This 1 part of a 3 part series on using Amazon spend to get free flights/hotels

Here are 2 recent redemptions I’ve done doing this:

Flight – 56% cash back equivalent – 2x business class flights to Nova Scotia ($4,466) for 78,600 Amex points ($786.00) that took $7860 spend to get through Rakuten. 

Hotel – 21% cash back equivalent – 6 night suite at Hyatt Regency Waikiki (Hawaii) – $8,601.60 hotel cost paid for with 120,000 Hyatt points that took $40,000 spend to get.

The set up:

Hotels through Hyatt points earned through Hyatt or Chase credit card.

Flights through Amex points earned through Rakuten. 

This post focuses on Hyatt and hotels.

Getting Status:

Globalist is the top status at Hyatt, and you can spend your way to top status with the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card without ever spending a night at their hotels.

Every $10,000 earns 5 qualifying nights. 60 nights are needed for Globalist which translates to $120,000 in spend/year.

https://world.hyatt.com/content/gp/en/tiers-and-benefits.html#charts

Once you earn the status, it’s good for the rest of the year that it’s earned and till the end of the next year. Example, earning it in January 2027 would last you till December 2028.

Why do we want status? The Perks.

Daily resort fees waived

Free Valet

Lounge access for breakfast (Seabird hotel gave me $40 per person credit x4 guests towards breakfast).

Free room upgrades

4pm Late check out

Suite Night Upgrade Awards (more on this later)

Maximizing earn rate:

Since we need to spend $120,000 to get status, we want to be spending it in a bonus category to maximize the earn rate.

Here are the bonus categories that earn you 2x points per $1 instead of 1x:

• Dining
• Airline tickets
• Car rental agencies
• Local transit and commuting
• Gas stations
• Internet, cable & phone services
• Social media & search engine advertising
• Shipping

None of those categories really compliment reselling spend for Amazon except Shipping.

Enter the secret weapon. Card Depot. If you’re already buying gift cards for OA (Online Arbitrage) this is a perfect fit because it codes as Office & Shipping on your credit card statement which awards 2x points instead of 1x.

Channeling $120,000 spend will earn you 240,000 Hyatt points in the process.

Side Quest – The Chase Ink Business Preferred Card earns 3x points per $1 for shipping on the first $150,000 spend/year and you can transfer Chase Ultimate Reward Points to Hyatt. I’ll usually do my “spillover” spending on this card after I get status with Hyatt. This will yield a max of 450,000 Hyatt points.

Maximizing Redeem rate:

Milestone awards:

Every 10 nights you have the option of picking milestone rewards. The one I would recommend chasing is called Suite Upgrade Award. This allows you to book a standard room and upgrade the entire booking up to 7 nights into a standard suite using only 1x Suite Upgrade Award. You’ll get up to 5 of them on your way to 60 nights as a globalist if you pick them as your milestone awards. There are milestone awards every 10 nights up to 150 nights.

Side Quest – At 70 nights you can choose Aadvantage Gold Status with American Airlines. At 100 nights you can choose Advantage Platinum status with American Airlines. This is a nice side perk being able to pick up status with an Airline without having to get another credit card.

What does this look like in practice?

Example booking for 1 night August 22^nd, 2026 at Hyatt Regency Waikiki, Hawaii.

1 king bedroom – $466.54 or 20,000 points

1 bedroom Waikiki view suite – $1,075.53 or 32,000 points

Using the suite night award upgrade means you’ll pay 20,000 points and get the suite for the booking resulting in a room upgrade (400 sq feet to 966 sq feet) and saving 12,000 points/night (If you’re booking in cash, you would pay the 1 king bedroom rate).

If you applied this to a 7 day booking that would result in the following savings:

12,000 x 7 days = 84,000 points you didn’t have to spend

The price difference between the suite and regular room is $608.99. The total savings over 7 days is $4,262.93. That means the 1x suite night award provided $4,262.93 in value and you’ll likely have 5 of them earning Globalist.

Remember there are extra savings to be had due to status:

$52 * 7 = $364 resort fees

$80 * 7 = $560 in valet

They also have lounge access where you can have breakfast/snacks/drinks.

$15 * 7 * 2 people = $210

That’s $1,134 in savings from perks on top of the room cost!

Key thing to remember: There must be suites available at time of booking to redeem it so it may require you to check several date ranges.

I use a website called MaxMyPoint.com that lets me pick a hotel and set up alerts to tell me when a suite night award is available to redeem and then book it. Example https://maxmypoint.com/hotel/7355

Cash Back Equivalent vs Cents Per Point (cpp):

I always like to frame my bookings as cash back equivalent. How much would the booking cost if I paid cash divided by how much I had to spend to earn that amount of points. Example $8,601.60 hotel / $40,000 spend to earn 120,000 Hyatt points = 21.5%.

Here’s the breakdown I used for my recent booking:

$7,449.60        Hotel Cost

$480.00           Valet – $80/day x6

$312.00           Resort Fees – $52/day x 6

$360.00           Breakfast – $15/day/person x4

$8,601.60        Hotel

120,000           Points

$40,000           Spend

21.5%  Cash Back Equivalent

Price per point would use the following equation:

Hotel cash cost / Point Cost

$8,601.60 / 120,000 = 7.17 cents per point.

Why is CPP important?

Cents per point (CPP) helps establish a baseline to know whether you’re making a good redemption. For example, NerdWallet values Hyatt points at 1.8 ¢ each, meaning 20,000 points should get roughly $360 in travel value. In practice, that means you shouldn’t redeem 20,000 points for a $200 room—you’d effectively be spending $360 worth of points for a $200 stay.

I prefer using a cash-back equivalent because CPP doesn’t account for how fast you earn points. For example, my 120,000-point Hyatt booking came from spending $40,000 in a 3x category, while someone earning just 1x per dollar would need $120,000 in spend to reach the same number of points. Factoring in the earn rate gives a truer picture of the real return you’re getting on your spend.

Static vs Dynamic Pricing:

Some hotel chains (Marriott) use Dynamic pricing to calculate how many points to charge for an award booking. Whereas Hyatt uses static pricing. Hyatt for example will charge 20,000 points for a room if the cash rate is $300/night or $1000/night. If we time it right, we can get some lopsided redemptions in our favor.

How this all fits into Amazon:

As I understand it, hotel points and cash-back rewards are generally treated as rebates, meaning they’re effectively tax-free (I’m not a tax professional!). If the average U.S. tax rate is around 14.5% (according to Chat GPT), then my $8,000 Hyatt stay would require earning roughly $10,000 pre-tax to cover it with cash. If that’s the case, the redemptions are that much stronger on paper.

I have a saying: every ASIN serves a different purpose. While someone might see a high velocity, low ROI ASIN and think the ROI is too low and not buy it, I see that ASIN as a vehicle to farm points on. I can spend heavy and reset into cash quickly and farm points in the process. On paper it might show single digit ROI but on the travel side it’s producing 25%+ ROI. Using Rakuten, your earn rate can be 10-15x per dollar spent which is how you can swing 40%+ cash back equivalent redemptions on flights.

Anyhow, this is just a shallow primer into travel hacking! If there’s anything I missed, you’d like to add, or I need to fix, I would love to hear from you!

Referral Links for anyone interested:

Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card:

https://www.referyourchasecard.com/21w/2D74ZJORBM

Chase Hyatt Business Credit Card:

https://www.referyourchasecard.com/205a/5EZZSDY4MD

Max My Point:

https://maxmypoint.com/ref?code=8ub68

If anyone needs help with hitting the sign up bonuses, I can send a leads list your way as a thank you!