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BACK AGAIN: Buy discounted MeliaRewards points on Amazon and get cheap hotel stays

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Over Black Friday, I wrote about the good deal available by buying MeliaRewards gift cards on Amazon.

It usually costs €330 for 55,000 Melia Rewards points.  On Black Friday, it was just €165.  This was a deal I couldn’t resist.  I bought 55,000 points and booked two nights for my brother at the new Melia in Kensington for July, when it is selling for £300 per night.

At the moment, the deal is back.  The price is not as generous:

buying off Amazon UK – click here – you will pay £205 for 55,000 Melia Rewards points

buying off Amazon Spain – click here – you will pay €214 (£192) for 55,000 Melia Rewards points

The Spanish site is cheaper although delivery is an extra €4.  Oddly, it is also faster if you choose Express Delivery (€6) than buying from the UK site, probably because Amazon UK ships from Spain using Standard Delivery.  If you bought yesterday, the UK site was promising delivery by ‘9th-11th January’ whilst the Spanish site, with Express Delivery, would deliver by 3rd January.

This is what you get:

Melia Rewards Amazon points offer

Whilst the card itself is credit card sized, the leaflet it is stuck to is A5:

MeliaRewards Amazon points offer

The instructions were simple enough that even my rudimentary (ie non existent) Spanish could follow them:

You log into the Melia website and head to ‘My Points’

Filter the earning and spending options by ‘Shopping’

Click on Amazon.  As well as explaining how to redeem your points for amazon.co.uk gift cards, there is a box to deposit your gift card.  I typed in the number and the 55,000 points immediately appeared as you can see below.

Melia Rewards Amazon points offer

Can you get value paying £205 for 55,000 MeliaRewards points?

Oh yes.

Having spent more time now exploring the MeliaRewards redemption chart, it is not as random as it first seemed.  It is simply that hotels have totally weird redemption values which makes them appear random.

INNSiDE New York, which we reviewed here, is 23,098 points per night.  Where this number comes from I have no idea.  There is real value here – I found dates in May 2019 where cash rates are over £350 per night, whilst you would be paying under £100 if you redeemed gift card points here, assuming you paid £205 for 55,000 points.

In London, the Melia White House is 24,286 points per night.  Again, on a peak date this is a bargain at under £100.  Melia has also taken over a hotel in Kensington which is due to be refurbished in the Spring and should be looking good for Summer stays.

What you CAN’T do is transfer these points to Avios or to anything else.  They are ringfenced for hotel stays.   You also need to note that the hotel only offers a few rooms per night at the points prices above – once those have gone, rather like the way Hilton Honors works, redemptions are priced off a revenue based system which is much less attractive.

I would not necessarily buy speculatively at £205.  However, if you have any stays planned where Melia could be an option it is worth a look.

The offer is here on the Amazon UK site and here on the Amazon Spain site.


How to get MeliaRewards Gold status from American Express

How to get MeliaRewards Gold status from American Express (April 2024)

Do you know that holders of The Platinum Card from American Express receive FREE MeliaRewards Gold status for as long as they hold the card?  It also comes with Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Hilton Honors Gold and Radisson Rewards Premium status.

We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here and you can apply here.

You can discover the benefits of MeliaRewards Gold status on the Melia website here. It includes three vouchers per year worth 20% off any booking.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Small business owners may want to consider American Express Business Platinum instead:

American Express Business Platinum

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

(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.)

Comments (51)

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

  • Vik says:

    Whats expiry of melia points?

    • Rob(staaaar) says:

      IIRC, 6 months to activate, then 12 months to spend/make booking (which could be a further 12 months?) Check the comments this last came up around Black Friday

    • Oli says:

      12 months.

    • Rob says:

      12 months from when you activate the gift card, assuming you have no stays in the meantime. General rule is 12 months without a stay.

      • Will says:

        Trt sending points to family/freind if they are coming up to expiration (and then back) 😉

  • rob(staaaar) says:

    OK, it might be the excesses of all the season’s jollies, but where do I find the melia redemption chart?

    • Ryan says:

      Been looking for past 35 minutes and still can’t find how to book with points after setting up account.

    • Nigel says:

      I was about to ask the same thing! Can’t find redemption chart online…

    • Rob says:

      You don’t. You need to pick a hotel and look for a few nights well ahead. If the points number is the same for each day you check, that is the ‘base’ level which you pay until they sell out the ‘guaranteed’ number of reward nights.

