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£400 + 40,000 POINTS BONUS: Are the four Amex Platinum hotel status cards worth having?

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American Express is currently running an excellent sign-up bonus of £400 of Amex Travel credit and 40,000 Membership Rewards points when you take out The Platinum Card.

The points would convert into 40,000 Avios or lots of other great travel rewards. Even better, you qualify for the bonus even if you have a British Airways American Express card as long as you meet the other criteria.

Our introductory article on the ‘£400 + 40,000 bonus Membership Rewards points’ offer is here. Remember that you can still get a pro-rata refund on the annual fee as long as you cancel by ‘late 2024’ – Amex isn’t being more specific than that.

The Platinum Card application page is here. The offer runs to 27th August.

American Express Platinum comes with FOUR hotel status cards.  I thought I would take a closer look at this benefit to help you decide if you should jump on the £400 + 40,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus.

American Express Platinum hotel benefits

What hotel statuses come with The Platinum Card?

American Express Platinum offers the following hotel statuses:

You will have four shiny cards in your pocket but ….

It is worth looking more closely at each of these statuses to see if they are actually worth anything.

Here is the ground rule for this article.  Because I am old and cynical, I do not trust anything unless it has the word ‘guaranteed’ in front of it.

I won’t move my business to a hotel because I may or may not receive a benefit ‘subject to availability’, which can mean anything.  The one thing you can be sure of is that ‘subject to availability’ does NOT mean ‘as long as we can physically manage your request, you can definitely have it’.  That isn’t how it works.

As far as I’m concerned, if it’s not guaranteed, I assume I won’t be getting it and I value it at virtually nothing.

You also need to remember that you must book direct to obtain any of these benefits. Bookings via Expedia, Hotels.com etc will not count.

So, if you get yourself an American Express Platinum card primarily for the hotel benefits (although the £400 plus 40,000 Amex Membership Rewards points that you get for signing up come in handy too!) then what are you certain of getting on your next stay?

Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills

Hilton Honors Gold – what is guaranteed?

This is the mid-tier Hilton status.  Hilton Honors is generally known for having the best mid-tier benefits in the hotel industry.  Gold does not carry a lot of weight in North America, where hotels are overrun with Gold members, but it does often carry respect in Europe and Asia.

The standard requirements for Hilton Gold status are either 20 stays, or 40 nights, or 75,000 Hilton Honors base points in a calendar year.

The key benefit here is free breakfast.

You will receive a free breakfast of some sort at all Hilton Honors brands, including Hilton, Conrad, Curio, Waldorf Astoria and DoubleTree hotels.  This is usually but not necessarily full breakfast.

Note that free breakfast at hotels in the USA has been replaced by a cash credit which can be used against any food and beverage purchase. The downside is that the credit rarely covers the full cost of breakfast, but the upside is that it can be used against any food and beverage spend.

You should also receive some sort of space-available upgrade at most brands as Hilton Honors Gold.  You shouldn’t expect too much, often just the best room in the category you booked.  You will also receive two free bottles of water per stay.

The other main benefits of Hilton Honors Gold are:

  • 80% bonus points – which soon adds up
  • late check-out (not guaranteed)
  • 2nd guest stays free (only useful in countries which tend to charge more for two people, eg Germany)

You will also qualify for the ‘book 5 nights and pay for 4’ Hilton Honors redemption benefit which is offered to all status members.

Overall, because of the sheer size of the Hilton chain and the guaranteed breakfast, and to a lesser extent the upgrade of some sort, this is the best of the free American Express Platinum hotel statuses.

You can see the official list of Hilton Honors Gold benefits here.

Remember that the sign-up bonus of 40,000 American Express Membership Rewards points would convert into 80,000 Hilton Honors points.

Marriott Bonvoy Gold – what is guaranteed?

Marriott Bonvoy is the loyalty scheme for Sheraton, St Regis, Le Meridien, Luxury Collection, Aloft, Westin, W, The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Marriott, AC Hotels, Delta, Protea, Renaissance, MOXY and various other brands.

