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How I Paid $95 For A 6 Night Hotel Stay

Whenever I travel I try to stay at nice hotels. I’ve stayed in my share of bad hotel rooms, motels, camping sites over the years and now that I’m loaded with rewards points, I would rather spend a little extra in points for a nice room. When I was a kid my family would never stay in any nice hotel. The highest class place we would stay at was some kind of cheap motel room for a night.

When my wife and I fly back to Seattle this month, we had the opportunity to stay in a nice hotel in Downtown Seattle, but driving 45 minutes in traffic every day just didn’t sound exciting. We decided to stay in a decent Best Western about 15 minute from where we will need to go every day.

Thanks to my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card I was able to save $650 off our entire hotel stay. The cost for $650 was 65,000 Ultimate Rewards points.

I paid $10 for rush shipping but if you wanted to wait 3-5 days you can get your gift cards for free. Since I live in Alaska I didn’t want to wait for these gift cards to get here, so I paid for the rush shipping and they were delivered in 2 days.

One way to find the best rates is by searching multiple websites for the best deals. When I first start looking for hotel rates I usually check the basic website such as Expedia. But don’t stop there, sometimes you will find better deals from the actual hotel website and if you book directly from the hotel you can also earn rewards at the same time.

When I was looking for hotels I checked Expedia and the Best Western website and this is what I found:

Expedia Website

Verse Best Western’s website:

Best Western's Website

I made sure the rooms where the exact same for both sites and yet by booking through Best Western I would save $141. Using my $650 worth of gift cards, my total cost for staying the week at the Best Western comes out to around $95. We also will earn rewards for staying, enough rewards points for another free night the next time we stay at a Best Western.

Obviously there are many different types of rewards you can redeem through the Chase Ultimate Rewards programs, including airline miles with Southwest, Mileage Plus (United) or British Airways. And including other hotels such as, Marriott, Hyatt and Ritz-Carlton. One thing the Ultimate Rewards program doesn’t lack is options with redeeming rewards. I do like the options of using gift cards to redeem at hotels, instead of just transferring the points to the rewards program.

Have you used Chase to build rewards? Share your experience or a tip you may have that will help us all!

About Derek

I currently live in beautiful Alaska with my wife! Living in Alaska i have learned that it cost so much more just to travel anywhere! In order to fly anywhere it cost us an extra $250+ a ticket. We use miles and points to fly nearly everywhere for free, usually in First Class. You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook or why not signup to receive new blog post via email or in RSS reader