How I made a saving with Global Hotel Alliance’s ‘buy money with 15% off’ deal!

Global Hotel Alliance, and its GHA DISCOVERY loyalty programme, has been pushing its way onto our radar over the last couple of years.

This is down to three things:

• a very generous status programme (get top tier status, which is well respected by member hotels, for just three stays if they are at different brands)

• a generous loyalty programme (you get up to 7% cashback on stays) and

• generous promotions, including regular triple points offers and an ongoing app booking bonus

We ran a separate piece here which provides an overview of GHA DISCOVERY and is our core reference article on the programme.

Global Hotel Alliance is a marketing alliance for almost 40 smaller hotel brands. Kempinski is probably the best known, but you are probably aware of Anantara and NH Hotels which are also in there. It’s an eclectic collection which a slight slant towards Asia, although the spread is more balanced since NH Hotels came in.

GHA is now selling points – and it can work out well

As I first mentioned back in July, GHA DISCOVERY has recently started selling its loyalty currency, DISCOVERY Dollars.

Now, most hotel chains and airline programmes sell their points. What is different about GHA is that its points have a fixed value. 1 DISCOVERY Dollar is worth $1 off your next hotel stay.

As a trial, until the end of August, you can buy DISCOVERY Dollars at a decent discount to face value. The discount is based on your status:

• Silver – 10% off
• Gold – 12% off
• Platinum – 14% off
• Titanium – 15% off

There are also caps on what you can buy:

• Silver – maximum D$200 in a transaction & D$600 in a calendar year
• Gold – maximum D$300 in a transaction & D$900 in a calendar year
• Platinum – maximum D$400 in a transaction & D$1,200 in a calendar year
• Titanium – maximum D$500 in a transaction & D$1,500 in a calendar year

There are three reasons why this deal is less good than it looks:

• if you are staying in the UK, you may incur FX fees on your credit card to buy DISCOVERY Dollars which you would avoid if you’d paid for your room in cash

• you can’t use DISCOVERY Dollars on pre-paid stays, except for food and drink charges added to your bill

• you won’t earn points back on the part of your bill paid with DISCOVERY Dollars

This last point is important. Yes, you save 15% on DISCOVERY Dollars if you are Titanium, but you would have got 7% back in DISCOVERY Dollars on the (ex-tax) amount you spent if you’d paid cash.

You should still make a saving but it won’t be as big as you think.

If there is a double or triple DISCOVERY Dollars promotion running when you stay, you could end up worse off! The saving by pre-paying for DISCOVERY Dollars may be lower than the amount you would have earned back from your stay when bonuses are included.

My stay at Çırağan Palace Kempinski Istanbul

We have just checked out of Çırağan Palace Kempinski Istanbul, which is probably the flagship Kempinski hotel in Europe.

A review will follow next month so I won’t go into it in detail. However, as I’d booked via GHA (I have Titanium status, as does my wife, so we expected and got a good upgrade), I had the opportunity to test out the ‘buy points’ feature.

We’d booked one room in my name and one for the kids in my wife’s name. This allowed me to buy the annual cap of $1,500 DISCOVERY Dollars per account, so $3,000 in total.

I paid $2,550 in total, saving 15%.

I only bought the points once we had checked into the hotel. I wanted to remove any risk that I might be stuck with $3,000 of 24-month expiry credit. Once we’d checked in and I was sure we wouldn’t be storming out due to some crisis (!) I went ahead.

It is a VERY slick process if you go via the GHA DISCOVERY app, because you can use Apple Pay (and presumably Google Pay too). No need to dig out your payment cards. Your DISCOVERY Dollars balance updates immediately.

Now, I haven’t REALLY saved $450 (15% of $3,000 of credit). I would have got 7% back in DISCOVERY Dollars had I settled that part of the bill in cash. However, I am FAR happier – unsurprisingly – with an immediate $450 saving rather than $210 of ‘expires in 24 months’ hotel credit.

It is important to note that there was no bonus $ promotion running for stays when I booked. This is another reason not to buy DISCOVERY Dollars until you’re already checked in. If a ‘triple Dollars’ promotion launches, and you were able to rebook at the same rate, you’d be better off paying cash. You would bank (in my case) 21% in DISCOVERY Dollars rather than getting 15% off in cash by buying DISCOVERY Dollars.

Quick reminder: you can only redeem against ‘Eligible Spend’

If you are planning to do this, remember that you cannot settle 100% of your bill with DISCOVERY Dollars.

Taxes, tips and fees are not included. The key element is VAT or the local equivalent. On a £1,000 UK stay, you could only redeem (assuming no tips on the bill) £833 which is the ex-VAT element.

What happens after 31st August?

In theory, the current offer for buying DISCOVERY Dollars ends on 31st August.

It’s not clear what happens then. Is GHA planning to keep the facility going but reduce the discount from 15% (for Titanium members) to something less? It would still have made sense for me to buy DISCOVERY Dollars even with, say, a 12% discount so perhaps the offer will continue at a lower level of saving.

What you should take away from this is that if you are booking a ‘pay on departure’ GHA stay (or pre-paying but planning to spend on food and drink in-house), it is worth keeping an eye on the latest ‘buy DISCOVERY Dollars’ promotion in the GHA app or website.

You can buy DISCOVERY Dollars on this page of the website.

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Hotel offers update – April 2025:

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 29th May 2025. The annual purchase limit is also increased to 240,000 points pre-bonus. Click here to buy.