Hotel Hacks

Here’s our (ever-growing!) list of hacks to save money, increase rewards, or get free nights at hotels and other lodging when you’re away from home. Being aware of the many options can help you find the best deal–for example, you might want to choose a $100 hotel over a $90 if the first one comes with $30 in rewards and offers perks like late checkout and a room upgrade. For convenience, we’ve divided this guide into three sections: (1) cost-saving, (2) reward-maximizing, and (3) free nights.

Cost Saving Hacks

Check a variety of booking platforms for the best deal. Because we’re lazy, we limit the search to a few trusted sites like Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, and HotelSlash. Don’t forget about credit card portals if one of your cards gives you access.

Consider alternatives to hotels like Airbnb and Vrbo. 

Remember that many hotel chains and online travel agencies (like Expedia) have best rate guarantees (check the terms and conditions carefully). Using them to book with the right platform can open up the reward-maximizing hacks below. 

In some (rare) cases, it might be cheaper to just buy points than pay cash for a stay. 

Reward Maximization Hacks

In general, an optimized booking strategy can give you four streams of (sometimes quite lucrative) rewards:

• Referral: Before joining a loyalty program, see if you can earn some extra miles by getting referred by a current member.

• Portal: By navigating to your booking method of choice via a shopping portal like Rakuten, you can often receive cash back or other rewards.

• Card points: Your earnings will depend on where you book and what card you book with. You can earn lots of points by using a co-branded card to book directly with the hotel. Or booking directly with your card’s travel portal. Some cards, like Bilt’s, offer bonus points for bookings made directly with the hotel. Other’s, like Amex’s Green Card, offer bonus points on travel, which will include travel agencies like Expedia or short term rentals like Airbnb as well. Other cards like the Capital One Venture X offer double points regardless of the method of booking.

• Hotel/platform points: Every major hotel chain offers rewards points for your spending on stays with their brands, as do many OTA’s. 

• Merchant offers: Amex, Chase, Citi often offer bonus point or cash-back opportunities, so be sure to check your card offers before you book. American Airlines’ SimplyMiles occasionally does so as well.  

• Chain offers: At any given time, most hotel chains are running promotions offering bonus points on top of regular points earning for certain stays. TPG has a handy running list here.

Other hacks to keep in mind:

If you have status with a certain brand (by earning status through stays or via a credit card), consider what perks you’ll get by staying with that brand and how much you value them. You might not value perks like early check-in, but bonuses like points on check-in (common with my IHG Premier) have real value and might be worth factoring in. 

If you’re more interested in flying or chasing airline status, consider booking through Airline-run or Airline-affiliated OTA’s. For example, Delta occasionally offers additional “Medallion Qualification Dollars” for booking through their travel site, and the RocketMiles site offers extra frequent flyer miles (and, in the case of AA, Loyalty Points towards elite status) for hotel stays booked on their platform. 

If you decide to book a short-term rental, make sure you maximize your rewards. You can get more rewards on Airbnb’s by booking via the Delta portal and buying gift cards via United. You can also get rewards on other short-term rentals like United miles on Vrbo stays and Marriott points through their STR program. 

Stay for Free

Many co-branded credit cards (some fairly affordable, some fancier) include a “free” night each year just for paying the annual fee. Of these, a small subset also offer the opportunity to earn a second free night after spending a certain amount on the card. 

Some credit cards (even those that don’t offer a free night annually) will occasionally run promotions offering a free night as a welcome bonus for signing up for the card.

Once you’ve accumulated enough hotel points, you can use them to book free nights. Many credit card points can also be transferred to hotel chains to book this way. As a rule of thumb, transferring to Hyatt is a great use of credit card points, while transferring to other brands is poor value, although this always depends on the specific situation. Credit card companies regularly offer bonuses on the exchange rate when converting into hotel points, which can change the calculus. 

When redeeming those points, you can also get a free night with some chains on stays of a certain length. Marriott offers a fifth night free to members redeeming 5+ night stays on points. IHG and Hilton offer free nights to holders of certain co-branded credit cards: a fourth night free at IHG and fifth night free at Hilton. 

You can earn a free night with Hyatt everytime you stay at five different Hyatt brands for the first time through their Brand Explorer award. 

If you are a hardcore hotel user, you can earn a free night after your 75th Marriott or 30th and 60th Hyatt stays in a given year. You also get a free night as a Hyatt Lifetime Globalist, a status unlocked after spending about $200k with the brand.