Best hotel program for credit card spending?
 

I've spent the last couple weeks here on Flyertalk searching for the best hotel programs where I can earn points not by staying at hotels but by spending on credit cards. I'm still a bit confused because of the different point requirements each program have for stays and the different points amounts for each dollar spent.

So my question is, What are the top hotel programs for earning hotel stays quickest by credit card spending and are there other ways to earn hotel points besides stays and credit card spending? I'd appreciate it if someone can direct me to a thread that discusses this if there is one. Thanks.

Well there are a few good options here...

Hilton Surpass AMEX... $40k annual spend and you earn Diamond membership, which is their highest tier. To the best of my knowledge, Hilton is the only hotel program you can earn TOP tier status solely through spend. Of course, you need lots of Hilton points to redeem for free nights.

SPG AMEX... because you can do cash & points redemption for hotel nights, plus transfers to so many airline partners. $30k spend gets you to their middle tier.

I also personally like Choice Hotels (really motels) as a back up card. no annual fee, and they have hotels literally everywhere, and I earn 5 points/dollar so I can rack up free nights very quickly.

Agree with above poster. HHonors AMEX Surpass is great if you are a 40K+ spender.

You will have top elite Diamond status for when you decide to redeem points for hotel stays. HHonors is quite competitive for high-end extended stay rewards for VIP elite members.

Lucky has a good article on this subject here:

http://travelsort.com/blog/which-hot...rd-is-the-best

The Points Guy also talks about it:

http://thepointsguy.com/2011/07/sund...-card-is-best/

Thanks. I'm not really concerned with status. I will use them for my vacations in the US and abroad so I guess I'm looking for something a little better than motels. I'm leaning to wards AMEX SPG because of the high value of each point.

If you are using hotel points for vacations then you should be concerned with status. Status correlates to complimentary upgrades.

No need to pay for the Presidential Suite when you can pay for the standard full suite and then get upgraded to the Presidential Suite.

Agree. Also with Hilton Gold or above status, you will get free breakfast.

For the best value per dollar credit spend, my vote is for American Express Starwood and use cash and point award.

escog, I'll check out those other threads. Thanks.

The problem with me obtaining status is that I won't be spending 40k a year on any one credit card. I'm thinking that for me the best idea is to get all the card bonuses, Hyatt, Marriott, SPG etc. Use the nights and then churn the cards if I can for more.

What confuses me is that the SPG has a high value per point but you only earn one per dollar spent and HHonors is low value per point but you can earn 3 per dollar spent. And then you have to factor in how many points per room per night and the quality of the hotel.

That's the approach which I take. I can get many more points from credit card sign-on bonuses than from spending on credit cards.

Be careful, since Chase doesn't allow you to churn their cards and you can usually get the sign on bonus only once. The Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club are all issued by Chase.

If you're looking to get the most amount of rooms for your credit card spending (and don't care if it is a big suite or a standard room) you are better off with the SPG card or the Hyatt card. If status, and the consequent upgrades, are important to you, then go with the Hilton card.

Hang on here. For hotel redemptions, points in different programs have wildly different valuations.

If you are looking at this from an economic perspective, the best valuations would be point cost compared to the best $ purchase price you would accept.

If you are not interested in a giant suite but rather "a little better than motels", would you consider priceline?

Let's take a hypothetical situation. Say you're staying in a place like Chicago where priceline offers 4* hotels for around $110 after taxes/fees most of the year. Here are some hypothetical valuations:

• Hilton Chicago, 50000 points redemption, 0.22 cents/point
• Starwood Westin River North, 12000 points redemption, 0.92 cents/point
• Marriott Magnificent Mile, 30000 points, 0.37 cents/point

Then, factor in how much spend it would take to earn those point levels from the respective credit cards. Even if we assume you earn at the higher rate in bonus categories:

• HHonors AMEX, 6 points/$ spent - you would need 50000/6 = $8333.33 of spend to earn the $110 room, effectively a credit card rebate of 1.3%
  
• Starwood AMEX, 1 point/$ spent - you would need $12000 of spend, a rebate of 0.9%
  
• Marriott Visa, 2 points/$ spent - you would need 30000/2 = $15000 of spend, a rebate of 0.7%

Those returns are terrible. You would be better off earning on a 2% cashback credit card and buying your rooms outright using priceline.

