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Nick and Greg have recently been looking at which hotel loyalty schemes offer the best return on paid stays (see here and here).
Their analysis has focused on the (somewhat) constant – how many base points you earn for stays, how many bonus points you’ll earn with status and how many points you’ll earn with a co-branded hotel credit card.
There’s another factor that can greatly influence the number of points you’ll earn on a paid stay – promotions. Most hotel loyalty programs have quarterly promotions offering bonus points on paid stays. Some of these promotions aren’t worth changing your booking behavior, whereas others are worth a mattress run.
I thought it’d be interesting to look at which hotel chains offer the most lucrative promotions. This proved to be more difficult than expected for several reasons:
- Dates – Most chains run their promotions from different dates rather than January 1 – March 31 for Q1, April 1 – June 30, etc., making it harder to do a like-for-like comparison.
- Different promotions each quarter – Promotions tend to be different each quarter, so Hilton might have the most lucrative promotion one quarter, Hyatt the next, Marriott the next, etc.
- Targeted promotions – Some promotions – particularly IHG’s Accelerate – are targeted and so are different from person to person. What might be a lucrative quarterly promotion for one person might not be quite so rewarding for someone else.
- Types of stay – There are some quarterly promotions that offer bonus points per stay, while others offer bonus points per night. Your length of stay therefore has the potential to greatly affect how many bonus points you’ll earn.
- Cost of stay – Needless to say, a stay at an Econo Lodge (Choice) or Super 8 (Wyndham) will cost less than a stay at a Waldorf Astoria or JW Marriott. For promotions that offer bonuses on spend (e.g. double points), this can also affect how many bonus points you earn.
For the purpose of these comparisons, I’ve simply used the most recent promotion for each hotel chain. With the current IHG Accelerate program, I’ve used my own targeted offer so bear in mind that your outcome will likely be different.
As for analyzing rewards based on types of stay, I’ve looked at three scenarios for each chain:
- 5 stays of 1 night.
- 1 stay of 5 nights.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights.
As for the cost of a stay, I’ve gone with Nick’s figure of $131.56 simply because we need something to use. Seeing as base points aren’t earned on room taxes – and thus promotions offering double points don’t award bonus points on taxes – my calculations assume the $131.56 doesn’t include tax.
To calculate the value of each set of bonus points, I’ve used the Frequent Miler Reasonable Redemption Values for each chain.
With all that in mind, here are the results as to which hotel chain has the most rewarding quarterly promotion.
Hilton
First up – Hilton. Their current Q2 promotion offers double base points on every stay from May 1 to August 31. At most Hilton brands, you earn 10 points per dollar spent. Here’s how many bonus points you’d therefore earn in each scenario based on a $131.56 room rate along with their value.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 6,578 bonus points. RRV = $29.60.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 6,578 bonus points. RRV = $29.60.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 11,841 bonus points. RRV = $53.28.
This shows how the lucrativeness of a chain’s promotion can change from quarter to quarter. The Q1 Hilton promotion offered 2,000 bonus points per stay including award stays. For five stays of one night, you’d therefore have earned 10,000 bonus points – far more than the Q2 promotion. For one stay of five nights though, you’d only earn 2,000 bonus points – far less than the Q2 promotion.
Marriott
The Q2 Megabonus promo for Marriott offers 750 points per night starting from your third night. Here’s the return you’d get in each of the three scenarios.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 2,250 bonus points. RRV = $16.20.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 2,250 bonus points. RRV = $16.20.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 5,250 bonus points. RRV = $37.80.
Hyatt
Hyatt doesn’t seem to offer promotions throughout the year like most other hotel chains. They do currently have a promotion offering 20% bonus points but that’s only on stays in Las Vegas.
For the purposes of this comparison, I’ve therefore used their most recent promotion that wasn’t location-specific. This offered 1,000 bonus points per night at all their brands other than Hyatt Place and Hyatt House which earned 500 bonus points per night. One of the nice features of this promotion was that bonus points were awarded even on award stays.
That promotion makes a comparison difficult though – should 500 points or 1,000 points per night be used? Seeing as about half of Hyatt’s properties are either Hyatt Place or Hyatt House, we’ll split the difference and assume an average of 750 points per night.
On that basis, here’s the return from each scenario.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 3,750 bonus points. RRV = $65.25.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 3,750 bonus points. RRV = $65.25.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – bonus points. RRV = $117.45.
IHG
As mentioned earlier, IHG’s Accelerate promotion from May 1 to July 31 is targeted, so my tasks will likely be different to yours.
