For the longest time, American Express has had a fairly underwhelming selection of hotel transfer partners: Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, and Choice Privileges. While those are all decent enough loyalty programs in and of themselves, the transfer ratios have generally meant that transferring your Membership Rewards to those programs hasn’t offered very good value.
That’s all changed as of today because Amex has added Leaders Club—the loyalty program of Leading Hotels of the World (LHW)—as a transfer partner. It’s on a 4:1 basis which might sound poor, but it actually provides very good value considering the high value of LHW points.
In keeping with the vast majority of hotel loyalty programs (Accor is a notable exception), Leading Hotels of the World Leaders Club points don’t have a fixed value. However, we’ve found that you can reasonably expect to get ~8 cents per point of value when redeeming points towards your stay. With a 4:1 transfer ratio from American Express, that means you’ll get ~2 cents per point of value when transferring Membership Rewards points over to LHW which is excellent as far as hotel stays go.
For comparison, Citi ThankYou is the only other LHW transfer partner at the moment. Their points transfer on a 5:1 basis, so it’s actually a little surprising that the Amex transfer ratio is better than that. We sometimes see transfer bonuses from Citi to LHW as well, so fingers crossed that Amex follows suit as that means you should get well in excess of 2 cents per point of value from your Membership Rewards in that event.
The addition of Leading Hotels of the World as an Amex transfer partner isn’t completely unexpected. In fact, I’d predicted at the start of this year that LHW would become an Amex transfer partner at some point in 2026. My reasoning for that is that when Amex revamped the Platinum Card® and Business Platinum Card® last year, one of the new benefits added was Sterling status in the Leaders Club program. That was, at the time, the only link between Amex and LHW (other than occasional Amex Offers) which seemed a little random, so it felt inevitable that their partnership would be expanded at some point.
For what it’s worth, Sterling status offers the following benefits:
- Upgrade priority when checking in
- Daily continental breakfast for two
- Early check-in and late check-out eligibility (but not guaranteed)
- Complimentary WiFi
- Sixt Platinum status
- 5 pre-arrival upgrades per year
- 5% bonus points on stays
That’s a pretty good suite of benefits, particularly complimentary breakfast as I imagine that could prove to be costly at many LHW properties. I’m not sure how good LHW locations are at providing proactive room upgrades, but I suspect your chances with Sterling status are better than getting an upgrade at an IHG, Hilton, or Marriott property with equivalent status but without any kind of upgrade instrument. That’s even before taking into account the fact that you get five pre-arrival upgrades per year.
One important thing to bear in mind is that because Leading Hotels of the World properties are luxury hotels, the cash rates tend to reflect that. As a result, even if you’re getting ~2 cents per point of value from your Membership Rewards points, it could still mean you’ll have to transfer over a significant number of points from Amex in order to book award stays.
If you’d like to learn more about the LHW program and some of its hotels, check out the following posts:
- Family-friendly Leading Hotels of the World
- Sampling Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) thanks to Citi ThankYou Rewards
- How to book Leading Hotels of the World with points (Video)
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“some of it’s hotels” (last sentence) should read “some of its hotels”. 🙂
Thanks – just fixed that
If you book before your points expire can the booking be after points expire?
Most likely but I haven’t tested it to be certain
I heard somewhere that the five pre-approval upgrades were only on cash bookings. Is that correct?
Correct
Finally Amex is adding a transfer partner instead of remoivg one. When was the last time Amex did add a partner?
I signed up using a link from FM 2 years ago to get 500 points ($40).
I never used them and now they’re set to expire in a few months (24 month expiration policy).
I just transferred 1000 MR to 250 LHW points. Went through instantly as my balance shows 750 points! Now I just have to hope that the transfer counts towards resetting the expiration clock… so far, no change. I will wait a few days
“Leaders Club points expire after 24 months of account inactivity. That said, it is easy to extend them by either redeeming them or earning new points, and then the 24-month clock resets.”
Get 500 free points (worth ~$40) when registering with Leading Hotels of the World
In my experience the clock resets the next day after transferring points in
FWIW the LHW app shows the correct and updated expiration same day, at least in my experience.
Update: The transfer from Amex reset the clock for another 2 years.
I feel like this is not publicized as much, but LHW charges taxes and fees on their awards. I had to pay $300 additional to the award for a one night stay once. You wouldn’t see the taxes till the final check-out screen.
true but depends on the country and some property. sometimes it’s as small as $10 so worth it
I agree. It is just something else to be aware of. Much like how departure taxes are much worse when leaving from Europe than US. However, what peeves me is that you can’t see the taxes and fees till checkout, after I had already transferred my points
With the changes to the Hyatt program, I needed a new hotel strategy. I was so close to pulling the trigger on a Citi Strata Elite over an Amex Platinum but this changes things.
Citi Strata Elite’s $300 voucher/coupon is *excellent* (at least for domestic USA stays). Pricing is better than Bilt/Amex portal and it’s an easy one-time application. Unless you’re partial to Hilton/Marriott points, I’d take Citi & its 12x hotel portal bookings.
Eh, I wouldn’t call it ‘excellent’… I’d say, it’s fine to use their platform to burn the credit, but it’s not got the bells and whistles of FHR, or even The Edit (still, that one’s way over-priced). Like, I may even prefer BILT’s travel portal over Citi, and BILT’s is so whack that it’ll book a nonrefundable trip without your consent… psh.
Citi has a wide selection of hotels that have minimal markup, which makes it much closer to the useful Delta Stays credit than overpriced The Edit, even if The Edit promises extra perks.
Pretty sure Citi is using booking.com/Rocket Travel (Agoda), while Amex, BILT, and Chase use Expedia as their underlying platform. Wonder how that affects availability, pricing, up-charge, etc.
I had planned to pull the trigger on Citi Strata Elite as part of my credit card application strategy for next year. As I was planning, I considered the Amex Platinum a close second. However, I’ve been eyeing a certain LHW property for some time now, and this news gives me much to consider. It may just tip the scales.