Recently, my wife and I spent three nights at the Pendry Chicago hotel. I had booked the first two nights through The Edit by Chase Travel℠ and the third night through Amex’s Fine Hotels + Resorts® (FHR). Despite the fact that these luxury hotel programs offer very similar benefits, I discovered interesting differences during this stay. As expected, one advantage of the FHR part of the stay was that I was automatically granted a 4 PM late check-out. I was surprised, though, to find some advantages to booking through Chase as well. Please note that my experience was just with one property over a single long weekend. Your experience is very likely to differ.
Background
American Express’ Platinum cards offer rebates for two hotel collections with elite-like benefits during your stay: Fine Hotels + Resorts (FHR) and The Hotel Collection (THC). Similarly, Chase’s Sapphire Reserve® cards offer rebates for The Edit by Chase Travel℠. The following table summarises the advertised perks of each collection:
| Perk | The Edit | FHR | THC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room upgrade | When available | When available | When available |
| Daily breakfast for 2 | Yes, at many but not all properties | Yes | Yes, at some but not all properties |
| Property credit per stay | $100 | $100 | $100 |
| Early check-in | When available | When available | When available |
| Late check-out | When available | 4 PM guaranteed | When available |
| Premium card rebate | $250 twice per year | $300 every six months | |
| Rebate minimum stay requirement | 2 nights | 1 night | 2 nights |
| Point value towards stays | 1.65 to 2 cents per point | 1 cent per point | 1 cent per point |
| Earn hotel points and elite credits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
In a previous post, I did a deep dive into hotels in two cities (New York and London) that were available through both Amex and Chase collections. I came to the following conclusions (with this admittedly small sample size):
- Amex has far more properties in its collection
- You’re more likely to get a better price through Amex than through Chase. On the other hand, with The Edit, you do have a very good chance (around 60%) of finding prices that are equal to or (rarely) better than Amex’s.
- If you want to use points to pay for your stay, you’ll do much better with Chase than with Amex since Amex doesn’t offer Points Boosts at all.
My Pendry Experience Overview
I booked Thursday and Friday night through Chase after logging in with my Sapphire Reserve® card. This $607.62 stay qualified for the card’s $250 The Edit credit and the $250 credit for select Chase Travel℠ hotels (2026 only, so far). Knowing that Pendry was on the list of qualifying brands for the latter, I paid $500 with my card and the rest in points. As expected, Chase automatically credited me with two $250 rebates. A 2x points boost was available for the Pendry, so I paid only 5,381 points to cover the remaining $107.62.
I booked Saturday night through Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts. The all-in total for the night was $293.50, but $41.09 was due to be paid at the hotel for the hotel’s destination fee, so I paid only $252.41 with my Amex Platinum card. Amex automatically credited me $252.41, and I still have nearly $60 credit available from the Platinum card’s twice-annual $300 hotel credit.
| Per-Night Price | Total Amt Pre-paid | Amt Rebated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chase | $303.81 | $500 + 5,381 points | $500 |
| Amex | $293.50 | $252.41 | $252.41 |
Mostly Identical Experiences
In many ways, my experience at The Prendry was the same with both bookings. Specifically, these benefits were identical:
- No room upgrade: Unless they counted moving us to a high floor as an upgrade, our room wasn’t special. This may have been my fault for the Amex part of the stay. When I checked into the Chase part of the stay, I asked if we could be kept in the same room for all three nights. This may have prevented us from receiving an upgrade for the third night.
- Welcome amenity: We received a small box of chocolates at the start of each stay.
- Free breakfast for two: In both cases, we were given a $60 daily credit for breakfast. This wasn’t actually enough to make breakfast free, but it came reasonably close.
- $100 stay credit: In both cases, charges to our room beyond the $60 breakfast credit (food & drink, in our case) were automatically deducted, up to a total of $100 per stay.
