Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

What are the best hotel promos for July and August 2019?

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UPDATE – APRIL 2024:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.  We produce a monthly summary of the top hotel bonus point offers – please click HERE or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ menu above.  Thank you.

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

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Welcome to our regular round-up of the best hotel promotions currently running.

All of the information in this article can also be found on our ‘Hotel Offers’ page which contains details of all of the current offers, together with links to our major articles on each hotel scheme.  However, a positive response from readers – especially our 14,000 email subscribers – means I am now running this monthly article as a handy summary of what is going on.

If you’d rather not spend cash on your next stay, this article looks at how to use Avios points to book hotel rooms.

Where should you credit your stays in July and August?

This is what you have to choose from:

IHG‘s Accelerate, which started on 1st May, has personalised targets so it is impossible to tell if yours are worth doing or not.  In general, they are NOT hugely generous this time.

Hilton‘s new Go More Get More offer is the easiest – double base points per stay, starting on your 2nd stay, plus additional bonuses for hitting 10, 15 and 20 stays by 8th September

Marriott‘s new Endless Earning promotion is not too generous.  You will earn 1,500 bonus Bonvoy points, which I value at £7.50, on all stays of 2+ nights before 16th September.

Radisson is offering 3,000 bonus points per night, worldwide.  I would value these at £9 which means you are getting a good return, especially at low cost hotels.

The schemes to avoid if you are seeking bonus points at the moment are Le Club AccorHotels and World of Hyatt which are not offering any global promotions.

Accor DOES, however, have an offer for a one-off ‘triple points’ bonus on your next stay.  Details are below.

And don’t forget …..

Head for Points is curently running an EXCLUSIVE offer with hotel booking site Kaligo.com.  If you book £700+ of hotels before 31st July, for stays before the year end, you will receive 8,000 bonus Avios.  This is on top of the base Avios you receive for each stay.

If you are new to Kaligo.com, you receive an extra 2,000 bonus Avios on your first booking – however cheap!

Full details are in this HfP article.  You can book here.

IHG Rewards Club current promotion

IHG (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Indigo, Staybridge Suites etc)

IHG is running another version of its Accelerate promotion. It runs from 1st May to 31st August.

Everyone has personalised targets which, in general, are the least generous we have seen for a while.  This is my article on the offer.  You can register on the IHG site here.

Here is a typical set of targets for this round:

10,000 bonus points for staying five nights

14,400 bonus points for staying at three different IHG brands 

2,800 points for staying at two different IHG hotels

4,500 bonus points for booking one ‘points and cash’ stay

5,600 bonus points for 2 x 2-night weekend stays (Saturday plus another night)

Unusually, there was no additional bonus for me for completing all or most of the separate targets.  If you are being smart you could hit the first three targets with just three stays which totalled five nights.

Take a look at what you’ve been offered.  You need to register for Accelerate – the link is here where you will also find your personalised targets.  The IHG home page is here.

Hilton (Hampton, Conrad, Waldorf-Astoria etc)

Hilton has a Summer offer called ‘Go More, Get More’.  You can register here.  Our full article on Go More, Get More is here.

You will earn DOUBLE Hilton Honors base points for every stay between 6th May and 8th September, starting with your second stay.

For most brands, you will earn 10 base points per $1 spent, plus an additional 10 promotional points plus any status bonus.

Given that I value a Hilton Honors point at around 0.33p, you are getting a good return on your spending here.  20 points per $1 is an 8.5% rebate and that is before you add in any status bonus.  There are also additional targets for heavy stayers:

10,000 bonus points after 10 stays

+ a further 15,000 bonus points after 15 stays (total of 25,000)

+ a further 20,000 bonus points after 20 stays (total of 45,000)

I would value 45,000 points at £150, so you’re getting an extra £7+ of points per stay if you manage to hit 20 stays.  You have until 8th September, so for regular business travellers it may be achievable.

There is no cap to what you can earn. The only snag is that you only earn double points from your SECOND stay after 6th May.

You need to register in advance via the Hilton website here.  Existing bookings count, there is no minimum stay rule and all Hilton Honors hotels are taking part.

Hilton is still status matching too.  If you have status with another hotel programme, Hilton will match you to Gold or Diamond for 90 days – I explain how to do get a Hilton status match in this article.

The Hilton booking page is here.

Le Club AccorHotels

Le Club AccorHotels, which covers Novotel / Ibis / Mercure / M Gallery / Sofitel / Pullman / Raffles / Swissotel / Fairmont etc, has no global promotion at the moment.

You can, however, earn a ‘one off’ TRIPLE points bonus on your next stay.

