Booked a 2 night-stay at Nolinski Paris (Part of Hotel Collection).
Got $300 credit within a week on my Amex.
Baglioni Hotel Regina, Rome, Italy, $338 for the last day of my three day quickie. $100 F&B credit, I’ll need a late check out for my 1910 flight home per favore, grazie.
Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills weekend, bookended with the Aspire FNC. Doesn’t matter if the room’s not ready, I’ll be at The Rooftop having brunch with my F&B credit. Please store my beloved backpack until then, no need to be gentle with it, and arrange the house Rolls Royce for 8pm to the closest In-N-Out Burger, thank you.
Too easy, and so much fun.
Hey Ben...TBH, I have more responsibilities at work now, life has so many things to tackle. Would you be willing to put together sort of an omnibus credit maximizing article on all of AMEX?
What does this mean? "(though authorized users don’t get incremental credits)" What are "incremental credits"?
Do I understand correctly that the $200 FHR credit is gone and replaced with this $300x2 version? Was that effective immediately or is the FHR credit still active for this year?
I like to wait for AMEX 3rd Night Free promos for using these
In the second paragraph you state, “As you’d expect, enrollment is required”, but further down in the article you say, “There’s no registration required”.
Amex is making this credit harder to use by limiting the number of prepaid options. This sounds nuts- on most hotel booking sites you can always prepay. But on the Amex site they often only allow 50-75% of the total hotel stay cost to be prepaid. This is how they cheat you out of more money- instead of being able to use $300 of your credit towards a $350 stay- you end up only being able to use $250 of the credit and then pay $100 out of pocket. This is not an accident and no one seems to be pointing that out.
Amex is making this credit harder to use by limiting the number of prepaid options. This sounds nuts- on most hotel booking sites you can always prepay. But on the Amex site they often yuonly allow 50-75% of the total hotel stay cost to be prepaid. This is how they cheat you out of more money- instead of being able to use $300 of your credit towards a $350 stay- you end up only being able to use $250 of the credit and then pay $100 out of pocket. This is not an accident and no one seems to be pointing that out.
Last week, I spent 2 nights at the Waldorf Astoria Versailles Trianon Palace just outside of Paris (Dec 8, 25). The perks were lovely!! The room, by European standards, was enormous! The bed was second to none I'd ever experienced in a hotel. I used my Amex Business Platinum and everything went smoothly! We received a fancy welcome letter listing all the Amex benefits we'd be receiving.
The 2nd night was needed because my husband and I were exhausted and I was fighting a virus (not Covid).
I meant to use my Hilton Aspire card to knock that card's resort benefit off my list before Dec 31st, but too be honest, because of the virus and fatigue, I FORGOT! Lessoned learned! I won't make that mistake again (hopefully.)
But...At 4pm on the day we needed to checkout, I went to the Amex Travel App and booked our second night. I then called the front desk to ask (beg) them to allow us to stay in the upgraded room as we were not feeling well. She needed to verify us staying in the upgraded room with her manager. She called back and said we could stay in that upgraded room!!! We were ecstatic! Just one more plus for the Amex Platinum as I believe our status and their availability cinched the deal for the 2nd night's complimentary upgrade.
The bed was the most comfortable bed of our trip that started in London and finished in Zurich and long story short- we stayed in 7 different hotels over 2.5 weeks.
I definitely got outsized value from the Amex Business Platinum card's benefits for that stay. And, my first time in a Waldorf! But for the card, that never would have happened.