Hacking Hotels (Family Edition)

Travel rewards and credit card points strategies to save thousands on family hotels! Learn unconventional booking hacks from a family travel expert.

Maximize your credit card points and travel rewards with four game-changing hotel strategies. Melissa reveals how her family uses points transfer bonuses, hotel credits, and smart booking tactics to slash accommodation costs on trips to the Azores, Porto, and beyond.

In this episode:

• Save 50%+ booking multiple rooms with travel rewards vs. expensive suites
• Master credit card points transfers like Amex to Hilton 1:2 and Citi to iPrefer 1:4
• Stack hotel credits from Chase, Amex, Citi, United, and Capital One cards
• Access luxury perks using credit card points through Fine Hotels & Resorts and more

Perfect for families wanting to maximize travel rewards, stretch credit card points further, and unlock insider hotel booking strategies.

00:00 Welcome to Family Travel Unpacked
00:13 Unconventional Hotel Savings Strategies
00:35 Strategy 1: Book Multiple Rooms
01:41 Strategy 2: Optimize Points Transfer Ratios
04:11 Strategy 3: Maximize Hotel Credits
06:16 Strategy 4: Luxury Hotel Booking Programs
09:29 Conclusion and Additional Resources

Free travel resources for families

Amex Platinum personal - Hilton status, FHR credits
Amex Platinum business - Hilton status and quarterly credits, FHR credits
Chase Sapphire Preferred - $50 annual hotel credit
Chase Sapphire Reserve - $300 annual travel credit, The Edit hotel credits
Capital One Venture X - $300 annual travel credit, Premier Collection hotels
United Explorer & Business - two $50 hotel credits per year

Don't miss this inspiring, practical travel with kids podcast hosted by family travel expert Melissa Conn, founder of The Family Voyage, certified Child Passenger Safety Technician, and mom of two who proves family travel is achievable for everyone.

