Discounted MeliaRewards points on Amazon – 4* London hotel for £70, 4* New York for £64

For the last couple of years, MeliaRewards has been selling points very cheaply via Amazon over Black Friday.  The offers run on one or both of the UK or Spanish sites.

The price of MeliaRewards points has just dropped sharply on the UK site this morning although, oddly, it isn’t marked as reduced.  This may be the 2020 Black Friday deal starting early.

EDIT:  Stock comes and goes.  If it is sold out on Amazon UK you can CLICK HERE to buy on Amazon DE.  Delivery is very quick and you can log in to amazon.de using your UK account details.

Points come in the form of gift cards you deposit into your MeliaRewards account.  Here are the current prices:

35,000 points for £103 – £2.94 per 1,000

55,000 points for £161 – £2.92 per 1,000

For comparison, the 55,000 points package has been at £290 for most of 2020.

You can check the price and availability on this page of UK Amazon site.

I bought this deal in 2018, when I paid €165 for 55,000 points off Amazon Spain.  This is what you get:

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

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.

Can you get value paying £161 for 55,000 MeliaRewards points?

Oh yes.

Of course, with rates currently rock bottom due to covid, the value for short term stays may not always be there.  If you buy now for bookings later in 2021, however, you should do nicely.

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

INNSiDE New York, which we reviewed here, is just over 22,000 points per night.  There is real value here – cash rates are typically around £300 per night in the Summer (although who knows how Summer 2021 will go?) whilst you would be paying £64 if you redeemed gift card points!

In London, the Melia White House is 27,440 points per night.  This works out at (x £2.92 per 1,000) £80.12.  On 24th June, for some reason, it drops to 24,000 points (£70) when the cash price is £297.

The trendy ME London on the Strand is 47,040 points per night.  This makes it a laughably cheap, for a hotel of this standard, £137 per night.

Outside London, INNSiDE Manchester – which we reviewed here – is 18,757 points, or £55.  This is in line with cash pricing at present but this hotel is usually substantially more expensive.

INNSiDE Newcastle, which opens next month, is also 18,757 points.

There are real opportunities for a super-cheap Summer 2021 holiday in Spain or elsewhere in the Med

Being a Spanish company, Melia clearly has a huge number of Spanish properties, both in cities and in beach resorts.  This promotion could be an opportunity to lock in a deal for next year.

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.

This is how I used my points in 2018

In 2018, I bought 55,000 points for €165 via a similar offer, albeit from the Amazon Spain site.  I used 48,500 for two nights at the Melia White House for my brother.  This was during Wimbledon and the cash rates were over £250 per night.

Surprisingly, after this stay I was able to transfer the remaining points to Avios at 10:3.  This got me another 2,000+ Avios.

My total return on €165 was therefore £500-worth of hotel rooms plus 2,000+ Avios.  Not bad!

I wouldn’t buy these points totally speculatively, but if you are fairly sure you can use them then this is a very good deal.  The link to the Amazon page is here.  I have no idea how long the price will remain this low or if the Spanish site will join in with a similar deal at some point.

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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.

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

(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.)