MightyTravels

Sorry for being verbose - the Wiki says Expedia etc rates will qualify as long as they are pay-at-hotel. Virtuoso is not specifically mention but should be a natural way to book because they have high-end resort only and add $100 hotel credit.

Any reports that Virtuoso booked rates (pay-at-hotel) qualify for the credit?

JJeffrey

ANY rate whereby which you pay at the hotel directly is eligible. There are hundreds if not thousands of OTAs and travel portals or other avenues through which you can book a room at a Hilton, so of course the wiki doesn't list out each and every one.

The credit is on the Amex side. The rate you book, where you book, or what you buy doesn't matter. All that matters is that the charge comes directly from a qualifying property, and not Orbitz or Virtuoso or any other OTA.

Javier1704

Stayed at DOUBLETREE FALLSVIEW RESORT & SPA BY HILTON. Charged to card on April 1st, posted today (April 4th). Will update on the resort fee credit accordingly.

B3nder

An interesting question I thought of. It seems like it would be useful to have a list of qualifying "resorts" without resort fees. Or does every one have a resort fee?

Javier1704

Good question. I wasn't charged a resort fee at the DoubleTree in Canada I mentioned above.

smmrfld

Adam1222

Certainly not every one does. Several are all-inclusive.
Im not sure why the presence or absence of a resort fee would be useful to those looking to spend the credit. You should be able to look at the one of the hundreds of properties that you are considering and discover.

SS255

B3nder

The presence of a resort fee makes the credit worth less, because paying for the room using the credit card rather than alternate currency (points or certs) results in a higher room rate (due to including the resort fees often to only pay for HH benefits one already is entitled to). That's the reason it would seem nice to filter them one way or the other. Agreed, current method would be just go down the list and try each one in the area. Seems pretty annoying..

Hah! I only looked in a couple places and every one I looked at had a resort fee. Good to know there's a few without. (Seems to be mostly some doubletrees noted above)

Eujeanie

Then why not use points? Surely you aren't saying you think $250 goes a long way! It's nice, and a nice perk of the card, but if you're staying more than one day it's not difficult at all to have way more than $250 in charges even on a "free" room.

Adam1222

This doesn't make any sense to me. The $250 credit is worth $250, whether or not you use it to cover a resort fee, a round of golf, a room rate, etc. Your statement that it is "mostly Doubletrees" also is incorrect.

B3nder

Exactly the plan, I go for efficiency... Use points where that's the better option, otherwise use the Aspire. $250 is ~2 nights at most HGI/Doubletree/Hiltons, per card. You are right, for a big spender ($500/night, etc) it's less of a deal.

It's worth the opportunity cost. The list of "resorts" is limited, so that already decreases the value below $250 for me, as I have to go out of my way to pick one of that subset. If one would never normally stay at one of the qualifying hotels, then it does not have a cash value of $250. If one would already be normally staying at one of them and paying cash, then sure, it has exactly a $250 cash-equivalent value for that person.

I'm not sure why you quoted me saying "Seems to be mostly some doubletrees noted above", and then said that statement is incorrect by making it much more broad than what you quoted. There were exactly 2 noted just above in the thread without resort fee and they were both doubletree.

I was curious though, I selected US&Hawaii and default sort on the "Resorts" list and have compiled the list of qualifying resorts without a resort charge in US. The list without is pretty short and is a mix of DT, Embassy, and Hiltons.
111 total qualitfying properties listed (noticed at least 1 duplicate though, so 110 or fewer). I think I found them all. 25 without resort fees. 10 Hilton, 8 DT, 3 ES, 3 HGV

Properties without resort fees:
ES Mandalay Beach Resort, CA
H Pensacola Beach, FL
H Ocean City Oceanfront Suites, MD
H Virginia City Oceanfront, VA
H Galveston Island Resort, TX
DT Beach Resort Tamp Bay - North Redington, FL
H Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder, NM
ES Deerfield Beach Resort & Spa, FL
H Palm Springs, CA
ES Charlotte Concord Golf Resort & Spa, NC
DT Breckenridge, CO
H San Diego/Del Mark, CA
DT Sonoma Wine Country, CA
DT Lancaster, PA
H Branson Convention Center, MO
DT Doheny Beach - Dana Point, CA
DT Karlan San Diego, CA
H Dallas/Rockwall Lakefront, TX
DT San Diego - Del Mar, CA
HGV at MarBrisa, CA
HGV Sunrise Lodge, UT
HGV McAlpin-Ocean Plaza, FL
DT Cocoa Beach Oceanfront, FL (Note says closed currently)
H The Lodge at Gulf State Park, AL
Valdoro Mountain Lodge, CO