Even though Gold Elite status usually requires 25 nights per year, the benefits are modest:

  • 25% bonus points on your stay
  • 2pm late check-out, but ‘subject to availability’
  • upgrade to an ‘enhanced’ room at check-in
  • welcome gift of 250 or 500 bonus points, depending on brand

Breakfast is conspicuously missing from this list.

The upgrade benefit is unlikely to deliver you anything noticeable as a Gold member. The late check-out benefit is handy but not guaranteed.  The bonus points are welcome but are not hugely valuable given my 0.5p per Bonvoy point valuation.

The full list of Marriott Bonvoy Gold benefits is here.

Remember that the sign-up bonus of 40,000 American Express Membership Rewards points would convert into 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.

ME London hotel

MeliaRewards Gold – what is guaranteed?

Melia is a Spanish-based hotel group.  The key brands are Sol, Tryp, Melia, Gran Melia, Paradisius, ME and INNSiDE.

In the UK, they have a number of impressive but not very well known hotels which you may want to try with your new MeliaRewards Gold status. These include:

  • ME London, the Norman Foster designed hotel on the Strand which has a good reputation, image above.  Think of a hotel like The Trafalgar nearby or a more sophisticated W.
  • Melia White House, a surprisingly pleasant art deco era hotel near Regents Park where we had our 2016 and 2017 HfP Christmas parties

MeliaRewards Gold offers the following benefits:

  • 30% bonus points
  • free breakfast for a companion (so basically 2-4-1)
  • free wi-fi
  • 3 x 20% off vouchers for room bookings
  • 4pm late check-out at city hotels, 2pm at resorts

Late check-out IS guaranteed as long as the hotel is not 100% full.  You will also receive free wi-fi.  There is no upgrade benefit.

(That said, my brother stayed at ME London on a reward stay booked from my Gold account last summer and got a very good upgrade. It just isn’t an official benefit.)

Overall, there isn’t much here that is guaranteed to persuade me to move a stay to Melia EXCEPT for the ‘almost guaranteed’ 4pm check-out.  That could be important on a short break if you have a late flight back.

However, it is fair to say that the 20% discount vouchers can be hugely valuable. In some cases – let’s say you were planning a £3,000 stay at a Melia beach resort in Spain – the 20% discount would cover your entire Amex Platinum membership fee for the year. It is possible that I underestimate this benefit because I have never personally used it.

The full list of MeliaRewards status benefits is here.

Radisson Rewards Premium status with American Express Platinum

Radisson Rewards Premium – what is guaranteed?

Radisson Rewards is the loyalty scheme for Radisson Blu, Radisson Edwardian, Park Plaza and Park Inn plus a few smaller brands.

Premium is laughably easy to earn, requiring just five nights or three stays in a calendar year.  It’s not hard to earn and therefore there will be a lot of them in any Radisson hotel on any particular night.

Your Premium status will get you:

  • 27 Radisson Rewards points per $1 spent – a huge increase on the 8 points per $1 earned by base level members
  • 10% off food and drink
  • room upgrade “when available”
  • access to ‘Discount Booster’

‘Discount Booster’ is actually the key benefit. In return for earning a lower level of points on your stay, your member discount is increased to up to 20%. Having booked two stays at a Radisson for next month, I can confirm that this is a genuine saving which goes well beyond other discounts on the Radisson website.

I certainly wouldn’t put any value on the room upgrade, given how many Premium members are competing with you, but ‘Discount Booster’ puts genuine cash back into your pocket.

Full details of Radisson Rewards status benefits are here.

Remember that the sign-up bonus of 40,000 American Express Membership Rewards points would convert into 120,000 Radisson Rewards points.

American Express Amex Platinum card

Conclusion

You can get four mid-tier hotel status cards in your wallet or purse via The Platinum Card, although it doesn’t mean that your hotel stays are going to be transformed.

That said, if you are a regular guest at participating properties – although not regular enough to earn status in your own right – then you could do nicely.