- No elite benefits: Pendry Chicago is a member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts. Both luxury hotel programs claim that you should earn hotel points and elite benefits when booking through their programs. I have top-tier I Prefer Titanium status, so I should have received a complimentary food & beverage offering, but I didn’t. When I asked at the desk, I was told that they only offer points as benefits at the Pendry.
Chase Advantages
There were a few advantages to booking through Chase for this stay:
- 2x Points Boost: I paid for the stay partly with cash (in order to earn Chase rebates) and partly with points. While Chase no longer guarantees a 2x Points Boost for The Edit, it was offered for this stay. Therefore, my points were worth 2 cents each towards the cash portion of the booking.
- Prepaid destination fee: The Pendry charges a $35 per-day destination fee (41.09 after taxes). This fee was prepaid through Chase. The advantage is that I was able to pay the destination fee with points (using the 2x Points Boost). This feature can be a negative in some cases: Some hotels have been known to charge guests again for destination fees. That didn’t happen to me here. Additionally, at Hyatt properties, top-tier Hyatt Globalists are supposed to have destination fees waived (they can contact Chase to try to get a refund after the stay). This wasn’t a Hyatt property, so this wasn’t an issue here.
- The $100 stay credit was more flexible: At the Pendry, Chase’s stay credit could be used for food & beverages or at the hotel’s “retail space” (a wall with some items for sale), whereas the Amex credit was limited to food & beverage purchases.
- Points earned automatically (maybe): I earned some I Prefer points, and I think they came from the Chase part of my stay, but I’m not sure. See the section titled “The I Prefer Points Mystery,” below.
Amex Advantages
And, here were the advantages to the Amex portion of our stay:
- Single-night stays are allowed: Chase requires a 2-night stay to qualify for the Sapphire Reserve® card’s $250 The Edit credit. Amex’s Fine Hotels + Resorts stays can be booked for a single night, and you’ll still qualify for Amex Platinum hotel credits. This is obviously useful for single-night stays, but it’s also useful for multi-night stays if you have multiple Platinum cards, since you can earn a rebate for each one by making separate back-to-back bookings (note, though, that you’ll only get a single $100 stay credit when you do this).
- My Amex booking was slightly cheaper: The per-night price through Amex was $10.31 cheaper than through Chase.
- Guaranteed 4 PM late check-out: The Pendry automatically set up a 4 PM late check-out for us on Sunday. With a Chase booking, late check-out is not guaranteed, and there’s no 4 PM promise.
The I Prefer Points Mystery
Pendry Chicago is a member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts. Amex and Chase claim that you should earn hotel points and elite benefits when booking through their programs. I entered my Preferred Hotel’s I Prefer number into both bookings. And both showed up in my I Prefer account, both before and after the stay. As mentioned above, I didn’t receive any elite benefits during this stay. But I did earn some points…
A week after my stay, I received an email from I Prefer Hotel Rewards congratulating me for having earned points: “Congratulations! You earned 6,210 I Prefer Points from your stay at Pendry Chicago.”
The problem was that the email didn’t say which stay earned points. Were the points from the Chase-booked stay or the Amex-booked stay?
The mystery deepened when I looked at my I Prefer points activity online:
Point earnings:
There were several confusing things about the online points activity, as shown above:
- It appeared they had reversed the 6,210 points, but they are still in my account.
- There is no way to click to see more information about the points activity.
- The “posted” date for both the award and the reversal is listed as Jan 30. That’s bizarre because it’s the only day of the weekend when I neither checked in nor checked out of the hotel. I checked into the Chase part of the stay on January 29th and checked out on January 31. For the Amex part of the stay, I checked in on January 31 and checked out on February 1.
- I can’t figure out how they decided to award 6,210 points. The base rate (before taxes and fees) for the Chase stay was $468.01. With my Titanium status, I should have earned 15 points per dollar for a total of 7,020 points. Maybe the base rate that I Prefer sees is less than the base rate reported by Chase? How about Amex? The Amex base rate was $215, so I should have earned 215 x 15 = 3,225 points from that stay. That’s far short of the 6,210 points I earned. However, I was also enrolled in an I Prefer double-points promo. If that was applied to this stay, then I should have earned either 5,375 points (if my elite bonus wasn’t doubled) or 6,450 points (if my elite bonus was doubled).