Here’s how many points I’d earn with this promotion.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 15,500 bonus points. RRV = $88.35.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 32,300 bonus points. RRV = $184.11.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 32,300 bonus points. RRV = $184.11.
Just a quick note about those results. In the first scenario, the first three tasks would be completed and I assumed one of those stays would be in May. The Bonus Weekend Stay task wouldn’t be triggered by one night stays, while I’ve assumed none of the stays were overseas. That means the Achievement Bonus wouldn’t be triggered, plus I’ve assumed none of the stays would be at one of the three specified brands to earn the Exclusive Brand Bonus.
With the latter two scenarios, it’s likely that a five night stay would include two weekend nights, so that triggers both the Bonus Weekend Stay task and the Achievement Bonus, hence all the additional bonus points.
Radisson
Radisson Rewards is currently running a promotion offering a $25 gift card when staying 2+ nights at any Radisson properties. That’s a short-term promotion for the month of May, so we’ll go back to the Q1 promotion for our comparison. That offered tiered rewards:
- 2 nights: Earn 5,000 bonus points
- 5 nights: Earn 15,000 bonus points
- 10 nights: Earn 50,000 bonus points
- 20+ nights: Earn 120,000 bonus points
With that in mind, here’s what you’d earn in each of the three scenarios.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 15,000 bonus points. RRV = $57.00.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 15,000 bonus points. RRV = $57.00.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 15,000 bonus points. RRV = $57.00.
If you found yourself in the final scenario, you’d have stayed nine nights during the promotion period. If that was the case, a mattress run for one night could’ve been worthwhile in order to earn 50,000 bonus points rather than 15,000. That’d have given you an extra ~$140 worth of points – definitely worth it if you were able to find a cheap hotel.
Choice
The Q2 promo for Choice Hotels offers up to 8,000 points after every second qualifying stay. The way it works is that Choice Hotels award between 5,000 and 8,000 bonus points so that you’ll end up with a total of 8,000 points once your base points have been taken into account.
You earn 10 points per dollar so, with an average room rate of $131.56, you’d earn 1,316 points per night. That therefore lowers the number of bonus points you’d be awarded.
Here’s how the Choice Hotels promotion works out in each scenario.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 10,736 bonus points. RRV = $86.96.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 0 bonus points. RRV = $0.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 2,738 bonus points. RRV = $22.18.
As you can see, Choice’s promotion ends up very skewed depending on your type of stays. With one long stay you earn nothing. With several one night stays, you get a good amount of value. When staying three times, the return is nothing to write home about.
Wyndham
Finally, we come to Wyndham. Their current promotion offers 15,000 bonus points after two stays. As all Wyndham Rewards award nights cost 15,000 points per night regardless of brand, that means two stays gets you a free night. The downside with this promotion is that you can only earn the 15,000 bonus points once.
Here’s how that works out in each of our three scenarios.
- 5 stays of 1 night – 15,000 bonus points. RRV = $105.00.
- 1 stay of 5 nights – 0 bonus points. RRV = $0.
- 3 stays: 1 for 1 night, 1 for 3 nights and 1 for 5 nights – 15,000 bonus points. RRV = $105.00.
Results
To make it easier to compare the findings, here are the results in table format with the best value in each scenario highlighted.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the results to end up like this. I suspected IHG might do well as their Accelerate promotions can be very lucrative if you can fulfill the tasks in a short number of stays / nights, but hadn’t expected them to be so far ahead of the other chains in the second and third scenarios.
To be fair to Radisson Rewards, they’d have edged the win in the final scenario if it had been for ten nights rather than nine as it would’ve triggered a higher threshold bonus.
The biggest surprise for me was how badly Marriott fared compared to all the other chains. Having said that, if we’d used their Q1 MegaBonus promotion rather than Q2, they’d have done better. In particular, the first scenario would’ve earned more than triple the points.
Conclusion
As these results show, the best hotel promotion for you will vary depending on how many stays you have during a promotion period and their length. You also need to consider how many base points you’d earn as that could affect your overall points total per stay.
Ultimately, you need to decide what’s most valuable for you. Not just in terms of how many points you’ll earn, but in the experience itself and if you’re chasing status.
For example, IHG might earn you a large stash of points with their promotions, but you won’t get free breakfast at a Holiday Inn even with their top tier Spire Elite status. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Marriott might not earn you many bonus points but if you have Gold status then you’ll get free breakfast and lounge access (until August) for stays at several of their brands. Those perks might make it worth forgoing bonus points.
