So, you don’t have enough points to pay for a hotel, motel or short term rental stay that you want to book? Not to fret, there are lots of options for earning rewards when paying with cash, and for reducing your cash costs!
The key thing here is to make sure to earn as many rewards as possible on THIS STAY, in order to have those points in your rewards bank for future trips!
As with anything, this may require shopping around for both the best cash price and highest points earning deal, and prioritizing hard choices among the options. If you need a review on points and miles basics, please read my post here.
If you’re looking for accessibility related details, I really like Wheel the World as a resource. Their website recommends hotels and short term rentals that their team has personally vetted, and includes criteria like bed height (for transfers) and accessible bathroom set-ups. I’ve used them multiple times to determine whether a resort is going to include room details I’ll need on a trip!
Let’s get into it!
The Basics
It pays in the long run to pick a brand to stay with most often; brand loyalty is rewarded in status. Hotel status comes with some nice perks! Examples include: free breakfast, food and beverage credits, free parking, bonus rewards points, upgraded rooms, welcome gifts, the list goes on. Having hotel status will pay you back and lessen your costs in multiple different ways.
But in order to acquire and maintain status with most hotels, you’ll need to: have a co-branded credit card with them, spend a certain threshold of money with them, earn a certain amount of points with them, or stay a minimum amount of nights at their properties. Many brands will let you use a combination of these strategies.
At a minimum, even without any intentions of pursuing “status”, you’ll always want to register for a rewards account with the brand, or you’ll leave those points on the table when booking a reservation! You will want to earn whatever points they will give you for every night and stay you book. Also, some hotels such as Hilton, offer reduced room rates even to their free level of members. Occasionally, hotels will run promos where members can earn extra points by booking in a certain location or within a range of dates- you won’t know about these deals unless you’re signed up!
Hotel Co-branded Cards
These are credit cards which are issued through a major bank- Citi, Chase, Capital One, or American Express- and are tied to a specific brand of hotel. Co-branded cards only accrue rewards points with the brand they are tied with. Many of these cards will come with an offer of welcome bonus points or free nights when opening a new account and meeting a minimum spend. These welcome bonus points then can be used for booking hotel stays on points. But what happens if you have used all your welcome points?
Co-branded cards also offer some type of card multiplier for earning more points with the brand. An example is a Marriott co-branded card earning 12x points back at their resorts. Meaning, if you book directly with that brand and pay with that card, a $300 hotel stay would earn you 3600 points for future use.
In addition, many of these co-branded cards come with annual free night certificates, which can be used for a free night’s stay in the future. Others require a minimum threshold of spend within a year in order to earn a free night, such as $15k spend within the year. Double check the card terms for your card’s benefits, but don’t leave those free nights on the table if they’re offered!
Hotel Rewards Programs Options
Another option many brands will offer, even if not a co-branded card holder, is the option to combine points with cash to pay for the stay. This just requires having a rewards account with the hotel brand itself. This is often at a 1 point: 1 cent ratio, and isn’t the best value for a points redemption. However, if you are short on cash, it may make sense. An example of this could be a night that would cost $300 in cash could cost $200 plus 10,000 points. You may decide that’s worth it to save some moolah.
Similarly, most hotels will allow you to “top off” your rewards bank by purchasing additional points. This may be particularly valuable for a more luxury, cash-expensive stay. For example, the hotel goes for $1000 a night, but the points you’ll need to purchase to cover the stay will only cost you $200. You may decide that is also worth it. Who can resist those terry robes?
Rewards memberships with hotel brands will also award any level of status with additional bonus points. For example, members at the mid-tier Gold status with Marriott offers 25% more points on cash stays. Exact membership levels can be found here, but what’s nice is that when paying with a co-branded card for a stay, Marriott Gold members will earn that 25% on top of what was earned with their co-branded card. So using the same example from above, a $300 Marriott stay would earn 3600 points from AmEx co-branded card spending, plus an additional 375 (1 point per dollar plus 25%) points from Marriott themselves, totaling 3975. It doesn’t sound like much, but earning points this way has the potential to add up quickly.
Flexible Travel Cards
There are credit cards designed with specifically with the capability to cover travel associated fees for the user.
The Chase Sapphire Reserve allows $300 annual travel reimbursement, and shows up immediately as a statement credit, so you won’t even owe that amount when the bill, or statement is due. Chase is pretty flexible with their definition of “travel”, so this credit can be used for a wide variety of expenses, including parking, transit, baggage fees, and hotel fees! After earning the $300 travel credit, card holders then earn 3x points on all travel purchases with either Sapphire card- the Reserve or the Preferred.
The Capital One Venture X also offers a $300 annual credit, but the booking must be made through Capital One’s online portal. This could still work for booking a hotel night to save that cash.
