(EXPIRED) New MGM Resorts Amex Offers: Stack With Hyatt Promos For Extra-Rewarding Stays

A couple of new MGM Resorts Amex Offers appeared today. While they’re similar to past MGM Amex Offers, they’ve come at a good time if you’re looking to have a cheap end-of-year mattress run to pick up status with Hyatt.

The Deals

• Spend $500+ on room rate & room charges at the following MGM Resorts brands & get $100 back or 10,000 Membership Rewards:
  • Bellagio, ARIA, Vdara, MGM Grand Las Vegas, The Signature at MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay , Delano Las Vegas, Park MGM, NoMad Las Vegas, and The Mirage.
• Spend $250+ on room rate & room charges at the following MGM Resorts brands & get $50 back or 5,000 Membership Rewards:
  • New York-New York, Luxor, Excalibur, Beau Rivage, Gold Strike, Borgata, MGM National Harbor and MGM Springfield.

Key Terms

• Reservations must be made directly through MGM Resorts online at mgmresorts.com, by phone, or via mobile app.
• Excludes all other MGM Resorts destinations.
• Not valid for Bellagio Shanghai, Four Seasons rooms and residences, and the Aria Residential Program.
• Excludes BillDirect transactions.
• Not valid on air and hotel packages and gift card purchases.
• Please note that hotels, car rental companies, and cruise lines do not accept prepaid cards for charges authorized in advance, although prepaid cards may be used to settle the final bill. Check to make sure prepaid cards are accepted before attempting to use your prepaid card to take advantage of offers for these merchants.
• We are working hard to connect our Card Members and Merchant partners to deliver benefits to them both during this challenging time. Due to this unprecedented period of disruption, note that your ability to redeem Amex Offers may be affected at this time due to changes in some Merchants’ operations, such as reduced hours, suspension of in-person shopping, dining or services, or closures of properties, retail locations and other facilities. Please see mgmresorts.com for current business operations and availability which may be subject to change with or without prior notice. While we hope to provide you with this offer on these terms, given the unpredictability of the current situation, we may need, and we reserve the right, to change or cancel this offer at any time.
• Offer only valid on room rate and room charges.
• Offer not valid for lodging stays that are paid for before the promotion start date or after the promotion end date.

Quick Thoughts

These MGM Resorts Amex Offers are fairly standard as they offer the opportunity to save up to 20% on a stay which is what’s been offered many times in the past. Considering how hard Vegas has been hit by the pandemic, it’s a little surprising that they’ve not increased the potential savings, but 20% off is still a good discount if you were planning a stay at one of these properties anyway.

The great thing about having these Amex Offers available right now is that reservations at MGM properties are eligible for a couple of Hyatt’s current promotions.

For starters, there’s Bonus Journeys which offers 3x or 4x at some MGM Resorts properties, although we don’t have a list of the eligible properties right now, nor do we know if the eligible properties will earn 3x or 4x. Either way, that’s still a nice return.

That same promotion also offers double elite nights, with the doubled portion being credited to your 2021 World of Hyatt status year. As Greg has pointed out, you could start a stay at the end of December and check out in the first few days of 2021 and have both sets of elite nights post to 2021. For example, checking in on December 28, 2020 and checking out on January 2, 2021 will earn you a total of 10 elite night credits towards your 2021 status with Hyatt.

Some World of Hyatt members have also been targeted for a promotion offering 3x bonus American Airlines AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on stays which includes MGM Resorts properties.

As mentioned earlier, stacking all these offers can make for a cheap – and rewarding – end-of-year mattress run if you’re seeking out Globalist status with Hyatt. In the past, it’s sometimes been possible to book complimentary nights with M life (the MGM Resorts loyalty program) which meant you only had to pay resort fees, but I’m not seeing any complimentary nights right now. Those used to be targeted, so check your account in case you do happen to have complimentary nights available.

I did see some cheap nights in the coming months though which means you can pick up some elite night credits for a net cost of ~$50 per night while also earning 3x or 4x on the base spend.

For example, you can book Luxor from December 13-17, 2020 and have the base room rate come to less than $100 total for the four nights.

Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas though without resort fees that can exceed the base cost of the room and that’s no exception here. Those four nights therefore come to a total of $258.24.

That’s close to the sweet spot for the second Amex Offer listed above seeing as you need to spend $250+ to get $50 back or 5,000 Membership Rewards. Your net cost would therefore be $208.24 for the four nights, or $52.06 per night, with the statement credit version of the offer. If you value Membership Rewards greater than 1cpp, you’d be better off going with the 5,000 points version of the offer if you were targeted.

If you were targeted for both the statement credit and Membership Rewards versions of the offer, you could still take advantage of both offers in this scenario depending on how much you actually spend while in Vegas. That’s because you can charge food and other services at any MGM Resorts property to your room at a completely different MGM hotel. For example, if you spent $250 on meals at Aria, you could still charge that to your room at Luxor. You could then split the final payment when checking out to put $250 on one card and the balance of $250+ on the other card, thereby triggering both offers.

MGM Resorts is also available through Rakuten (formerly Ebates) right now at 2.5%, or 2.5x if your Rakuten account is set up to earn Membership Rewards, so that just sweetens the deal even further, not to mention the 3x/4x from Hyatt, double elite nights and potentially 3x AAdvantage miles.

Update: You can also indirectly stack these Amex Offers with a separate Amex Offer giving $150 back when spending $800 or more on prepaid Fine Hotels & Resorts stays.

I’d initially thought the FHR and MGM Resorts offers would stack if they were both on the same card, but Greg pointed out that the prepaid requirement for the FHR offer meant it likely wouldn’t as it would post as an FHR charge rather than an MGM one.

I therefore didn’t include that in the post, but Jim made a good point in the comments below that if you were booking a more expensive stay, you could book through FHR to take advantage of that other Amex Offer, along with the additional benefits you get with FHR bookings. You could then pay for room charges of $250+ with a card with one of these MGM Resorts Amex Offers loaded to it.

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