The dream of free night awards at luxury hotels: It’s the carrot-on-a-stick that drives many of us to get into credit card points in the first place. One sure-fire way to earn these perks is through co-branded hotel credit cards that run sign-up bonuses or annual free night awards. For example, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless offers three free nights when you open a new card and meet certain spending requirements. The Hilton Surpass is also currently running a promo for an additional free night, and all the major brands offer free nights to celebrate cardmember anniversaries for having cards like the IHG One Rewards Premier.
In the best-case scenario, these perks could get you a dreamy stay in a hotel of your choosing, saving you thousands of dollars in cash to make a dream stay happen. Or, at worst, they could leave you scrambling to make sure you don’t waste them.
This is a lesson I had to learn through personal experience. I was eager to sign up for the Bonvoy Boundless and earn three free nights, but then an altered travel itinerary left me with three unattached nights and no plan to use them. Two eventually went to the AC Hotel in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, which left me with a single free night to spare—that is, a night with a quickly approaching expiration date. Sure, as far as stressful situations go, it’s not a life-or-death deal, but it does represent a conundrum when you’re trying to maximize your travel credit cards and points strategy.
Rest assured, with a little research and advance planning, you can routinely make the most of free night awards at hotels and avoid ending up in a situation like mine.
The pros of free night awards
There is a good chance that free night awards will enable you to book luxurious trips to hotels like the Kimpton de Witt in Amsterdam or the Park Hyatt Kyoto in Japan. While the redemption methods vary slightly between brands (Hilton requires a phone call to the customer service center), you’ll always want to check award availability for your dates.
A good place to start is by narrowing down your desired hotel and using a flexible dates feature on the brand’s website to find the lowest points price. Some free nights are also worth more than others: Hilton nights can be redeemed almost anywhere and don’t have a redemption limit. A Hilton free night applies just as easily to the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills as the Hampton Inn Junction City in Kansas, making dream stays at picture-perfect resorts like the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island attainable. Other brands’ free nights can only be redeemed up to a certain point value or hotel category depending on the credit card you hold.
Award nights with a set limit have compelled me to book high-end stays I wouldn’t have made with points alone. One of my favorite hotel bookings was at the Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland, a five-star hotel on a historic estate. Rooms were going for more than $500 a night when I stayed at the height of summer, and I got to stay for free. (For the points geeks, it offered a solid points value: Compared to the typical valuation of $0.75 per Marriott point, I redeemed for about $1 for each point.) Even non-luxury stays can be worth it—when I used my free nights for my stay in Park City, nightly room rates soared to over $900 for both Sundance and ski season.
The cons of free night awards
It’s also important to remember that free nights often come with caveats. Awards redeemed with Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, and IHG all require the stay to be completed (not just booked) before the expiration date, which is often your cardmember anniversary. That means awards are most valuable when you already have a plan to travel somewhere you can make a good redemption and earn the extra points to extend your stay. Holding on to them can be good for emergencies (say, an unexpected overnight at an airport hotel during a flight delay or cancellation), but you’ll need a backup plan for using them in case all your travel plans—mercifully—go smoothly.