So… which stay resulted in points?
A case for Chase:
- The date the points were posted was in the middle of the Chase stay.
- The number of points I expected from the Chase stay (assuming the double points promo didn’t apply) was reasonably close to the number of points delivered. I expected 7,020 points but received 6,210.
A case for Amex:
- The number of points I expected from the Amex stay, assuming the I Prefer double-points promo did apply, was close to the number of points delivered:
- If my elite bonus wasn’t doubled, then I expected 5,375 points, but received 6,210
- If my elite bonus was doubled, then I expected 6,450 points, but received 6,210
A case for neither:
There are two scenarios in which the points can’t be attributed to either stay:
- Mistake: Maybe I Prefer made a mistake in awarding points at all. Then they tried to correct the mistake, but didn’t properly remove the points from my account. This is plausible since my account activity shows the points being removed (even though they weren’t).
- Manual points: During the stay (I forget which day, but it could have been January 30th), I asked at the desk about elite benefits. The desk agent, after inquiring “in the back,” told me they only provide points at the Pendry, not elite benefits. Maybe she then manually awarded me points based on a calculation only she knows.
My bet: Chase
I think that it’s most likely that points were awarded from my Chase-booked stay. In many ways, I Prefer seems like a half-baked rewards program, so it’s not particularly surprising to me to find that the number of points awarded was not predictable using math.
My Pendry Experience Details
Overall, we thought the Pendry was fine, but we wouldn’t be excited to stay again. We liked the hotel restaurant and our room’s shower (endless hot water and good pressure). On the other hand, our room’s decor was bland, the walls were noticeably not soundproof, and there was a stupid alarm clock that went off early in the morning after our second night. Can someone please outlaw alarm clocks in hotel rooms?
Details about our experience with The Edit and Fine Hotels + Resort benefits at The Pendry follow…
Welcome letters
At check-in, I explained that I had back-to-back reservations, and I asked to be kept in the same room for both stays. The desk agent then printed out the benefits for both parts of the stay (as shown above). He also specifically noted that the $100 property credit from Chase could be used at the hotel’s retail space, whereas the $100 credit from Amex could not. That was a surprising difference! In the following table, I’ve listed the differences I found between the two welcome letters:
| Benefit | Difference? |
|---|---|
| Room Upgrade | No difference. Both note that certain room types are not eligible for upgrades (with Amex, it is listed in paragraph form rather than in the bulleted list) |
| Welcome Amenity | No difference (with Amex, this benefit is listed in paragraph form rather than in the bulleted list) |
| Daily Breakfast for 2 | No material difference. Both offer $60 per day towards breakfast. Chase describes the benefit as $30 per person and specifically lists the hotel restaurant and in-room dining as qualifying. |
| $100 Property Credit | The primary difference is that Chase’s credit can be used at the hotel’s “retail space” (a wall with some items for sale), whereas Amex credit is specifically for food & beverage. |
| Early check-in, late check-out | Chase vaguely offers this “based on availability”. Amex specifically lists 12 pm check-in when available and guarantees 4 PM late check-out. |
| Complimentary Wi-Fi | No significant difference |
Room upgrade
We were on a very high floor, so maybe that was considered an upgrade. Otherwise, I believe this was the same room type we had booked.
Welcome Amenity
We received these chocolates at the start of each stay. They were delicious!
Daily Breakfast for 2
The hotel breakfast was great, but $60 per day wasn’t enough to cover breakfast for two. One day, we each ordered coffee plus one of the cheapest breakfast items (yoghurt and granola), and the total still exceeded $60 after fees and tip.
$100 Property Credit
In addition to spending more than $60 per day on breakfast, we had lunch at the hotel one day and a light dinner with drinks the next. The Chase $100 property credit fully covered our breakfast overages and lunch (with almost $5 left unused). The Amex $100 property credit covered most of our dinner at the hotel. In both cases, the credits were applied automatically based on our room charges.