Over the years I have done OK on Hilton and Radisson stays via my American Express Platinum status, although this was before Radisson made their status laughably easy to get. I have always had a higher Marriott Bonvoy status than Gold due to my own travel. I don’t stay enough with Melia to give a fair opinion except to note my brother’s stunning ME London upgrade last year.

You will retain the hotel status cards until their expiry date if you cancel your Platinum Card for a pro-rata refund.

You can apply for the card here. The special offer of £400 of Amex Travel credit plus 40,000 Membership Rewards points is now on.

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Category

American Express Platinum card, Hilton Honors, Marriott Bonvoy, MeliaRewards, Radisson Rewards

Comments (22)

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

  • James Wyatt says:
    14 Jul14 July 05:59

    Meliá 20% off vouchers can be valuable. I use InnSide Newcastle 3 times a year (3 kids at the Uni) so I’m saving at least £400 a year. Free companion breakfast – they never put the “paid for” on the bill. Late check out rarely works! A longer family holiday at a Meliá in the Caribbean served up a £2000 saving. So, this benefit is top of my list! One other thing – Meliá recently had a 30% off anniversary sale. A 20% off voucher could be “stacked” – ie. 50% off. I had a decent suite for little more than £100!

  • ukpolak says:
    14 Jul14 July 06:39

    This is a very useful reminder.

    Since having this card for ~9 months and booking / staying in all of those brands except Radisson, our biggest benefit has indeed been the 20% off Melia which have saved me and my family a small fortune indeed for summer breaks in the Med. It also brings the 5* Rome Gran Melia in to budget for a city break in half term.

    Keeping my eyes peeled on here has also saved me more with them, as Melia often run other sales which seem to stack with the 20% off (so cancel / rebook has worked well).

  • ACK says:
    14 Jul14 July 07:00

    We have used the Melia 20% discount a few times in resorts around Spain and this alone paid for the amex plat two times over. Given that we wanted to go to spain and wanted to stay in melia resort properties i consider this an actual cash saving. Apart from wanting us to have dinner from 8pm with an infant (which i consider to be a spanish thing, they eat late) the experience was always good.

  • Niall says:
    14 Jul14 July 09:50

    Slightly suspicious 3 early morning comments all about Melia.

    The mate checkout guaranteed if not 100% full thing has been mentioned always at headforpoints but in my experience as a MeliaRewards platinum, it is not true/not honoured.

    A 30% sale discount plus using a 20% off code does not give 50% discount. This is both because of how maths works in general and because the Melia sales are as fake as many of the airlines sales. They will claim an up to 20% sale discount which if you’d checked prices just before will be significantly more modest. Indeed I have seen prices lower after the sales than during!

    • Erico1875 says:
      14 Jul14 July 10:54

      Niall,
      The bottom line is you are going to make a serious saving using the Gold 20% off code + 5% off app discount
      Random example
      Marbella Meliá Gran Don Pepe
      17 to 24 Aug garden room b+b.
      Meliá 3870. Very cheapest I could find, AGODA @ 4968 so a real saving of £1100

      • Jonathan says:
        14 Jul14 July 11:25

        A real saving is only if you’d book or buy in the first place, a real saving is never the case if you’re purchasing or booking goods or services you wouldn’t do otherwise but you’re dragged into by the promotion or the savings you’ll get in return for your transaction(s)

        • Niall says:
          14 Jul14 July 11:37

          Exactly this! I have stayed at the Gran Meliá Don Pepe. 710EUR per night B&B is not something I think a sane person would/should consider. Still, I don’t dispute the 20% voucher is a benefit of the Melia status. I do think it is the only benefit though and is often overstated.

        • Rob says:
          14 Jul14 July 12:02

          So you’re saying that (for example) if a 5-star Melia is reduced to £200 from £400 in a sale and with the voucher and you were planning to stay in the Holiday Inn Express around the corner for £200, you are getting no benefit from booking the Melia?

          I always find these discussions on HfP rather bizarre because, by definition, if you’re reading this site then you have zero interest in the cheapest possible flight or cheapest possible hotel in wherever you are going. youthhostellingwithchriseubank.com is a better site for you.

