The flights were set down and we had 4 nights to fill before our first night at the Inn at Spanish Bay. We were looking for something inexpensive and centrally located in the Bay Area for the first two nights and then we would drive south and stay in the Monterey area, just outside Pebble Beach for the next two nights.
I was sitting on some points in the Priority Club program I had signed up for more than 10 years earlier when I frequently stayed at a Crowne Plaza near where I worked in San Jose. I had never used those points and at the time they fortunately didn’t automatically expire like they would now. Priority Club had been renamed to the IHG Rewards Club program by that time. The are redeemable at any of the IHG brands, which include Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, and many other brands you’ve likely heard of.
I had enough points for two rooms for one night, but only half as many as I needed for the two rooms for two nights we needed.
Searching
I spent weeks trying to find the perfect hotel for us at the cheapest rate. Balancing the amenities with location and cash and points price was a challenge. We really wanted to find a property that had breakfast included in order to save time and money. Finding a way to use the points was not a problem, I just didn’t have enough points!
As summer progressed, my wife was making plans for an extended trip to Canada with the kids to visit family and we discovered that all our credit cards imposed foreign transaction fees. This means that if we used any of our current credit cards in another country, there would be and extra fee attached to every transaction. The fee for our cards was about 3% per transaction and that adds up quickly.
The internet to the rescue!
By reading through several travel and credit card blogs, I realized that there are many cards don’t impose those fees. Better yet, some of those cards offer bonuses if you sign up for the card and spend a minimum amount of money within a certain period. Best of all was that some of the bonuses were large numbers of points.
After some research, I found there was an IHG Rewards Club card that offered a 50,000 point signup bonus after spending $2000. The card also did not charge any foreign transaction fees. When added to the points I already had, was enough to book 2 rooms for 2 nights at a Holiday Inn Express I was looking at.
VOILA! Problem solved. After I added my wife as an authorized user on the card, she could use it on her trip to Canada. By temporarily shifting our spending to this new card, we quickly satisfied the signup bonus spending requirement and the points were in my IHG account ready to book the hotel.
In the end, by spending money I was already going to be spending I gathered enough points for four free nights in a hotel.
This was the first signup bonus I had ever received and it really opened my eyes to the world of travel credit cards and the benefits of points and signup bonuses.
Booking
After meeting the spend bonus on the new credit card, the points were quickly added to my IHG account and I was able to book the Holiday Inn Express Belmont. While not in San Francisco itself, it was a convenient home base for the first two days of our golfing adventure. I booked two rooms for two nights for a total of 80,000 points (20K points per room per night). Each room had a double bed and would have cost us around $150 per night before taxes and fees. After making the reservation online I called the reservation line and requested adjoining rooms. There was no guarantee we’d be able to get them but they put a note on the reservation and the hotel would do their best at checkin.
Overall it was a pretty good return on the points. The hotel even offered free breakfast so we wouldn’t need to waste the time and expense of finding a bite to eat first thing in the morning before golf.
Next up was finding a place to stay Monterey area for two nights.
Tomatico Travels 
You must be logged in to post a comment.