Jcrew

I have an 8 day vacation trip for New York coming up in May and I decided to take advantage of Prestige's fourth night free benefit.

Since it is an eight day trip, I wanted to take advantage of the benefit twice. Apparently this does not work if you stay in a single property, even if you split the booking into two separate bookings. Therefore I booked two different hotels for my eight night stay and was able to confirm that I will get 4th night credit for each stay.

This trip alone would reimburse me about $800

joeypore

First off, thank you all for the super helpful info. I have the AAdvantage Executive, and am considering switching to the Prestige.

My question: is the Citi concierge able to book AAA rates? If so, this would seal the deal for me, as about 80% or more of my bookings are AAA rates.

In addition, am I correct in concluding that the concierge can match rates available on say, expedia, kayak, hotels.com, etc.? I typically get a great value out of booking with SPG and then filing a BRG claim and getting the additional 20% off.

However, for 4 night stays, assuming the best rate available is still bookable through Citi (and not necessarily a lower rate comparable to BRG), this is clearly the best value, and would definitely save me 100s in the coming months.

Thanks

linglingfool

Citi concierge forwards your booking request to Carlson Wagonlit Travel, which is a large travel agency. I would imagine that most hotels list their low-restriction rates like AAA and AARP in the GDS, so you should be able to get them, but you'll have to specifically request when checking the hotel with Citi/CWT.

Whether or not they can match rates really depends on the hotel. It seems as though they generally offer the "best available" rack rate upon your first request. If you point them in the direction of the better rate on a different site they may be able to dig up a better rate, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it.

(The reason a lot of the large sites are able to offer BRGs is that their contracts between them and the hotels usually specify that they must receive pricing as good or better than what is offered to other agencies, so they can go to the hotel and require that the better rate be made available to them as well.)

joelfreak

They will NOT match rates, even if their web page says they will. I escalated this with both CW and Citi, and I was basically told tough luck. You are able to book the MasterCard rate usually, which will be slightly discounted, but not the cheapest you can find. BRGing sometimes comes out ahead by far.

PancakeGames

Just a heads up: I spoke with both the Prestige concierge and travel agent regarding a stay extending into 2016, and neither could confirm that the 4th night benefit would be extended beyond 12/31/15.

As a result, I did not continue with the booking.

Giethoorn

I booked 2 reservations on 12/25 for two 4 nights stays, I checked out from the hotels on 1/1 and 1/5 respectively. The February Prestige card statement was closed on 2/20 but the credits still have not been posted yet. Does anyone have experience of how long does it take for the credits appear on your account?

maxswanson

I have a stay from jan. 3-7, 2015 and got the credit on the next statement about one month later.

frequentfiler

Can this benefit be used for Suites, club-level rooms, etc. or only for standard rooms?

linglingfool

Anything you can book through CWT.

mymontreal

I just received the Prestige card and it's good to read about people's experience booking the 4th night free...

I will be going to Hong Kong next month for 12 nights... the area where I am staying, there are 2 hotels from same chain almost opposite each other...

Wonder whether I could book 4 nights in hotel one, 4 nights in hotel two and then back to hotel one for 4 nights...

I'm guessing that would be too blatant, but I guess it does no harm to ask Citi...

ffflllyyyeeerrr

I'd do it. Even if you get pushback. It's a benefit of the card and you should take full advantage of it. However, most reps probably don't know geographies well enough to realize what you are doing. I wouldn't even mention it as trying to game the system. Just say you need to be in one part of town for X nights, then another.

progapanda

Same here. 5-night stay in mid-February with statement close towards the end of the month; the credit for the 4th night posted automatically the day the March statement was available.

As an additional datapoint, during my stay I ended up getting 1 night comped because a service failure at the hotel so the final bill was lower than what Citi and CWT had expected. However, that didn't affect the Citi reimbursement for the 4th night.

deltrave

Has anybody tried booking an extended stay at the same hotel in the following manner and still availed of multiple complimentary 4th night?

First 4 nights: Citi Prestige
Next 1 night: Other Card
Next 4 nights: Citi Prestige
Next 1 night: Other Card
Next 4 nights:

Will booking an intervening night at the same hotel but on a different card cause any problems?

bbmatt

I think you can just legitimately book consecutive 4 nights, with a night break in between. You can then make a separate booking not through CWT.

When you check in, just the hotel join the reservations. I've done this once, but i did 4 nights, then booked 4 directly w/ the hotel and another 4 on prestige.

TTT103

Quote:
Originally Posted by ffflllyyyeeerrr View Post
Is the condition of the free breakfast booking directly with Hilton, or is it simply a benefit of being Gold? If it's a Gold benefit, you should receive it. You can attach an elite number to the reservation at the time of booking with the concierge/CWT.

Has anyone confirmed this to be definitely true?