          • Jonathan says:
            14 Jul14 July 12:27

            What I’m saying is say buying something because it’s on promotion in the shop you’re buying from, when you wouldn’t otherwise have brought it when you generally wouldn’t need or want it.

            Going to stay in a hotel (because you’ll make a saving by booking) that’s located somewhere you’d normally say a near instant pass on, as opposed to going somewhere you’d actually want to go is the exact same thing

          • Throwawayname says:
            14 Jul14 July 17:44

            The marginal utility of a better hotel is always tricky to calculate on a city trip (resorts are different obviously). Particularly when travelling solo, I don’t see a 5-star property as being worth €50 more than a 3-star. I might spend €15 on getting a ‘superior’ room with an espresso machine and/or a bit of extra space, but lavish lobbies, large breakfast buffets or extensive spa services don’t add any value for me in those circumstances.

          • Niall says:
            14 Jul14 July 18:25

            You don’t appear to be reading or at least thinking about these discussions if you find this so bizarre.

            Nobody is talking about the cheapest places to stay. You mistake people caring about value for people wanting rubbish.

            You’ve jumped in with an example of a previously £400 Melia being £200. I can assure you, this does not happen.

            This is about the perceived value of a discount. People seem very willing to see the amount discounted by use of these vouchers being the amount that it has saved them. But Erico’s example is only closer to true if someone would spend 5000 on a week in a small room in Gran Melia Don Pepe. Which I would suggest they shouldn’t. Not because I don’t think anyone should ever spend £5,000 on a hotel but because Don Pepe is not worth it compared to their competition.

            If people book the hotels because of this 20% discount and wouldn’t have otherwise because value would have been poor, then the worth of the discount is less.

            None of us have the figures, but an article of yours Rob showed us Melia had almost a million MeliaRewards members who would have this discount. That has to have an impact on the pricing especially at the more expensive and popular Melias. I.e. they can charge more at least some of the time because they have a pool of people who will use the codes.

    • Tariq says:
      14 Jul14 July 12:17

      Have always been allowed 4pm checkout, but the only Melia hotels I stay in are Me London and White House.

    • TurningLeftAgain says:
      20 Jul20 July 07:36

      Niall, cynicism is always healthy but in this case it’s misplaced (although I agree with your stacked maths point). Before using my Melia 20% vouchers my partner and I shop around for a better price and to date have never found one (for resort hotels in Spain).

  • ed_fly says:
    14 Jul14 July 12:37

    I’ve got a Meliá stay coming up having made use of the 20% off. Combined with a sale price and 5% app discount. Very happy with the price I paid. Would I have booked the room/hotel without the discount who knows? I’m happy the price I paid is very competitive. I recouped my platinum fee on Eurostar tickets that I would’ve bought anyway. With this stay and a range of other benefits, the platinum provided me with a great return.

  • John says:
    14 Jul14 July 17:33

    Are the 3x 20% Meliá vouchers repeated annually? So far my birthday voucher has (re)appeared, but the stash of 20% codes has not been replenished…

    • Stu N says:
      14 Jul14 July 18:03

      The 20% vouchers should renew every calendar year.

      I find Melia Gold very good for upgrades – I stay in Melia hotels a few times a year for 8 or 9 years, so a decent sample size. Almost always get upgraded from basic room to superior and had some suite/ LEVEL upgrades too. I find Marriot more hit or miss, usual work Marriott usually upgrades me but I stay regularly. Had a couple of spectacular ones (RC HK) but usually nothing.

      Hilton upgrades are barely noticeable – bin view to partial bin view etc….

  • dshunter says:
    14 Jul14 July 22:52

    Likewise have had most joy out of Hilton (breakfast) and melia (discounts and upgrades). Marriott shoddy and raddison just not competitive for the quality of hotels.

  • Grimz says:
    15 Jul15 July 14:52

    I just got the platinum card and added a supplementary card holder – how long does the supplementary card holder have to wait for their priority pass?

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

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