I try a good Preferred Hotels deal for HSBC and Barclays Avios cardholders – with messy results

Preferred Hotels is currently running an interesting status deal for holders of World Elite and World Mastercard credit cards.

This includes the two HSBC Premier and the two Barclaycard Avios credit cards. In both cases the paid cards are World Elite and the free cards are World.

I recently tested this out myself and, whilst the process was a mess, I just about got there in the end.

Full details of the offer are on this page of the Mastercard Priceless website.

What is Preferred Hotels?

We don’t cover the Preferred Hotels (home page here) marketing consortium much, although we did publish a glowing review of Swinton Park Hotel in the Yorkshire Dales last year which sits in their ‘Beyond Green’ eco-friendly arm. Sinead also visited The Londoner in Leicester Square.

It works in a similar way to Leading Hotels of the World and Small Luxury Hotels, allowing independent hotels to gain access to a loyalty scheme and a bigger marketing budget.

Over 600 hotels are members. In the UK it includes:

• Virgin Hotels Edinburgh
• Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch
• The Beaumont, London (Mayfair)
• Royal Lancaster London (overlooking Kensington Palace)
• The Mandeville, London (Marylebone)
• The Stafford, London (Mayfair)
• The Pelham, London (Knightsbridge)
• South Place, London (The City)
• Hotel Saint, London (The City)
• Middle Eight, London (Covent Garden)
• The Londoner (the blue hotel in Leicester Square)
• The Bo’Tree, London (Marylebone)
• The Grand, York
• Sopwell House, St Albans
• Old Course Hotel, St Andrews
• The Fitzwilliam Hotel, Belfast

The pictures below are of Hotel Saint in the City of London, for reasons I will explain!

What is the Mastercard promotion about?

There are three deals, but only two are worth bothering with in my view:

• World Elite cardholders receive, after one cash stay, top-tier Titanium status with Preferred Hotels and 25,000 I Prefer points

• World cardholders receive, after one cash stay, top-tier Titanium status

• Gold and Platinum cardholders (I have no idea which UK Mastercard products count as ‘Gold’ or ‘Platinum’) receive, after one cash stay, mid-tier Gold status

I am ignoring the bottom option because Gold status has few benefits, albeit if you are staying at a Preferred Hotels property you might as well sign up.

These offers only work on a brand new I Prefer account. You need to fill in the form on the Mastercard Priceless website and you will be sent a promo code which needs to be used when signing up to I Prefer.

IMPORTANT: Some people find that the Priceless website incorrectly sees their card as World when it should be World Elite. Looking at our forum, this can be corrected by contacting Priceless. You should do this before requesting your I Prefer sign-up code.

What are the benefits of Titanium status?

The benefits of Titanium status with Preferred Hotels are:

• 50% bonus points on cash stays
• ‘complimentary food and beverage offering’ on every stay
• a ‘digital anniversary gift’

It’s not life changing but, as you need to spend $5,000 to earn Titanium, I assume that recognition is decent.

If you are World Elite you will also get the bonus 25,000 I Prefer points along with Titanium status. These aren’t worth much on their own – although some hotels in the system have free nights at this level – but of course you will also have the points from your qualifying stay.

A London boutique hotel like The Mandeville would be 50,000 points per night, with the top hotels hitting 150,000 points. Cashed in for stay vouchers, which is not the best way to use your points, 25,000 I Prefer points get you $50.

The Preferred Hotels award pricing is here although the page is buggy. There is no way of accurately sorting by points price because it refuses to show a price for many hotels.

The best way to use Preferred Hotels ‘I Prefer’ points is for ‘Key Access’ stays. This is a way for selected hotels to quietly dump rooms cheaply by insisting on a small points co-pay, which means only active I Prefer members can book them.

For 28th to 30th September, for example, The Thief in Oslo can be booked for £164 plus 500 points per night on a ‘Key Access’ rate. The cheapest cash rate on the main Preferred Hotels website is £251.

Let me tell you my story ….

The reason I used The Thief in Oslo as an example above is that, when I found this Mastercard status challenge offer, I was about to book two rooms for five nights at The Thief, which I reviewed here in 2022. As often happens, I decided to take my family to somewhere I had previously visited on my own to review.

I Prefer lets you earn points on two rooms per stay so I was looking at a chunky pile of points, given hotel rates in Norway.

The junior suites and suites at The Thief were too expensive for cash, given that we would be out and about a lot, but I thought arriving with Titanium status may swing us an upgrade. The 50% bonus points on around £3,000 of spending weren’t to be sniffed at either.

This called for a mattress run!

I found a room at Hotel Saint, about 10 minutes walk from the HfP office in The City, for just £144.

(Yes, London hotel prices are down sharply. Admittedly it was a Friday night, but £144 for a modern 4 star hotel is exceptionally good.)

I thought I had the timings worked out. I was staying at Hotel Saint on 1st August. My stay at The Thief started on 12th August. What could go wrong? I had 10 days to get my status upgraded.

Hotel Saint was impressive. I was upgraded to a corner room, see above – I think booking via Preferred Hotels put me ahead of the tourist groups who were filling the place otherwise. It came with a good view over The City as you can see below.

After checkout I waited for my points and for my status to update. And waited. And waited. Remember that I had booked via the Preferred Hotels website so they had my details.

After 72 hours I tried to retro-claim my points, but it turned out that this is not possible until 10 days after check-out. On 11th August – so almost certainly too late for my stay at The Thief starting the next day – my retro-claim form was accepted.

I got an email back saying that it would take ANOTHER 10 days (10 business days this time, not 10 calendar days) to validate my claim. This is despite:

• booking via Preferred Hotels
• submitting a scanned receipt which perfectly matched the rate I had booked

OK, I thought. In reality it can’t take 10 working days, surely. It will post by the time we check out of The Thief in six days.

In the end, it took Preferred Hotels eight calendar days to confirm that I had stayed at the hotel I had booked via them and for which I had provided a formal receipt.

My stay at The Thief had already posted to my account by then, obviously without any elite bonus. Even better (or worse), my status had NOT updated to Titanium after that stay either.

Here’s where the story improves.

I replied to the email confirming that my retroclaim for Hotel Saint had been successful with the story I outlined above.

24 hours later, my account was upgraded to Titanium and (as I had suggested they do) I was given the 50% bonus points that I would have received from The Thief had I been upgraded before I checked out.

I wasn’t made totally whole – because I didn’t get any welcome amenities at The Thief and wasn’t upgraded (not that upgrades are automatic for Titanium members) – but I was happy enough.

I now have just over 100,000 Preferred Hotels I Prefer points, good for two nights in a mid range hotel, and Titanium benefits when I do redeem.

The lesson of this story ….

Mastercard is running a decent offer whereby World Elite and World cardholders can get an upgrade to top-tier Titanium status at Preferred Hotels after one stay.

World Elite cardholders will receive 25,000 bonus I Prefer points on top.

If you are thinking about a cheap mattress run to get Titanium status in advance of a future expensive Preferred Hotels stay, I recommend that you do it at least ONE MONTH before your main stay. This gives you enough time to:

• submit a retro-claim if needed (requires you to wait 10 calendar days)

• wait a further 10 business days for the retro-claim to be actioned, and

• potentially wait another few days whilst they upgrade your status if for some reason it didn’t happen automatically

Do the mattress run a month in advance and you are virtually certain to have Titanium status before your main stay.

You can see the various Mastercard offers for Preferred Hotels on this page of the Priceless website.