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Chase Sapphire credit cards

Transcript

Melissa: 0:02

Hey there and welcome back to Family Travel Unpacked. I'm Melissa, and in case you're new here, you can find tons of detailed destination guides, travel tips, hacks it more on my website, thefamilyvoyage.com. Today's quick tip Tuesday is all about some unconventional strategies for saving on hotels that you might not have even thought about. These aren't your typical"sign up for the loyalty program" tips. We're gonna go a bit deeper to save you real money. You might not use all of these tips at the same time, but hopefully at least one of them will work for you and put some more money back in your family's travel budget. Strategy one: book multiple rooms instead of one big one. Here's something that catches a lot of families off guard: for trips outside of North America. Hotel room occupancy limits can be as low as two or three people per room. If you try to book your whole family of four or five into one room, the system might only show you expensive suites or special family rooms. Those are awesome and we love them, but if you search for two regular rooms instead you could save a fortune. We're actually using this strategy for our trip to the Azores next year. We'll be staying at the DoubleTree and booking one room for our family would've cost us 184,000 Hilton points per night. When I search for two rooms instead only 70,000 points total, that's less than half the cost for the same number of people sleeping in the same hotel. Obviously this won't be ideal for every family. In the past when we've had to book two rooms, sometimes we split up and put one adult and one kid in each room. But now that our kids are older, I'm hoping we can give them their own room. I'll also reach out to the hotel well before our trip to request connecting rooms if possible, or at least to be in the same area. Strategy two: pay attention to points transfer ratios. Not all points are created equal, especially when it comes to transferring them to hotel programs. Some credit card points transfer at better than one-to-one ratios, which can dramatically change your math. For example, you can get two hotel points for every credit card point when you transfer Amex to Hilton or Citi to Choice Hotels or Capital One to I prefer hotels; and for real value, you can transfer Citi Points to I prefer at an incredible one to four ratio. Going back to that Azores example, since the DoubleTree is a Hilton brand, those two rooms that cost 70,000 Hilton points per night are actually only costing us 35,000 Amex points because of that one to two transfer ratio. I was eager to book and I have a huge stash of Amex points, but if I wasn't in such a rush, I would've waited for a transfer bonus to get even more Hilton points for each Amex point. Within the last year, I've seen 2.25 and even 2.5 Hilton points for each Amex point. And here's another Hilton specific tip. If you have an Amex Platinum card like I do, whether it's a personal or a business, you automatically get Hilton Gold status. You just have to connect your accounts through the Amex website. That gives you either a food and beverage credit or free breakfast depending on the property. Plus Gold status unlocks the fifth night free promotion when you book with points, which is huge for longer stays. If we were staying in the Azores for five nights, it would work out to just 28,000 Amex points per night for two rooms, which feels like a total steal to me. The Business Platinum also gives you$50 per quarter in Hilton credit, which is perfect for covering incidentals like breakfast for the kids or parking charges. Here's another example of how we're unlocking huge value by knowing about a great transfer ratio. We've got a one night stay in Detroit next summer to catch our beloved Los Angeles Dodgers, and I found a beautiful preferred hotel right downtown for 50,000 I prefer points per night. There's some Hilton's and Marriotts nearby in the 65,000 point range too. That's not bad for Hilton's since I can transfer from Amex with that one to two ratio I mentioned. But moving my Citi points to I prefer is a game changer because I can book that I prefer hotel for only 12,500 Citi points thanks to the one to four transfer ratio. Even the super basic Hyatt place is just a few thousand points less for that night, but it's 10 miles outside of the city and we'd have to deal with crazy post-game traffic if we stayed there. Instead, we'll be exactly where we wanna be without burning a huge chunk of points. Strategy three: maximize hotel credits on your credit cards. If you're booking with cash, make sure you check your credit cards for hotel credits. I talked about this back in episode eight, credit card treasure hunting, but let me hit some of the most common ones that you might find in your wallet. Some of these credits reset every year on your card anniversary, while others are every calendar year, so pay attention to that detail. Most of the credits require booking through your bank's travel portal, so you won't necessarily get loyalty points or benefits, but the savings can be huge, and it's a slam dunk if you're booking outside the major chains. Here are some examples I want you to know about. The Chase Sapphire Reserve gives you$50 per card year that can be used on a one night stay. United Explorer and business cards each give you$50, twice per card year- also great for one night stays. The Capital One Venture X gives you a three hundred dollar credit per card year that applies to anything booked through their portal, whether it's a vacation rental car or activity. Some of their hotel bookings are now loyalty eligible, but that's pretty new, so you have to look for that flag in the portal. The Citi Strata Premier, which only costs$95, gives you$100 off a$500 stay each calendar year while the newer Strata Elite gives you$300 off any two nights stay every calendar year. And the Delta Gold, platinum and Reserve cards offer between a hundred and two hundred fifty dollars per calendar year, depending on which level you have. Now, here's where you can get clever. If you're staying somewhere with pretty low cash rates, you can book consecutive one or two nights stays separately at the same hotel to maximize your credits. That's exactly what we're doing in Porto next year. I booked four nights total at an apart hotel through United Hotels. Each night is its own separate stay, and I put two nights on my United Business card and two nights on my husband's United Explorer card, which saved us a total of$200. If I end up canceling those bookings, it'll be to book two nights with our new Citi Strata Elite card in December, and then the other two nights in January when the credit resets. That would save us$600 total on that one hotel stay using just a single card. And finally, let's talk about strategy number four: luxury hotel booking programs. This is kind of a next level version of the hotel credits we just talked about, but for higher end bookings. The best known is fine hotels and resorts on the Amex Platinum cards. And honestly at this point, all the other programs I'm gonna mention are just trying to keep up with FHR. Here's how it works. You prepay for your hotel through Amex Travel, usually at a slightly higher rate than you'd normally pay. In exchange, you get a$300 rebate on your credit card bill, which can be used twice per year. Plus the hotel gives you free breakfast for two an on property credit, potential room upgrades, early check-in if available, and guaranteed 4:00 PM checkout. Basically, you get treated like royalty even if you've never set foot in that brand before. One thing that's really nice is that you can use the$300 rebate even for a one night stay. That's good because the hotels in this program tend to be on the more expensive side. Or if your tastes are more mid range like ours, you can use the rebate for a two night stay at a property in what's called the hotel collection, which doesn't have quite as many guaranteed benefits, but it's usually a better fit for families in my experience. My husband and I used FHR for our stay at the Royal Palms in Arizona last year, and it was awesome. We got upgraded from a regular room to a full on Casita, which is way bigger than a suite and the$100 on property credit was perfect for our massages. Keep in mind that you can book two nights in a row with FHR properties to use both of your$300 credits in the same stay, but you won't get a second on property credit. We are using the credit this year through the hotel collection to take a family trip to the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale for our daughter's birthday. The$300 credit basically covers one of our two nights, and the cash rate for the second night is so reasonable that overall it's a way better value than using points for the whole stay. Since my Hyatt globalist status still applies on these luxury bookings, we'll get breakfast anyways, so I'm not worried about the reduced benefits that come with the hotel collection. Chase now has something similar on the Sapphire Reserve cards called the edit. But the credit is only$250 twice per year and each booking has to be at least two nights. So it's not as flexible and at most you're only saving$125 per night. The Capital One Venture X offers the Premier collection. Which is basically the same thing, but doesn't come with any extra rebate or credit beyond the$300 I mentioned earlier that you could in theory use for anything. And lastly, there are renowned hotels and resorts on the more expensive United cards. But I'm mentioning these last because I have$150 credit on the United Quest card and I find it super limited. I'm probably gonna let that expire this year because I just haven't found a good use for it. All of these programs have mostly the same list as the FHR properties, but they have smaller credits, and those hotels are expensive. You could be looking at a thousand dollars a night, so$150 isn't really gonna make a dent. By the way, here's a bonus. On top of all those perks and credits that you get through these luxury booking programs, you can usually still link them to your hotel loyalty account. My Hyatt app shows our upcoming Stay in Scottsdale, even though I booked it through Amex Travel. That's great because the nights are still gonna count toward Requalifying for my status, plus I can stack with benefits like free parking, free breakfast, waived resort fees, and more. So there you have it. Four unconventional ways to hack your hotel bookings. Whether you're using points or cash, there are always creative strategies out there to get more value out of your stays. If you wanna dive deeper into any of these strategies, head over to thefamilyvoyage.com/freetravel where I've got detailed guides on maximizing points and miles for family travel. Down in the show notes i'll also link to some of the cards that I've talked about in this episode. And if you haven't already, make sure you hit follow wherever you're listening so you don't miss our next episode. Safe travels everyone.