Are you guys usually transferring points or just booking through the CUR portal? Any tips to maximizing point transfers? It never seems like a very good deal to me, but I probably also don't look at optimal times to travel.
every now and then, there are good deals on the portal IF the airline has a good fare ... e.g. if an airline has a flight cheap as fuck, it'll be worth purchasing on the portal due to redemption value 1.5x
also, not all the transfer partners, will be a partner you'll want to fly on ... so you'll have to use the portal if you want to use points for them... e.g., i'm going to europe and a lot of the smaller airlines that jump between the greek islands are cheap and on the portal, so I used the portal to purchase those 1.5x
the REAL value though, is international flights through a transfer partner such as united or what have you... for my honeymoon we used points to get us business class tickets, to and from europe, for 230k for both of us... can't complain about that! another high value transfer partner is southwest... in general, their point redemption rate is very good for their "wanna get away" fares. so your points go far with them