Beginner’s Guide: Understand Hotel Programs and Points in One Article

About Hotels and Loyalty Programs

Just like airline miles, hotels also reward guests with points, and you can use a certain number of points to redeem a free hotel stay. If you stay frequently and accumulate enough points, the hotel will raise your membership tier. These elite benefits can make your stay much better, such as free breakfast, room upgrades, late checkout, and more. Compared with airline programs, hotel elite status is easier to reach, and you can even get top-tier status outright with a few premium credit cards. So if you live in the US, enjoy the occasional trip, and like staying at quality hotels, you should definitely read this article carefully and take your stay experience to the next level.

To help everyone understand quickly, we’ll break things down into a few sections below to make it easy to get started:

• What is a hotel chain? How is it different from a regular hotel?
• What are hotel points? Are they the same as booking with cash?
• How to get lots of hotel perks through credit cards
• Which hotel chains should we focus on in the US?
• A roundup of each chain’s hotel program

What Is a Hotel Chain? How Is It Different from a Regular Hotel?

I remember when I first came to the US, my roommate recommended staying in hotels when traveling. The cheapest way was to use Priceline and, with some filtering tricks, find the hotel location through a blind bid, with an 80% chance of getting the hotel you want. It was indeed a bit cheaper than booking directly, but there was still a 20% chance of ending up with a dud and staying at a poorly reviewed hotel. At the time, I wondered whether I could spend a little more and guarantee hotel quality. Hotel chains are exactly the answer!

A hotel chain is similar to an airline alliance: it consists of many hotels under one brand. But hotel chains strictly control and guide the hotels under them, with regular inspections, service standards, training, and more. This ensures the hotels in the chain maintain a certain level of service and facilities, so you can stay with confidence (the chance of ending up with a bad stay is much lower than with non-chain hotels). Of course, there are still differences between hotels within the same chain. For example, Hilton has the $1,000+ Waldorf Astoria properties as well as the more mass-market Hampton hotels that cost under $100 per night. The main differences are in facilities and service attitude, but the baseline is still guaranteed.

Another benefit is that when you stay more within a hotel chain, you accumulate points. You can stay a few nights at Waldorf Astoria Beijing, spend a few nights at a Hilton hotel in Chicago, and then apply for a Hilton co-branded credit card. The Hilton points you earn can then be used to redeem stays at Conrad Tokyo and Conrad Osaka, so a $500 nightly room rate doesn’t have to be paid in cash—you can stay for free with points instead. Independent hotels don’t have this kind of points system to better serve loyal guests. After all, you can’t stay in one place forever, but when you travel, you can still stay with the same hotel chain wherever you go!

• Conrad Osaka room

In addition, hotel chains give frequent guests higher membership tiers, and you can enjoy elite benefits across all hotels in the chain. Examples include free breakfast for two, suite upgrades, 4 p.m. late checkout, and other high-value perks. Even better, if you understand hotel co-branded credit cards, you can sometimes get these elite tiers directly and enjoy all the benefits for free.

• Free breakfast at Hotel The MITSUI Kyoto, Kyoto Mitsui Luxury Collection Hotel!

Of course, staying with hotel chains does have one small downside: once you’ve experienced the standard service and facilities, it becomes hard to go back to regular hotels!

How Do Hotel Points Work? Are They the Same as Booking with Cash?

What makes chain hotels so attractive is that they have their own loyalty programs. When you stay at the hotel, you earn points, and those points can be used to redeem hotel nights. Doesn’t that sound a bit like a perpetual-motion machine? And points can be earned not only from hotel stays, but also in large quantities through credit cards, which is one of the unique advantages of US credit cards. We’ll go into more detail below. For now, let’s take a look at booking hotels with points.

