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SMOFCon Is On
Oct. 5th, 2015 09:13 pmMy vacation request for early December has been approved, so it looks like Lisa and I are okay to plan the trip to SMOFCon 33 in Fort Worth. I've booked hotel rooms along the route, including using the two free-anywhere-in-the-chain nights I had banked for two nights at the Palazzo in Las Vegas on the return trip. The only difficult part is that we'll get home on Saturday and I'll then have to turn around the very next day and drive to the Bay Area to work for a week down there, as it's the last full week in the year -- the rest of the month is partial weeks because of the holidays.
As it happens, the free-anywhere-nights are somewhat less valuable when I'm using them, as a Wednesday-Thursday night in the second week of December has (relatively) less expensive room ($259) than if we were booking a weekend night in a peak period. But it's still good use of the free nights, as is redeeming 20K IHG points for a night at Williams AZ on the way out, where the Holiday Inn Express is unaccountably selling rooms for more than $200/night.
I also seem to have enough Hyatt points for one free night, but there are a lot fewer Hyatts along my route than there are IHG hotels. One of the plans was to use a night in Albuquerque; however, we need to spend two nights there (I'll work remotely that day; it saves a vacation day), so it wouldn't make much sense to change hotels in mid-stay. Also, it looks like Hyatt and I have a confusion and I have a pending query to their customer service about why I seem to have two different accounts with them, with two different balances. We'll give this some more thought. None of the hotel stays booked yet are non-refundable, so we might change a few things around if more free nights become available to me.
As it happens, the free-anywhere-nights are somewhat less valuable when I'm using them, as a Wednesday-Thursday night in the second week of December has (relatively) less expensive room ($259) than if we were booking a weekend night in a peak period. But it's still good use of the free nights, as is redeeming 20K IHG points for a night at Williams AZ on the way out, where the Holiday Inn Express is unaccountably selling rooms for more than $200/night.
I also seem to have enough Hyatt points for one free night, but there are a lot fewer Hyatts along my route than there are IHG hotels. One of the plans was to use a night in Albuquerque; however, we need to spend two nights there (I'll work remotely that day; it saves a vacation day), so it wouldn't make much sense to change hotels in mid-stay. Also, it looks like Hyatt and I have a confusion and I have a pending query to their customer service about why I seem to have two different accounts with them, with two different balances. We'll give this some more thought. None of the hotel stays booked yet are non-refundable, so we might change a few things around if more free nights become available to me.
