[joelrunyon]

That's a dumb way to value it.

You can get a $500 hotel on points. You don't say "well, I live for free at home, so technically this night is worth nothing."

Just because you can "buy" something with a different currency that might make more sense, doesn't make it cost less in USD if you were to purchase it outright.

[BlackJack]

He's talking about willingness to pay (WTP), which is the right way to value travel imo. A biz flight might be $4k, but the economy option might be $800. If I buy economy but would pay ~$1500 for business, but no more, then the miles are effectively worth that to you. If an airline was selling fares at $1500 you'd buy them, but since they're not, you won't be buying at $4k.

In your hotel example, you should look at the WTP for a room. I might pay $150 for a room, and up to $250 for the high end room. So even if the sticker price is $500, it's value to me is closer to $250, so I'll calculate my CPM that way.

[Sleeep]

If I was given a $500 hotel voucher (that was non-transferable and expires) and I had absolutely no use for a hotel room I would value that voucher at $0, yes.

Just like if Amazon offered me a year of prime membership for $10 I'd say "no thank you" because I value prime membership at $0. (Don't shop at Amazon much, don't mind waiting for shipping, have all the streaming I need)

[Cakez0r]

Let me know if you ever get any $500 hotel vouchers that you have no use for. I'll happily give you $0 for them.

[Sleeep]

You missed when I said "non-transferable." Otherwise the value of the voucher to me would be what I could sell it for.

[bonesinger]

Its pretty easy to use points to book rooms for other people, I was able to gift 4 reservations a few weeks back for an event. All I had to do was write "Gift Reservation for xyz person" in the Request option.

[Sleeep]

Right, but that's why I said "voucher," not "points." Incidentally, that is why United got such a bad rap for giving out vouchers rather than cash for bumping passengers. Because everyone knows vouchers are more than likely never going to be used before they expire.

Even considering you can book rooms for others, there's still a huge segment of the population (50%?) where hotel points are still completely useless. There's a time in my life hotel points would be completely useless to me too. Many people don't travel and don't have friends/family who travel either, it's as simple as that. The HN crowd seems to believe that everyone is taking a few vacations to far away places a year but that's simply not the case, most people I know do not travel at all and do not want to either.

Plus, even you wanted to use them they would have to have a hotel at the destination where you also wanted to travel to.