How Much Are Travel Points and Miles Worth in 2023?

Making the most of travel rewards requires some understanding of the basic questions, like 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 15 airlines, seven hotel programs and nine 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, points and miles valuations are the target cash values applied to travel rewards currencies when redeeming.

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 thousands 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.

Consider these values a “baseline” for what you could actually get when using your award currency to book regular trips (i.e., we're not limiting our search just to travel options where you'd receive outsize value).

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

How much are airline miles worth?

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

The best hotel point value goes to Hyatt at 2.8 cents. This is nearly 5x in value higher compared to the lowest on the rung, Hilton, and almost a full cent higher in value than the 2021 Hyatt valuation.

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 throughout the pandemic.

• Airline miles are maintaining their value, but not keeping up with inflation. First, mile valuations have generally increased since 2020. This may be due to inflation affecting the price of cash airfare, though that can’t tell the entire story since airfares were cheap in 2021. This runs counter to the usual idea that airline miles inevitably devalue over time. For the last few years, they haven’t.

• There are fewer and fewer outliers. The difference in value between programs is collapsing. Most airline miles are now worth between 1.3 cents and 1.5 cents, which is a narrower range than previous years.

• Southwest, dethroned. Southwest Airlines used to stand atop these valuations, but now it shares its value with three other airlines: American, Delta and JetBlue. American Airlines in particular has seen a significant increase in value, rising 50% since 2019.

Hotels

Hotel points have followed the same trend as airline miles, with values ticking up overall through the last several years.

• Hyatt's award chart means better value for redemptions. World of Hyatt always offers higher-value points than the competition, and the difference has only expanded this year. Hyatt is now the only brand offering a fixed award chart, and this skyrocketed the value of its points during the inflation-intensive period in which the data was collected.

• Marriott trends downward, yet again. On the flip side is Marriott Bonvoy, which has devalued significantly since 2019. Bonvoy points are now worth only slightly more than Hilton Honors points, which would have been inconceivable before the pandemic.

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 2022.

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 mid-length routes (651-1,500 miles).

• Two trans-continental routes (over 1,500 miles).

• One route from a hub to a small airport.

• Ten 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).

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, mid-tier 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.