We’ve covered some obscure hotel programs, but I Prefer Hotel Rewards has the potential to be one of the best… if you’re fine with cash copays on awards.

Everything has a value

I don’t need to reiterate what I’ve already stated previously, but it’s still worth mentioning. Travel using points isn’t free. Since it’s not free, there must be a value attached to it. You could then calculate the value of a point.

It’s important to also distinguish the value of a point from the cost of a point. The value is what the point can buy while the cost is what you spent to acquire the point. The difference, then, between the value and the cost can be thought of as the spread. Common sense would dictate that you don’t want the cost to exceed the value of the point (i.e., a negative spread) or you would have lost money in the transaction.

For the purposes of the below, I’m just going to define the value of the point and not the cost. Everyone’s cost will vary depending what avenues of acquiring points are available to them. I’ll save that cost calculation for you to do.

Key considerations

It’s important to identify a few key considerations to this valuation so we can look at this in the proper framework.

Each point in the same program is not worth the same amount

This one is an odd one. If you open a loyalty account and only earn one point, what is that point worth? Well, assuming you can’t redeem just one point, that point has zero value to you. In fact, each point you earn before you can redeem any of them is worth zero. The point that enables you to then redeem for an award is the one that’s worth a significant amount.

If you were to theoretically plot this out on a graph, you’d see a chart that jumps all over the place. It’s not very useful to think of points as a function plotted on a graph. Instead, it’s better to think of points as an average value. I’d rather not think about calculus when spending time in this hobby.

How much do you cherry pick your awards?

Now that you’re thinking of points themselves bouncing around in value, you can also start thinking about cherry picking for the better awards. Do you spend 1,000 miles buying $10 off travel or do you wait for 2,000 miles when you can get $25 off? That’s a simplistic example but it does help demonstrate what this dynamic entails.

Your comfort level in cherry picking the best value will depend on your earn rate, your comfort level in the program not devaluing, and the spread you’re looking to get.

The cash price the award replaced isn’t always the proper valuation

Let’s say you find an award for two one-way international flights that together form a roundtrip journey. If you didn’t have access to points, you likely wouldn’t book these flights as one-ways. Generally international roundtrip flights are significantly cheaper than one-ways. Claiming your points have the value of the cash price of two one-ways would then be inflating the value of the points.

The proper valuation should consider opportunity cost. If you didn’t have points at your disposal, what would you have paid in cash? Sometimes the cash rate might be the proper metric (it could be the only hotel in town that works for your needs), but it might not be.

Everyone’s valuation will be different

It’s important to know that my valuation will be different from yours. That’s because the awards that I might be interested in aren’t the same awards you would be interested in. Valuing points is inherently a very personal calculation that considers what I would redeem for and when.

Within this concept is the truth that sometimes elite status affects the value of points. Take Hyatt’s program where Globalist status can offer free parking on award stays but no free parking on cash stays. That then means that Globalists might have a higher valuation of Hyatt points than non-Globalists. Another example might be Hilton’s fifth night free when booked with points but only for elite members.

What do you get out of my valuation? It’s more of the framework that matters, so that you can consider your own valuation.

The method of valuing an I Prefer point

We’ve talked about how we built up the value for each of the following:

• Accor points (worth 2.4 cents each)
• Choice Privileges points (worth 1.1 cents each)
• Hilton points (worth 0.4 cents each)
• Hyatt points (worth 2.0 cents each)
• IHG points (worth 0.64 cents each)
• LHW Leaders Club points (worth 8.0 cents each)
• Marriott Bonvoy points (worth 0.9 cents each)
• Wyndham Rewards points (worth 1.0 cents each)

But before we dive into the weeds of the I Prefer program, there’s an important thing to know about Preferred Hotels & Resorts.

• I Prefer points will only work at some Preferred Hotels.
• Some Preferred Hotels are bookable with Choice Privileges points.
• That overlap means some hotels have two points currencies you could use, some hotels only have one or the other, and some have none.

Confused yet? Preferred Hotels are a little more confusing than others. To our knowledge, this is the only arrangement where two unique, unrelated points systems can be used to book the same chain of hotels (ignoring the OTA programs, of course).

Point values aren’t the same between the two programs

Let’s drill home this point by looking at one region as a representative (North America, California). As of the time of posting, 15 hotels are bookable with Choice Privileges points and 14 hotels with I Prefer points. You’d think there would be a lot of overlap, right? Not only is there not much overlap, but award prices are all over the place.

