In my household, I manage lots of cards that offer annual free night certificates. This includes seven Marriott cards, four IHG cards, three Hyatt cards, two Hilton cards, and a partridge in a pear tree. At the same time, I’m being inundated with hotel discount and rebate opportunities due to my Platinum cards, Sapphire Reserve card, Delta cards, and Strata Elite card. It’s become too much! I can’t use all of these hotel nights, discounts, and rebates before they expire. Against the backdrop of premium cards offering more and more coupons to worry about, I’m eager to find ways to simplify. Plus, I’m increasingly interested in staying at unique independent hotels rather than big chain hotels. Here’s what I plan to do about it…
Marriott: Drop 6, Keep 1
Finding uses for seven Marriott free night certificates each year is a lot. Marriott makes it ridiculously hard to use their free night certificates for anyone but the account holder. While Marriott allows using points to book nights for other people, they don’t allow using free night certificates to do the same. In the past, when I’ve wanted to gift a free night certificate, I’ve booked it in my name and contacted the hotel before the stay to ask them to allow person XYZ to check in. That has always worked, and probably would continue to work, but I’ve been a bit spooked by reports that Marriott has been cracking down on this sort of thing (see: Marriott may be cracking down on “additional guest” reservations).
Here are the cards I currently have:
- Chase
- Bonvoy Boundless ($95 annual fee): 35K annual free night
- Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business ($99 annual fee): 35K annual free night
- Ritz-Carlton ($450 annual fee): 85K annual free night
- Amex
- Bonvoy ($95 annual fee): 35K annual free night
- Bonvoy Business ($125 annual fee): 35K annual free night
- Bonvoy Business [wife’s card] ($125 annual fee): 35K annual free night
- Bonvoy Brilliant ($650 annual fee): 85K annual free night
My thought is to drastically simplify my Marriott card collection as follows:
- Cancel all Amex Marriott cards ($995 savings)
- Downgrade my Chase Bonvoy Boundless to the no-annual-fee Bonvoy Bold card ($95 savings)
- Cancel my Chase Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business card ($99 savings)
- Net savings: $1,189 per year
The reason I’ll keep my Ritz card is that it offers a great version of Priority Pass, which I’ve shared with several family members by adding them as authorized users. Long term, I could switch to a different solution for this (see this post for options), but it’s a keeper for now. And even though it has a $450 annual fee, I have no trouble using its $300 airline incident fee credits each year, so it really only costs me net $150 for Priority Pass plus an annual 85K free night.
I have lifetime Platinum elite status, so I’m not giving up Platinum elite status by giving up the Bonvoy Brilliant card. However, by giving up that card and all of my Marriott business cards, I will be giving up on choice benefits. Currently, I get 25 elite nights from the Brilliant card and 15 additional elite nights from having a Marriott business card. With those 40 elite nights, I’m virtually guaranteed to earn 50-night choice benefits each year. Without those cards, I’ll start each year with only 15 elite nights from my Ritz card, and certainly won’t earn choice benefits since I’m extremely unlikely to spend 35 nights at Marriott hotels. I can live with that.
IHG: Dump 2, Keep 2
In my household, we have the following IHG cards:
- IHG One Rewards Premier Business Credit Card ($99 annual fee): 40K annual free night, allows unlimited top-offs
- IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card ($99 annual fee): 40K annual free night, allows unlimited top-offs
- IHG One Rewards Select ($49 annual fee): 40K annual free night, no top-off allowed
- IHG One Rewards Select [wife’s card] ($49 annual fee): 40K annual free night, no top-off allowed
I’m considering cutting my IHG collection in half. I’ll dump the consumer Premier card and my wife’s Select card. I want to keep the old $49 Select card that’s in my name since it offers a 10% award rebate, and I want to keep the Premier Business card for its 4th night free and the ability to spend towards Diamond status.
Savings: $148
Hyatt: Keep ’em
With Hyatt, we have four cards in our household: 3 consumer cards ($95 annual fee) and one business card ($199 annual fee). The business card doesn’t include a free night certificate, but I find it useful for spending my way to Diamond elite status. One of the reasons I’m inclined to keep all three consumer cards is that Hyatt makes it easy to gift the certificates to others. If a certificate is near expiry, I can gift it to someone who can put it to good use.
Hilton: Downgrade ’em
Until this morning, my wife and I each had a Hilton Surpass card ($150 annual fee), and we planned to each pick up a Hilton Aspire card as well. Hilton’s free night certificates can be insanely valuable, but since I’m in simplification mode, I’m not ready to pursue Hilton free nights at the moment. So, my immediate plan is to downgrade each of our Surpass cards to no-annual-fee Hilton cards. In fact, I did this for my wife this morning. With my Surpass card, I recently hit the $15,000 spend required for a free night, so I’ll wait for that to post before downgrading.
My long-term strategy here is to wait until I’m pretty sure that I can use the free night certificates for great value, and then do the following based on how many nights I think I’ll need:
- Two nights needed: I’ll apply for the Hilton Aspire card (which offers a free night every year, including the first year), then I’ll upgrade my existing Hilton card to a second Aspire card.