If elite status is out of the equation, there are only a few times hotel point-earning cards make sense, such as for signup bonuses, if you use the card to pay for room costs for business travel, or if your spend is so high you can redeem for a discounted long-stay package (something like a Marriott Hotel+Air travel package).

i think it only makes sense to accrue hotel points for those high-end places where the dollar value will go up faster than the point value. also, spg gives you flexibility by being able to transfer to airline miles with a bonus.

I think you are right. I follow your blog and have read your take on churning Chase cards. I'll get them all for the bonuses and keep the SPG to use for cash and points, which looks doable. Plus, I'm not sure but I think I read somewhere that the Hyatt card comes with an annual free night now.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, I'm a bit thick sometimes and your reply clears it up for me. Up until now I've used Travelocity for hotel rooms. I'll check out Priceline next time I'm looking for a hotel unless of coarse I can use the bonuses.

I already have a gas cc and and 2 airline cc's. I could definitely throw a rebate cc into the mix. Thanks again.

OK, so SPG and Hyatt would be the ones to keep. I have plenty of airline miles, especially AA miles. I was looking into moving some into a hotel program but it looks like poor value to do it. Thanks for the reply.

I'm in the little-better-than-motel / value shopper camp, too. Here's what I have found valuable. I mostly get a hotel card only for the sign-on bonus and/or super flexibility of its points, and not worry about hotel status. I'm not a big spender either so have to be careful with the size of the required initial spends.

Amex Hilton: 50,000 points for $500 initial spend, no annual fee even past first year. I pre-paid my wireless phone bill for a couple of months to get the 6X points. I figure I should get a night or two at Hamptons or Hilton Garden Inns out of this bonus if I shop around.

Amex SPG: I got it a while back when the bonus was higher with a lower spend. I was able to transfer 20K for one air ticket, and have a bit left over for some cash & points on a category 1 Four Points.

Chase Sapphire Preferred: 50K Ultimate Reward points for 3K spend in 3 months, which is gonna be a challenge for me. I mention this one because the Ultimate Rewards points transfer 1:1 to Hyatts, and some low end Hyatt Places start at 5K redemptions. Or I can choose to transfer to airline programs, I forget which ones now.

Once I can apply for Chase again (I'm kind of maxed out now :D ) I think I'll try for the Priority Club (Holiday Inns & Intercontinentals) for the bonus. Unless a better Chase offer comes along :D

Other than that I shop around for Priceline, Hotwire, and/or the opaque sites through Travelocity and Expedia.

Unrelated to CC usage, this brings up a good point. It can be useful to hold a small balance in a variety of hotel programs for unusually low-priced redemptions. For example, Priority Club puts a handful of properties on sale for 5k points every few months. Can be a great value.

Each program has its own unique ways to accumulate points in small quantities. PC, Hilton, and a few other programs have TopGuest. Hilton has been running some big bonuses from rental cars. Always have to keep your eyes open...

Yep, it sounds like we are both in the same boat. What I am learning tonight is that I need to rack up all the bonuses I can get.

I started with the Citi AA CC's, did the AMEX then because I hired a contractor to do some work who took CC's I was able to get the spend done for the Sapphire Card. So I basically just went on a spending spree that covered the spends on 6 CC's and now have 300k AA miles, 75K AMEX and 50K Sapphire points. Add that to my 76K UA/Continental miles and I feel like I have a healthy amount of air miles and need to figure out what to do with the AMEX/ Sapphire points.

I'm now turning my attention to Hotel points. So at the moment I am looking for hotel CC's with low spends though I am trying to figure out how to get the SPG asap. The Hyatt, HHonors, Amtrak look like the next ones on my list.