You need to register via this page of the Accor website.  Take careful note of the dates:

You MUST register before booking via the link you will find here 

You book between 23rd June and 31st July

You stay between 15th July and 15th September (no minimum stay requirement)

Your booking can be in any country but this offer is only valid for residents of selected countries – the UK is included, but many other places are not

There is no minmum stay requirement – even 1 night stays are OK

You can find out more details and register here.

Current Marriott Bonvoy promotions

Marriott Bonvoy (Renaissance, The Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, Westin, W, Aloft, St Regis, Luxury Collection, Moxy etc)

Marriott Bonvoy has just launched its Summer promotion, Endless Earning.

It is not hugely generous, offering 1500 bonus points on cash stays of 2+ nights.  I value a Bonvoy point at 0.5p so this is equivalent to a £7.50 bonus on your 2+ nights.

The offer is valid for stays between 2nd July and 16th September, although you must register here by 2nd September.

Our full article on Endless Earning is here.  You can sign up here.

Radisson Rewards (Radisson Blu, Park Inn, Park Plaza, Radisson Red)

Radisson Rewards is offering a generous 3,000 bonus points per night with its new offer.

Called ‘Discover More Staying Power’, it is valid for stays worldwide between 27th May and 31st August.  Participating brands are Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inn & Suites by Radisson,

You will earn 3,000 bonus Radisson Rewards points per NIGHT, starting with your 2nd stay during the promotional period.

I tend to value a Radisson Rewards point at 0.3p.  This means that you are getting £9 of bonus points per night.  This is a very good return, especially at cheap Park Inn hotels.

You MUST register in advance for this offer by clicking here.  Existing bookings count.  Reward nights and, importantly, ‘points & cash’ bookings do not count.  As usual, stays booked via third parties such as Expedia will not count.

Be careful with the ‘starting with your 2nd stay’ rule.  If you were going to spend 7-10 days in a Radisson Rewards hotel it might be worth seeking out a cheap Park Inn somewhere to sneak in a mattress run night before that.

Click here to register.

World of Hyatt

World of Hyatt, which covers Andaz, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt, Hyatt Centric, Hyatt House, Hyatt Place, Hyatt Regency, Park Hyatt, Thompson and many other brands, is not running a global promotion at present.

And finally …..

If you booking a luxury hotel, remember that we can offer you exclusive additional benefits at Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula and similar hotels.  Click here for details of our luxury hotel booking service in association with Bon Vivant / Virtuoso.  

Feedback from readers who have used this service so far has been excellent and we have booked almost £1m of rooms so far.

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.
Category

Accor Live Limitless, Hilton Honors, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, Radisson Rewards, World of Hyatt

Comments (36)

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

  • Nick says:
    21 Jul21 July 15:52

    I have a hugely generous Accelerate offer this time (178k bonus possible), just a shame I don’t have any plans that can be pushed towards them!)

  • Nick says:
    21 Jul21 July 16:28

    hi all. a bit off-topic but would appreciate verification of my credit card strategy. I’ve a young family and we cannot face long-haul with toddlers, regardless of airline or cabin and we will probably do just 2-3 short-haul foreign trips as a family per year. We have plenty of work travel between us but that is all funded by employers. I’ve got about 120k avios left over, which I think is more than enough to see us through the next year or so.

    I am spire in IHG (although god knows why – they never seem to downgrade you!) and mid-tier in other chains via amex plat, which is long since canceled. So my plan is simply to use SPG Amex where amex is accepted; and IHG card wherever it is not. This means no MR points at all, and no avios earning. We will go for the premium IHG card and put work expenses etc on that to ensure we get to the £10k per annum to trigger the free night certificate. I doubt we will spend £25k per annum on the SPG.

    Does that make sense? Am I missing anything? I’ve been so focused on avios and MR points for years now that I’m a bit nervous about dropping both, but with no plans for a long-haul trip for a good few years it seems a bit daft to plough on with accumulating avios and companion vouchers. Any thoughts welcome…

    • Froggee says:
      21 Jul21 July 17:48

      I kind of felt like that a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t even go as far as the Canaries and limited ourselves to the Algarve as that was far enough.

      We’re in Singapore just now with an almost-three-year-old and a six-year-old and had no 241 vouchers to use for this trip (as I ceased with the BA Amex) when there were Avios flights available. That was a painful error as ended up buying four cash tickets in club world. The maths would have worked well with 241 but not normal redemptions.

      There’s probably not much harm in keeping the basic BA blue card and spending close to £10k on it to give you the optionality of upgrading the card before you do £10k and thus triggering the voucher.

