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  Hotel Strategies

For many hotel reservations, you can earn rewards points from 2, 3, 4, or even 5 different sources: your credit card, the hotel's loyalty program, the booking site's reward program, an "online shopping portal", and/or an affiliated frequent flyer program.

With a little extra effort, you can earn multiple sources of bonus rewards on all your hotel reservations. In effect, the extra rewards you earn is like getting a significant discount on your room rate.

Try to take advantage of as many different reward programs as you can, on each of your reservations. You can sometimes save even more by using gift cards to pay for your purchase.

Jump to

• Finding the best rate
• Get an even lower rate with Hotwire
• An example
• Other tips for saving money
• Getting extra benefits
• Maximizing rewards
• Moving beyond the basic strategies

1. Use a credit card that offers good rewards on hotel purchases

The most straightforward way to earn extra rewards on your hotel purchases is to pay with a credit card that earns good bonus rewards on hotel purchases.

Sapphire Reserve Guide

For most people, the best "universal" option is the Sapphire Reserve Card. It earn 3x Ultimate Rewards points, valued at 5.1 cents per dollar, regardless of whether you book directly with the hotel or use a 3rd party travel site like Hotwire or Hotels.com.

Other good options are the ' which earns 3x Membership Rewards points per dollar on an even wider range of travel purchases, the Altitude Reserve Card' which earns 4.5 cents per dollar on all travel purchases, either of the Citi ThankYou cards, which earn 3x ThankYou points, or one of several non-annual-fee cards that earn 3%. Best Credit Cards for Travel Spending.

In some cases, the hotel's own credit card provides more valuable rewards than these more general-purpose cards. If you already have one of the following cards and are booking directly with the hotel, you should use it. This is especially true if you are already trying to use the Hilton Surpass or the Hyatt card to earn a free night certificate (with $15,000 of annual spending).

• Hilton Surpass Credit Card
• Hilton Aspire Credit Card
• Hyatt Credit Card
• Best Western Credit Card

The small number of people who are spending money with the Raddison Rewards credit cards to earn Radisson free night certificates should also use that card for their Radisson hotel stays.

2. Earn points with the Hotel's own loyalty program

In many cases, you can earn additional points with the hotel's own loyalty program.

• If the hotel you are staying out belongs to an reward program, we recommend always joining. Since you already need to enter all your personal information anyway to make the hotel reservation, it hardly takes any extra effort to sign up for the loyalty program along the way, and you can use AwardWallet to easily remember your account information. Get Extra Benefits and Cheaper Rates Just by Signing Up for Hotel Loyalty Programs.
• Even if don't value the points, you'll often get other benefits by joining, such as free (or better WiFi) or free bottled water.
• And you might as well earn the points. Even if you don't build up a big balance, you can often redeem them for some ancillary purchase; and your account may eventually get large enough to pay for a free night. Maybe you'll wind up staying at additional locations sometime in the future. Maybe you'll eventually get their credit card and can add extra points to your account.
• Sometimes you can earn airline miles instead, and that winds up being the better option. Some hotels give you the choice of earning hotel points or airline miles. The hotel points always provide more value, at least on paper. But, they don't provide any value if you never wind up using them. If you are staying at a hotel that is part of smaller program, where you are unlikely to accumulate large quantities of points, and they offer a frequent flyer miles option, earning miles can be the best choice.

If you use a 3rd party booking site, you usually aren't entitled to points in the hotel's own reward program. It doesn't usually make sense to book direct, just to earn the extra points, if you can save a significant amount of money on the room rate by booking elsewhere. But, it doesn't make sense to book elsewhere, if you aren't saving much money, and you're missing out on the extra loyalty points.

3. Earning extra points with hotel reward promotions

4. Earning additional rewards with the booking site's reward program

Some travel booking sites operate their own reward program.

• For hotel reservations, the key program is operated by Hotels.com. For every 10 nights you book through Hotels.com, you get a free night The free night certificate is worth up to the average price of the 10 qualifying stays, giving you essentially 10% back. This is on top of whatever rewards you earn from your credit card. Hotels.com Rewards Website.

• There are some potential gotchas when redeeming your free nights.
• You can use your credits whenever you are booking a hotel reservation. If the hotel room you are booking is more expensive than your credit value, you will pay the difference. But, if it is less expensive, you won’t get a refund. You can only redeem a single free night credit for each night of your new reservation; you can't use multiple credits to pay for a more expensive room night, and you can't use a large credit to pay for part of the cost of a 2 night reservation.
• You always pay any taxes or fees. The credit just covers the base hotel rate.
• If you book online, you'll need to pay a $5 "reservation fee". This is waived if you book in the app.
• If you cancel a reservation made with a free night (after a 72-hour grace period), you lose your free night credit and the reservation fee, even if you are within the hotel’s normal cancellation window.
• Free Night credits will expire if there is no activity in your account during a 12-month period.
• Hotels.com provides more valuable rewards than the other mainstream booking programs. The only reason you would use a different travel booking site is if they had an unusually low rate or were running a valuable promotion. Guide to Travel Booking Site Reward Programs
• A few websites specialize in giving you large amounts of frequent flyer miles or other reward points with your hotel reservations. Rather than giving you a discounted rate on a select group of hotels, they give you bonus rewards. The value of the extra rewards you receive are often 20-30% of the cost of the hotel reservation, on top of the rewards you earn from your credit card. But, these high reward rates are only available on a limited selection of hotels. Consider Booking with Bonus Mile Booking Sites to Get Thousands of Miles

• You usually can't combine the hotel's own reward program with a booking site program. If you use the booking site, you won't qualify for the hotel's reward program. If you book direct, you can't take advantage of the booking site. For example, you can earn 10% with hotels.com, or you can earn points with Marriott, but you can't earn with both. Regardless of which option you choose, you can always combine with your credit card.

