Loving RiverView Ranch | Coffee Break Ep121 | 9-9-26

Frequent Miler on the Air

Greg shares his immersive experience at RiverView Ranch in Montana, one of the most aspirational points stays in the U.S., detailing everyth

Key takeaways

• RiverView Ranch is an SLH property accessible via Hilton free night certificates or points, requiring a minimum three-night stay (though two nights were available during his trip).
• The property offers an all-inclusive experience with no hidden costs, including meals, activities, and transportation to/from Missoula airport.

Main topics

• Booking RiverView Ranch with Hilton points and free night certificates
• All-inclusive luxury experience at a high-end ranch

Notable quotes

"It's probably the single most aspirational points stay available in the United States."

Conclusion

Greg highly recommends RiverView Ranch as an exceptional luxury getawa

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 2 (0:11) Today's coffee break, loving Riverview Ranch. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Speaker 3 (0:19) Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Speaker 2 (0:25) I am just back from a short trip to Riverview Ranch in Montana. It is probably the single most aspirational point stay available in the United States. So I'm eager to talk about this. Speaker 3 (0:40) Wow. I mean, that's a big claim, especially with some of the properties that are out there. I mean, I know you've stayed at Ventana Big Sur, and I know the Waldorf Astoria now in New York is certainly a place that's aspirational for a lot of people. But you're telling me the Riverview Ranch in Montana is the most aspirational. So let's go over some of the basics here. Riverview Ranch Retreat and Western Adventures is an SLH property, Small Luxury Hotels of the World. And of course, SLH partners with Hilton. We'll come back to that in a second. But things to know about this property are, number one, it's all inclusive. So when you book a stay, everything's included. We wrote about this a long time ago. I kind of stumbled on it when I was looking for some of the SLH properties that are bookable via Hilton. And I stumbled on it and stopped for a second when I read the fact that cash rates were somewhere in the neighborhood of, I guess now about $4,700 a night during peak season, $3,500 a night during off season. season I mean that's that's incredible it's wildly expensive yes uh but but you can book these with either Hilton free night certificates or with Hilton points it's now up to 220 000 points per night when I first wrote about it it was significantly less but now it's 220 000 points per night but even still if you bought those points when when they're on sale that's about 1100 worth of points per night which is a lot it's also a lot less Speaker 2 (2:02) than $4,700 per Speaker 3 (2:04) night. So that's right. And if you do a fifth night free, then even less. Speaking of fifth night free, you usually do have to book at least three nights to find availability at this property. You can use Hilton's flexible date calendar with a stay of three nights or more. So if you put in a stay, a number of days that are three nights or more, you can hit the flexible calendar and see all of the dates that are available for check-in for three nights or more. And we have a post about how to do that. So if you're not sure, check the show notes here for a link to that. If you want to apply free night certificates, since you can't book one night at a time, you're going to have to either chat online or call Hilton if you want to use more than one free night certificate. It's pretty easy to do, though. You can chat on the website. I've done this and used a couple of free night certificates on a single booking. The big gotcha with this property is the cancellation policy. So the cancellation fee is 20 % of the total stay if you cancel between your booking date at 2 p.m. local and 61 days prior to arrival. So again, that's 61 days or more from the time you book until 61 days in advance. The penalty is 20%. And after 60 days prior to arrival, that's it. It's non-refundable. You're not going to get anything back. 100 % of the total stay. that's uh that's quite a big gotcha Speaker 2 (3:27) it's it's huge that's probably my biggest complaint about this place is that man once you lock in you're locked in That's Speaker 3 (3:37) the truth. So you might wonder, how do I get some Hilton free night certificates? If you're not familiar with it, there are several different easy ways to get them. First of all, the Hilton Aspire card, which has a $550 annual fee, comes with an annual free night certificate every year. So that's just an automatic benefit. Then if you spend $30,000 on the card, you earn another free night certificate and you can earn yet another one at $60,000. The Hilton Surpass card, which has a $150 annual fee, gives you a free night certificate after you. spend $15,000 on purchases in a calendar year. And then sometimes the welcome offers for the surpass card or the Hilton business card also include a free night certificate that varies comes and goes. So you got to keep an eye on whatever the current offer is. And with a little creativity, you might be able to toss together a few more free night certificates. We have a post about how to maximize your Hilton cards with upgrades and downgrades to get as many free night certificates as possible. Check that post out. It's linked in the show notes if you really want to get a bunch of Hilton free night certificates. Speaker 2 (4:39) Yeah, that's a great post. And I just read it myself this morning because back from the stay, I'm like, I need to get more free night certificates. So I need to refresh my memory of how this all works. So that's a great post. Great resource. Love it. All right. Let's start off. I'm going to talk about the booking process, like what led me to book this and everything. Earlier in the year, I noticed that I had a Hilton free night certificate that was going to expire mid-September. And my wife's birthday is end of August. And so, hey, here was a great opportunity to use a expiring free night certificate and do something really special for my wife. So I remembered Nick's post about this place and I decided I'll check whether I can book it. And for whatever reason. For the end of this year or mid to end of this year, they were allowing two-night bookings. And so even though they normally require three, I found two nights and only two nights available over my wife's birthday. So I went ahead and booked it with one free night award and a lot of Hilton points for the second night. And I did that by online chat. It's very easy to do. Speaker 2 (5:57) I was a little bit hesitant because dude ranch, like, I mean, when you hear ranch, you think dude ranch, right? And that was not on my way for my bucket list type of thing to do. You know, it's just my impression of what a ranch, you know, is like and everything is a lot of testosterone and running around shooting things or whatever. And Speaker 1 (6:24) actually, if you look at. Speaker 2 (6:25) And if you look at RVR's website, which I'm saying RVR because that's how all their branding shows up, and it's a lot easier to say than review brand. Speaker 3 (6:35) I was like, don't you try and pretend it's because that's the way they brand. Right. Speaker 2 (6:41) So if you look at RVR's website, especially under activities, it looks like that testosterone-filled shooting and everything. And this is not what we're interested, but... I've heard from people who have actually gone and they just raved about it and not about shooting things necessarily. Not that there's anything wrong with shooting things. I'm just saying that's just not what we were, you know, in the mood to do. Not on our bucket list to do. And so those kind of positive reports from people really motivated me. I was like. this sounds like it'd be really special we could combine it with a trip to one of the national parks either glacier or yellowstone or grand tetons we ended up going to yellowstone afterwards um which was great by the way and uh but you know that cancellation policy really made me hesitate you know so i had to talk to my wife first and be like Hey, this is what I'm thinking. Here's what people were saying about it. Is this okay? And are you sure you can lock in those dates? Because we can't unlock them. And so she agreed to all that. So I went ahead and booked it. Then flash forward to three weeks before the stay, I got an email. It looks like a standard form email you get before your stay that invites you to. look at their activities