[TRAVEL] The Gap between Luxury and Affordable Lodging Widening

I just finished reading a great article about how it seems that the gap between luxury and affordable lodging is widening.

Below are three paragraphs that essentially summarize the whole article:

• Private elevators, personal shopping assistants, six-bedroom suites with their own postal codes. Even helipads. This is what the super-rich have come to expect from hotels.
• For others, vacation now means renting someone’s apartment, a spare room, maybe just a couch — anything to save on the cost of a hotel.
• As the gap between the wealthiest travelers and everyone else has widened, so has the way people are experiencing vacations. The wealthy are looking for ever-more pampering. Many others are seeking new ways to economize.

There are so many different opinions and thoughts that can be conjured from this observation. I am actually going to focus on how points come into play on something like this.

I will like to mention right off the bat that I would not overpay for lodging. I do generally prefer staying in a hotel when I am travelling, but if I have a friend or family in the place that I am visiting, I would be more than happy to stay with them, granted that they welcome me. Otherwise, I generally prefer staying at hotels that are within my budget, generally IHG hotels or Best Western hotels because their points never expire, though I will be looking more into the SPG program from now on.

The reason I am going with SPG is because they have a nice set of luxury hotels around the world. Those are hotels that I would probably never pay for out of my pocket, but I would be happy to use some of my points on a nice hotel during a vacation.

That’s why earning points is such a big hobby for me, because I get to use my points to pay for something that I would not want to use cash to pay for.

Happy Pointshogging everyone!