5. Online Shopping Portals

“Online Shopping Portals” give you cash-back or reward points when you use them to make purchases at hundreds of popular online merchants.

Their business model is straightforward. They collect the affiliate marketing fees that merchants are willing to pay for potential customers, keep a portion, and give you the rest. If you are willing to invest a little bit of extra effort, you can get additional rewards for almost everything that you buy online—including travel.

When you make a hotel reservation, either directly on a hotel’s website, or via an online travel agent like Expedia, you can often get an additional 2-8% back on your purchase, via a shopping portal.

This is on top of whatever benefit you get from using your credit card to make the purchase, and on top of the hotel or travel site’s own reward program. By taking advantage of a travel portal, you can “triple dip” on the rewards you get for your hotel reservations—earning rewards from the travel portal, from your credit card, and from the hotel or travel site.

• If you take advantage of a discounted hotel rate, you won’t always receive Shopping Portal rewards. When you book with a corporate or AAA rate, or even a frequent-guest rate, the shopping portal may not receive an affiliate fee from the hotel. If the Shopping Portal doesn’t get paid, neither will you. Discounts are almost always more valuable than the shopping portal rewards, so we would never book a more expensive rate, just to increase the odds of getting some additional cash or points back.
• Since it is relatively easy to use a Shopping Portal, our recommendation is not to spend much time deciding whether your rate will qualify—just use the portal every time. If it works out that you get extra rewards, great. If not, so be it.
• You won’t see your cash until after your stay, and sometimes not until a month or two later. Unfortunately, some delayed satisfaction is involved; and it is difficult to monitor the status of the extra rewards you should be getting.
• The cash back rates you receive from different programs can depend on how you participate with the hotel's loyalty program. For example, if you have higher-level status with some hotel companies, you will receive less cash-back when you book their hotels. Since they are giving you more hotel reward points and benefits, you'll get back less from the shopping portal. Perhaps the hotel's thinking is that they shouldn't pay high affiliate fees to bring their existing loyal customers back to their website.

Similarly, if you participate in hotels.com reward program, you'll receive less back from the shopping portal, than if you don't.

Don't let these lower payout rates deter you. You will almost always earn the highest total reward rate by taking advantage of the booking site's reward program, even if it means a lower shopping portal rate.

Shopping portal reward rates

There is no shopping portal that is always better than the others. We suggest starting out with Be Frugal, Mr. Rebates, and/or Top Cash Back. The reward rates for each portal change frequently, so you should use a shopping portal comparison site to check current cash back rates with different portals. We recommend using Cashback Monitor and/or Cashbackholic.

RetailMeNot's cashback rates are not listed on the cashback comparison sites, or in the table below. Rather than a fixed percentage back, you get a fixed amount of money back if you meet a minimum spending requirement. For example, you might get $25 back, if you spend at least $250. Current Offers.

Major Hotel Chains	Be Frugal	Mr. Rebates	Top Cash Back	eBates	RetailMeNot
Best Western	5%	4%	5%	2.5%	–
Choice	5%	5%	5%	2.5%	Up to 5%
Hilton	1-4%	2-5%	1-4%	1-2%	Up to 10%
Hyatt	–	–	–	–	–
IHG	8.3%	8%	8%	4.5%	Up to 10%
Marriott	3-5%	2%	3-5%	1.5-2%	–
Wyndham	6.5%	5%	5%	2.5%	– Booking Sites Expedia 3% 2% 3% – – Kayak – – – – – Hotels.com 3-9% 0-5% 5-9% 2-4% Up to 4% Hotwire 4% 4% 4-8% 4% – Orbitz 2-7% 4% 2-7% 1.5% – Travelocity 8% 3% 7% 4% Up to 10% 6. Affiliated frequent flyer programs 7. Discounted gift cards Sometimes it is possible to purchase discounted gift cards for travel booking sites or hotel chains. If you purchase a Fairmont Hotels or Hotels.com gift card for 20% off and use it instead of your travel reservations, you are essentially getting 20% off the room rate. Even better, any rewards you get from the hotel chain or the booking site will be based off the full retail value of the room. Discounted rates on Hotels.com gift cards are quite common and pair nicely with their normal loyalty program. You won't earn credit card reward points on your reservation, but you will be able to earn credit card rewards on the gift card purchase instead. If you buy the gift cards directly from a travel-related company, you will often earn Travel category bonus points. But, if you buy from a different source, you might miss out on bonus points. As with credit card points, any shopping portal rewards will be based on the merchant you purchased the gift cards from, not the booking site or hotel chain you use the gift cards at. Depending on the merchant and the shopping portal, gift card purchases might be excluded from earning shopping portal rewards. If you want to be sure, check the fine print. Guide to Travel Booking Site Reward Programs Hotels 101: Get the Best Deal on Your Hotel Room TravelStrategies:*Hotel Rewards 2/Page