Citi Strata Elite Card $300 Annual Hotel Credit: How Hard Is It To Use?

A two-night stay at a Choice property is an easy candidate.

These coupon credits are somewhat tedious but I’d rather use ‘em than lose ‘em.

I do prefer that it is a discount ‘at the time of booking, so this is an immediate rebate, rather than an after the fact refund’ unlike Amex’s FHR credits, which sometimes take a little while to post, and can be confusing if you change or cancel thereafter.

Admittedly, these ‘programs’ often raise their prices relative to other platforms or booking directly, so it’s a slight opportunity cost, but, you still end up ahead when using the credit. I suppose their strategy is to ‘get you hooked’ on using their platform, but, in reality, unless the 12x TY points outweighs the savings via booking directly, most will probably just revert to their original methods (like, booking Hilton through Hilton Honors, etc.)

Where this gets interesting is for those who seek out the status multipliers from sources like AA Hotels for the extra LPs. Eh, to each their own. I’ll use my $300 credit either way.

Your choice is Choice!

I love AA hotels, but cash is king. I think the problem becomes when you have so many hotel credits to use, it is not always easy to use them all, especially ones like this one which require a 2 night minimum stay. I think it's a perfectly fine credit if this is the only premium card that you have in your wallet, but the reality is I would think many folks that are getting the Elite already have an Amex Plat (or 4...) or a CSR or a C1VX (to live, perchance to dream...). So using this credit kind of becomes further down on the depth chart and a bit less useful.

Sounds like much more useful than luxury hotel credits on the other cards. Easy to use as well.

The price difference was $187 on Agoda vs $243 through Citi; same room, same dates. But I almost always stay at chains where I have status so I booked it. The $300 credit was really a little less than $299

I meant a little less than $200.

Less than $200

It’s consistently higher than other OTAs (even reputable ones like Expedia, agoda, booking etc.). Some times it’s just by few dollars and those are rare. More often it’s by 50-100 dollars per night. I have a hard time justifying even if I come out a few dollar ahead .. but not really due to the annual fee. Good luck.

How does this credit relate to early check-in?

> If nothing else, this could come in handy in a situation where I need a really early check-in time (due to an early flight arrival), and then I can just book a stay of two nights to use this credit and guarantee early check-in.

If you have an early morning arrival you'd typically have to wait until mid-afternoon to be able to check in at a hotel but if you booked a room for the night before it would be ready for you when you arrive and you'd just be considered to be checking in very late.

While the comments say Citi's portal is more expensive, I just booked a hotel for $474.51 (really $174.51 w/ the $300 credit) and the same room on Expedia or Booking is $493. Chase's portal was also $493, but had a points boost offer of 30,000 points.

The only difference is that while all adversed free cancellation until 10-29, the actual time did vary, with Citi and Chase being the earliest requiring cancelation before 11:59pm on 10-28 (which is technically the day before the advertised last day to cancel).

So Citi was the cheapest, but Chase points boost also offered great value.

@Ben, I haven't seen much on Citi's "The Reserve" hotel collection, made to compete against Amex FHR and Chase's The Edit. Do you know if bookings of The Reserve hotels give you elite benefits and elite night credits the way FHR and The Edit do?

Are you sure the $300 hotel credit can be spread across multiple stays? The reason I ask is: on the citi website for the Strate Elite, under the How does the annual hotel benefit work? section, it says "...$300 off a single hotel stay of 2 nights or more..."

Heh, I think I may have found the answer to my question - on what looks like the official terms for the card, it says "If your reservation is less than $300, the remaining amount of the annual hotel benefit will be available for your next qualifying purchase in that same calendar year."

Neither applied for my stay at Hyatt recently

Does anyone know if you can stack the Citi Strata $300 credit with the Citi Reserve benefits on the same booking/stay?

Does anyone know if there is a way to change the settings in the Citi Travel Portal so that hotel prices show the full price and not the price exclusive of taxes?

Even the major hotel chains (and Airbnb) now show the full price. I thought the laws changed and now require them to do that so I would think the online travel agencies would do the same.

Are there certain countries that citi travel won't show any hotels?
In my case Nairobi Kenya won't return any results