What are the best hotel promos for November and December 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UPDATE – APRIL 2024: This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.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 Promos’ 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 14,500 email subscribers – means I am now running this monthly article as a handy summary of what is going on.
Because there isn’t much business travel around Christmas, I decided to delay the November edition of this article by two weeks and run it as a combined November / December round up.
If you’d rather not spend cash on your next stay, this article looks at how to use Avios points to book hotel rooms.
Here are quick links to the registration pages you need for each offer – do it before you forget:
IHG’s Accelerate – register here – plus register here for a separate promo offering 3,000 points on InterContinental stays – plus register here for the new ‘4x’ promotion (these promos stack!)
Hilton’s Power Up – register here
Marriott’s Unlock More – register here
Whilst we don’t discuss it below, I also recommend you look at this article on how I earned 7,000 Heathrow Rewards points for a one-night hotel stay via a Rocketmiles promotion.
Where should you credit your stays for the rest of 2019?
This is what you have to choose from:
IHG‘s Accelerate, which started on 1st September, has personalised targets so it is impossible to tell if yours are worth doing or not. You have until 31st December to achieve them.
IHG has also launched two additional offers. There are bonus points on InterContinental stays until 30th November. More importantly, the new ‘4x’ offer will get you a 100% bonus on your 2nd stay, 200% on your 3rd stay and 300% on your 4th and subsequent stays after registration until 31st January.
Hilton‘s new Power Up offer is the easiest. You get double base points per stay, until 5th January 2020, increasing to triple points if you still have – and pay with – the old Barclaycard Hilton Honors credit card.
Marriott‘s Unlock More offers 2,000 bonus points for two stays by 14th January. Once you have achieved this, you will be given an additional personalised target to achieve by 14th January.
World of Hyatt’s Bonus Journeys is offering double base points (triple points on stays at Hyatt Place) on stays until 15th December. This only kicks in from your second stay after registration. Registration closed on 31st October, however.
Radisson Rewards and Le Club AccorHotels are not offering any global promotions.
IHG (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Indigo, Staybridge Suites etc)
IHG has got a little carried away and is currently running three global promotions.
First up, IHG is running another version of its Accelerate promotion. It runs from 1st September to 31st December.
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:
25,200 bonus points for staying at four different brands
4,500 bonus points for booking one ‘points and cash’ redemption
2,800 bonus points for staying at three different hotels
8,000 bonus points for four stays using the corporate rate of the company I haven’t worked at for nine years and which very few hotels accept!
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 second promotion is focused on the InterContinental brand.
You will receive 3,000 bonus IHG Rewards Club points for every stay at an InterContinental hotel before 30th November. You need to register for this offer here.
If you pay $200 to join the InterContinental Ambassador loyalty scheme, the bonus is doubled to 6,000 points per stay and you will receive an additional 10,000 points with your membership kit. I discussed the pros and cons of this offer in this article.
The third promotion is called ‘4x’ and runs until 31st January.
You will receive 1,000 bonus points on your first stay registration, 2 x base points on your 2nd stay, 3 x base points on your 3rd stay and 4 x base points on your fourth and subsequent stays.
This could work out very well. One reader told us he earned over 100,000 points for a four night stay at a mid-priced hotel, topped up by eating in every night and so expanding his bill! Our full article on 4x is here and you can register here.
The IHG home page for bookings is here.
Hilton (Hampton, Conrad, Waldorf-Astoria etc)
Hilton has an Autumn offer called ‘Power Up’. You can register here. Our full article on Power Up is here.
You will earn DOUBLE Hilton Honors base points for every stay between 9th September and 5th January. If you pay with the old Hilton Honors Barclaycard, no longer available to new applicants, you will receive triple base points.
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.
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 for 90 days with a stays target for getting Gold or Diamond until 2021 – 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 is not running a global promotion at the moment.
Marriott Bonvoy (Renaissance, The Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, Westin, W, Aloft, St Regis, Luxury Collection, Moxy etc)
Marriott Bonvoy is running a promotion called ‘Unlock More’.
It is very simple but difficult to value because it is open ended. You will receive 2,000 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points, which I would value at £10, when you complete two stays by 14th January.
Once you have done this, you will receive an additional personalised target. This must be completed by 14th January. It is obviously impossible to put a value on this as we don’t know what you will get.
Our full article on ‘Unlock More’ is here. You can register here.
Radisson Rewards (Radisson Blu, Park Inn, Park Plaza, Radisson Red)
Radisson Rewards is not running a global promotion at present.
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 offering Bonus Journeys.
This is a decent offer which is spoiled by two unnecessary rules:
registration closed on 31st October even though the offer runs until 31st December
the bonus only starts from your second stay after registration
You will receive double base points on each stay. Stays at the lower end Hyatt Place brand will earn triple base points.
Our main Head for Points article on Bonus Journeys is here. Registration is now closed.
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.
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