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u should at least give a shout out to Kimpton promos and SPG. i guess thats rolled up into marriott…
Yep, I didn’t do one for SPG as their promotion was – for all intents and purposes – the same as Marriott’s. With Kimpton, do they have separate promotions? I’d thought theirs was part of IHG’s Accelerate promo, but there may well be other promos I’m not aware of.
Another interesting thing would be to chart this by quarter and by year… Marriott’s promo last quarter was a free night (cat 1-5) per every two stays. We stayed precisely twice, got a free night, and used it in Barbados during high season, so it was worth ~$350 to me, or $180 using Greg’s RRVs. This quarter, their megabonus is a microbonus. In statistics terms, the standard deviation from Marriott’s bonuses is quite large.
Fantastic work! This would be an amazing resource each quarter!
Great analysis!
Cool analysis!
I am glad I have seen this post, particularly the analysis of IHG Accelerate. I had already made reservations for mid-June for IHG, which I will now drop as a result of seeing that my interpretation of the terms is apparently in error. More specifically, on your 10000 point offer, it states “stay 5 nights”. Based upon your calculations, I see you are reading this as 5 nights within the same stay. I was reading that as 5 nights, where ever, within the time period allowed for the Accelerate promotion. Thanks
I just happen to have a five night stay planned. My understanding is that you just have to stay five nights in total for that particular challenge, not necessarily in one stay. In the first scenario of having 5x 1 night stays, I’d therefore expect that challenge to be completed. The reason the higher number of bonus points wouldn’t have been awarded is because 5x 1 night stays wouldn’t fulfill the requirement to stay 2+ consecutive nights over a weekend.
Your original reading of the promotion terms is therefore correct – 5 nights, where ever, within the time period allowed for the Accelerate promotion would trigger the bonus points from that challenge.
Would be cool to combine in a Grand Unification Theory that also factors in credit card spend…
I was thinking about doing that as it’d be interesting to see how it all comes together. The problem is that there are too many variables seeing as most chains have more than one credit card, plus your status greatlys affect how many points you’d earn.
There’d therefore be an untold number of permutations. If I was an Excel expert, I could probably create a spreadsheet that’d take all this into account, but I’m sadly not familiar enough with functions, formulas, etc. to put that together 🙁
Yeah, I initially thought that, but I think it isn’t as many variables as might seem. All the Marriott cards earn 6x, Hyatt earns 3x (which you could also earn with CSR, comes to the same thing). It’s only Hilton which has significantly divergent earning from ccs, of the big chains. Seems reasonable to assume the base card.
Re elite status, very true – but if someone is an earned elite with a chain, they probably would stay there regardless. In which case, this post isn’t speaking to them, so you can ignore that possibility. You might assume the elite status that comes with basic cc, though.
After all, to be fair, you ought to look at the overall earn from the night, not just the promo part of it. Otherwise, chains with rewarding points structures seem like worse deals than chains with weak point earning rules but an occasional decent promo.
I think there’d still be too many permutations which would make things too confusing to have in a single post. For example, even though Marriott will effectively only have one credit card earning structure from August, these would be the different options:
1) Scenario 1, no status, other credit card (CC) used.
2) Scenario 2, no status, other CC used.
3) Scenario 3, no status, other CC used.
4) Scenario 1, Silver status, other CC used.
5) Scenario 1, Silver status, Marriott CC used.
6) Scenario 2, Silver status, other CC used.
7) Scenario 2, Silver status, Marriott CC used.
8) Scenario 3, Silver status, other CC used.
9) Scenario 3, Silver status, Marriott CC used.
10) Scenario 1, Gold status, other CC used.
11) Scenario 1, Gold status, Marriott CC used.
12) Scenario 2, Gold status, other CC used.
13) Scenario 2, Gold status, Marriott CC used.
14) Scenario 3, Gold status, other CC used.
15) Scenario 3, Gold status, Marriott CC used.
16) Scenario 1, Platinum status, other CC used.
17) Scenario 1, Platinum status, Marriott CC used.
18) Scenario 2, Platinum status, other CC used.
19) Scenario 2, Platinum status, Marriott CC used.
20) Scenario 3, Platinum status, other CC used.
21) Scenario 3, Platinum status, Marriott CC used.
21 scenarios and that’s just for one chain with – effectively – one type of credit card. With IHG, Hilton, Radisson & Wyndham all having more than one credit card earning structure, we’d be looking at ~200 permutations.
A spreadsheet where readers could plug in their stays, status level, credit card earning rates, welcome amenity bonus points, cost of room, etc. would enable them to gain a better understanding of which combination would work best for them. That’s sadly beyond my level of expertise though.
