Combine £100 Amex cashback with 20,000 bonus points from Preferred Hotels

Back in March, American Express launched a new cashback deal with Preferred Hotels.

You will receive £100 cashback when you spend £500 by 30th June. Cumulative spend is OK.

If you are targetted for this offer, you will see it under the ‘Offers’ tab on your statement page on the Amex website or in the app. Remember to check for each card you hold, and click ‘Save to Card’ if you are interested.

Preferred Hotels has now launched a generous 20,000 bonus points offer which can be combined with the cashback deal.

Unlike many similar Amex deals, this one has global coverage. The list of participating hotels is here. As well as the UK and most of Europe, it includes the US, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, the Bahamas and Japan.

What is Preferred Hotels?

Preferred Hotels Group is not a hotel chain, which is why you may not know it.  It is a marketing consortium made up of a number of independent hotels from around the world.

There are over 550 hotels represented from 85 countries.  Almost all of the hotels trade under their historic names with the phrase ‘A member of Preferred Hotels’ tacked on the end.

The quality is generally high. 20 hotels are in the UK. In London, for example, they have The Beaumont, The Stafford, Royal Lancaster, The Pelham, The Londoner, The BoTree, Hotel Saint (a new City opening) and South Place amongst others. The Lowry in Manchester, The Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, Virgin Hotels Edinburgh and The Grand in York are also included.

(Not all hotels are taking part in the cashback deal. Virgin Hotels Edinburgh is not, for example, but Virgin Hotels New York is. Check the list. Hopefully the Amex employee who decided to list the hotels alphabetically and not by country will be suitably dealt with.)

Full details of their hotels are on the Preferred Hotels site here.

What is the new bonus points offer?

Preferred Hotels has a loyalty scheme called iPrefer – details here. It has just launched a summer bonus promotion which will stack with the American Express offer at participating hotels.

To put the deal simply:

• 312 hotels are taking part, so just over 50% – you can see the list here. Not all of them will also be participating in the American Express £100 cashback offer so you need to compare it with the Amex list.

• you must book by 19th May and stay by 31st August

• you must book a two night stay, which will come with breakfast and a ‘subject to availability’ room upgrade

• you will receive 20,000 bonus iPrefer points (you can only earn the bonus once during the offer period)

In the UK, participating hotels in the 20,000 points offer are:

• Grosvenor House Suites, London
• Middle Eight, London
• Royal Lancaster London
• The BoTree, London
• The Guardsman, London
• The Londoner (the huge new hotel in Leicester Square)
• The Mandeville Hotel, London
• The Pelham, London
• Sopwell House, St Albans
• The Grand York
• The Lowry, Manchester
• Old Course Hotel, St Andrews
• Virgin Hotels Edinburgh (bottom image below)
• The Fitzwilliam Hotel, Belfast

What hotels can you book with 20,000 bonus points?

Not many, which is a problem.

You can take a look at the redemption list here.

You can pull up the list of hotels at 30,000 points, which is the lowest level with participating hotels in Europe. There are over 50 hotels globally at 30,000 points with European options in Barcelona, Bilbao, Budapest, Hamburg, Helsinki, Madid, Munich, Prague, Ronda, Stockholm, Venice (Mestre) and Vilnius – although nothing in the UK.

There are seven hotels costing just 15,000 points per night, although none of these are in Europe.

Whilst you will be spending at least £500 to trigger the £100 American Express cashback, you will still be short of what you need for a free night at a 30,000 point hotel unless you spend around £1,000.

This is because you only earn 10 points per US$ of pre-tax spending. Even worse, under the scheme rules, a hotel is only obliged to give points on your room rate – it is ‘discretionary’ if points are awarded for food, drink, spa and other spend.

You CAN use your points though ….

If you don’t have enough points for a free night, there are two other options.

You can redeem your iPrefer points for a Preferred Hotels gift certificate. This isn’t hugely lucrative.

15,794 points gets you a £25 gift certificate, which is the smallest Sterling denomination available. You can also order vouchers in $ or € depending on where you plan to redeem. If you had roughly 25,000 points after taking part in this promo, you may be able to redeem for €50 (26,980 points) or $50 (25,000 points).

There is also ‘points and cash’.

This lets you use a minimum number of points (some hotels start at 10,000 points, others insist you use at least 30,000 points) to part pay a room.

The good news is that these can be decent deals. A hotel in Cork, for example, offered me a €377 room for €282 plus 10,000 points. The bad news is that these rates are not available every day and only seem to show on dates where standard reward nights are also offered.

Your points will expire after 24 months of inactivity in the programme.

Conclusion

If you have the £100 American Express cashback offer available, this offer of 20,000 bonus iPrefer points on top is an extra carrot to use it.

However:

• remember that the £100 American Express cashback offer ends on 30th June, even though the 20,000 bonus points offer is valid on bookings until 31st August

• remember that each of the two offers has its own list of participating hotels, so there is no guarantee that any particular stay will trigger both

• remember that, even with 20,000 bonus iPrefer points, you won’t have the 30,000 points you need for a free night at a European hotel unless your room spend is roughly £1,000

On the upside ….

• if you had the American Express £100 offer on two cards, you could get £200 back on a £1,000 spend if you paid the bill across both cards

• a £1,000 stay lasting 2+ nights would get you over 30,000 points when you factor in the 20,000 bonus points, which is enough for a free night at the European hotels listed above – so your £1,000 stay would have cost you £800 and got you a future free night somewhere

• you can get decent value from a ‘points plus cash’ redemption from 3,000 points per night, although in Europe 10,000 points per night seems to be the minimum needed

You can learn more about the 20,000 bonus iPrefer points offer here.

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Hotel offers update – April 2025:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

• Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 29th May 2025. The annual purchase limit is also increased to 240,000 points pre-bonus. Click here to buy.

• World of Hyatt is offering a 25% discount (equivalent to a 33% bonus) when you buy points by 14th April 2025. Click here to buy.