn't right but still still, the next level down was bookable and it's still pretty extraordinary in itself. I don't know that I'd ever, this is like a resort community in Southern Egypt. I don't know, it looks very nice. I don't know that I'd ever go there. But the Casablanca one, I could see myself going.

Yeah, yeah, it might be kind of interesting. And I look at those and I think they're pretty interesting opportunities because you can, again, stay in some pretty killer suites for not a lot of points, for an amount of points that we would typically think of as't available on points, it might be available on points. Because just because a standard room isn't available doesn't mean you can't book a suite, potentially. Sometimes hotels are sold out of standard rooms, but they still have suites. So it just happened to me tonight because I thought that this hotel I'm staying in was going to be sold out of entry-level rooms, their base-level rooms.

And so for a minute, I was bummed, and then I thought, oh, well, if they are, I can just contact the high concierge on Twitter, and maybe I could still book one of the premium suites or the standard suite for not many more points than I was going to pay anyway. So I think it could be cool for that. I don't know. What about the really high-end places? I mean, is it worth paying double for places that are 25,000 points a night? Now you're paying 50,000 points a night for a suite. What do you think? traveling with another couple or lots of kids or something where you would have gotten a second

room. And then if the place has two bedrooms, which let me be clear, very few of the ones we found had two bedrooms. So I think in that case, I mean, definitely, because you're not just getting the two bedrooms, you're also getting a big living room, usually a kitchen and who knows what else. The other situation I could definitely see is when you're going all out for a honeymoon or something like that. You just want everything to be top of the line. And if you have the points to kill, why not? Well, you know, it's nice that you can do that with the points. I think that's probably what made this most exciting for me and probably for most people who read it this week

um because you know everybody knows that high globalists get a certain number of suite upgrades per year probably most people are familiar with the fact that marriott awards suite night upgrades but you know those things will get you maybe to a standard suite generally, whereas this can get you to a killer suite, confirmed at booking. It's all done. So I think that's what makes this particularly exciting versus some of the other options. Though I say that, and now I think it's also worth mentioning that we're starting to see some places, especially in the M maldives now where standard rooms are pretty killer suites i mean we've seen that happen with some of the marriott places when they took over starwood and i made a booking a lot of other people made bookings at places where you know

for example the saint regis borobora where the you know standard room is like a 2700 square foot villa uh and this week the jw marriott in the Maldives became bookable. You get yourself a nice overwater villa for like, I don't know, whatever, the 85,000 points per night, the standard room is there. I mean, do redemptions like that interest you? Or do you think it's just kind of silly because it's off the charts? And you know, who's going to actually go to the Maldives? Do you get excited about those? Would you ever go stay in an overwater villa yeah I get excited about the idea and then when it comes time to actually um you know think about am I actually going to do it it it never for me uh it never turns into a real trip um so uh when you look into the actually these things are not like in florida they're not even

in like mexico they're in like places that are far away to get to the place you have to get to in order to then transport right a little bit more right um so uh i yeah i mean will i do it someday maybe probably because yeah the idea of the overwater bungalow sounds awesome and i i do want to experience that but um uh you know uh when there are so many things other things on my bucket list to do, and, and 95% of them are much easier to get to, uh, and less expensive too. Um, yeah, it just hasn't been happening, but, but that's not true for you, right? Well, no, I mean, no, I guess it's not true for me in this book to ship to Bora Boraora and i i went to the maldives once uh already uh but i actually like the rooms look really cool at that jw marriott that over

water villa with its own private pool does look really cool i'm getting to the point where i'm getting less excited about those though because like you said it does get kind of crazy to spend all the points and the money to get there and then spend another five or $600 a person for the transfer, which again, I feel a little bit hypocritical saying that, but I feel like it's silly. And I think the more I travel, the more places that I see, they're gorgeous beaches all over the world. So I'm not totally convinced. I'm hoping Bora Bora is going to change my mind on this, but I'm not totally convinced that those places are worth going all out on. But, you know, again, if you're splurging for a honeymoon or that kind of thing, if you're able to pay for it on points,

