2024’s craziest hotel promotion is here – but it won’t be easy
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Global Hotel Alliance, the marketing group for 40 small hotel brands representing over 800 properties, is celebrating its 20th birthday.
As a gift, it is giving out up to $1 million of hotel credit in a special promotion.
If you have time on your hands between now and 30th September, it is ludicrously generous. How generous? How does $5,200 sound to you?
I’m going to whizz though this in brief because, if you are serious about going for it, you will need to study the small print in a lot of detail.
Here’s the headline deal:
Stay at 10 different GHA brands between 1st May and 30th September and you will receive $5,200 of DISCOVERY Dollars. This is worth $5,200 to spend at GHA hotels.
You don’t need to do the full 10 brands, but the rewards are back-ended:
- D$300 after a third brand, and
- D$400 after a fourth brand, and
- D$500 after a fifth brand, and
- D$600 after a sixth brand, and
- D$700 after a seventh brand, and
- D$800 after eighth brand, and
- D$900 after a ninth brand, and
- D$1,000 after a tenth brand
Here’s the first snag – each stay must be for at least $600 before taxes. This means that, to unlock the full $5,200 of credit from 10 brands, you will need to spend at least $6,000 plus applicable taxes. In reality, because you’re never going to spend exactly $600 plus taxes per stay, you net spend will be higher.
The $600 can come from multiple rooms charged to one bill.
On the other hand, you will also earn base DISCOVERY Dollars on your stays. Top tier Titanium members earn back 7% of their pre-tax spend, and you get Titanium for staying at three different brands. Even if you don’t already have GHA status, your final seven stays will be as a top tier member earning the highest level of rebate at 7%.
Let’s look at some realistic numbers. Let’s assume each stay averaged $750 plus 20% in taxes, so $900. Your 10 stays would earn (if Titanium for all of them) $525 in base earnings plus $5,200 bonus DISCOVERY Dollars. You’d get $5,725 back on $9,000 of post-tax spending. This is a 63% rebate. Who else is offering you 63% of your hotel spending back this summer?
If you could keep your average spend at $700 in countries with an average tax rate of 15%, you’d get base earnings of $490 plus $5,200 as a bonus, for a rebate of 70%.
Here’s the second snag. Your $5,200 bonus is only valid for six months. You would need to cash it in for a stay at a GHA member hotel by then.
Here’s the third snag. Hitting 10 GHA brands isn’t easy. If you are stuck with Western Europe, I reckon you’d have NH Hotels, Pan Pacific, The Set Collection, The Doyle Collection, Kempinski, Lore Group, Anantara, Lungarno Collection, Corinthia ….. but that’s about it. You’d need to hit pretty much every GHA brand which operates in this part of the world.
Anyway …. if you’re up for a challenge you can find out more on the GHA DISCOVERY website here. You need to register before booking.
PS. If you really, really want to go for it, there is an additional angle. The person who stays at most brands during the promotion will get an additional bonus of $200,000 DISCOVERY Dollars. Two runners up will receive $20,000 of DISCOVERY Dollars. You could do a $600 + taxes stay at every GHA brand for a fraction of $200,000. Even with flights I reckon it would cost under $50,000 to do the lot …. will anyone take up the challenge of potentially getting back 4x their money in free stays?
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Hotel offers update – April 2025:
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