A common focus in the miles and points world is extracting maximum value for our points, often comparing our “cpp” (cents per point) value to the equivalent cash price. I definitely fall into that camp most of the time and generally will not burn my transferrable points for under 2 cpp and never under 1.5 cpp. However, there are some flaws in that logic. One, while it is fun to think about getting crazy value like 10 cpp, most of us would not be willing to pay the cash price in those cases and two, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I wouldn’t transfer my points to travel partners for < 1.5 cpp value, but if that helps someone take a trip they couldn’t otherwise pay cash for, who am I to say that is wrong?
My first ever points redemption was one of those latter cases. Of course, part of that was my own naivety with miles and points, but it did enable me to take a trip that would have not easily been able to afford.
When I started traveling internationally for business in 2008, I typically flew American Airlines. With the Great Recession happening at the time, American offered a lot of incentives like double or triple miles on flights. Despite flying economy for all of these flights, by 2011 I had racked up over 75k miles from butt-in-seat flying. I knew it made sense to earn as many miles as possible, but at that time I still had no idea how to redeem them for maximum value.
My amazing <1 cpp trip
For spring break 2013 we had an amazing opportunity to travel with our friends to the Cayman Islands and stay in amazing deck house that is part of the Ritz-Carlton property on the beautiful Seven Mile Beach. The CEO of our friend’s company owned this house and let us use it for the week. These houses are absolutely stunning and today go for several thousand dollars per night as vacation rentals! In addition to the amazing house, we had access to all of the Ritz main property amenities and beach and thoroughly enjoyed snorkeling along Seven Mile Beach.
Now we just needed to get there. American was charging 70,000 miles and $77 in taxes for an economy ticket vs a cash price of $688. Not knowing any better and not wanting to shell out $1376 for two tickets, I happily burned almost my full stash of points to save almost half that amount for 0.87 cpp value on the flights.
While I would never do that today, I am so happy I did at the time. We had an absolutely amazing trip and in a small way, it started to get me thinking more about how to better leverage miles and points. Within 2 years I was “in” and today, 4 million miles later, I’ve been able to enjoy dozens of fantastic trips. The moral of the story is that while we try to extract maximum value in this hobby, sometimes the experiences and the memories made outweigh a rigid points value calculation. Even writing this post has me itching to return to Grand Cayman and I plan to check out both the not-yet-opened Grand Hyatt and the Kimpton Seafire properties.
TL;DR: My first ever miles redemption, 70k American miles to Grand Cayman, may have been a mathematical “mistake” but even if I could go back in time I wouldn’t change anything about this redemption. We strive to maximize the value of our points in this hobby, but at the end of the day the value can also be measured in experiences and memories.
Featured image via unsplash.com, credit: Zachary Brown