pay for your flights on points, pay for the 85k per night on points, then maybe the cost of the seaplane transfer is no big deal. I'm curious about some of those places though like what happens if you use a marriott suite night upgrade at the place where you're already in the overwater villa like i wonder what will be available for a suite night upgrade or if that'll be available at all now i haven't had those suite night upgrades before from marriott the suite night award however they call it there um i know they work differently than the Hyatt ones do. In your experience, like, can you get a really awesome suite with one of those? Yeah, so the way it works is once you have a reservation and if you have Suite Night Awards in your account, then it'll actually pop up a thing saying,

do you want to upgrade your trip or something like that? I forget exactly what it says. But if you click edit, it'll show you a bunch of room types that are presumably higher than the one you booked. I never checked to make sure that they're actually all higher, but the room types could be just like ocean view instead of, you know, garden view. But they're also suites and luxury suites and everything. And you check all the ones that you're willing to

accept as an upgrade. And then you wait because they're they are not processed until at best five days before your trip. At that point, you might get confirmed into one of those that you checked as like, I'm willing to take this upgrade. I've done it twice so far. Once was at the St. Pancras Hotel, which I've been at many times. There, I think that getting a suite upgrade is is a huge benefit um that worked there successfully you you get to um uh even if you don't have this status that gets you into their lounge it having the suite upgrade gets you into the lounge and that is hugely valuable at this particular property.

That's in London, by the way. Then more recently I did this at the Inet Bay Harbor in northern Michigan. In this case, I've been to this hotel a number of times before as well. It's a resort on Lake Michigan. I checked the box allowing for just a lakeside view king room and as well as all the high not even a suite not even a suite and the reason I did that is because that's at this hotel the single most important thing to me especially I was only traveling with my wife so there's just two of us is to have a nice lakeside view those lakeside view rooms all have balconies with like rocking chairs looking out of the lake it's very nice so i wanted to ensure that uh because i did have a case a year or two ago where we went and we're stuck in a parking lot view because all the others were sold out so So I thought this gave me a better chance. So that cleared it. And

they gave me what cleared five days in advance was the King lakeside view. So that was expecting, I was fine with that. Um, when I showed up, they told me that the, um, King room was oversold. Um, so they were going to give me an upgrade. And what they gave me was the penthouse suite. That's a nice little upgrade from the late King. So my wife and I now had three bedrooms, gigantic kitchen, like way bigger than our kitchen at home gigantic living room and and a huge huge balcony that that you know went the length of maybe four regular

bedrooms so that was all extremely nice obviously having two extra bedrooms didn't really make any difference to us but the rest of it actually I enjoyed it I very much did that's nice yeah so when you i'm curious because i haven't used these yet i'm curious how it works so when you check the different rooms you're willing to upgrade to i realize you you got the lakeside king i mean was the penthouse suite one of those check boxes or i wish i can remember i don't think so i feel like i would have remembered that if i saw that there. So I'll pay more attention next time. Ask able to you know how I can figure out what I can upgrade to because now with Hyatt you've got the ability to message the Hyatt

Twitter concierge and say hey if I want to book a suite on my points you know which suite is it that I would get for the premium suite of this particular property so you know exactly what you're to book into with Marriott. That's been part of the, now, you know, it's one of those questions. Well, if I take these five suite night awards, like if I have stay A, B, and C that I'm kind of interested in applying suite night awards to, what will they even get me at those particular properties? I don't know if there's a way, is there any way with Marriott to know? No, I don't think so yeah I mean you

know I think I think you could ask a friend who has this work down to work a dummy reservation and then check that's kind of ridiculous now one thing that you might not know I think or a lot of viewers might not know is that a lot of Marriott properties will let you book right into a higher level suite from the get go even with points or with stay certificates. So if you have free night certificates with your credit card or whatever, let's say you have the 35k certificate. And you want to book that at a 35k a night hotel

but you want to get into the suite a lot of the Marriott properties definitely not all of them but a lot of them when you go in to book that award there will be options like to say you could either pay more points or, or more cash in addition to the 35 K points or the 35 K state certificate in order to get a specific suite. I'm going to challenge you on that. I want to see a post this week down to the best places to do that because I have seen that before, but based on my searches, I absolutely wouldn't say a lot.

