What are the Best ~$100-fee Hotel Credit Cards?

Tl;dr: The IHG and Hyatt cards are fantastic; Hilton’s is one to avoid for most people.

My love for my IHG Premier card is well-documented. Having a good hotel card in your wallet can be an incredible weapon in your hotel-booking arsenal. The best of these cards come with an annual free night that pays for the annual fee, elite status and the perks that come with it, big points earnings when staying at the hotel chain’s properties, and some good value in certain situations when your spending isn’t directed at the chain in question. With the elite status and big points returns, they can make booking directly more cost-effective than OTA’s like Expedia or even alternatives like Airbnbs. 

Unfortunately, not every hotel card can be as good as IHG’s. I collected the key details on all the major hotel co-branded cards in the (roughly) $100 annual fee category: the Best Western Premium, Choice Select, Hilton Surpass, IHG Premier, Marriott Boundless, and Wyndham Earner+. You can review them yourself here, or read on to see which ones stand out, in good ways and bad.

In my opinion, the cards separate fairly neatly into three distinct tiers: the awesome, the adequate, and the abysmal. The IHG Premier and World of Hyatt cards are awesome, packed with valuable perks and high earning rates. The cards from Choice, Marriott, and Wyndham are all useful, especially for folks who regularly stay at those properties, but lack high upside and offer lackluster benefits. Meanwhile, the cards from Hilton and Best Western require you to spend significant money on the card to earn the free night that other cards offer automatically, so only very specific people will find them valuable. 

Awesome

IHG Premier: I won’t rehash my review. The earning rates on IHG stays are excellent, the points are more valuable because the card offers a 4th night free perk on award stays, the card offers solid earnings on gas and transit, and comes with excellent perks like statements credits for TSA Precheck and $25 in (use-or-lose) United TravelBank cash every 6 months. While some folks might not love the IHG portfolio, particularly as compared to heavier hitters like Marriott or Hilton, the card itself is a world-beater.

World of Hyatt: With a paltry-seeming 30k point welcome bonus, this card may seem a little lackluster. But Hyatt points are quite valuable. Given the value of those points, even the 1x per dollar the card earns on most categories represents very solid value even on general spending. Bonuses on niche categories like fitness club memberships and transit make the card even more valuable. And the card’s protections and elite status benefits are excellent as well.

Unfortunately, the card has a few drawbacks that cause it to drop to a distinct second place for me. First, you can earn double points on 1x categories for in the first 6 months to earn another 30k points, bringing the welcome bonus to 60k points. Spending $15k on the card also nets you a second free night. In other words, to get the full value of this card, you have to be prepared to shift a lot of spending to it, especially in the first 6 months. And that can be tough because it’s sometimes wasteful to use the card in some situations. For example, while the card earns 2x on dining, the Bilt card and Chase Sapphire cards can each earn 3 Hyatt points on that same spending, or used flexibly in a number of different ways. Finally, while the ultra-valuable points are great, devaluations happen, and you’ll have to bear the risk that Hyatt might finally decide to ditch its award chart and switch to the dynamic pricing models that have eroded the value of other brands’ points.  

Adequate

Choice Select: This card is basically a knockoff version of IHG’s. Like that card, it offers great earnings on stays with the brand, along with good earning rates on useful categories like gas, groceries, home improvement stores and phone plans (plus cell phone insurance if you pay your bill with the card). It also, like the IHG, offers a statement credit for TSA Precheck. It even sweetens the pot with a waived annual fee for the first year (and, as of now, an excellent 90k point bonus). It drops down to the “adequate” list because it lacks significant status benefits and doesn’t offer any discount on points bookings. (The properties are also a notch below those of Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Hyatt, although that might be a benefit if you prefer that price point). 

Wyndham Earner+: With the lowest annual fee on this list ($75), discounts on both cash and points bookings, and solid earning rates on dining, gas, and groceries in addition to Wyndham stays, this card could be appealing for folks who want a card to unlock budget hotel options. As a Visa Signature card, it should have excellent protections and benefits, although it oddly doesn’t advertise them. The drawback with this card is that it offers 7500 points on renewal rather than a free night. While that can get you a free night at some Wyndham properties, those will probably be out of the way and not the nicest. So whereas your free IHG or Hyatt night could be a Holiday Inn or a Hyatt Place downtown, for your free Wyndham night you might have to settle for a rundown Days Inn or Super 8 on the outskirts of town. 

Marriott Boundless: This card is fine. Marriott has the best portfolio out there, with tons of properties spanning an incredible range from budget to luxury options with fairly consistently good quality. That being the case, it can be worthwhile to have a card that lets you maximize your points when staying with the brand, and the free night annually makes the card fairly painless to hold. But the Silver status it bestows is not very valuable, and is actually worse than you could get by holding a non-Marriott card: the Amex Platinum offers Gold status. Meanwhile, the 6x points on Marriott stays are better than the alternatives, but not much better. The Amex Green three Amex points on Marriott stays, for example, could be converted into 4.5 Marriott points. 

Abysmal

Sometimes you don’t need to book directly with the hotel. With credit card portals, OTA loyalty programs, discounters like HotelSlash and the like, sometimes your best option is to book through another avenue. In some sense it’s great that Hilton’s points are so devalued and its credit card so bad, because given their enormous portfolio it makes it easier to book a discounted hotel without feeling like you’re giving up on the big points earnings and perks you could have with an IHG or Hyatt card, for example. So hey, it’s not all bad news here.

Best Western Premium: Offering special cardmember rates and status perks like free bottled water, it’s not all downside with this card. But needing to spend $5,000 to unlock a free night is a tough pill to swallow, made much tougher by the card’s anemic earning rate of just 2 points per dollar on all non-BW spending. 

Hilton Surpass: You’ll get 10 free Priority Pass airport lounge visits each year, which might actually be worth the annual fee depending on your perspective (although why bother when you could get unlimited visits basically free with cards like the Venture X?). The status perks here are also actually decent, including free breakfast. And if you earn a free night, you can use it at ultra-upscale properties, whose $500+ nightly rates might make the $99 annual fee look like a steal. But you’ll have to spend $15,000 on the card to unlock that free night, which, realistically, isn’t going to be much more valuable than the one you could get just for renewing your IHG, Hyatt, or Marriott card. You’ll also have to divert that spending from more lucrative cards. The whole proposition makes even less sense considering you can get Hilton benefits with no fee from the Honors card or upgrade to the Aspire for a better value proposition.  

Edit: Hilton recently revamped its card lineup, massively improving the Surpass; we will discuss the changes in a future post.

Conclusion

Having a hotel card or two available can be a big boost to your hotel-booking strategy. The right one will depend on your travel preferences and spending habits, but I think the IHG Premier, World of Hyatt, Choice Select, Wyndham Earner+, and Marriott Boundless are all worthy contenders.