Hilton free breakfast

  Hotel Strategies, Credit Card Reference

Pretty much every hotel-branded credit card gives you some level of elite status with that hotel’s loyalty program. Usually, the automatic status you get from the credit card is nice to have, but doesn’t amount to very much—just bonus points when you stay, some possibility of a minor room upgrade, late checkout, and maybe a few other minor benefits.

What you really want is hotel elite status that gets you free breakfast and/or access to the hotel “club”. With a few exceptions, that is only possible with Hilton.

If you stay at hotels in the Hilton reward program more than a few times per year, we highly recommend getting a credit card that lets you take advantage of the free breakfast / club access benefit on your stays.

For most people, signing up for credit cards, just to receive travel benefits, good reward earning rates, or lucrative signup bonuses, isn't an irresponsible thing to do. It won't kill your credit rating—it just might improve it. But, if you have a problem with credit, or you aren't organized enough to avoid unwanted credit card fees, you'll need to stick to our other strategies for discounted travel. For more information, see our Credit Cards 101 guide.

Getting free breakfast access at Hilton

Hilton Gold status entitles you to free continental breakfast (for two) at every brand in the Hilton program or a free snack at any brand that already provides free breakfast to everyone. The only exception is the Hilton Grand Vacation Clubs.

For example, you can take advantage of this benefit at every Hilton, Doubletree, Hilton Garden Inn, Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, Curio collection, Tapestry Collection, and Tru hotel.

• While you are only entitled to continental breakfast, many hotels will give you a full hot breakfast or breakfast buffet instead, and many other hotels will allow you to upgrade to a full breakfast for a small extra charge. For example, a hotel may provide access to a hot menu item for an $8 additional charge per person and you'll still get free juice and coffee.
• If you don't want breakfast, you can choose 1,000 bonus points instead. At most hotels brands where everyone gets free breakfast, such as Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites, and Hampton, Gold members get their choice of free snacks or small quantities of Hilton points instead.
• Gold status also comes with some other nice benefits, such as a better chance of upgrades to a slightly nicer room and a 80% bonus on points earned for stays. Along with Silver members, Gold members get their 5^th night free on award reservations, 2 bottles of free water, and elite tier rollover nights. Hilton Status Benefits.
• The Hilton Aspire card comes with Diamond status, instead of Gold. Diamond status gives you guaranteed access to any executive lounge at Conrad, Curio, Hilton, DoubleTree, and Tapestry Collection hotels, an enhanced snack / bonus points benefit, a 100% points bonus (instead of 80%), a potentially better upgrade, and a 48-hour room guarantee.

Temporary(?) Hilton Breakfast Changes

Until the end of 2021, Hilton Gold and Platinum members will receive a food & beverage credit instead of the "free breakfast" benefit at hotels within the United States. Benefits at international locations remain the same. For each room, you'll receive up to two per-person credits each day. Credits amounts are $25 each at Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, and LXR, $12-15 each at most other brands, and $10 each at Hilton Garden Inn.

Credits can be used at any restaurant, bar, or market at the hotel or for room service, will be applied automatically to your hotel bill, and need to be used each day (they won't roll over to the next day on your stay).

Unfortunately, these credits are too low to pay for a full breakfast at the many hotels that historically provided a hot breakfast or buffet to Gold and Diamond elites (or to feed more than 2 people per room at the hotels which choose to comp entire families). In many cases, the credits won't even be enough to purchase the "continental" breakfast that is the official elite benefit, especially at resort hotels, hotels in expensive locations, and hotels that have "continental buffets".

On the positive side, a flexible food and beverage credit provides can be used for a drink and/or snack (or a lunch or dinner discount) if you don't want breakfast or if your breakfast would be reimbursed as a travel expense.

Hilton is touting this as a response to guests who want more flexibility. Hopefully in the future, they will give guests the choice of free breakfast or a flexible credit, so that guests that want the breakfast won't be required to pay the potential difference in cost.

If you are traveling alone, it makes sense to always book your room for two people. There is a good chance you'll wind up receiving two credits per day.

Which credit card to get

There are three different credit cards that provide automatic Hilton gold or diamond status.