I completely agree with you that you need to look at the promo in conjunction with base points, other bonus points, credit card earnings, etc., which is what I’m hoping this post will help readers do.
Ultimately though, the aim of this comparison post (and future comparison posts) is to give readers a better idea of how each quarterly promotion works in a few different scenarios. Seeing as their stay habits will likely be different from those used for this comparison, it means they’ll need do their own calculations to help ensure they maximize the promos for their optimal benefit.
Well, it’s only that complicated if you assume the person would earn status through some means other than having and holding credit cards. And of course, people do. But if you’re earning elite status by staying in hotels, then that’s going to be your focus more than the promo earning. That’s unique to each person in ways that having a credit card is not.
As to using other credit cards, it’s striking how infrequently it would be worth it to use even an awesome card like CSR. I mean, if you don’t value other points beyond their RRV, i.e., if you are being purely economically rational.
Here are my calculations of the value of point earning (assuming this rate) per night and per five nights, using your RRVs:
Hilton HHonors
Silver – 12x
CC 7x
Total = 19x
131.56 => 2500 points = $11.25 (5 nts = $56.25)
Hilton Ascend
Gold – 18x
CC – 12x
Total = 30x
131.56 => 3947 = $17.76 (5 nts = $88.80)
Marriott
Silver – 12x (to 12.5x)
CC 6x
Total = 18x
131.56 => 2368 = $17.05 (5 nts = $85.25)
Hyatt
Discoverist 5x
CC 3x
Total = 8x
131.56 => 1052 = $18.31 (5 nts = $91.55)
IHG
Platinum 15x
CC 10x
Total = 25x
131.56 => 3289 = $ 18.74 (5 nts = $93.70)
Club Carlson Premier
Gold 35x
CC 10x
Total = 45x
131.56 => 5920 = $22.50 (5 nts = $112.50)
Choice
Gold 11x
CC 5x
Total 16x
131.56 => 2105 = $17.05 (5 nts = $85.25)
Wyndham $75
Platinum 10x
CC 5x
Total 15x
131.56 => 1973 = $13.81 (5 nts = $69.05)
The major effect of factoring in regular earning is that IHG would be better than Wyndham for 5 stays of one night… Meaning IHG would win across the board.
This is a GREAT visual!!! I would be grateful if you could create this chart every quarter and put a “hotels” tabs as a quick reference. Well done, and thank you for your insight!!
As a general rule, do you recommend one hotel brand as your very favorite for someone who rarely travels (and is just beginning the points game)? Since January, we’ve earned two SW Companion passes, one IHG card (before they made changes), a Chase Sapphire and a Chase Freedom. I’m not sure which hotel card would be the most beneficial though…and there are six of us!
Thanks for letting me know it’s helpful – I’ll look at doing one of these comparisons each quarter once we know each chain’s promotions.
As for a recommended hotel chain, that’s a tricky one as it depends on your travel needs. If you’re all about maximizing your points for as many free nights as possible, IHG can be really good for that, especially if you get a helpful set of Accelerate challenges. With six of you, I’m assuming there’s you and a partner, so make sure they’re also an IHG Rewards Club member as the Accelerate offers differ from person to person. We’re using my set of offers this quarter as I’ve gotten ones that are easier to complete, whereas in the past my wife got an offer that only required a one night stay to earn ~35,000 points.
Although Hilton didn’t get a great showing in this quarter’s promotion comparison, it’s pretty easy to rack up points with them both with paid stays and their credit card(s). Having a credit card like the Hilton Ascend also gives you Gold status which will get you free breakfast at some of their brands. IHG on the other hand is pretty poor with recognizing status.
Seeing as you don’t travel much though, your focus might be more on having one luxurious week away each year rather than a series of weekend trips. If that’s the case, Hyatt might be a better option for you as you’ll be able to transfer the Ultimate Rewards points you earn from the Sapphire (Preferred / Reserve?) and Freedom over to your World of Hyatt account. That can be a great use of UR. Even if you wanted to take more frequent trips, there’s a great selection of category 1 Hyatt properties that only cost 5,000 points per night, or 2,500 points per night + $50. Those can be especially helpful for a family of six as you’ll be able to book just one room at some of those properties as they contain 2 queen beds and a sofa bed, along with a small fridge. Hyatt Places also offer free breakfast which I’m sure would save you money when traveling as such a large family.
Yep, having typed all this out, Hyatt sounds like it’d be a better program for you to focus on.