Save £100 on a £300 spend at Small Luxury Hotels – and earn Hilton points

Small Luxury Hotels of the World has launched a new cashback offer with American Express.

Amongst other family cards, I have it on my Business Platinum card. It seems that Amex is now experimenting with offering hotel cashback deals to Business Gold and Business Platinum cardholders.

If you stay at a participating SLH hotel before 15th August, you will receive £100 cashback on a spend of £300+. Cumulative spend is OK.

The offer is not well explained, unfortunately.

SLH is a marketing consortium, not a chain. This means that it isn’t clear to the average reader:

• whether you must book via the SLH website or not?

• whether bookings via other channels, such as Hilton (who market SLH hotels) or intermediaries such as Hotels.com count?

• whether direct bookings count?

We know, having covered Amex offers for many years, that as long as you pay at the hotel you are fine. Booking a ‘pay at hotel’ rate via Hilton will be OK.

Do note that pre-paid bookings are specifically blocked from the offer. Whilst this is usually not actually true when it applies to Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott or IHG cashback offers, it may be true here if you book via the SLH website.

If (and I mean ‘if’, I don’t actually know) payment is taken by Small Luxury Hotels and not the individual hotels, and Amex is looking out for specific hotel retailer codes on your statement, the cashback would not trigger. I would guess that pre-paid rooms booked directly with the hotel on its own website should trigger the cashback.

Which hotels are taking part?

It’s a long list! Importantly, it isn’t just hotels in Europe which is usually the case with American Express offers. There are hotels taking part in Barbados, Japan, Mexico, Thailand and the USA.

You can download it here (PDF).

The UK list runs to 29 hotels which is 10 fewer than when this offer ran in 2024. There are some good names amongst them. These include:

• The Gainsborough Bath Spa (review here, image below)
• Grove of Narberth (review here)
• Dormy House
• The Grand Hotel Eastbourne (review here)
• Ashdown Park
• Flemings Mayfair
• Tylney Hall
• Luton Hoo
• The Nare

Benefits of booking Small Luxury Hotels via Hilton

Hilton has a partnership with Small Luxury Hotels which allows you to book selected hotels via hilton.com.

Here is a reminder of the elite benefits for Hilton Honors members who book an SLH property via the Hilton website for cash or points:

• Member (no status): member discount, complimentary standard Wi-Fi, complimentary late checkout, bottled water

• Silver: 20% elite tier bonus, 5th standard reward night free, all ‘Member’ benefits 

• Gold: 80% elite tier bonus, complimentary breakfast for two, space-available upgrades, 5th standard reward night free, all ‘Member’ benefits 

• Diamond: 100% elite tier bonus, complimentary breakfast for two, space-available upgrades, 5th standard reward night free, all ‘Member’ benefits

You will also earn points and elite night credits as you would at any standard Hilton hotel.

The list of SLH hotels participating in Hilton Honors is here.

You should also get a quote via Bon Vivant

SLH also has a programme for luxury travel agents. This can get you valuable extra benefits at no additional cost BUT not all SLH hotels take part – The Atlantic in Jersey (review here) didn’t play ball when we went a couple of years ago.

Our hotel booking partner Emyr Thomas can book these for you and as all Emyr bookings are ‘pay on departure’ it will trigger the cashback too.

You can contact Emyr via this page of HfP – don’t book an SLH property without seeing what he can do. The price will match the flexible room-only rate on the website but with substantial extra benefits, and he may be able to persuade the hotel to match any promotional offer too.