Option 1: The simplest path to Gold status is to get the Hilton Surpass or Business Card

• Both cards cost $95 per year and come with a valuable signup bonus.
• Along with Gold status, you get 10 free Priority Pass airport lounge visits per year. The 10 visit passes can be useful if you don't already have a Priority Pass membership from another card (such as the Sapphire Reserve), or you already have a Priority Pass membership, but need a way to occasionally bring in some additional guests. Get Free Airport Lounge Access from a Credit Card.
• If you spend $15,000 in a calendar year, you'll get a certificate that you can use for a free weekend night at any hotel in the Hilton program You can use the certificate for a free night at very expensive hotels such as Grand Wailea in Hawaii, the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, the Conrad in Tokyo, or the Waldorf Astoria in Park City, or at one of thousands of other Hilton family hotels. If you decide to get this card for the free breakfast benefit, spend enough money on your credit cards each year, and are willing to deal with the extra complexity, it is worthwhile to spend enough to earn the certificate. Otherwise, you don't want to use the card for any of your spending. Hilton Free Weekend Night Certificates.
• The two cards are nearly identical, but the business version of the card provides typically less valuable bonus categories and the opportunity to earn a second free night certificate (with a whopping $60,000 in annual spending).
• If you are collecting signup bonuses, you'll want to postpone one of these card until later. It will take up one of your five Amex credit card slots, slowing down your ability to collect other Amex signup bonuses. In addition, since you are likely to be need to focus most of your spending on meeting signup bonus requirements, it will be hard to spend enough on the card to earn the companion certificate. Get the Platinum card instead. You can get a different Platinum card each year, offsetting the high annual fee with a valuable signup bonus. When you run out of Platinum card versions, you can reconsider getting a Hilton card instead. Dealing with the Amex 5 Credit Card Limit.

Option 2: A more complicated, but potentially more valuable, option is to get the premium Hilton Aspire Card

It costs $450 per year—$355 more than the Hilton Surpass Card. For that extra $355, you get several valuable extra benefits.

• An annual $250 credit for Hilton Resorts. You can only use this credit when you stay at a "resort" property, but you can use it to pay for your room and not just for incidental charges.
• Hilton Diamond status, rather than Gold status. Diamond status gives you access to any Executive lounge, a better chance of getting a good room upgrade, and a 50% bonus on points from stays (rather than a 25% bonus). Hilton Status Benefits.
• A free night certificate every year, without a spending requirement. This saves about $150 in potential lost rewards, when compared to needing to spend $15,000 per year with the regular or business cards. Even better, you get your first free night certificate when you initially get the card, rather than on your first anniversary. Hilton Free Weekend Night Certificates.
• A full Priority Pass membership. Instead of just getting 10 visits, you'll get unlimited access to Priority Pass lounges, with the ability to bring in two guests per visit. However, unlike the Priority Pass memberships that come from other credit cards, the memberships that come from Amex credit cards no longer provide access to restaurants and other alternative locations that participate in the Priority Pass program. You'll only get access to the program's more traditional lounges. And there is a significant chance that you will already have a membership from another card, removing the value from this benefit. Get Free Airport Lounge Access from a Credit Card.
• A $250 annual airline incidentals credit. It only pays for extra fees, like baggage fees and inflight food and beverage purchases, rather than for airplane tickets. And you can only use it on a single airline that you choose at the beginning of the year.

Most people find it hard to naturally take full advantage of these Airline Incidental credits. If you choose the airline you fly the most, chances are that you already have ways to avoid many of the applicable charges (via the airline's credit card or elite status). If you choose another airline, you are unlikely to naturally incur $250 in charges. However, there are some tricks to make it easier to take advantage of. Get Full Value from Your Airline Incidental Credits.

If you think you can get good value from the Airline Incidental credit and the Hilton Resort credit, it is worth spending the extra money for the Aspire version. But for most people, we recommend keeping things simpler and sticking with the Surpass Card. And if you are collecting signup bonuses, take advantage of the Amex Platinum card’s benefits for the first three to four years.

Option 3: Amex Platinum Card

If you decide to collect credit card signup bonuses (which we highly recommend), you are likely to be get Hilton Gold status via the Amex Platinum Card.

Among the many valuable benefits of the Amex Platinum Card is Gold status with Hilton. Unfortunately, the annual fee on the Platinum Card is $695 ($595 for the Business version). Even with all its benefits, we wouldn't normally recommend paying this much per year to hold onto this card.

However, there are several different versions of the Platinum Card. While American Express limits you to one signup bonus per card per lifetime, each version of the Platinum Card has been counted separately. There is a chance this changed as of July 1st, but it isn't clear yet. In any event, you can always get the personal card one year and the business card one year.

The annual fee is worth it for the initial year because you get a very lucrative signup bonus along with the card's regular benefits. Even the lowest signup offer of 60,000 points is valued at $900 and higher offers are often available.

