Originally Posted by
36902BRF
The "problem" with some hotel cards is they aren't a whole lot better (and some are worse) than just MSing on a 2% or 2.2% cashback card. Just because you get a hotel stay for half price (accounting for cost of MS) doesn't mean it is a good deal as compared to 2% cashback and booking the same hotel via Hotwire at a discount. Also there are a number of ways to to get discounted lodgings beyond just hotels. I do MS some hotel cards for hotel stays but you really need to run the numbers and compare to other options you have for lodging/discount lodging.
And of course the math can change a lot based on what your cost of MS is, what other options you have to MS and your volume.
On some cards that only offer 1x, you will likely be better off simply using 2% cards. But there are big sweet spots if you are aware of them, or have access to sufficiently low cost MS.
You can MS SPG and Hyatt at 0.5c in scale and get ~2c value quite easily. You can MS HH at 0.2c and get over 1c if you have Diamond. Effectively 75-80% discount over paid rates. It's rare if you can reliably find decent hotels at the time and place you are traveling at anywhere near that sort of discount on Priceline etc.
Plus if you can MS on HH and earn Diamond, or have enough award stays on SPG, you can get upgrades that you'd never get on a paid rate (or at least without huge additional expense).