When it comes to accruing points and miles, it can be overwhelming to decide who to fly with or where to collect hotel points. I already laid the foundation for why you need hotel points and airline miles but wanted to take more time to telling you how to choose the right hotel loyalty program for your needs, travel styles, and expectations. In this post, you will find a list of considerations before you make the final decision on where to collect those hard earned points and where to spend your money even when you do not use points for a hotel stay.

So you think you’re ready to join the world of points and miles to fund part of or your whole trip but where do you start? First you’re going to want to ask yourself some things like: What hotels have you stayed at that you really liked and why? Will you mostly be traveling with your family, solo, for business, with a partner, etc.? How often will you be staying in hotels? And lastly, what is your price point and how many points do you realistically expect to be able to accumulate?

For me, my favorite hotel brand is Marriott, specifically their JW luxury brand, but more on that later. I prefer Marriott because not only do they now have the largest hotel chain with the recent acquisition of Starwood Preferred Guest(SPG) Hotels, but they have a range of options to choose from depending on the kind of trip I’m taking. I can choose a hotel that’s more budget-friendly and includes breakfast each morning or a higher end hotel that has a lounge or execute level for an additional fee but I get to stay in more luxurious accommodations. Plus, for someone like me who has almost every place on earth on her bucket list, the fact that Marriott does have so many hotels all over the world made them a no-brainer when I was deciding who to accumulate hotel points with.

Here are a few tips to help you choose where to put your hotel loyalty:

How Do You Travel?

Do you travel for work/business, with family/children, solo, with a romantic partner, etc.? Who you travel with might or might not be a determining factor in how you choose your loyalty program but for me, it did. Before baby, my husband and I stayed at hotels (or airbnbs) and found that we just didn’t care for a lot of other large hotel chains but we wanted name recognition. I won’t go into detail but one chain in particular just seemed to always have older and outdated buildings and rooms, plus they required a ton of points for free nights. I couldn’t rationalize dedicating money and energy into collecting points for mediocre and points-expensive hotel stays so that chain was a no go for us.

If you travel for business or work, your company might decide for you what hotels you can and cannot stay at. That’s easy because you should just accumulate miles wherever that is. And if your company allows for reimbursements on travel, that’s even better because you get to collect points on free trips to use later for more free trips.

For families, you are probably going to want to find a hotel chain that has options for booking hotels with fewer points. I suggest this because budgeting with a young family is real. For example, IHG has some hotels in their portfolio that you can book for 8,000 pts/nt which is going to get you further than somewhere where you’ll need 60,000 pts/nt. Accruing points with a chain that requires so many points to book a free night means that your redemptions will come fewer and further between.

But maybe none of the above scenarios matter to you and you know how you like to travel whether you’ve got the family in tow, it’s for work or purely for leisure; it’s all the same. And you are willing to take the time to acquire as many points as necessary for awesome hotel stays even if that means you travel less frequently or use points less often. That’s all good and I can understand that as I am a mix between family/kid travel, romantic travel and sometimes even travel for work.

Hopefully by now you’ve determined the way you travel/who you travel with (or that doesn’t matter to you). Now let’s think about where you want to travel to.

Where Do You Want To Go?

This is the fun part, guys. Put your wanderlust goggles on and let’s get started:

Before you embark on points and miles accumulation through credit card sign-up bonuses, one thing I have to recommend is having a destination in mind; a destination and a time of travel (please don’t start trying to accrue these points only a few months before your planned trip – bad idea). Ask yourself, where is somewhere that I have always wanted to go but it’s probably way out of my price range right now? Think about that place and let’s get started answering the following questions:

1. What hotel chains (if any) are in this city/country?
2. What time of year would I like to visit?
3. How long do I want to travel for, ideally?
4. What is most important to me in my accommodations for this trip?

1. What hotel chains(if any) are in this city/country?

It’s important to ask yourself what hotels are available in your dream destination because it just wouldn’t make sense to accrue points with a chain that doesn’t exist where you want to go, right? So, the destination you chose has Hiltons, Marriotts and IHG properties. Awesome, now what?What time of year would I like to visit? Holidays, summer, peak travel?

2. What time of year would you like to visit?

Decide when you would most like to visit. If it’s during the holidays, you might not even be able to find rooms bookable with points and if you can, they may be at a premium price. Traveling during off-peak times for your destination will almost guarantee availability of points-redeemable rooms.

Keep those wanderlust goggles on. We’re just getting started.

3. What is most important to you in your accommodations?

Next, ask yourself what’s most important concerning your accommodations. For example, do you prefer to have breakfast included to save money or are you somewhere where your main priority is to eat your way through the city and will eat out at every meal? Do you plan to have days where you just hang around your hotel room so you need a comfy bed? Do you need a place that has room service or a full service spa? Once you’ve decided your must-haves, you can decide the type of accommodations you are going to need. You don’t need to save enough points for a stay at the JW if all you really need is a comfortable place to lay your head after days full of exploring. And you’re going to need more than a Fairfield Inn and Suites if you’re expecting to have a 4-course meal delivered to your room at all. Lastly, decide how long you want to stay.

4. How long do you want to travel for, ideally?

This is where it gets tricky. Do you want to be in a hotel for 2 weeks? This is where I would break up my time and either jump between cities or Airbnb and hotel just to experience a change of seen. However long you want to stay, the goal is to have enough points to cover the entire stay. Even if you can get enough points to cover part of your stay, you’re winning. So find out how many points you will need to cover the duration of your stay in the destination that you want to travel to during the exact time you want to travel. This is your starting point: knowing exactly how many points you will need.

The last step in this game is to just start earning points!