Good luck with those bonuses.

Thanks for the tips.

My vote: depending on your preferred alligence, either SPG or Marriott cards. I've been happy with both.

The Choice Visa only earns 5 points/dollar when used on Choice stuff (hotel stays, hotel gift card purchases, etc). Elsewhere it earns only 2 points/dollar.

https://www.barclaycardus.com/apply/...8&cellNumber=2

Like a broken record player I am going to repeat why I enjoy the PC Club Visa

1) No foreign transaction fees.
2) 5 points/$ @ PC properties. Combine this with your F&F rate, and you are banking on points and savings. If the F&F rate doesn't make sense financially then use your points. But if you are looking to try and just build miles that F&F rate + 5pts/$ is a great way to stay cheap and earn big.
3) Low $49 yr annual fee.
4) It is a VISA (most of these travel cards are AMEX and it is nice to have a good visa to use)
5) Free hotel night voucher per year after owning the card for 1 year
6) 10% reward redemptions on points
7) Easy platinum status through CC sign-up (60k public, 80k targeted)
8) They have a very small # of properties for 5k that are rotating in and out on-sale. But you can get nights generally speaking for 10k.

So if you try and value all this....
80k sign-on.
Redeem 80k = 8k left over. You have almost 9 nights of stay if you stay @ 10k a night properties.

If you prefer to stay in "preferred location hotels", aka near magnificent mile or theme parks in orlando. You will be starting @ 15k a night.

Hilton sounds like a high rollers card. This visa pays for itself. I have no intentions on closing it. International travel and the free night are the main reasons. Research seems to show that Hilton properties are like 25k a night.

Although there is one Hilton or maybe it is Hyatt card I just saw on these forums that had 2 free nights at any hotel anywhere in the world it says (that is their property). This could be a very large reward depending on how costly of a room you can redeem.

But after those first 2 rooms the card is useless due to the fact you need to spend like 25k a year on the card to see the rewards turn in to nights.

Careful on getting the Amtrak for transfer points. You have to have $200 Amtrak travelspend on the card, and be a card holder, to transfer a max of 25K points / year.

I thought the F&F rate was ineligible for points, has that changed?

Loyalty Traveler blog has quite a few posts which compare hotel programs and their cards. A lot of your questions are answered there:
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/loyaltytraveler/

Ineligible for FF program pts, but not ineligible for CC spend pts. The CC can't differentiate between an F&F stay and a normal stay to deny you pts based on your rate. As long as you pay the hotel (as opposed to say Priceline), you will get the bonus pts for CC spend.

You do not earn points for your stay @ the hotel property when using F&F rate, but you earn points on the $ spent on your PC Club Visa card, and since it is IHG...you earn 5 points per dollar spent.

So a $500 stay will still net you 2500 PC points when you pay using your PC Club Visa.

After looking at the SPG Preferred Guest Amex.....

I would say these 2 hotel cards are the cats meow. 80k points with 10% redemption and 1 free night a year is all fine and good, but PC club hotels are not necessarily up to SPG standards it would seem.

All of SPG's hotels are "pretty friggin wicked". E.G. the 3000 to 4000 point Four Point @ Cocoa Beach with a surf shop, surf lessons, and rentals all on-site. Very cool decor. I just can't help but think that @ 3000 to 4000pts a night (or $93-100/night stay)....

If you can hit the 4.5k spending req. on the SPG card, thats 35k points, maybe another 5k if you get a ref. If you don't get the referral then the 35k points could stilll land you 11 or 12 nights in their Cat 2 hotels. And their Cat 2 hotels look to be much nicer than your "any HIX".

So I am thinking of signing up for this card even if I only get 10k + 5k referral than I have 15k points, which is worth $400-500 if you think of it as 5 3000 point Cat 2 stays.


My jaw just drops when I look @ SPG's hotel line-up. Plus their points are POINTS! And by that I mean they transfer extremely wellllllllllllllll.

