If you’re new to collecting hotel points, you might not know about Daily Getaways. For those who have been doing this for a while, #IYKYK.
The Daily Getaways promotion is run by the U.S Travel Association and features daily sales. Until 2019, the promotion featured new deals every day, usually on Monday-Friday for up to 3 weeks. Each day featured a single program, or occasionally a few smaller companies, offering gift cards, vacation packages or the chance to buy loyalty points at a deep discount.
For the most popular programs, packages sell out almost instantly after the sale starts, much like trying to purchase a popular concert ticket or game console. The program was put on hold for 2020 and an abbreviated sale took place over 7 days in October 2021.
Last year, I didn’t pay much attention to the sales because I had plenty of points and free night certificates to spend. In addition, the number of really good packages was limited, with companies wanting to dip their toes back into the pool, and chances of getting one were pretty low.
The U.S. Travel Assn. has announced that this year’s Daily Getaways promotion will start on July 18th. They will announce preview offers a week earlier, on July 11th. Previously, that meant they’ll announce the deals for the first 1-2 weeks. This year, they promise.
- Amazing travel deals up to 50% off for a limited time only
- Savings on loyalty points, hotel stays, gift cards and more!
- Incredible offers from America’s top travel brands
To give some ideas of what’s on offer, here are some of the sales from last year. Always one of the most popular offers, World of Hyatt was selling points for as low as 1.2 cents each.
Choice Privileges was selling points for just over 0.5 cents each.
Other programs like IHG, Hilton and Marriott were also selling points for prices around what you can find at the best sales during the year. An additional advantage of buying points during the Daily Getaways promotion is that they usually do not count towards the yearly cap programs put on point purchases.
World of Hyatt limits purchases to 55,000 points a year, but if you were lucky to snag one of the 80,000 point packages, you’d have 135,000 points which will buy you a lovely vacation.
While buying points from those programs was usually appealing, I’m looking forward to the Daily Getaways this year because of the advances made by the lower-tier programs. Accor Live Limitless, Wyndham Rewards and Choice Privileges have expanded their offerings beyond their base chains and now allow booking interesting locations with loyalty points. People have slept on these offers in the past, but there might be more interest this time around.
Of course, you have to pay for these packages, which means you are spending money on an asset that has a chance to lose value the longer you hold onto it. Hotel programs devalue points at any time with no notice. Even if it’s a screaming deal, it’s only a good idea to buy points if you’re sure that you’ll be able to use them reasonably quickly.
I’m going to keep an eye out to see what the preview offers are and how long Daily Getaways will last this year. I’m hoping the offerings are more robust and wider-ranging than the “Taste of Daily Getaways” that we were provided in 2021.
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