For those of you who don’t know, you can redeem Amtrak points not just for train travel, but for hotels and car rentals too! This operates just like any other travel portal – you trade in points, and Amtrak books whatever you’d like.
If you’re sitting on a pile of Amtrak points, this might be a good option for you to burn a few. From now through November 24, 2020, you can also save 10% of the points you’d normally spend on a car rental or hotel stay through the Amtrak booking portal. Use the following codes to snag the 10% savings on your points bookings.
- CARFALL2020
- HOTELFALL2020
Booking with the Amtrak Portal
Personally, I’ve only ever used Amtrak points for actual train travel (and even then, only a few times). The travel booking portal looks just like any other your used to. If you’ve booked on the Chase Travel Portal for example, this will be easy to navigate. I tried a sample search for a hotel in Boston over Veteran’s Day Weekend.
Using HOTELFALL2020, you can see the 10% discount activated. Now, if you’re just looking to use up some Amtrak points, that’s all you need to know. But, are these hotels good deals? You’ll need to double check and run a few numbers for cash bookings, and then figure out the dollar value per point.
Online, I’m seeing an average rate of $65/night for the Boston Fenway Inn by FOUND pictured above. At 6,600 Amtrak points, you’re netting .98 cents per point. This is a…less than ideal rate for your stash of Amtrak points. In my experience, I’ve booked train tickets for between 1 and 1.37 cpp.
The value will depend on the individual hotel and dates, and the comparative cash rate, but I hope you guys can find some value!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Where are you getting only 1-1.37cpp?
I just booked a roomette for 14,000 points that ran for $409, which is 2.9cpp which I’ve always understood to be the valuation.
Every train departing from LAX that I can see has a 2.9cpp valuation.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend using points at 1/3 their value.
Roomettes are a great value! Usually on the NE Regional track the rates aren’t quite as good. I’m based in Boston so I’m usually on the NE Regional.
When I have used Amtrak points for train travel I have gotten about 2.9 cents per point.