Early check-in, late check-out
We didn’t need early check-in or late check-out. If we had needed them, I have no idea if we would have been offered either with our Chase stay. With our Amex stay, we were automatically given 4 PM late check-out (which we didn’t need).
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Thanks for the post. I thought 2 $250 credits cannot be used in one booking. I plan to stay at Bellagio for 2 nights, can I use both $250 credits for this booking?
Never mind. I figured out myself. It is $250 additional credit for Pendry hotels.
I wondered if it was worth trying to combine stays from multiple programs like this (Chase + Amex) and if the property credits would work. I assumed they’d consider it 1 single reservation. Glad to see that it does work.
Great post, super helpful and thank you for the thoroughness.
This blog (and DoC) is so ridiculously better than anything else out there, especially now that the angry mutant goblin at VFTW alternates between lame political posts and shilling for Shiti non stop.
the pendry in San Diego is kool
Thanks for the review. We will avoid this property. As for points, we stayed at the Forth in Atlanta. Excellent property. But no I-Prefer points awarded on a FHR stay.
Did you challenge the hotel on the “free” breakfast? There are a disappointing number of hotels refusing to honor the stated breakfast benefit and instead offering a stipend. Hopefully you asked them to fully credit the breakfast since it is booked as free not as a $60 credit
No. It’s very common to have limits like this. I do t sweat it.
I think the Chase Edit is what caused no room upgrades. We have stayed there with Fine Hote and Resorts a few times and we have been upgraded to a room that was at least double the size of the one you had(maybe 3 times the size), I mean it was massive and amazing!
Also, we loved the hotel, it gets nearly 5 star reviews online as well. Well now I look and it seems it has lost some of that, it used to be 4.6 to 4.7 now down to 4.4…hmmmm
Did you know you can “borrow” their Cadillac Escalades for anything within I believe 1 or 2 miles of the hotel? We used this free service to get us to several bars/restaurants we wanted to go to without needing to pay for an uber(at least one way)
I thought service was amazing and at least for us, the hotel room was one of the largest we have ever been uggraded to.
We are staying there again in a few months for 2 nights with Fine Hotel and Resorts(2 player mode), so we shall see if we get a room upgrade as in the past.
Greg,
can you confirm that tips on food and beverage purchases are not applied to the $100 credit.
Also: could you have used the FHR credit toward the $41 destination fee?
No
With the Chase part of my stay, the credit covered tips. With Amex I don’t know because our dinner was more than $100 before tip.
I just stayed at the Andaz in Prague and tips were excluded from the $100 credit. When I asked them about it they were sure that tips are not part of the deal.
Yeah I was surprised that tips were covered at the Pendry.
I didn’t think I would use The Edit at all but I’ve already made three bookings. I booked an IC San Diego stay and it used a $250 Edit, $250 IHG and the $100 Chase credit in the app.
I made a booking later this year at The Vinoy in St. Petersburg. Rates were slightly higher for a two night booking with Chase rather than directly with Marriott-about $70 total. Still, the $250 applied quickly. I booked the first night with a 50 k cert. The weekend nights were 74k each so I used the Edit and my final night with a 50k cert. I applied Marriott upgrade awards to the cert nights. We’ll see how they figure all this out when I check in.
please keep us posted on double resort fees and elite pts.
Greg, quick correction on the “Point value towards stays”. THC is not 1 cent per point. I believe it is 0.7 cents per point.
very helpful information. thank you!
The Intercontinetal San Diego tried to charge me twice for the heafty $58/night amenity fee. People should definatley watch this when using the $250 Chase credit with IHG.
please tell us ur war story. very important DP.
