morningloryblue

Every year around the start of the year I take stock of my balances in various frequent traveler points programs, both to see how we'll I've done in accumulating & using miles as well as to set goals for the coming 12 months. Yesterday I posted a wrap-up of my airline miles and status for 2025. Now it's time for the same with hotel points and status.

This check of points and status comes at an odd moment. I feel I am at a tipping point where it may be time to say "Game over" for the hotel points-and-status chase. Hotels have been watering down the value of elite status. "Room upgrades as available" often are not available. And when they are, the "upgrade" is something close to trivial like the same room on a higher floor or facing the garden instead of the parking lot.

At the same time hotels have been watering down the value of their points. They do this by increasing the amount needed for redemption. Yes, that's been a story most of the 20 years I've been in the points-and-status game, but over the past few years points inflation has gotten out of hand. Hotel rooms routinely now cost 2x the points they could be purchased for just a few years ago.

This runaway inflation puts emphasis on the strategy of earn and burn: earn points (from stays and credit card bonuses) and spend (burn) them quickly, before they lose value. The old strategy, from years ago, of saving up points for years to redeem them for a week-long stay at a top property is broken. Thus as I inventory my points and status I indicate accumulating too many points as a bad thing and managing to spend down my balances as a good thing.

⬇️ Hilton: More Burn than Earn... And I Got Burned!

Hilton edged out Marriott to be my #1 hotel chain again in 2025 (ditto last year, in 2024). I stayed 16 nights with Hilton. The majority, 13 nights, were paid. That's because either (a) they were for work, and the company was paying; or (b) the cash price was reasonable while the points price was through the roof. Unfortunately "through the roof" has become the new normal with Hilton as they have broadly increased their hotel points costs three times in just over a year. 😧

The one stay where I redeemed points was when both the cash price and points price were through the roof. When we visited Rome in May we stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Rome Cavalieri for 3 nights for a whopping 85,000 points per night. (After the latest devaluation it's 120,000 points per night.) I try to make Hilton points worth at least a half cent apiece, so that's $425 at par. But hotels were eye-wateringly expensive across the city at that time. Many were $600+, including the Cavalieri. So while it was a lot of points it was at least a good value.

Status-wise I regained Diamond (top tier) elite after dropping to Silver (bottom tier) at the start of the year. Diamond is a benefit of the Hilton Aspire American Express card I signed up for again in April. I say again because I canceled it in 2024 thinking I'd find some kind of sign-up bonus for it again. Alas I did not. Is the card with its newly raised $550(!) annual fee worth it without a big signup bonus? My plan is for the answer to be Yes; I'll check back on that after the card's anniversary in April.

Thanks to spending 255k points on that Rome Cavalieri stay I spent more Hilton points than I earned in 2025. My balance dropped from 477k a year ago to 385k today. My goal with the remaining balance is to find an enjoyable luxurious stay for 4-5 days. I need to do it ASAP before Hilton hits us with yet another deval It'll have to be cheaper than the Rome Cavalieri, though!

⬇️ Marriott: Bonvoy-age, Marriott!

Marriott was my #2 hotel chain again 2025, falling just behind Hilton with 15 nights (16 if I include one Hawk did on her account). Back in the 2010s Marriott was my #1 choice. I routinely hit 50+ BIB (butt-in-bed) nights a year with them. My overall amount of travel, especially business travel, has decreased since then. And Marriott has gotten... unfriendly. Their prices in many markets are 15-20% higher than their competition, and getting elite benefits from them is like pulling teeth. Benefits shouldn't be hard; I'm a Lifetime Titanium elite! But here we are.

You may have seen a news stories recently about a Marriott that shooed customers off a bench and a Fairfield Inn that posted that bottles of water are no longer an elite benefit! When they nickel-and-dime loyal travelers that hard getting a real benefit like a suite upgrade seems to have a snowball's chance in hell.

In 2025 I succeeded in spending down my Marriott points balance. It's a goal I'd been working on for years. Why was it so hard? It was hard because I insisted on getting good value for my points. The thing about airline/hotel points nowadays is that while you pretty much always can use them for any trip, you're frequently charged a terrible redemption rate. I spent my balance down from 160k last year to almost zero this year. With earnings from a few paid stays I made, I finished the year just 32k left.

For 2026 my plan for Marriott is, basically, "Bonvoy-age!" I'm done. I'm out. I'll be content to stay at Marriott and use my elite benefits if work sends me to a Marriott, or if I happen to find a Marriott at a competitive price (unlikely!) when traveling for leisure, but I am absolutely not going to go out of my way to choose them. Those 32k points? Meh. Once upon a time they would've bought a night at a resort high rise in Hawaii. Today they might— might!— be enough for a one-night stay at a Fairfield Inn along a highway. And I'll have to pack my own damn water bottles.

⬆️ IHG: Burn and Earn

Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), whose portfolio includes Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, remained  my #3 hotel chain in 2025. I stayed 8 nights with them... though that increases to 12 if I count in the nights Hawk and I stayed with IHG on her account. (She's burning off points, too!) Every year recently it's looked like IHG will leap ahead of the others, as its footprint of plenty of decent limited-service properties in smaller towns than Hilton and Marriott fits our travel patterns well. But this year even their prices were just too high much of the time.