- Three nights needed: 1) Apply for the Aspire card; 2) Upgrade the Hilton card to the Surpass card; 3) Spend $15,000 on the Surpass card to earn a free night; and 4) Upgrade the Surpass card to the Aspire card.
- Four nights needed: Do all of the above, and then spend $15,000 more on the card that was upgraded to the Aspire card to reach $30K spend and another free night.
- More nights needed: I could do any of the above with my wife’s accounts, too.
Near-term savings for downgrading two Surpass cards: $300.
Summary
With the plans outlined above, I should be able to drop my annual free night certificate headache from 16 to 6, and I’ll save $1,637 ($1,189 + $148 + $300). Given my goal to simplify my hotel free night certificate situation, that sounds like a win.
Can you improve on my plans?
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
we need your help on how to MS so easily. i wish u could help with how to spend $30k so quickly. if i had that much in spend ie taxes, would use for new card’s SUB not on hilton to earn only 2 FNC.
The only part of your plan that I’d question is keeping the Hyatt Business card, seemingly solely to spend to Globalist. The personal card also allows you spend towards status, albeit at a slightly lower rate (2/$5k vs. 5/$10k). However, at a $0.02 cpp opportunity cost toward putting spend on a card just to meet status, it would take needing to spend towards 20 nights or more to break even against just spending on the personal card. Need less than 20 nights, it’s better to just save the $199 and spend on the personal card. If you value the 2x$50 business card credits at face value (I don’t), then cut that in half, and the breakeven point is 10 nights.
Also, every night above 60 is essentially wasted money (excluding milestone awards, but every night above each 10 night increment is also wasted money). So it doesn’t make much sense to spend early in the year when you don’t know how many nights you’ll fall short by at year end. And if it’s been more than 24 months since you received a bonus on the business card, you could always apply for one near the end of the year to spend towards status, if you’re tracking towards falling well short.
But overall I am getting tired of credit card coupons that require mental effort to track and use, and FN certs are just another coupon, so I share your desire to simplify. If only Amex would get the message.
You are missing the 10% rebate benefit of the Business card up to 20k points per year. If you could get back even 7.5k points (which is equivalent of redeeming 75k WoH points), that would be worth more than the $100 you spend on the annual fee.
That requires $50k spend, a huge opportunity cost on that spend, and then you only get 10% back for remainder of the year. So irrelevant.
For IHG, I’d suggest canceling the premium business card and keeping the personal premium card. You won’t be able to get the premium personal card in the future unless you close your old select card. However, the business premium card is separate and you will still be able to get it in the future. I think both business and premium IHG cards have the exact same benefits (including the $40K spend for diamond status) though the cards get bonus points on different categories.
Also, I’d keep both IHG select cards. The 40K IHG free night award is pretty easy to use at properties that cost ~$100/night (eg airport hotels), you don’t need to maximize it by looking for $200/night 40K hotels.
I would agree with this adding that you also have the option to downgrade the personal premier IHG card to the IHG travellers card if you don’t want the annual fee and upgrade again when you need to spend to diamond or take advantage of fourth night free.
I would keep $49 IHG select card for sure. For a free nightly certificate costing $49 (which no longer is available), it is a no-brainer. However, I understand why you choose to do so (when you have so many FN certificates lying around). I usually just need to find a place to sleep rather than a 5-star luxury aspirational hotel experience. Having free breakfast is more important to my family than a beautiful view :). Everyone’s need is different.
To contrast you even more, if I were you, I would close all my Hyatt cards. For one thing, it forfeited my $200-ish points due to expiration without warning. It also reflects the fact that I don’t often stay there even if I have no bias. For small towns near home, Hyatt choices are few. I need those FN certificates to serve me, not I serve them, say, adjusting my travel plan to be able to use them.
Getting rid of the Marriott cards is a no brainer (personally Ive found the 35k certs to be next to useless).
But I don’t understand why you’d wanna get rid of the IHG cards. At least keep your wife’s Select – at $49 for a free night, even if you only use it once every 3-4 years then you would still be getting your money’s worth. (Personally, I would make a similar argument about the other one as well. Even if you let it expire every other year, then you are still likely coming out ahead.)
Plan sounds good except for the boundless. I would turn that into another ritz Carlton. Right now ritz Carlton is effective $150 annual fee so having 2 can’t hurt until they nerf it
I like your strategy. Those Marriott Certificates are very hard to use
I frequently think about dumping my Marriott cards. I too have lifetime platinum. But with the Brilliant card I assume many more people have platinum status than in past years. My timeshares have the potential for 42 nights per year so with the credit catds reaching titanium is pretty easy. So the question becomes does titanium increase your chances for upgrades and successful use of upgrade certs. I assume it does but it would be nice to know how Marriott prioritizes upgrades. With titanium I have had pretty good luck getting upgrades with and without certificates.
Can the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit be downgraded to the no-fee Traveler card and retain the 4×3 benefit? (and upgraded again in the future to the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit if the FNA become worthwhile for some reason?)
I assume he meant Hyatt globalist status
Was thinking doing the same!
Hyatt Diamond Elite status?
#throwback