Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

New Amex hotel cashback deals: Thistle (£50 off £100), Hilton and others

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

A large number of new hotel cashback deals were launched by American Express yesterday. Whilst only the Thistle deal is outstanding, what is great about these deals is that you can combine them with any other offer or sale as long as your total bill hits the required target.

These offers have not yet appeared on the cardmemberoffers.co.uk website although it is fairly certain that they will.  However, there are direct registration links for most of the offers below.

To register immediately, log in to your American Express account, visit the statement page for EVERY card you have, and click on ‘Offers’ at the bottom.  Some or all of these promotions will show up and can be ‘saved’ to your card.

If you don’t see the one you want, wait a few days and it should be available for registration via cardmemberoffers.

This is what is available:

Hilton (comments suggest it also works at Doubletree and possibly other brands) – £50 back when you spend £250, UK only, expires 12 April – you can register for that deal here

Thistle / Guoman – £50 back when you spend £100, expires 12 April – register here

Landmark / Lancaster London / K West – £75 back when you spend £200, expires 12 April – register here

Red Carnation – £20 back when you spend £100, expires 12 April – register here

onefinestay apartment rental – £500 back when you spend £2,000, expires 13 February – register here

The Grove (Watford) – £25 back when you spend £250, expires 12 April

Other deals I saw were:

First Great Western – £10 back when you spend £60, expires 12 April – register here

ESPA at Corinthia London – £45 back when you spend £300, expires 12 April

Costco – £10 back when you spend £100, expires 16 February

There is also, apparently, a 15% discount on easyJet Plus discount as well.

Combine the Thistle deal with Signature

The Thistle / Guoman hotels deal is, in value terms, easily the best offer hereBy coincidence I wrote about Signature, the Thisle / Guoman loyalty programme last week.

The key benefit of joining Signature is a voucher for a free Sunday night and free Sunday lunch when you pay for a Saturday or Monday night at Best Flexible Rate.  If you could get that Saturday or Monday night with £50 cashback, you are looking at a pretty good deal – potentially two nights accommodation and Sunday lunch for £75 or so all in, depending on hotel.

The Thistle sale is also still running for another 2 days and the ‘£50 off £100’ promotion would work alongside that as pre-pay rooms are included according to the rules.

Combine the Hilton offer with the Winter Sale

It seems a long time since I wrote about this, back in late November, but the Hilton Winter Sale carries on until January 31st.  The special rates are valid for every weekend in 2015.  My article is here and the special booking page is here.

Remember that only UK hotel qualify for the £50 Amex cashback.  If you book for a stay after April 12th, when the Amex deal ends, you would still get the cashback as long as the hotel charges your credit card for your pre-paid stay before that date.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (57)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Doodles says:

    I am still waiting for a credit from the December promotion if spending over £150 on travel with Amex. I bought my ticket on 4th December but the transaction did not post until 30th December after the promotion had ended. I have a Lloyds card and credits have normally appeared in good time. Does anyone have contact details for Amex? I could not find anything suitable on the cardmemberoffers website. Thank you.

    • Michael Pritchard says:

      I had the same issue on my Diamond Club AMEX. I got it touch with AMEX via Twitter and then by phone, they said they will honour it and to call the number on the back of the card if there are issues. Mine only posted on the 10th Jan but has a transaction date of the 17th Dec so will give them a call in a few days if nothing appears.

  • Doodles says:

    One other question. I missed the FGW offer last time. I know it says for tickets bought online, but does anyone know if it also works for tickets bought at the station by chance?

    • Rob says:

      Unlikely as it probably won’t say FGW on your Amex statement. Technically it MIGHT work at stations where FGW run the ticket office.

  • Ben says:

    Just wondering what you think my chances are of booking a room at the Grovesnor for > £200 (and then using the free Sunday night voucher) over the phone and then asking them to split payment on each of my Amex cards, thus receiving two £50 credits?

    Thanks.

    • Rob says:

      You need to book Best Flexible rate via the call centre to use the voucher so it would be ‘pay at check out’. No problem using two cards then.

  • Cambus says:

    I’m assuming that if you book one of these hotels via, say, Kalingo, you would not receive the statment credit as you would be paying Kalingo not the hotel? I was just wondering whether it is better to receive the statement credit, rather than the bonus Avios on Kalingo.

    • Rob says:

      Correct. As the Kaligo sign-up bonus is once only you might want to keep your powder dry.

  • graeme says:

    Hi,

    If I was to stay in the Hilton 2 nights per week (reaching over £250) for 6 weeks could I effectively earn £300 statement credit or is it only applicable once?

    Gc

    • Rob says:

      Only once per card unfortunately.

      • Jamie says:

        I received a £50 credit for a Hilton stay last week. And just checked out of the same hotel again this week, and received an email saying I have received another statement credit. Appears it works on every £250+ spend!

  • Akkers says:

    Does anyone know if it is possible to “prepay” using the flexible rate at the Thistle. I am doing the Manchester Marathon one week after this promo ends on a Sunday 19th. Was hoping I could double up the amex offer and signature offer so that I can rest after the run! I’ll need it.

  • Rob says:

    No problem, will work fine.

  • Dean says:

    Has anyone managed to successfully combine the Thistle AMEX and Signature free Sunday night offers? The former T&Cs say must be booked online and can’t be combined with any other offer. The latter says must’ve booked over the phone with Memebership Services and cannot be combined with any other offer. Was hoping to use it this weekend, but now looking unlikely…

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.