Don’t Forget About These Easy Hotel Points

An example from Marriott…

Tl;dr: Check for hotel chains’ offers before booking and before staying to maximize your rewards.

While I’m always happy to save money by choosing an Airbnb or other short-term rental over a traditional hotel, or by finding a steal–especially on independent hotels–with an online travel agency like HotelSlash, a lot of times it just ends up making sense to book directly with the hotel. They often price match, for one. And when the price is good, you can usually get some extra rewards by activating a shopping portal bonus, earn hotel points, and either get credit card points (and potentially offers) or elite benefits and higher earning rates with a co-branded hotel credit card. 

On top of all that, the major hotel chains often have running offers that can net you even more points or other rewards as long as you remember to check for them. For example, as I write this, almost every major hotel chain has an offer available to me on top of the usual earning rates:

Those offers are from Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Choice, Hilton (again), IHG, Hyatt, and Marriot (Courtyard hotels only).

As someone who stays in modest, affordable hotels, the points from these bonus offers can be as much or more than I would earn from the stay itself. For example, a $150 stay in a Marriott Courtyard would only earn 1,500 Bonvoy points, but with these promotions, I could get those points, plus the credit card points for booking the room, plus 15,000 from the promotion, plus 2,000 from the special offer. All told, that’s at least $150 in points back for that $150 booking. But even the more modest offers of, say, 2,000 points for a two-night booking can nearly double the base points earning on affordable stays. 

I recommend checking out the offers and registering before you book, and checking again right before your stay. I once booked a stay at an IHG hotel and found out after booking that the hotel in question was offering 4x points via an offer. Despite knowing nothing about this when I booked, I signed up before my stay and ended up with 21,000+ points instead of 7,500. Well worth the effort!

These points are relatively easy to earn, so make sure you don’t miss out!