Lowering the Cash Cost With Points
The Capital One Venture X, Venture, and VentureOne will allow you to use points in your rewards bank as a statement credit for travel expenses, at a 1 point:1 cent ratio. Meaning, a hotel stay that costs $300 will require 30,000 points to pay yourself back, but would technically be $0. Capital One also allows percent reimbursements, so you can also reduce the price cost by using points instead of eliminating it completely. Using the same example as above, a $300 hotel stay could be reduced to $50 out of pocket (to pick a number), by redeeming 25,000 points instead of the full 30k. (Many people reduce Disney costs this way!)
Technically, any cash back rewards credit card will also reimburse you in a similar way as the Venture cards, without the travel expense caveat. Meaning, if you earn enough cash back to pay yourself back in a statement credit, you can reduce or eliminate your travel (and other types of) expenses, including hotel stays. This is one often overlooked way to reduce your cash “out of pocket” costs.
Traveling for Work
If work is requiring you to stay overnight on a work trip, you do have some options. Options you have most likely include which hotel chain to stay with, or where exactly you’d like to stay for the night. Pick your favorite brand and make sure that reservation is tied to your hotel membership so you earn those points. Pay for the room yourself, and have your employer reimburse you! That way you’re paying yourself in points for your own future vacations.
Shopping Portals
Cash Back Portals
As with anything, you should always shop around for the best deal! Hotels can be booked directly, booked through a third party, or booked directly or through a third party via a shopping portal! Often a shopping portal will give you more rewards in the form of cash or points back than booking without one.
Typically on holidays, shopping portals including cash back portals like TopCashBack and Rakuten often run “sales” where they will increase the percent back they are offering. These may be days that are worth waiting for to make your travel reservations.
Keep in mind that making what the hotel considers to be third party bookings, will most often not let you link your reservation to make rewards points with the hotel brand itself. Meaning, if you book your hotel stay with any shopping portal, or any booking site such as Kayak, Agoda, Expedia, Hotels.com, et cetera, the booking is considered a third party booking and won’t accrue hotel rewards points. By “hotel rewards points” I mean that night won’t count towards status, and hotel brand’s rewards points won’t be awarded for future stays.
So be careful if you want to preserve your hotel rewards points and status!Sometimes a choice must be made as to where to prioritize earning rewards points for a booking. Unfortunately, even the banks’ travel booking portals are often considered third party bookings.
The only exception to this third party rule that I am aware of is: booking directly with the brand through a cash back portal, such as making a reservation with Hilton through Rakuten.
Travel Brand Shopping Portals
Alternatively, travel brands also offer their own shopping portals. It sounds kind of silly, but hotel stays can also be booked through, for example, an airline brand’s shopping portal. Miles with that airline would be earned, instead of cash back.
As an example, if a hotel stay is booked through the Southwest Airlines portal, Southwest will award the booking with up to 12,000 Southwest miles! Unfortunately, the person booking can’t “double dip” and also earn hotel brand points, because Southwest’s platform is considered a third party booking. But maybe you have a trip in mind you would prefer to earn SW miles than Marriott points, for example!
Linking Rewards Accounts
Wherever you can link accounts to make rewards points, you should. This will exponentially multiply the rewards points you can potentially earn per purchase! Take the guess work out of it, and automate as many points programs connections as you can!
Examples of linking accounts and earning extra points include:
- Each airline and major hotel brand has a dining program. Pick your favorites and sign up. Every time a purchase is made at a restaurant in the program using the linked credit card, points will be rewarded. The only caveat is that a different card needs to be linked to each account.
- Rakuten is a great cash back portal by itself! However, if you have a credit card that earns American Express Membership Rewards points, it can be linked with Rakuten to earn AmEx points instead of cash back, at the same rate. This is totally separate from your payment method, meaning, you don’t need to pay with an AmEx card to earn the points!
- Uber and Marriott have a partnership where you can earn Marriott points from Uber Eats orders and Uber rides. Marriott also earns points through Hertz car rentals.
- Renting a car with Alamo, Enterprise, or National can earn Hilton points if the accounts are linked. Hilton also earns points with Lyft rides by linking accounts.
- Wyndham members can earn free stays at casino hotels in Las Vegas and with Atlantis in the Bahamas!
This is a small list of examples of how to earn higher rewards on purchases and bookings. Always shop around!
Earning Points No Matter What
Basically, it boils down to this: any time you are spending your hard earned cash on something, you want to maximize your rewards earned for that purchase! This is true for hotels as well.
Choosing the right path for earning the most amount of points which you value is part of why points travel is so personal! As long as points earning is being maximized, there’s no wrong option! The only bad choice would be to leave all the potential points “on the table”, unclaimed!