      Everyone’s kids are different but ours handled a connecting flight plus LHR-SIN impeccably. The lady across the aisle from us said she didn’t hear them at all. Kids change rapidly- you may still not fancy long haul next year but if you do the 241 option makes a big difference price wise if you can get enough Avios.

      We’ve found with ipad, stories, food and sleep that flights are tolerable but the packing, connecting through airports and immigration etc at the other end still suck so if we’re going to fly, we fly well. Disney in April!

      Just my tuppence worth.

      • NIck says:
        21 Jul21 July 18:39

        thanks Froggee. Mine is 18 months old and with another on the way it will be quite some time before we can face Singapore! We did have a serious think about a last go to Australia before our son is 2, but the recent horror of a short 2-hour flight made our minds up.

        I like your thinking on the BA card, it feels crazy that I am ditching the main piece of my strategy since I started this hobby over a decade ago. I’ve actually got a BA card on the go with about £3k on it already so might as well carry on with that one for at least one more companion voucher. But in general I would hope that we don’t actually spend enough (any more) to do £10k on BA; £10k on IHG and a reasonable amount on SPG. I’ve had a seriously complex creditcard life for the last 7 years or so, but I’m short on time now so I have given up on all but the easiest manufactured spending.

        • Funtime says:
          21 Jul21 July 20:24

          Depending where people live and card limits, I’m surprised that everyone is not rinsing through £200k a year. Takes 15 minutes a day.

          Play your cards right, pun intended, you can double dip that.

          • Harry T says:
            21 Jul21 July 23:48

            Spill the beans…

          • Funtime says:
            22 Jul22 July 02:46

            Co-op is your friend. Paypoint limits your foe.

          • Nick says:
            22 Jul22 July 12:27

            It’s the 15 mins that’s the problem. I know what you mean but I really can’t be arsed with all that, when I can generate the points I need given my reduced travel ambitions!

        • Froggee says:
          22 Jul22 July 02:12

          By far the worst flight we ever had was when our second was 20 months old. It’s a nightmare age to fly as they are now properly mobile, do not negotiate and are constrained on a knee. He fell asleep as the plane took off and I suspect woke up with sore ears. I’ve never heard him scream like that. So angry. Trying to escape but nowhere to go. Very strong Had to hold onto him as nasty metal bits under the seats he could thrash against. HE WOULD NOT STOP. I had him at the galley screaming for a good part of the flight. He refused chocolate buttons for goodness sake. That never happens.

          I was exhausted. My wife too. We tag teamed him, I don’t think just one of us could have coped. Then on landing he really went for it. Backward head-butted me in the chin and managed to slide down so he was hanging by the neck on his child seat belt. I had to undo the belt and had him pinned against his seat. I felt really travel sick for the first time since I was a kid as I couldn’t look ahead. Truly awful.

          And the kicker was that just as the plane landed my four-year-old fell asleep and we then had to wake him. He’d been perfect all flight but he then started wailing. Immediately the seat belt signs went off, I stood up and the toddler magically stopped crying. So we disembarked with a bawling four-year-old and a delightful toddler who smiled and bye-byed the cabin crew.

          This was on jet2 and I was mortified. I vowed never to fly again with that creature. A year later we flew club to SFO and both boys were angels and even patiently waited for 1.5 hours at immigration. It changes quickly!

          • Nick says:
            22 Jul22 July 12:39

            Sounds awful. Mine was a dream on flights when he was about 9 months; hard work at 1 and a nightmare (although not as bad as your experience) now. But I wonder if I’ll regret neglecting my avios balance in the near future, in particular as easy sources for endless points are falling away. I always took comfort that I could drum up an extra 100k avios in matter of weeks, but not any more. Oh well.

  • Ian M says:
    21 Jul21 July 19:33

    I’m still not eligible for the Accelerate promo. Looks like Hilton will continue to get my stays through the summer.

  • Ian M says:
    21 Jul21 July 19:52

    Re the recent IHG targeted promo for Ambassador status offering 15,000 points back. I called IHG today and asked if I would still receive the 15,000 points if I took the option to purchase Ambassador with 40,000 points instead of $200, and was told that yes I would receive the 15,000 points. They said they could take 6-8 weeks to post to my account however.

  • Mary owen says:
    5 Aug5 August 09:32

    My accelerate does end end August as does my daughters and husbands. The only one we have completed ( for 89,000) points is my sons. His runs out October 31st. If mine did I could get 8400 for a two brand stay. Do you think there will be a new one for September or should I book with no prospect of extra points?

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