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Amazon sells heavily discounted Melia points (cheap 5-star hotels / Avios!)
We’ve written about Melia quite a few times on this blog. Melia Rewards is a low-key yet valuable hotel loyalty scheme. It runs frequently sales for points purchase which can represent great value.
It’s running another excellent deal on Amazon UK at the moment, which if I remember correctly is the first time. There are two options:
- 55,000 points – £161
- 35,000 points – £103
The 55,000 points one works out slightly better, although at the time of writing it’s temporarily sold out (UPDATE: still available on Amazon DE at the same price). You are paying roughly £30 for 10,000 Melia points, which is close to the record low. In last-month’s points sale on Melia’s website, the price was €35.7 (~£32) per 10,000 points.
As we’ve discussed before (here and here), it’s very easy to outsmart Melia when redeeming your points on hotels. Usually a five-star Melia hotel costs 22,000 points per night whereas a Gran Melia would cost 28,000 points, with few exceptions.
In the worst case, you could spend your points directly at the hotel venue, on food, drinks and spa services etc. The rate is fixed at €5 per 1000 points which is still significantly better than what you are paying now.
Melia is also a transfer partner with British Airways too, so you can transfer your Melia points into Avios at the rate of 10:3. It’s not a great rate, but if BA decides to run 30% conversion bonus in the future, then you are now “buying” Avios at roughly 0.77p.
Note that these are physical paper vouchers shipped to your address and you need to visit Melia’s website to redeem them. Once redeemed, they function as normal Melia points and have the same expiry rules.
Historically Amazon Spain also runs (even better) deals on the same Melia voucher. Although it’s not the case now, as Black Friday in approaching I’ll keep an eye on the relevant page in case it comes back.
Marriott buy points 50% bonus sale
Marriott’s last round of points sale finished two months ago, but obviously they didn’t intend to let us wait long – the new round has just started.
- You get 50% bonus for purchases of 2,000 points or more
- The annual purchase limit has also increased to 150,000 points
- The promotion runs until 22 October
Under this promotion, you pay $83.33 for every 10,000 points, which is roughly £64.8.
50% bonus is Marriott’s second best offer, and it’s not difficult to avail at this price. However, given how frequently the sale is running now, I wouldn’t recommend buying without imminent use.
For maximising your Marriott points’ value, please refer to my following posts:
Save 70% on Nordic hotels with Choice’s points sale
You probably have heard of the name Choice Hotels, but very few people understand their loyalty programme (me neither). This is partly due to their weak present outside North America, and most of their hotels being in the middle or low end.
Shangri-la 50% bonus on point purchase (31% off dining)
Shangri-la has recently launched a sale on point purchases – as far as I’m aware, this is the first time ever Shangri-la runs a promotion like this, so you can see how badly the hospitality sector is hit by Covid-19.
(more…)Melia selling points at lowest price ever, but with a caveat
We talked about the Melia Rewards programme previously, and their points can represent excellent value when redeemed for hotel stays. Melia is running a very attractive point sale at the moment, which is worth a look if you are interested.
The promotion has two parts. Firstly, if you log in to Melia’s “Buy Points” page, you can see the price has been reduced to €5 per 1000 points. This is not a bad deal itself as it represent 37.5% discount from the regular price (€8).
In addition to this, you get 50% bonus for your first purchase during the promotional period, until 12th July.
Factoring in this bonus, basically you are paying 3.33 euro for every 1000 points. This is a very attractive deal. In fact, the best deal ever was when Amazon ES had a Black Friday sale, where you could purchase 55,000 points for €165. This is getting very close to that level.
For a five-star Melia hotel (for example, Melia Madrid Princesa at which I’ve stayed twice), or a 4-star in London or New York, one room night costs fewer than 25,000 points. That translates to only 83 euro!
For Gran Meliá Palacio de Isora, a luxury resort that is generally regarded as the best hotel in the Melia portfolio, a half-board package costs 43,609 points per night. That is only 146 euro. As a comparison, the cash rate is €289 which is already lowered given the current situation, so you are almost getting a 50% discount here.
Sounds too good to be true right? Well it is, because the 50% bonus comes with a catch. Instead of being deposited into your account like other “normal” points, the bonus points will show up under “My Promotions” (presumably in the form of a voucher) and there are many restrictions to using it.
They must be used by the end of this year, after which the bonus points will expire, and you won’t get any points back if you cancel reservations booked using them.
They can only be used towards stays by 30th April, 2021.
All bonus points must be used IN A SINGLE TRANSACTION. Say that you are awarded 50,000 bonus points in this promotion, but only need 10,000 for your booking, you are not going to get the remaining 40,000 points back.
Also, because these points are awarded in a promotional form, they can’t be transferred to others, or converted into airline miles.
Is this a good promotion? Certainly. As I mentioned earlier, €5 for 1000 points is already a decent deal. But I would advise you to proceed carefully if you care about the 50% bonus, and make sure it doesn’t go to waste.