Questions and Answers

I have used a load of Ultimate Rewards points and United miles to book a trip to New Zealand in July next year for myself, my wife, and our daughter. Now I’m looking at hotels for our stay, and wondering what would be a good strategy.

There don’t seem to be a lot of the usual chain hotels. E.g. in Auckland (where we’ll be spending most of our trip) there’s a Hilton, but that’s about it. So I’m wondering about the best strategy.

My existing cards are:
[LIST]
[*]Hilton HHonors (no annual fee Amex and Citi cards)
[*]Amex SPG
[*]Chase Sapphire Preferred
[*]Chase United MileagePlus Explorer
[*]Discover IT
[/LIST]
I’m thinking that paying for non-chain hotels with either the SPG or Sapphire cards would make the most sense. Any other strategy I should consider?

Assuming this will be your card mix, it makes sense. I might consider the Citi Premier for 3x on hotels (or the Prestige if you want the other benefits) and are in the market for another card. Another option might be to get the Barclays Arrival and use it towards Airbnb or regular BnBs (or hotels). I’ve gotten fond of this option recently and enjoy meeting locals in a more laid back surrounding.

Thanks [USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER]. I’m also looking at which miles I should start building up. Booking the trips to NZ took my United MileagePlus miles way down, so I’m looking at whether to rebuild the United miles or start building AA miles for future trips. Which are more useful, for future trips from Philadelphia area to Europe? (We don’t mind flying out of different airports – e.g. we travelled out of EWR last year for our trip to Italy and Switzerland.)