Can You Book Hotel With Sky Miles Plus Money

The behemoth Delta SkyMiles program contains many twists, turns and odd alleyways, none more than disruptive than the departure between the "Pay With Miles" and "Miles + Cash" programs.

Although they sound nearly identical, they work very differently. And to make matters worse, neither are the same as booking "laurels flights" using miles.

Hither you'll find the bones differences between these options, how each 1 works and how you can make up one's mind which (if any) you should utilise to book your next flight with Delta.

The basics

In a nutshell, hither are the differences betwixt these different booking options:

"Pay With Miles"

• Lets you pay for some or all of your cash fare with SkyMiles.

• Each SkyMile is valued at a prepare rate of one cent per mile.

• Y'all get to choose how many miles yous utilise.

• These tickets earn both Medallion Qualifying Miles and redeemable miles, but just on the portion of the ticket paid with greenbacks.

"Miles + Greenbacks"

• Available to anyone with a SkyMiles account.

• Lets y'all pay for some of your cash fare using SkyMiles.

• The value per SkyMile varies from ticket to ticket.

• Delta determines the split up between cash and SkyMiles.

• These tickets don't earn Medallion Qualifying Miles or redeemable miles.

Award flights are the normal way to use miles to book flights with Delta and its partners. Read our guide to booking Delta accolade flights for more details.

Generally, we recommend using the "Pay With Miles" feature if you loathe searching for award availability. Nosotros generally don't recommend using the "Miles + Cash" option unless y'all are trying to burn a very specific number of SkyMiles and have no other good options.

Pay With Miles: How it works

Over again, this option is available only if you accept a Delta co-branded credit card attached to your SkyMiles account. Specifically, yous must hold the Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card .

To apply Pay With Miles, search for a flying as yous would commonly. Don't select "store with miles" just all the same. You should meet a "Pay with Miles Eligible" tag at the bottom of each cash fare.

Select the fare as y'all usually would. On the next screen, you'll get a widget with a dropdown similar this:

As you can come across, you can offset the toll of the cash fare using SkyMiles in 5,000-mile increments.

SkyMiles are always worth 1 cent each when used in this way, which, while not spectacular, isn't far from our estimated value for SkyMiles of 1.3 cents each.

Given how much simpler this option is compared with normal honor booking, those with footling patience for blackout dates and other award calendar headaches might be willing to forego potentially higher value from their SkyMiles. However, it's probably worth spending a few minutes comparing the value of the fares you find with "Pay With Miles" and normal award bookings (see the calculator beneath for help figuring this out).

Miles + Greenbacks: How it works

Let's say you want to utilise your SkyMiles to book a ticket, but yous don't have enough miles to cover the full cost. You can use the "Miles + Cash" option on most Delta-operated flights to practice just that. Make a search in the Delta booking tool like normal, then look for the "Miles + Cash" option nether "Show Price In."

Selecting this will switch the prices over to a combination of, well, SkyMiles and greenbacks, like this:

Since Delta is setting both the split between the amount of SkyMiles and greenbacks, as well as the value of the SkyMiles, determining the value of this selection requires a trivial work. For case, the same ticket paying only greenbacks costs $466.twenty in this case (annotation that the Miles + Cash price to a higher place is for a "Main" fare):

Subtracting the cash portion of the Greenbacks + Miles price ($191.20) from the full greenbacks toll ($466.xx) determines how much greenbacks is existence start past miles ($466.twenty - $191.twenty = $275). So $275 is being offset by the 26,500 SkyMiles.

You lot can utilise this reckoner to determine whether this is a adept bargain or not:

If the value of 26,500 SkyMiles is more $275, this is not a good deal. If they are roughly the aforementioned, it'due south a wash.

Indeed, for the most office, these Miles + Cash bookings should be considered only as a final-ditch option for burning some extra miles if you don't accept enough for a full ticket.

The lesser line

They may sound similar, but Delta's "Pay with Miles" and "Miles + Cash" options offer fundamentally different value propositions. Neither offers peculiarly good bang for your SkyMiles in terms of value, but the "Pay with Miles" do good for Delta cardholders can make sense in some cases, where the "Miles + Cash" beginning rarely does.

How to maximize your rewards

You lot desire a travel credit menu that prioritizes what's important to yous. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2022 , including those best for:

Source: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/demystifying-deltas-pay-with-miles-vs-miles-cash

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