Hotel card for Europe?
 

What is the best option to get good hotels in Paris, Rome, and Florence?

For Paris, I'm status matching my HHonors Gold to Hyatt Diamond, applying for the card, and getting 2 Free Suite Award Nights at the Park Hyatt Vendome for my family of 4.

What are some other ideas?

They don't status match, they offer a Diamond Trial instead.

Were all four of you planning to share one room? The Park Suite has the restriction "Maximum guests per room: 3". Only the very high-end suites allow four guests. Do you have recent Hilton stays? IIRC that's a condition of the Hyatt Diamond challenge.
The Marriott Chase 70K offer might work for Italy, but value is pretty weak in Europe IMO.

Have you investigated the availability? I see dozens upon dozens of Flyertalk posters planning to redeem at this same small property. Someone will be disappointed.

Instead of Hyatt, try SPG and check the site www.beatthetimer.com
It is a Starwood page with great deals for EAME properties.

254 Euros at the Westin Paris for a room for 2. 2 rooms = 508 Euros.
224 Euros at the Westin Excelsior Rome, room for 2. 2 rooms = 448 Euros.
230 Euros at the Westin Excelsior Florence, room for 2. 2 rooms = 460 Euros.

Probably not what the OP had in mind!

If you want to use hotel points for rooms in those cities, you will most likely need 2 rooms for 4 people. Most hotel rooms are tiny, with one queen or king bed, or two twin beds. They'll tell you they have fire code restrictions, or that there isn't physical room for rollaway beds. Most Europeans with kids will rent condos, vacation homes, or camp.

Occasionally you'll find a Marriott, Hilton, or Holiday Inn with two double beds in a room, but not in Paris, Rome, or Florence (I've looked as I have kids too). Check the max capacity in the hotel rooms where you want to stay as they will probably be enforced.

I would say apply for as many hotel points as you can, and plan to rent a condo in one of those cities. Florence is a difficult city on points, the Hiltons, Marriotts, Holiday Inns, and Sheratons are poorly located for a tourist.

Thanks so far.

I'm looking Novotels and I'm quite disappointed.

Hilton Employee Rate was the best. WHY DID MY DAD LEAVE? -_-

Lol, so... any other ideas?

I agree that Florence is going to be a hard sell. I booked a room at a 5 star with late rooms and it was a really nice hotel with free breakfast. Sometimes its better to just pay for a room due to location.

How many hotel points are you starting with? In which programs? When are you going and for how long? How many hotel credit cards are you willing to sign up for? Will your spouse or partner sign up for some too?

I'm resigning myself to needing to get two hotel rooms for my family in most of Europe, which will mean saving up points longer for my next trip. There are some good hotels in Paris and Rome, but usually they require lots of points for a little room. If you give us more details, we could help you better.

The Intercontinental Rome has a perfect location at the top of the Spanish Steps, for 40,000 Priority Club Points for a party of 2. I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Giovanni for 25,000 Priority Club points for a room for 2, which was nice enough, but a long hike from the subway station when we were tired after site seeing all day. I used Hilton points for one night at the Rome Airport Hilton, which was nice and convenient to the airport before our flight out. I wasn't willing to spend the points on the Hilton Cavalieri, which was poorly located and required 60,000 points a night. I looked at using SPG points, but the hotels were either badly located or too many points. I tend to hoard my SPG points, and don't think the high category hotels are a good redemption rate.

The dilemma is that the hotel programs where it's easy to get lots of points from card signups don't have such good locations and/or values (at least in Rome), and the hotel programs that do have decent locaitons and values don't have much of a credit card signup (such as Choice).

Choice is a great deal often if you stay in cheap suburban hotels and then redeem for much nicer hotels in Europe. And with constant promos like 4x points (ending tonight) or stay 4 cheap one-night stays in the US and earn enough points for 1 to 2 nights in European cities, you earn points really fast if you stay at Choice often enough, without big spend necessary.

However, the Choice card does not earn very well (outside of Choice stays), and the bonus is only enough for a couple nights in Europe. Also, unless you have status at Choice, you can only book (European hotels for a US-based traveler) about 2 months in advance. (Upper level status lets you book over 3 months in advance.)

I only started using the Marriott program a few months ago, so I don't know if Marriott (with it's 70K + 1 free night cert card promo) has good (in terms of both value and location) in Rome or not.

And I haven't researched Florence, so I don't know what the situation there is.

I do know that Priority Club (Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, etc) has tons of locaitons in Paris, some at good values. And Paris has a better metro system than Rome, which is part of the reason it's easier to find more hotels with good locations (near one metro stop or another) in Paris than in Rome.

However, I do know that if you use your Priority Club points in one of these cities, you're not likely to have enough (from just one card sign-up) for other cities. So unless multiple people in your family are going to apply for the same cards (use one person's account for Rome and another person's account for Paris, for example) you're going to have to mix programs to stretch the points from sign-up bonuses.

Most hotel cards earn points pretty slowly on "everyday" spending. In any reasonably short period of time, you'll have trouble getting a lot more points beyond the signup bonus. So unless the trip is very far off, realistically, you have to look at what you'll get form the sign-up bonuses and not count on much else from actual spend...

... I would recommend the Priority Club Select Visa from Chase as one hotel card you get to take to Europe, as it won't charge you foreign transaction fees, which most other hotels cardss will. (The other hotel cards that don't charge foreign transaction fees include on for Marriott and one for Hyatt. All 3 of these are from Chase.)