  • dgsupersonic says:

    Can I buy this using the Amazon £50 off promo for business accounts?

    Thanks.

  • Tom says:

    It’s actually not a slam dunk win.. with the various bonuses I have from Melia for being a member of their loyalty scheme via Amex Plat including a 20% discount as a birthday present, and including the £100 off £400 on my Amex Plat…it’s a good deal cheaper to pay cash on some properties I am looking at in Tenerife.

  • Barry cutters says:

    For London and New York stays this is an amazing deal.
    I’ve just bought 6 – hope they are easy to activate.
    Looks like I get gold status with plat too.

    Does anyone know if I can have more than one reward booking per night?

    • Grant says:

      For the basic rooms, yes but for anything else I’m not so convinced. Example – for the Innside Nomad in NYC during May 2019 a 4 night stay in a Queen Room is 91,277 points or £919.43 cash (pre-paid room only rates). Purchasing those points on Amazon would cost about £390 plus any currency fees from my credit card. Therefore purchasing the points equals a substantial saving on the cash price.

      Compare that to a Deluxe King City View which is 245,252 points or £1,035.50 cash (pre-paid room only rates). Purchasing those points on Amazon.es would cost around about £900 plus any currency fees from my credit card. Still a saving but not so amazing.

      • Delbert says:

        Grant – what are these currency fees you allude to? That’s so 1980s.

        There’s loads of options out there. Personally, I keep a Halifax Clarity Card to hand for currency transactions.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        Option 3 might be to contact the hotel and negotiate a cash supplement to upgrade.

    • Rob says:

      It is more down to how many rooms the hotel has at the base points price per night.

    • Rob says:

      It is more down to how many rooms the hotel is offering each night at the ‘base’ price. 1? 2? 5? 10?

  • Tracey says:

    I recently stayed at the ME London on the Strand, great location for soho/ Covent Garden. I haven’t looked at the redemption table yet, but may be worth looking at for an alternative Melia London hotel.

  • Matt B says:

    Just thought i would post my experience using Melia points:

    When Rob first posted the black friday deal by the time i read up and realised this might be useful for us it was too late. When they came on the sale on amazon UK I jumped on and ordered 2 x 55k packs for £410. I was pretty chuffed as it meant I could get 5 nights in NY over May half term for a third of the cash price.

    When they arrived and I attempted to redeem I realised i had made a bit of a cockup…..so even though I had 112k points (inc bonus 2k for joining) but actually needed 114k to book, I lazily assumed that as there is a points plus cash option it would give me the option of paying a small amount of cash on top. But as I discovered this wasnt the case and I was given the option of paying almost £800 to cover the 2k difference!! It appears they calculate this from the revenue based points value which was 3 times greater.

    I rang up to buy the remaining points but was told the IT system is having issues and I couldnt do it at this time. So in order to minimise risk I booked just 4 nights and then ordered an additional 35k card from amazon spain for £128 as this was still cheaper than the cash rate for the 5th night (£205).

    This arrived this morning and I am all booked up and will contact the hotel in NY to try and link the 2 bookings so we dont have to change rooms. However now we have just shy of 33k points remaining that I was hoping I could transfer out to amazon vouchers but I saw Rob’s comment above that this would not be possible. My backup is using for a night in London as we go a few times a year and should get value from that.

    So all in i spent £540 and for 5 nights in NY over half term plus a night in London at some point I still consider that excellent value based on what i would have spent otherwise. But obviously if I had just bought 1 x 55k and 2 x 35k from the start it would have been far more simple!

    Incidentally my remaining points now expire a year from my final night of my booking, so end of May 2020.

    • Grant says:

      Are these costs for the basic queen room (pre-paid, room only rate)?

    • Rob says:

      Feel free to try transferring out to Amazon – I have not tried it, I was just being realistic in how I thought it would work, and given that bought points cannot be transferred to airlines.

  • magda says:

    For Innside NY it says that you will be charged and extra $27 per room per night for facility fees and also taxes-where can you check how much the taxes will be ( from what amount will the taxes be deducted from). Sorry if it’s a silly question but I’m just trying to work out how much the stay will actually cost once all the taxes are included as well. Thanks

    • Rob says:

      Taxes are a % of the room rate, so usually nil (unless there are any flat fee taxes).

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