My goal with IHG for 2025 was to burn down my points balance of 212k. Hawk had a similar goal, too, as she had about as many points as I did! Plus we both have free-night certificates from the IHG credit cards we own. How did we do? We both spent our balances down somewhat. We used the certs first because they expire after 12 months, and we both redeemed some points, too. But then I signed up for another IHG credit card midyear, and earned 140k from the juicy signup bonus. I finished the year more than 100k above where I started, with 316k points.

Status-wise I remain Platinum with IHG, a benefit of owning their affiliated credit cards. Platinum is their second highest tier. In the past I've groused it's not worth much because there really aren't elite benefits to be had at the limited-service properties I make most of my stays at. Usually it's an "upgrade" to a "suite" at a Holiday Inn Express, where it's just a slightly larger than basic room. I mean, I appreciate it, but to me it's not worth more than maybe $10 a night.

For 2026 my goal with IHG swings back to Burn, baby, burn! 316k points is not the huge balance it may seem at today's devalued rates, but I'm going to see if I can redeem it for a 4-5 night stay someplace nice this year.

↔️ Best Western: What do I do with these points?

For several years Best Western was been down in my "Whatever" category (see below), the group of hotel chains I stay at so infrequently I just don't care. For example, I didn't touch BW at all for years. But the chain came back on my radar in 2024 as they do what IHG does at the lower end, but even moreso. And as IHG was too pricey much of the time, I traded down to BW several times in 2024. That left me about 24k points at the end of 2024... which I still have at the end of 2025. Thus my plans for 2026 remain the same: find some reasonable redemption, presumably a one-night stay somewhere not too swank, for my BW points.

↔️ Hyatt, Choice, Wyndham: Whatever

I have memberships in several other hotel rewards programs. Some still have scraps of points left in them from years past. Others are zeroed out due to expiry. I've barely paid attention to these chains for the past few years because the ones above largely meet my needs— and they control a huge portion of the mid-scale and upper mid-scale hotel market. That said, I did stay for 2 nights at a Hyatt (my employer's choice) and 1 night at a Choice (my choice). Plus we stayed 5 nights with Wyndham on Hawk's account. Between those two I was disappointed with Choice and slightly impressed with Wyndham. That reversed my expectations as previous I'd ranked Choice ahead of Wyndham. We should figure out if Hawk has enough Wyndham points yet to be worth anything, like my BW points (above) are worth potentially a few night somewhere.

I think my future will involve a lot more stays at these other brands as I see declining value in elite status and accumulating points, and instead pick whatever property offers the best quality/price tradeoff in the moment.

Every year around the new year I write a variety of retrospectives about the year just finished. Several of those are about travel, as that's the main theme of this blog and one of the things I most enjoy in life. My travel for 2025 is done for the year so I can post this summary a few days early.

Here are Five Things about my travel in 2025:

1. I traveled 89 days and 72 nights in 2025. These figures are down slightly from 2024's tallies of 94 and 81. I/We just didn't get out as much as I/we wished. More on that below.


2. Business travel was up.... Business travel made up 40% of my travel in 2025. That's double 2024's 20% share. Partly that's because I actually traveled on business more in 2025 than 2024. Though it wasn't for customers and trade shows. I mean, I did travel for a few each of those, but not significantly more than in recent years. The increase in 2025's business travel came from internal training meetings.


3. ...And leisure travel was down. Business travel took a larger 40% share of my travel in 2025 not just because I had more days on the road for my job than in recent years but also because I spent fewer days traveling for fun. Why? Basically because being sick sucks. January was a loss because Hawk was sick for 6 weeks. October was a loss because she was recovering from foot surgery. Other than last Sunday's same-day mileage run December was a loss as well due to sickness. And the suckiness of being sick is going to pinch leisure travel this coming year, too, as Hawk has another surgery in late January. Aside from business travel I do solo, we likely won't go anywhere in January, February, or March.


4. I flew 48,300 miles in 2025. That's down from nearly 55k in 2024 but is in line with my average over the past few years. Next year might be a lower mileage year with a few months of no leisure travel... but if I follow through on plans to retire early in the year I expect to travel a lot more.


5. Bucket List items checked off: 1. It's been a slow year for progress on bucket lists. This year I didn't visit any new national parks. I'm still at 53/63. I finished visiting all 50 states and Washington, DC in 2024. I did visit two more countries this year, Italy and Spain, bringing my tally to 25 countries.

More 2025 retrospectives to come.

Flying for Fun & Profit #1
SJC Airport. Sun, 28 Dec 2026, 3:30pm.

This afternoon I am embarking on a mileage run. It's a flight taken strictly for earning points snd status. A few weeks ago I saw I was coming up a tiny bit short on my Southwest status chase, so I booked this mileage run.

For this mileage run I booked a quick round-trip to LAX. But I'm not going to Los Angeles, other than spending a few hours on the ground at the airport. I get back on a flight home this evening.

Right now I'm at SJC airport. I arrived here well early for the first flight. I'm taking as few chances as possible with the schedule.

I've been checking the flights for on-time-ness all afternoon. The aircraft for my first flight has been tracking on time and just landed from its previous leg. The homebound flight has been drifting a bit late, probably picking up delays from coming from somewhere in the East, where snow has caused lots of cancellations. That flight being late is okay... I'd only get worried if my outbound were late, because then I might miss the homebound! I planned over 3 hours on the ground between flights, so the chances of that are small... though never zero.

Stay tuned, this should only take a few hours!

Update: the flight to LA was smooth, then I took a piss and I turned myself around... that's what it's al about!