I read from Google reviews of this hotel that people had been charged the amenity fee by Chase and then again at the hotel. Since I knew that in advance of my own reservation, I called Chase and had them clarify with the hotel that I had indeed prepaid the amenity fee (I didn’t want there to be an issue upon arrival). Chase had to check with several reps, but finally, they got the IC to say that it was already included. Fast forward to check-in, the lady tells me that my reservation is prepaid with Chase, but I will have to pay the $58/night amenity fee. I explain that I’ve already prepaid it AND had Chase call to verify it with the hotel. She says it will be “no problem”, but I can tell it will be a problem. The next morning, I check my IHG app and they have indeed charged the amenity fee. So I text the front desk and about an hour later they remove it. I’m not kidding you that the next day, I am AGAIN charged the $58 fee and I have to go to the desk to have it removed at check out. The hotel is great, but the process was extremely frustating. From the reviews on Google it appears others did not get their amenity fee refunded and I can see why. I had to be very proactive.
I believe that the IHG system is incorrectly categorizing the prepaid amenity fee as tax. You have to show them the math.
thank u so much. this is huge. there have been extensive discussions about this on FT. but happy u got the stupid resort fees removed.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase-ultimate-rewards/2190176-chase-edit-hotels.html
FYI: The post previously incorrectly stated that the base rate (the rate before taxes and fees) for my Chase stay was $607. I’ve corrected that to $468.01. The number of points I expected was correctly based on the $468 number though, so I didn’t have to correct the rest of the “point mystery” section.
I have an upcoming stay here so this is helpful / I’m fine with a good not great hotel. But for my dates the Edit wanted $600 more than Amex or direct booking or others. Just checked again – same thing. Wanted to use my Edit and IHG credits but the value of those credits is less than the Edit up charge!
Had a situation where it made sense to book a flight through a portal and just tried to book a flight with Chase Travel for the 8x and ended badly. Spent half an hour on the phone with an agent who could not figure out how to make a booking for more than 6 people (and this was after a HUCA with a prior agent). Complained to me how antiquated the system they use is. And then once they figured it out claimed only 7 seats made available to Chase. Gave up and made the booking with Amex for the 5x which was seamless.
Just find it very hard to get satisfactory use of Chase travel. While I much prefer to transfer points out, I have used it in the past to get 1.5cpp. May just focus on using my Chase points this year and moving on – finding them more and more frustrating (really annoyed that I had to follow up to get the OpenTable credit to post as well).
Anyway, glad it worked for you but not sure I agree with the 60% odds based on my anecdotal experience.
Peter, as always, you’re wise to do the cost-comparison (I’m a huge fan of your posts because you tend to do-the-work and do-the-math). Yes, often, these OTAs (like Chase Travel, Amex Travel, etc.) are over-charging, usually to offset the various perks (and to profit), especially when they realize we’re basically only using most of them to burn our credits. I wouldn’t go out of my way to use The Edit, like, ever, but for the CSR credits. However, I do often seek out FHR, not because of the $300 credits, but because of the guaranteed 4PM late checkout, because, when I really need that (say for a late-night flight), it pays for itself.
I used my IHG for an airport hotel for a weekend we are doing in Nashville. We don’t care about staying near Broadway (we are going for a family member’s birthday celebration) so an airport hotel for nearly free is fine.
I probably won’t use my The Edit credits in 2026 at all unless we decide to do another weekend in Vegas in 2027 (I’d give that 50/50 odds – we had a really great time this year). I value The Edit pretty close to zero.
Makes sense – frustrating that even that credit is a 2 night credit. I clearly also value the Edit at close to $0. Just makes it very hard to justify keeping the card. Lots of jumping through hoops with the other coupons. Would miss the lounge access, I suppose, but enough other cards that have other lounges to access.
By the way, any data points on whether you got Chase UR points on the portion that was not ‘nearly free’? Chase’s website for both the Edit and IHG credit says that purchases that qualify for the credit will not earn points.
You most certainly received points from Chase stay. Remember that you get points awarded only on base cost of the room, and not on taxes and resort fees. Your chase costs of $607 is inclusive of 2 sets of $41 resort fees and about 18% taxes in Chicago. Once you back those out, your base room rate will be closer to $420-$430, which multiplied by 15 will give you your answer.