How to Save 44% or More At Select Priority Club Hotels

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Last month my wife traveled though Port Moresby (POM), Papua New Guinea. During her travels, she had to spend a night in Port Moresby for a night leaving the country and a night entering back into the country. Unfortunately, Port Moresby has some of the highest hotel room occupancy in the world. How is that a problem? Supply and demand. Where there is a high demand, you can naturally expect prices to increase.

As such, when you spend a night at the Crowne Plaza in POM, you can expect to pay about $245.00. Crazy, but I can guarantee that you would rather pay that than sleeping on the street. The average hotel rate in town hovers around $200. However, by using a simple travel hack, guests can get a room for $62.50 during selected times of the year. Here is a guide for saving 44% or more on Priority Club hotels.

Just in case you don’t know the Priority Clubs family of hotels, it includes InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and Candlewood Suites.

Every few months Priority Clubs designates certain hotels as PointBreaks locations. These hotel offerings are extremely limited and available at a special points discount for a few months at a time. Usually, every 2-4 months they update the list. However, these locations are available for a discounted number of Priority Clubs points — only 5,000 points. However, if you plan your travel well, I’ve found that the promotions can fit well into your travel plans. This is one of the reasons why I collect Priority Club points.

To find a list of available PointBreaks, visit this page and can click on PointBreaks at the bottom of the page. Next, choose the region where you will be traveling in the next 2-3 months. Currently, they are only taking reservations through August 31st, 2010, and there are 23 different hotel locations across the US.

But, what if you don’t have 5,000 Priority Clubs points?

Buy 5,000 Priority Clubs Points for $62.50.

All you need to do is sign into your account (or open one first) and buy 5,000 points. Want to guess how much points cost? $12.50 per 1,000 points.

Anyone who stayed in the Crowne Plaza in POM between May and June 2010 could have paid $62.50 instead of $245 if they only knew this little fact.

How hard is it to find available PointBreaks locations?

While my family travels more than the average family, over the last three years we’ve been able to find PointBreaks promotions during about half of our vacations.

Here’s my journal of locations where I’ve stayed for 5,000 points in the last three years.

All prices below are first listed in local currency and then US dollars at the currency value during the time of our stay.

• Holiday Inn On Avon, Christchurch, New Zealand (2 nights): rates start at $108 NZD ($81 USD)
• Crowne Plaza, Queenstown, New Zealand (1 night): $229 NZD ($171 USD)
• Holiday Inn Express Vaughn, Canada (2 nights): $91 CAD ($77 USD)
• Crown Plaza, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (2 nights): K610 PGK ($245 USD)

Total nights = 7. Total points used: 35,000.

Total US dollar value = $1,005. If you wanted to buy points for those same hotel stays, it would cost $437.50, which would still result in a 44% savings.

In our case, we actually used points. But even if you don’t have points, remember to check the PointBreaks page before booking your next vacation. In fact, you might even want to consider collecting Priority Clubs points because on all those stays listed above, we actually used points we accumulated by signing up for two Chase Priority Club credit cards. We typically focus on accumulating hotel points because hotel points are better than flight points.  In this case, signing up for two credit cards and getting $1005 worth of hotels is a pretty good deal.  That is one reason why we focus on maximizing our credit card rewards.

Have you ever used PointBreaks? How often do you find availabilities for your scheduled destination? How much money have you saved by using PointBreaks?