Questions and Answers

Lucky,

As you may be aware, my home city of Chennai, India is undergoing a horrific flood situation. It is apparent that a need for temporary accommodations for those whose homes are flooded in Chennai is one of the critical needs. Hotel room costs are astronomical but there is decent availability of rooms using points (based on my research).

One idea that I’ve been mulling over is to see if hotel points can be donated into a central fund and used to book rooms at various properties in Chennai for the needy. I was looking around and all I could find were mileage donor sites which convert miles to cash – but that doesn’t serve the purpose. Is there a service/site that allows pooling of various programme points into a fund and allow those points to be utilized to book rooms directly for the needy? Chennai has most of the international chains including Hyatt, Hilton, IHG and Starwood. I am more than willing to contribute and manage, but need some ideas on how to do this in a more scalable, streamlined and efficient manner. Any ideas?

Thanks
Kaushik