FHR v Hilton / Marriott Gold – 2 rooms – short break Spain / Portugal

[sentio85]

Hi

Considering taking my elderly parents away for 4 nights away somewhere in Portugal or Spain in April.

Any thoughts on whether to book via Hilton / Marriott direct or use FHR via my Amex Plat before I spending all day comparing offers. We will need two rooms. Can I make two FHR bookings to get the free breakfast twice?

We need to go from Stansted, so will probably use Jet2. So we will not need the 4pm checkout due to flight times. Really just want to make sure we get a decent breakfast. Happy to pay separately for meals as they don’t each much / skip meals beyond breakfast.

Any recommendations?

[bruinbrown]

If you book through FHR you can make a single booking for multiple rooms and get the same benefits across all rooms. Eg if you book 2 rooms then everyone will get breakfast, every room will get an upgrade and every room will get the property credit. Some hotels may be awkward about the credit and insist that 2 $100 credits aren’t the same as a $200 credit. If you’re booking through FHR you may also be able to use some of the FHR offers eg 3rd/4th night free – there’s a full list of all properties with offers on this page on the Amex website
https://www.americanexpressfhr.com/fhr/offers

If you’re booking through Marriott or Hilton then you may be able to get an extended stay rate that might knock 15-20% off the flexible rate but you’d end up needing to pay for breakfast. Hilton gold will get you breakfast for yourself plus one person sharing your room. Marriott gold won’t get you free breakfast at all. The FHR rate will pretty much always be the same as the flexible rate on the hotels website.