Ok, gotcha now. Tx for the explanation.

Thanks to all for the replies. Articles I've found at Loyalty Traveler explain most of the questions I have about the details of the different programs. Just like the airline bonuses I'll go for the hotel CC's that are offering the best bonuses and then from there figure out which programs I like most. Thanks again for your help.

This card is from AMEX (the bank, not just the logo). So beware: AMEX remembers what cards you had forever, so it can be the most impossible of all banks to churn. And the SPG AMEX has in the past had offers where you got the full 25k bonus with much more achievable spend (than the current offer has for the 20k part of the bonus). So if I were you, unless you desperately need those 10k + 5k SPG points now, I would wait (if you don't you're very likely to meet the spend bonus) until this offer goes away very soon, to see what the next offer will be. It's not likely to be any worse (for those who can't do the full spend for the full bonus), given that the previous 25k offer also gave you 10k after just one purchase.

Regarding the Priority Club card, you left out that it has 0% forex fees. That alone could make the card worthwhile to have in your wallet, if you don't already have another 0% forex card, if you travel outside the US. (The SPG Amex is definitely not a 0% forex card!)

If you care more about the quality of the hotels than about the number of hotels in the world, you could also consider the Hyatt card if you want a non-Priority-Club hotel card for 0% forex. But Hyatt has extremely few properties compared to either SPG, or Priority Club, or Marriott, or Hilton. So if you're going to go down that path, look at the list of cities that Hyatt is in and see if it's enough for you.

Maybe in Kansas. But here in CA most of the prime-location HIX properties (i.e. San Luis Obispo) want 25k on the summer weekends. And the nice IC city hotels require 25-40k. 10k awards are more like the equivalent of a Cat 2 Marriott or Hilton and useless to those of us who mostly vacation at premium city properties or resorts.

+1 My SPG balance get cleaned out periodically thanks to SPG cash+points. By contrast I've got 100k+ in Hilton, Marriott and 50k in IC because I refuse to spend them on low value single night awards. SPG is great for infrequent travelers that don't accumulate a lot of points through expensive stays.

:confused: I don't think I've stayed in a Choice property for years. Usually the low end Marriott or Hilton is more attractive, or possibly HIX.

Personally I use Marriott Visa the most of my hotel cards, mostly for bonus categories like restaurants and Marriott stays. And looking forward to cashing in for a 5N Cat 8 award in Europe next year.

Then you may not be aware that at least some of Choice's brands are improving in steps (for example, the very recent addition of yogurts and hard-boiled -- ie, real -- eggs to Comfort's standard breakfast in the US). Plus you either are not paying on your own dime, or are not a very tight budget. In many places I stay, Choice is half or even one third the price of HHonors properties, and the same for Marriott unless you can get a great LNF rate. I may be able justify moving up to Marriott or HHonors when it's just a few bucks, but I can' justify paying double to triple, sorry.

Plus, Choice hotels in some countries overseas are way nicer than the ones here, making earning 8k points every two or three cheap suburban nights in the US have tremendous value overseas.

Finally, there are locations where there's choice and no Marriott or Hilton, but there is (only) a Choice or Best Western. In the US, often in the town nearest the entrances to major National Parks (Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, etc). Overseas, in much of Scandinavia outside the capitals. (In Choice, for US members, Scandinavia is redemption only, no earning.)

Hi Guys,

Does hilton have a points+cash like SPG? Do you think it's worth it redeeming nights with this method?

I am looking at Cat 5,6,7 hotels for Hilton.

I am looking to either accumulate points from my AMEX platinum to SPG or Hilton Honors. I am in australia where $1 = 1 MR point.

1000 MR points = 330 SPG
1000 MR points = 1000 HH points

Cheers,
K.

It's a very new feature in Hilton HHonors, and I haven't looked into it myself yet, so all I can tell you is that there's a Hilton HHonors forum on FlyerTalk where you can find out more about it, starting in this Sticky thread there:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilto...oint-cash.html

Thanks. I will check it out.