If you’re interested in Tokyo and have enough Hilton points, you can start searching. If you search for Tokyo on the official site, you’ll see all the hotels that can be booked with Hilton points (the screenshot here only shows part of the list). The lowest DoubleTree properties start at just 40,000 Hilton points, the more upscale Conrad Tokyo costs 100,000 points, and SLH, the collection of luxury hotels, can cost an eye-popping 1,294,000 points! Sharp-eyed readers may notice that these point prices are all round numbers, while cash bookings usually have odd amounts. That brings us to the key features of award bookings:

• Many hotel loyalty programs use fixed award charts, so a given hotel stays at one award level for a period of time, whether it’s a weekend or a weekday.
• Points bookings can usually only be made for standard rooms. If standard rooms are sold out, you may see absurd point prices like SLH’s 1,294,000 points (because the actual booking is for an executive suite).
• Another point is that pure points bookings do not require extra taxes or fees. For some very expensive resort hotels and hotels with high taxes, using points is especially worthwhile.

The advantage of a fixed award chart is that when cash rates are high, you can use points; when cash rates are low, you can pay cash. Points bookings are a little less flexible than cash bookings in that if there is no standard room left, it’s probably not worth considering. But because your points belong to that hotel chain, if you can’t book one property, you can switch to another hotel in the same chain and still find something that works!

Likewise, free-night certificates work similarly to points: as long as there is a standard room available, you can use the certificate to book the hotel.

How to Get Lots of Hotel Perks Through Credit Cards

Now we come to the biggest advantage Americans have: credit cards! You could say that people around the world who love chain hotels are very jealous of people in the US. That’s because US credit cards are so generous. If you know the ropes even a little, you can get elite status while spending very little. To get the same level of benefits elsewhere, you’d have to stay dozens of nights in hotels. Hotel credit cards also come with very rich welcome bonuses, and just one approved card can get you several free hotel nights. Some hotel credit cards even give you a free-night certificate every year, so paying the annual fee can be enough to enjoy a free hotel stay.

For details, see the hotel cards we summarized below:

• Hotel credit card comparison

Here are a few quick examples:

AMEX Hilton Aspire is the most worthwhile premium hotel card to apply for. Simply holding the card gives you Hilton’s top-tier Diamond status, which includes free breakfast for two, even at Waldorf Astoria properties! It also gives you an annual free-night certificate with no property cap, which you can use at luxury hotels and which is worth $500-$1,000+.

There are many mid-tier cards as well. They come with solid welcome bonuses and an annual free-night certificate, but they don’t grant as high a status tier.

Which Hotel Chains Should We Focus On

We definitely need to pay attention to the major hotel chains in the US. Because they have a broad footprint, choosing where to stay becomes much easier, and the bigger chains also offer more elite-member benefits. Of course, if you can apply for more than one of the related credit cards, I recommend covering all four chains so you can use whichever points make sense for the stay. Likewise, although these co-branded cards do have annual fees, they all come with free night certificates every year. If you use them, you can usually get enough value to offset the annual fee, so you won’t really lose out.

Hyatt

Hyatt (Hyatt Hotels Group) is one of the world’s top hotel groups, known for its upscale properties (Park Hyatt, Andaz, etc.), but it also has mid- and lower-tier brands. World of Hyatt is famous among hotel loyalty programs for its high value, reaching up to 1.6 cents per point; among mainstream hotel points, none are more valuable than World of Hyatt, and points are relatively quick to earn. Hyatt has 17 different brands.

• Timeless Portfolio: Park Hyatt, Miraval, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, the smaller Hyatt brand, all-inclusive resorts: adults-only Hyatt Zilara and all-ages Hyatt Ziva (mostly in the Caribbean), Hyatt Place, apartment-style extended-stay Hyatt House, and Hyatt Residence Club (a timeshare brand).
• Boundless Portfolio: Andaz, Alila, Thompson, Hyatt Centric
• Independent Collections: The Unbound Collection, Destination, Joie de Vivre

In my personal experience, Hyatt is the kind of chain that has fewer properties but very high quality. Combined with the Hyatt credit card and high-value points, it is a good fit for people who do not stay often but care about quality.