If you sign up for a different card each year, you can maintain continuous access to Hilton Gold status and the other Platinum Card benefits (such as Centurion Lounge access) for a few years, while receiving a signup bonus each year to offset the hefty annual fees. There are currently four versions of the card which are easily accessible. If they don't introduce more variants, that's up to four years of subsidized access to the benefits. Once you've exhausted your options, you can decide whether it is worthwhile for you to continue to hold onto the Platinum Card, whether you want to switch to one of the other options, or whether you aren't getting enough value from the Hilton Gold benefits.

Getting free breakfast at Marriott / SPG

After 2018, you can't get breakfast at Marriott / SPG simply by having the right credit card. Marriott is in the process of switching over to a new unified Marriott / SPG reward program. During and before the transition, there are some options that won't be available later.

• Until August 2018, you can get breakfast at many Marriott brands, simply by having a credit card that gives you SPG Gold status. The Amex Platinum Card gives you automatic SPG gold status, which will be matched to the Marriott Gold status, which provides free daily continental breakfast, light snacks, and beverages for 2 people at the lounge (if available) at JW Marriott, Autograph Collection, Renaissance, Delta, and Marriott hotels. This benefit doesn’t extend to resorts, Courtyard, Edition, or AC hotels. If the hotel doesn’t have a lounge, you’ll almost always get continental breakfast in the restaurant.

If you spend $30,000 on the personal or business version of the Marriott Bonvoy Amex Card, you'll also get SPG Gold status, which will provide the same benefit.

In the new unified program, starting in August, these credit cards will no longer give you breakfast-level benefits. Instead, you'll have access to the new program's Gold level, which provides similar benefits to today's SPG program.

• For 2018, you can get breakfast benefits via the Ritz Carlton Credit Card. The current version of the card provides Marriott Gold status the first year you have the card.

When the new program starts in August, you'll be bumped up to "Platinum" status, which provides breakfast benefits and some new valuable benefits, such as free upgrades to suites (when available at check-in). In addition, the breakfast benefits will be expended to all of the program's hotels, except for or Ritz-Carltons, Edition hotels, Gaylord hotels, Design hotels, Marriott Vacation Clubs, and Marriott Executive Apartments.

However, moving forward, the card will simply give you Gold status in the new program, without any breakfast, lounge, or suite-upgrade benefits.

• Various credit cards can give you a boost towards the 50 nights you need to qualify for breakfast, lounge, and suite upgrade benefits. Under the new program, Platinum status comes with the juicy benefits, and requires 50 nights. Starting in 2019, all of the currently available credit cards will give you 15 elite night credits towards status, although it won't be possible to earn multiple blocks of credits from different cards. With any combination of cards, you'll need 35 actual nights to qualify for Platinum status. In 2018, you can earn and combine various credits from multiple cards. The older version of personal and business versions of the Marriott cards provide 15 credits each, and the personal and business versions of the SPG cards provide 5 credits each. Plus, the Marriott cards earn an additional credit for every $3,000 worth of spending. Starting in August, all of these credits will be part of the same account, along with any actual stays from both programs, and can help you qualify for status through the end of 2019. Moving forward, we believe that you can still earn additional credits through spending on the old Marriott card, and add them to the maximum of 15 credits you get from the other cards.
• You can earn the new Platinum status directly by spending $75,000 per year with the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card or Ritz Carlton Credit Card. Obviously that is a lot spending, and simply not possible for many people. However, if you have some way to generate that amount of spending, it may be worthwhile. By using the card for this much spending, you'll miss out on about $750 worth of rewards you could have earned by using a better general-purpose reward card. But, your status can last for up to two years. For this to make any sense, you need to spend enough nights that the benefits add up, but not so many nights that you could qualify for status the normal way.

Is it worthwhile to get a credit card just to get free breakfast or club access?

It is clearly nice to have the option of free breakfast or club access when you are visiting a hotel. This is especially true if you didn’t have to pay very much money to stay at the hotel in the first place. Some of our most rewarding stays have been on points at a few great Category 2 Sheratons, where only 3000 points got us a nice room, plus free breakfast, and drinks at the club.

But is it worth $100 a year? That depends on how often you expect to stay at hotels where you can use this benefit. If you are going to use it at least a few times a year, getting the card, starts making sense.

Keep in mind that when you stay in lower-end brands, you don’t get any extra breakfast benefit, a breakfast is already included. Consider that even when you are entitled to free breakfast, you may not have time to take advantage of it, or might prefer going to a better breakfast spot outside of the hotel.

Hotels 101: Get the Best Deal on Your Hotel Room

Boost Your Hotel Status

Guide to the Marriott Bonvoy Reward Program

Guide to the Hilton Honors Program

Get Free Hotel Nights with Credit Card Certificates

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