I'd say like I've seen it three times maybe in like hundreds of Marriott searches. So we just are obviously looking at different Marriott hotels, but I'd be really curious then as to which ones are the best use. If you want a Marriott suite, which ones are the best use of a 35K cert and cash? Where can you get like some, you know, some good suites,

some valuable suites for 35K and and cash where can you get like some you know some good suites and valuable suites for 35k and some cash i actually started researching that earlier this week it turns out to be a lot more work uh with marriott because it's it's a complete fishing expedition yeah until you go to try to book an award at a specific property you can't see what's available yeah so just one after another with 6 700 properties that's it and if you happen to well and worse if you happen to pick a date when the suites were booked they're not even going to show up so you don't know that that it was a possibility if you'd booked a day later or something so yeah but. But I found a few things. The value on first blush doesn't seem to be there as good and as often as with Hyatt.

So then if I value a suite, I mean, what are my top three or four ways to do it in order? What's the best way for me to get a suite? And then what are my other good options if I want to be able to book a suite? Are you talking about specifically with merit or in general? In general, in general, like what are my best options for booking suites? If I mean, we know, right, we've talked about how we value these suites. And surely there are a lot of people who do value suites for some of the reasons that we've said. So, you know, if a listener reader is out there

wondering well okay i got a vacation coming up i don't care where i stay but i want to make sure that i get a suite what are their best options stay bridge suites you know you joke about that but this whole marriott thing you've got me saying it's the more marriott said some of their lower level like limited service brands some of them are actually pretty nice yeah yeah i mean so to be honest i mean i think with points if if you want to say at a night at a luxury hotel then then um you could go fishing with with the other brands but i think hyatt is the is the place to start looking um and at the low end, there's plenty of all suite hotels.

I'll agree with you that Hyatt is the place to start looking. But I'll say, this is where you want to check out the Thank You portal and the Chase portal as well. Don't forget and count those out. Because you know, once you start paying double the Hyatt points, when you get to a certain level, you might be better off just looking at using points at a penny and a half each and booking them directly through Chase or Citi. I mean, you're giving up your elite credit, your points and your benefits, but if you don't have those elite benefits already,

then it might not matter to you very much. And so you might be better off booking the room you want through Chase or Citi. Yeah, no, that's a good point. And a lot of, and so I think you're talking about in those cases where the suites aren't crazy expensive, but a lot of these hotels we looked at, by the way, earlier, when we talked about the Hyatt premium suites, a lot of the times, like those premium suites are selling for like $3,000 a night, whereas the baserooms were like very little. So in those cases, you wouldn't do that. But in cases where the suite is, let's say, less than double what the baseroom has, which happens a lot too, then that makes a lot of sense. Plus, when we were researching this, I noticed over and over again,

a lot of the suite descriptions said that they came with things like lounge access. So you are basically getting the elite benefits just by booking into that suite, even if you're booking with like thank you points or chase points. So that's a pretty good way to do it. That's a great point. If your main thing is you want a living room, separate bedroom and all that kind of stuff, don't count out Airbnb and VRBO. I mean, you're, you know what you're going to get. You can book it often, often at a, at a very good rate and sometimes

some nice, nice properties. Uh, you know, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit. I don't think, you know what you're going to get. And that's why I'm not a big Airbnb fan. Cause I feel like, you know, I've had some good experiences with Airbnb bit i don't think you know what you're going to get and that's why i'm not a big airbnb fan because i feel like you know i've had some good experiences with airbnb i know there's people out there that love it i don't love it i feel like you know nine times out of ten it doesn't quite match exactly what the pictures were i don't know i mean might just be my bad luck i've had good experiences with airbnb don't get me wrong but

i'd much rather book a hotel where i know there's, you know, like a standard, like I expect. I know what you're saying. And I do want to debate this, but we've gone much longer than we intended to. So I think we should call it a night and pick up that topic next week or the week after. How about that? Sounds good. All right. Great talking to you again.

Good talking to you too. Take care. Bye. All right. Bye-bye.