Adam1222

I didn't realize you weren't trying to make a broader conclusion based on your sample size of two people responding to you in a short time period. Anyway, your survey of properties in the US seems to show that your sample size of two was meaningless and that actually it has nothing to do with being a Doubletree.
Also note that some of the properties on your list may try to charge you a resort fee anyway, i.e., the Hilton Palm Springs.
I still fail to see why the resort fee issue would be any more relevant on this thread than any others, and if you are staying at so many properties on the Resorts list each year that you are trying to decide which ones to use your $250 at versus which ones to use other forms of payment at, yet are unable to check the specific properties you are looking at to determine if there's a resort fee, you seem to be in a very different boat than most people who have posted in the thread.

Most people on this thread have posted looking for ways to use the $250. If a property on the list is convenient for you and works on the date you're going, whether there is a resort fee or not is irrelevant if you're looking for a way to use the credit. I fear your new sublist is going to cause much more confusion than benefit.

Also your quote is simply wrong. 2 nights at most of the properties on the Resort list cost far more than $250. Indeed, very few of the properties cost less than $125 a night including taxes. There are no Hilton Garden Inns on the list at all. If you define "big spender" as someone who would stay at a property that costs more than $125 a night, its weird to me why someone would get this card if they were not a "big spender"

B3nder

~ is an estimation, it means not that specific hard cap at $125 a night. There are lots on the resorts list around there for prepaid or MVP rates at non-peak times or before the hotel is booked up. Agreed no HGIs on the list, again I place a value on the benefit depending on spending that is being displaced. Many DTs/Hiltons are on the list. From personal experiences, I place HGI quality often equal or above many DTs/Hiltons.

The card currently has a negative effective annual fee. IMO, no need for only big spenders to get the card..... It's also a good deal for extremely frugal people. For the frugal people, placing a value and ease of use on each of the benefits is applicable on an ongoing basis (see recent AA airline credit) to determine to renew or no t.It's not just "use it for anything because it's Freee!" for the frugal people who like to optimize. There are always people who will use 200k(or whatever amount) HH points to buy a new kitchenaid mixer from the HH website because they have more points than they know what to do with, and that's fine if it makes them happy. I only use that example because I know someone personally that did so, not to equate it directly.

ezak

Seems the discussion got a little sidetracked here. I believe it started with you asking for a list of no-resort fee hotels that are eligible for the $250 credit, and Adam1222 questioning whether this list matters to spending the credit. And I'll have to agree with Adam here - from a pure economic point, resort fee is just part of the total room charge, so with or without it should not affect the hotel is worthiness for spending this $250.

That's why I disagree with the quote above. Whenever we make the judgment of point vs cash, it's always X points vs X total dollars out of pocket, which means room rate + tax + resort fee. Sure the $250 credit isn't worth its full amount to everyone, but the presence of a resort fee should NOT make it worth less. In a sense, you can think of resort fee as another tax - some cities charge 15% and some cities charge nothing, and you never pay taxes when redeeming points, but that doesn't make a no-tax or low-tax list useful.

Looks like you might be against paying a resort fee (which I actually don't disagree with), but that should be a personal preference that has no economic consideration, making the list you asked for not very useful to most people in this thread. If you're looking for a place to spend the credit, I'd suggest starting from where you'd like to visit, because making resort fee a deal breaker really limits your options and is economically unnecessary.

And to add a note, if you were looking at the hilton.com resort list, which shows each hotel with "starting from $X", and were trying to find one that gives you a bill of almost exactly $250 for one or two nights (so that you don't incur extra spending while using the credit), please know that X number isn't true. It's often possible to find room rates even lower than that, and of course some other nights higher than that as well. So really, resort fee or not, you always have to go search exact rates before making a decision.