Originally Posted by Happy

There are other ways to get Gold without the fee cards. Check Fast Track thread in HH forum. Would work well if you can time your stays including award stays.

The cert has limitation, in that, it has to be on Fri Sat Sun, and only worthwhile in expensive cities. Bangkok is not one. While HHonors may ask for silly pts for Conrad BKK (which I think the devalued level is a mere 50K as we had booked one such last year as we needed an extra night), there are plenty of nice hotels and even Conrad itself, the cash rates are quite reasonable. They were down right bargains during the months when demonstrations were frequent.

There are some domestic locations can be very expensive too - New York and Chicago come to mind, no need to be a Conrad by the way as there are only 27 properties under this brand with some of them are dumps.

Back to regular programming, husband just got his 11th, instant approval with same CL like the 10th in January. Let's hope the link survives when others go for the 60K.