Hotel Travel Points: How to End Up with Free Vacations

How would you like to take a vacation for free? Who wouldn't? Well, I cannot tell you how to take your entire vacation for free but I can tell you how to rack up a few free hotel nights if you have a job which requires any travel.

About six years ago I began a job which requires me to travel around my home state about twice a month, some months more, some months less. These trips can last from one to four days and I frequently have a say in what hotel I stay at. I work for the state as a bailiff. The agency I work for hears cases related to the area of law which we administer so I travel for these hearings. When I travel to meet a judge I travel alone and then I may select the hotel which I stay at. Other times I travel with a judge from our main office in the capital and then I stay where the judge stays.

Either way, I have am a member of nearly every hotel travel club out there. No matter where I stay I rack up free travel points which I save for vacation or for family emergencies.

Now, if you are a business traveler, I do caution you to check and see if your company has a policy concerning this. I have run into at least one sad and sorry individual who was required to keep a points card and turn over the travel points to his company. Their rational was that they were paying for the hotel room so any free points he earned should belong to them. My thinking is this, he did not have to keep a points card in his name at all and how would they differentiate between points on that card which he earned traveling with their company and say, a weekend trip on his own? Would they take those points also? In effect this guy could not have any hotel points cards because he worked for a company with such a policy. No matter, my state does not have such a policy and I am free to keep the points which I accrue while traveling.

I personally prefer to stay at Comfort Inns of any other "Choice Hotels" because their points pile up the quickest with their "Choice Privileges system" and seem to be the easiest to use when you decide to use them. Plus they always seem to be running some kind of bonus point special.

My next choice is Holiday Inn Express. It is in the state budget and their point system is second only to the Choice Privileges system. Plus, they just have really nice hotels. They do not run the same bonus point specials but their points do add up and, again, are easy to use when you wish to use them.

Both of the above mentioned chains have easy to use websites and I have not noticed their points expiring. Maybe it is just that I have just not let their points set on my account long enough.

The other hotel I stay at fairly regular it Hampton Inn. They have a point system and, while I am hesitant to say anything bad about it, I will point out that in six years of staying with them, I have yet to manage to get one single free night. Their points seem to expire so fast and it takes so many points for a free night that your average business traveler is never going to build up enough points to earn even one free night with them before your first points have dropped off. In my opinion, you would have to do a lot of traveling staying exclusively at Hampton Inns in order to ever earn even one free night.

Other hotel chains, like Microtel, and Best Western, have free point systems also but I have not used them. I keep both of their cards just in case I am sent some place unusual and end up in one of these hotels.

Having been a single parent and on a tight budget, vacations have been something of a rarity for my daughter and I. But we have managed three of them, and a couple of week end get a ways with the free nights I have accumulated. Being as I make less than $30,000 a year, this is a nice little bonus when carefully managed. We may have to switch from one hotel to another mid-vacation but that works, particularly if we shift from one spot to another.

When using your points it is wise to pick spots which are not the top-of-the-line tourist destination. The points you use are "charged" by the popularity and season of the site you are going to. For example, a Choice hotel in Wilmington, NC, before Memorial Day might be 6,000 points a night. After the holiday it might be 10,000 points a night. Forty miles south in Myrtle Beach that same hotel might be 50,000 BEFORE the holiday and we don't wand to even look at it after. Sixty miles north of Wilmington, as you start to get into the Emerald Isle area and on up into the Outer Banks, the rates will be similar to Myrtle Beach.

Two years ago I took my daughter to Wilmington for a week. The beaches were great and there were no crowds. Since I hate crowds, that worked out just fine for me. The year before that we went to the mountains and stayed "off the beaten path." Who cares in the mountains? There is always something within driving range and, frankly, the smaller attractions are sometimes the best ones. I think that was our best vacation ever. Of course last year and this year we cannot afford to go on vacation because of the gas prices. Maybe one day we will be able to go again.

Until then I am racking up the hotel points and you can too. All you have to do is visit the Choice Privileges and Priority Club (Holiday Inn Express) websites and sign up. They will send you a card which you present when you check in or you can give them the number when you make your reservation. Each of the "clubs" have certain little perks also like newspapers delivered to your door in the morning , free room upgrades (if available), or delayed check out. Read it over on the website. They cost you nothing to join. I will tell you that they will both try to get you to sign up for their credit cards. You can tell them no, I have for years. You do not have to have their credit cards to get the points it is free to join.

If you travel frequently, stay in hotels and do not participate in these plans, it is like you are throwing free money away. The free nights are there for your taking all you have to do is sign up for them. Good luck and enjoy your free nights, after all no vacation is a s good as a free one.