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Thinking about shifting spending to hotel points and I can’t see a good scheme comparison on HfP, just reviews of individual schemes and credit cards.
We tend to book luxury-but-small when travelling and are often interested in Mr&Mrs Smith, SLH or Relais Chateaux. When in isolated locations like the Maldives I’ll often look for packages that include food and maybe drinks.
So that’s left me avoiding Hilton, Marriott, etc. Is there a reward scheme that fits this bill so I can then go and find a card to match?
@masaccio – we too prefer to stay in much smaller luxury hotels. We are also not interested in ‘maybe’ upgrades; we want to know at the time of booking. In my experience, you are much better off to negotiate directly with the hotel who will be delighted to deal with you directly rather than paying commission into their system or booking.com etc. I find we get significant discounts plus benefits tailored to our requirements whether it be included spa treatments, golf, breakfast, laundry or recently free corkage (vs usual $35 charge)! And of course big upgrades. This is all worth far more than any points, although if you stay in small hotel chains that are part of bigger chain (eg Thompson/Hyatt) you can get points as well. Our two Thompson stays yielded two nights in a suite in the Park Hyatt.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 3 months ago by .
We have 2-part reviews of all the schemes. There is NO ‘best’ scheme, frankly. If you know exactly how many nights you will do each year, what cities you will do them in, whether your stays are leisure or business funded, how and where you would redeem your points etc we could give you pointers, but that’s about it.
Marriott and Hyatt let you redeem for suites and larger rooms, for example, which Hilton (let’s ignore premium rewards) and IHG do not. Got kids? This is important. Not got kids / not addicted to suites? You don’t care.
Employer pays for your stays? You don’t care about free breakfast. You pay? You care.
And so on.
If you were doing 60 nights per year in the US, Hyatt Globalist is effectively the best option. You get the lot – guaranteed suite if they are not sold out, guaranteed lounge, late check-out, free parking, no resort fees etc etc. If you’re not in the US and/or not doing 60 nights, it is not the best option.
Couldn’t give a stuff about suites and kids. I don’t do much business travel anymore and certainly was never enough to achieve status in any of the multitude of programs I tried. We rarely stay in big cities except perhaps for a road trip once every 3-4 years and even then I massively prefer B&Bs to the horror that is US chain hotels (if I see another waffle machine before I die it’ll be too soon).
So yeah rural UK/Europe and tropical really which is why I’ve been reluctant to get excited about a lot of hotel chains.
What I do have though is I get through a fair bit of credit card spend so that is where I generate easily half my Avios (generated that is – not expecting business travel for another year)
On that basis, I would focus on Hotels.com Rewards. One free night for every 10 you book, all chains on it and more importantly lots of independents which you’ll need for regional / country places.
On that basis, I would focus on Hotels.com Rewards. One free night for every 10 you book, all chains on it and more importantly lots of independents which you’ll need for regional / country places.
Definitely my current approach. Sometimes they don’t have a matching lower price but supposedly they price match. Never tried that though
For maximum flexibility hotels.com is hard to beat.
Marriott have some decent upper-end hotels and, unlike hotels.com, a UK credit card. You can use points for suites (with a cash supplement) and they do five-for-four which is great for a leisure stay.
If you decide to stay at any of the top chains or top brands – luxury hotels only – book through a Virtuoso agent. Rob works with one such agent. These agents can get you non-cash benefits like early check in, late checkout etc which can be valuable, apart from free breakfast.
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