Generally speaking, you’ll need fewer points to book Preferred Hotels with Choice Privileges. However, that’s not always the case; one hotel (The Marker Union Square San Francisco) actually needs fewer points with I Prefer and one hotel (The Hollywood Roosevelt) the points are the same.

It might be tempting to just identify the average cost in Choice and I Prefer points and scale the Choice Privileges value accordingly. However, that might overstate the value of I Prefer points since in my valuation of Choice points, I found they weren’t as valuable when used at the Preferred Hotels I reviewed. It’s better for us to instead perform the same analysis but look deeper at Preferred Hotels.

Analyzing hotels across the world

For this exercise, we’re going to review six hotels in each geographic region. Three of these hotels will be bookable with both Choice Privileges and I Prefer Hotel Rewards. Three of these hotels will only be bookable by I Prefer Hotel Rewards. What we’re interested in is (1) the spread in value between Choice and I Prefer and (2) if there is a bias in redemption value when Choice isn’t an option.

As we’ve done with the valuation of other points currencies, we’ll review the hotel pricing for 9 months for both cash and points. The first set of hotels below will be our test case of comparing the value of I Prefer points against Choice Privileges points (click to enlarge).

And then our next set is for those hotels where Choice Privileges is not available (click to enlarge).

Coincidentally, we came up with an overall average of 0.53 cents each I Prefer point regardless of whether you can book hotels using your Choice points. There is some fluctuation by hotel and by month, and yet the average worked out to be the same. Weird how that works sometimes.

As for the value of I Prefer points compared to Choice Privileges, Choice points are about 33% more valuable than I Prefer points. When booking Preferred Hotels, your Choice points might go farther, but it’s worthwhile to check pricing under both programs. Some hotels are flat out cheaper with I Prefer Hotel Rewards.

Not all fees are covered by I Prefer points

One more important thing to note in all of this is that you’re going to be on the hook for a cash copay with many of these rewards. Not only does that include resort fees, but it also includes hotel taxes. That’s unfortunate, and can be a “gotcha” of the program since practically everyone else in the hotel loyalty industry waives taxes on reward nights. And the extra confusing part is they won’t tell you what those taxes are until you get to the final page before confirming your stay.

As we would do with extra cash fees on airline rewards, we tend to think of these as cash copays to go along with your redemption. Certainly not ideal, but sadly this is just life making redemptions in this program.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you up front.

The distribution is what will set our valuation

I’m going to go out on a limb and say most of us don’t have an excessive amount of I Prefer points in our accounts. If we’re not currently flush in points, we probably not going to have many to spend freely on just any stay. That means we can be a little selective in our use of the points. It’s also fair to be judicious in using the points because so many of these hotels can be booked with Choice points.

The below represents the statistics from our study.

I’m comfortable saying we would hold off on using I Prefer points at most hotels. For the sake of argument, we’ll use the 75th percentile as our value of points for this program, or 0.74 cents/point.

Citi is the way to accrue points… for a short time

It’s all good if you don’t have points because there is actually an easy way to earn plenty of points in a hurry. Just get out your Citi ThankYou cards and you can take advantage of an excellent 1:4 transfer ratio. Each Citi ThankYou point will give you 4 I Prefer points. That’s a fantastic transfer ratio, but it only sticks around through April 18, 2026. Starting April 19, Citi will cut the transfer rate in half to 1:2.

Those expensive hotels that cost 150,000 I Prefer points/night? It’s only 37,500 Citi ThankYou points for the night. And you thought Hyatt had some great award redemptions.

With a valuation of 0.74 cents per I Prefer point, that means you could potentially get 2.96 cents per Citi ThankYou point. This might be one of the most underrated options for your Citi ThankYou points if you act now.

After the transfer rate gets cut, the new 1:2 rate implies a potential value of 1.48 cents per Citi ThankYou point. Still an admirable transfer and can be worthwhile for hotel stays. You never want to see the rate go the wrong way but perhaps some people were taking advantage of it a bit too much? We can’t blame those who were able to take advantage!

Do you collect I Prefer Hotel Rewards points?

Suggested reading:

• Quick Hit: Overriding The Hotel Thermostat In Your Room
• How to Emulate Hotel Elite Status
• Did You Know: Free Cash Back on Hotel Stays