How does the Millennium & Copthorne ‘My Millennium’ hotel loyalty scheme work?

Millennium & Copthorne is a hotel chain with a presence across the UK, Asia, North America and New Zealand.

It relaunched its loyalty scheme as My Millennium in 2016 and more recently streamlined the scheme considerably. As many HfP readers may find themselves in a Millennium or Copthorne hotel in the UK from time to time, it’s worth taking a look at what is on offer.

About Millennium & Copthorne Hotels

M&C comprises two core brands with some smaller add-ons. There are 145 hotels in total.

Millennium Collection, operating under the Millennium, Grand Millennium and M Hotel brands, runs around 70 five star and high-end four star properties.  These are concentrated on major business centres.

Copthorne Collection, operating under the Copthorne, Grand Copthorne and Kingsgate brands, runs around 40 midscale properties, mainly in regional centres.  It operates in the UK, New Zealand, Middle East, Malaysia and Singapore.

M Collection is a new brand for Millennium’s lifestyle hotels which trade under the M Social and Studio M names. There are only a handful of sites so far.

Leng’s Collection is a catch-all name for the unbranded properties owned by the group, including The Chelsea Harbour Hotel (below), The Bailey’s Hotel in London and the Hard Days Night hotel in Liverpool.

The group also owns some hotels which are branded by other groups, such as the Grand Hyatt Taipei and the Novotel New York Times Square. These do not take part of MyMillennium.

The My Millennium loyalty scheme

My Millennium is designed to reward guests who stay at those hotels owned by the group which are run under their own brands. 

This means, primarily, the Millennium, Copthorne and Kingsgate hotels.  Hotels managed by other chains under their own brands, such as the Millennium Hilton properties, do not take part. (Note that the Millennium Hilton New York, pictured below, is no longer a Hilton and is now branded as Millennium.)

There are 17 participating hotels in the UK, of which 14 are branded Millennium or Copthorne. The full hotel list is here.

My Millennium benefits

The key reason to join My Millennium – even if you are only staying one night – is for the 10% discount.  It is automatic to all scheme members at participating hotels.

You earn 10 My Points for every $1 spent in participating hotels on the room rate.  Food and drink spend earns 4 points per $1.

If you stay more than 10 nights at participating properties within a yearly period, your points balance will be doubled, a generous if unusual offer.  This yearly period is calculated from your membership start date.  You also get triple points for all stays during your birthday month, which is also a little unusual.

Your earning rate is also increased after staying 10 nights per year. You will then be earning 15 points per $1 spent on rooms plus 4 points per $1 spent on incidentals.

Points expire after 12 months.  This is a hard expiry and there is nothing you can do to extend their life.  However, it appears from the FAQ that you can transfer your points to someone else, seemingly for free.

New members earn bonus points

There are a number of small incentives to get new members to get involved:

• 10 points for joining
• 50 points for setting your communication preferences
• 20 points for completing your profile
• 20 points for downloading the My Millennium app
• 100 points for booking your first stay

Given that these only total 200 points, which is what you earn from just $20 of room spending, it isn’t much.

What are the membership tiers?

My Millennium recently brought back membership tiers, through the introduction of a ‘Prestige’ level for those staying 10+ nights in a year.

As well as earning 50% more points on your room rate spend, you will receive:

• welcome amenities
• a one-level room upgrade
• early check-in and late check-out
• ‘kids eat free’ privileges

Redemption options

The scheme is sensibly structured and accepts that a small footprint means that most members will struggle to earn a large number of points.

You cannot see the redemption price list without signing up and logging in.  As well as free nights and room upgrades, M&C also offers redemptions, club lounge access, food and drinks vouchers, free laundry and spa treatments.

Redeeming for food and beverage vouchers

Points can be converted into dining vouchers at the rate of 2,600 points = $10.

At the earning rate of 10 points per $1 of room spend, you would need to spend $260 before tax to get a $10 food and beverage voucher. This is a 3.8% return.

Of course, if you manage to spend more than 10 nights yearly in My Millennium properties you get double points, so the cost-benefit calculation changes.

Redeeming for free nights

Room redemptions are based directly on the cost of the room you want.  I ran a few examples and it works out at roughly 0.4p per point.

You can redeem either in part or in full for room redemptions.

If you earn 10 points worth 0.4p each (4p in total) for every $1 spent on your room, you are getting a return of around 5% on your room rate. The rate increases substantially if you spend more than 10 nights a year in M&C hotels, since your points balance is doubled.

Room redemptions are marginally better value than food and beverage redemptions, but not by enough for it to seriously impact how you choose to spend your points.

Redeeming for gift cards

You can, in theory, also use your My Points for various gift cards. The functionality to do this appears to have been removed from the website however.

A 4% rate of return is comparable to other leading hotel programmes.  However, the Millennium & Copthorne network is considerably smaller and it is much harder to get additional bonuses. M&C does not have a co-branded credit card, so it’s impossible to boost your points balance without ‘heads in beds’.  This means that, in practice, My Millenium point are less valuable than those from other brands because it is much more difficult to both earn and redeem them.

Can you convert points in or out?

No.  It is not possible to convert your points into airline miles.  You also cannot convert any credit card or other points into My Millennium points.

You CAN earn airline miles instead of points – see below.

Can you earn airline miles instead of loyalty points?

Millennium & Copthorne has a number of airline partnerships, although they do NOT work with Avios or Virgin Flying Club.

The list of partners has shrunk hugely in recently years and now consists only of:

• Air New Zealand Airpoints
• JAL Mileage Bank
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

Details can be found here.

Conclusion

Unless you are working at a client based near a Millennium or Copthorne property, it is unlikely that My Millennium will become a key programme for you. 

For occasional stays, you are unlikely to be able to get good value out of your points and are likely to end up with an orphaned balance.  I can’t even recommend taking airline miles instead, since the Air New Zealand, Japan Air Lines and Singapore Airlines programmes are unlikely to be core ones for you.

You find it easier to forget about their own loyalty scheme and book via Hotels.com to earn Hotels.com Rewards credit (we explain why we like Hotels.com Rewards here), although this will be devalued sharply later in 2023. You need to compare the Hotels.com rate for a logged in user to the My Millennium member rate of course.

If you do have regular stays, of course Millennium & Copthorne has some high quality hotels in its portfolio (admittedly outside the UK!) and you may be able to leverage a run of stays at the Copthorne Newcastle into something more glamorous elsewhere.

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Hotel offers update – April 2024:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

• Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 14th May 2024. Click here.