@Dugette - Generally speaking, you want to try to plan each trip 2 years out at a minimum. I give myself one year to accumulate the points and miles I will need for a given trip with the credit card sign up bonuses. Then, once those are in place I give myself about a year to get everything booked with those points.
I have no experience with Flexperks but if you are getting a value of 2 cents per point I may look into that so thanks for sharing. I'm all about diversifying the points and miles portfolio.
For international hotel stays, my go to is Club Carlson. There is a generous sign up bonus with a do-able spend. The card gives you 40k points every anniversary to boot. DH and I have received more value from our Club Carlson cards than our Hilton and Marriott cards combined. I'm not counting SPG as a hotel card because I value that card for flights.
I've only been playing this game for 5 years. I have over 30 credit cards and NONE are more valuable to me than my Chase UR cards. My Chase UR points are far too valuable for me to waste by transferring them to a hotel. I prefer to transfer them to an airline and I will get more bang for my buck. With regards to the question of Marriott points vs UR points. I will give you examples of what I have done with both:
In 2014 100,000 UR points got 2 one way tickets in first class from Paris after an ABD trip and visit to
Disneyland Paris back home to Miami by transferring them to United. The same flights on on United's website were over $9,000 each.
In 2014 100,000 UR points also transferred to United got me a RT flight to Vancouver and back in first class when we went on our Alaska cruise with Disney. That flight was about $2400.
In 2016 100,000 UR points transferred to United got me a RT flight in first class to Jackson Hole for our ABD trip to Yellowstone in Wyoming. Cost on United $2400
In 2017 100,000 UR points were worth $1500 towards my Delta flights in first class to Iceland. We had enough to cover our flights and this is the least value I have ever received from using UR points.
So what have I done with my Marriott points? In 2015 100,000 Marriott points got me 2 nights at the St. Ermin in London. Had I payed cash it would have been a little over $600.
Clearly, we are able to generate a lot of UR points by utilizing the bonus categories from the Freedom, Ink+, CSR and CFU. The transfers to airlines usually wind up getting me flights that I would not pay real money for and offer me a better vacation experience and still help mitigate what goes into the vacation budget. Hope that helps
Well if it makes you feel better @tink1970 I just made my own boneheaded mistake. As you can see in my signature line, we are doing ABD China next year. While looking at different options to get to Hong Kong I decided we should go for the Suites Class flights with the double bed on Singapore Air. DH and I each transferred some SPG, TY and MR points to my Krisflyer account. My mistake was not reading the T&Cs for Krisflyer. One is not allowed to pool points. So, technically, they can make me forfeit any points that DH transferred into my KF account. We have not booked yet, but do have a flight on hold. So, we proactively reached out to KF and explained that a mistake was made and are requesting that DH's MR points be sent back to his Amex MR account. We had to email them a statement of his MR activity and his credit card that earns MR points.
