How Much Are Travel Points and Miles Worth in 2024?

Making the most of travel rewards requires some understanding of how much each reward currency is worth. Earning 100,000 points sounds great, but what does that mean in terms of dollars?

To find out, NerdWallet performed a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of dozens of airline, hotel programs and general credit card rewards programs. We compared cash and award bookings across many dates and cities to determine how much actual value you can expect to get from any given points or miles.

In essence, valuations approximate how much your points and miles might be worth in terms of dollars and cents when redeemed for travel.

Unlike many point and mile valuations, ours are drawn from real-world data. They are not hypothetical or maximized values based on idealized conditions, but actual estimates of how many cents per point or mile you can expect to get when making award bookings.

Basically, we looked up hundreds of travel bookings using either cash or miles, and directly calculated the results.

For determining the value of airline miles and hotel points, we picked the 75th percentile value rather than the average or median. This means that for every four searches, we picked the one that offered the highest value. We believe this reflects how travelers shop for award bookings — by comparing cash and point redemptions across several dates.

» Learn more: What are travel points worth and why do they matter?

How much are airline miles worth?

Here's what we found in our latest analysis:

Keep in mind that the airline points values are based on main cabin economy tickets and exclude premium cabin redemptions.

Hyatt has the most valuable hotel points at 2.2 cents apiece, more than 4x the value of the lowest hotel reward currency on the rung, IHG.

Because transferable credit card points offer more complexity and value range than standard travel rewards from hotels and airlines, we offer two separate values for each program or card:

• Baseline value. This is the promised value from the issuer when using the points to book travel directly with their internal tools, such as using Chase Ultimate Rewards® points to book travel through the Chase travel portal.

• NerdWallet value. This is a combination of the baseline value and the value of each programs’ highest-value transfer partner (per the table above).

Airlines

A few notable trends emerged since the pandemic.

• Overall, the value of airline miles have increased in the past few years. In 2020, only one airline — Southwest — had miles worth 1.5 cents or more. Now, four airlines have reached that threshold: Southwest, American Airlines, Frontier Airlines and JetBlue. American Airlines leads the way among all domestic airlines we analyzed, with AAdvantage miles worth 1.6 cents each.

• Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines miles have also increased significantly in value, climbing to 1.5 cents and 1.3 cents respectively this year, up from less than 1 cent just two years ago.

• The Department of Transportation is looking into airline frequent flyer programs with new scrutiny. In a frequent flyer program inquiry announced in September 2024, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is requesting data from airlines to find out whether devaluations of miles and dynamic pricing are unfair to consumers. The findings could inform future policies.

Hotels

Hotels have been a mixed bag over the last few years. After some dramatic changes during the pandemic, most hotel points are still worth about as much as they were five years ago.

• World of Hyatt points is still in a league of its own, with a valuation that’s more than double most of its other competitors’. 

• Marriott and Hilton points inched up a smidge, which means members of the two popular hotel loyalty programs can make their points go a little farther this year compared to last year.

• Choice Hotels, NerdWallet’s surprise winner for Best Hotels in 2024, had a lackluster performance in this analysis, with their valuation falling to 0.8 cent.

• IHG had the biggest drop, with its IHG One Rewards points decreasing from 0.8 cent to 0.5 cent in value. Its points are now worth even less than Hilton’s.

We collected real-world data on thousands of flights and hotel stays to determine these values.

We compared cash prices to award redemptions for the same flights and rooms. For example, we cross-referenced the cost of flying round-trip from New York to Los Angeles using either cash or award miles. Then, we divided the cost of the cash tickets by the cost of the award tickets to determine a “cent per mile” value for each flight.

These searches were made in August 2024.

Airline valuation methodology

Fare classes

We compared main cabin fares across all airlines. We did not include basic economy fares.

Routes

• Three of the busiest routes from the airline’s hub.

• Three short routes (under 650 miles).

• Three midlength routes (651-1,500 miles).

• Two transcontinental routes (over 1,500 miles).

• One route from a hub to a small airport.

• 10 international routes.

Dates

For each airline, we chose three dates for comparison:

• Within 15 days of departure.

• Six months out.

• During peak winter holiday travel (Dec. 22-29, 2024).

Hotel valuation methodology

Rates and rooms

For both cash and reward bookings, we selected the lowest-priced refundable room.

Destinations

We chose five major cities and five midsize cities:

Major:

• New York.

• Los Angeles.

• Chicago.

• Philadelphia.

• Dallas.

Midsize:

• Akron, Ohio.

• Scottsdale, Arizona.

• Tampa Bay, Florida.

• Buffalo, New York.

• Modesto, California.

For each hotel chain, we selected brands from three categories: budget, midtier and luxury (as determined by our in-house experts). We selected individual hotels from each category in each city, when available.

Dates

We selected two timeframes for both cash and reward bookings:

• Within 15 days of travel.

• Four months out.

Credit card valuation methodology

To determine the value of credit card points, we considered:

1. The value of these points when used to book travel directly with the credit card’s travel portal.

2. The value of the airline and hotel points to which these points can be transferred, when applicable (based on the separate analyses above).

3. The number of top-tier travel transfer partners, as determined by our expert panel.

The overall value is determined as: A weighted average between (1) and (2), with the weight determined by (3). The program with the largest number of high-value partners receives a 100% weight on (2), and a program with zero high-value partners receives a 50% weight on (2).

Data analysis

We selected the 75th percentile value for all data analysis.