• World of Hyatt loyalty program guide

IHG

InterContinental Hotels Group plc is headquartered in Denham, UK. In January 2010, InterContinental Hotels Group was the world’s largest multinational hotel company by room count, and also one of the world’s top ten well-known brands. More than 4,500 hotels owned, operated, managed, leased, or franchised by InterContinental Hotels Group span more than 650,000 guest rooms across about 100 countries and territories.

• High-end luxury: InterContinental (IC), Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo
• Upper midrange: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites
• Lower midrange: Candlewood Suites, EVEN Hotels

In my personal experience, IHG hotels are very widely distributed, and they also have a lot of lower- and mid-tier brands. Room rates and points prices are fairly affordable, so they work well for people on a tighter budget. Also, if you hold the IHG credit card, point redemptions come with a stay-three-get-one-free perk, meaning four nights only require points for three nights. If several hotels meet your needs, IHG is worth prioritizing for a four-night stay.

• IHG InterContinental Hotels Group membership and points guide

Marriott

Marriott Bonvoy’s 30 brands span more than 8,000 hotels in 139 countries. One reason many travelers like Marriott is that wherever the destination is, there is usually a Marriott hotel nearby. Its hotel coverage is extremely broad: the high-end Ritz-Carlton is a landmark in many places, St. Regis is known for service, and the younger lifestyle brand W gives you an option that fits your taste. After merging with SPG, Marriott became a super giant with a presence basically everywhere. Its loyalty program also inherited much of SPG’s strong positioning, and its points kept SPG’s flexibility—you can use them for hotel stays or transfer them to airline miles.

My feeling is that Marriott is the most well-rounded of the four, with options from top to bottom and a very large footprint. Because it has so many co-branded cards, there are also plenty of annual free nights. So if you insist on learning just one chain, I’d recommend Marriott—it can definitely meet all your needs. Marriott points redemptions also have a stay-four-get-one-free promotion, meaning you only need four nights’ worth of points for a five-night stay. If you’re staying five nights, Marriott is worth prioritizing.

• Marriott Bonvoy membership and points guide

Hilton

Hilton Hotels Group was founded in Texas in 1919 and currently has about 5,000 hotels and resorts worldwide, across 13 hotel and resort brands. Hilton, as a global hotel group, has hotel and resort brands that cover every segment and age group: from the top-end Waldorf Astoria to the lower-end Hilton Garden Inn, plus suite hotels like Homewood Suites that are suitable for large families.

If you plan to hold the premium Hilton Aspire card, I recommend staying loyal to Hilton. On the one hand, its footprint is broad. On the other, the complimentary Hilton Diamond status is the top-tier elite status, which guarantees breakfast and lounge access, usually gets you an upgrade by one category, and, if you are lucky, even a suite. Hilton free night certificates are uncapped, so they can deliver very high value. Hilton points redemptions also have a stay-four-get-one-free promotion, meaning five nights only require points for four nights. If you’re staying five nights, Hilton is worth prioritizing.

• Hilton full guide

Summary of hotel program guides by chain

We have already written quite a few hotel chain program guides. If you have used this article as an introduction and learned most of the basics, you can take a closer look at the details of each program. The four chains below are the most important in North America, so it is worth getting familiar with them.

• World of Hyatt loyalty program guide
• IHG InterContinental Hotels Group membership and points guide
• Marriott Bonvoy membership and points guide
• Hilton full guide

We have fewer guides on other hotel programs for now (we are gradually improving them), but if you need them, feel free to take a look.

• Preferred Hotels & Resorts guide
• Choice Hotels program and points guide
• Wyndham hotel program guide

Beginner's Guide Series

Read these posts, and you'll be ahead of 90% of Chinese Americans in the U.S.

• How should you use U.S. credit cards? Can they save you money and even make you money?
• U.S. Credit Card Application Roadmap: From Your First Card to an Advanced Player
• The Complete Guide to U.S. Credit Scores and Credit Reports: How to Read FICO, the Three Major Credit Bureaus, Hard Pull, and Utilization?
• How do you use U.S. credit card points, airline miles, and hotel points?
• How to earn checking and savings account bonuses