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Is there any way of paying in Sterling for a European (Spanish) stay? Want to use my £100 Amex voucher (on an advance rate) but wouldn’t normally dream of using Amex for a FOREX transaction.
I might have dreamt it but once I clicked through from BA Executive club Avios and prices were in £ but now seem to be in €.
Maybe I’m just trying to overoptimize!(£100 cashback, Avios from BA Amex, extra Avios from BA plus presumably Marriott points).
Thanks in advance (Newbie Marriott user)If you’re on the Marriott/Bonvoy website, there’s an option (top right IIRC) which allows you to change currency.
I guessed you dreamed the £ price, or it had just given a guesstimate of what the € price converts to.
Hotels will always price in local currency, (just been Hilton Dalaman – everything priced in Euros on printed info, actually charged in Lira). Also Amex doesn’t allow Dynamic Currency Conversion and may require the hotel to charge in their country currency.
You’re booking on Amex travel I presume as you have a £100 voucher? Either way you’re seeing Amex’s forex rate, either Amex travel’s conversion or Amex CC’s if paying in €
You’re booking on Amex travel I presume as you have a £100 voucher? Either way you’re seeing Amex’s forex rate, either Amex travel’s conversion or Amex CC’s if paying in €
Oh I didn’t think I needed to book via Amex travel – it’s an offer I added a while back but due to expire soon. Now very confused!
Oh I didn’t think I needed to book via Amex travel – it’s an offer I added a while back but due to expire soon. Now very confused!
You mentioned a ‘voucher’?
Oh I didn’t think I needed to book via Amex travel – it’s an offer I added a while back but due to expire soon. Now very confused!
You mentioned a ‘voucher’?
Oh, you’re right! Sorry, I’m confusing the issue even further! It’s definitely the “offer” to get £100 back on £300 spend that disappeared a long while ago (OH was too late though splitting a £600 spend may have broken me).(The perils of being an over-optimizer)
If you’re on the Marriott/Bonvoy website, there’s an option (top right IIRC) which allows you to change currency.
Thanks, I’d assumed this just gave an indicative conversion rather than charged in GBP. I think I need to call UK booking line anyway as room I want weirdly not available on an advance pay rate only flexible rate on app or website.
You’re overly complicating things.
Like all Amex offers, it doesn’t matter what currency the transaction was in as long as it is billed by a participating site.
So you just have to make sure it is over £300 *after* amex have converted it to Sterling.
I think OP is trying to avoid FX fee.
Oh, you’re right! Sorry, I’m confusing the issue even further! It’s definitely the “offer” to get £100 back on £300 spend that disappeared a long while ago (OH was too late though splitting a £600 spend may have broken me).(The perils of being an over-optimizer)
Either way, you’re swapping one company’s FX charges (Amex’s) for another’s conversion rate (Marriott’s), the underlying cost is always local hotel’s currency, it’s just a question of who gives the better translation.
If you want to use an Amex money off offer then you either stay in the UK or you suck up the forex fee.
The only way to avoid Amex forex fees for overseas hotels is by using an OTA which you pay directly, such as hotels.com, but some OTAs will build in a fee to their GBP price.
Hotels.com doesn’t, but on a recent stay in the UK I tried changing the currency to euros and USD and the price became 3% more than the rate at the time. Never seen this for any other hotels.com bookings when I’ve been bothered to check the prices in different currencies (sometimes you can arbitrage a bit because mastercard now publishes their exchange rate in advance, and curve uses this rate).
And if you use a visa/mastercard directly with an overseas hotel you occasionally get DCC-scammed, which is a pain to get reversed, but the only alternative is to pay the Amex fee or pay an OTA.
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