Delta Stays: Is It Worth Booking Your Hotel Through This Portal?

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In recent years, many credit cards have started offering credits when you book a hotel through their travel portal. Initially, these credits were provided by banks that had their own travel portals, such as Chase and Citi. However, the travel portal business is quite profitable, and now it seems like every travel company wants to be involved. This has led to airlines entering the hotel booking industry. However it goes beyond airlines simply providing a link to book a hotel associated with your flight. Instead, they offer an independent travel booking portal where you can use airline points to pay for hotels or earn extra points in the airline’s frequent flyer program when booking a hotel.

One of the newer players in this space is Delta Air Lines, which recently launched Delta Stays. Powered by Expedia, Delta Stays offers hotels and vacation rentals where you can earn Delta SkyMiles or use miles for lodging. More importantly, those who have a Delta AMEX co-brand credit card can get a statement credit when booking with Delta Stays.

My First Delta Stays Booking

Since I have a Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card, I get a yearly $150 statement credit for bookings with Delta Stays. This is a very valuable benefit since the card’s annual fee is $150. If you can use the hotel credit, it pays for the card.

I’ve used up most of our free nights, so I needed to book a paid stay at a Hilton property. I searched for the rate on the Hilton website, and a three-night stay was priced at $612 after tax.

I went to the Delta Stays website to check the same hotel and the price was identical. I chose to pay an extra $5 per night to extend the cancellation policy until the night before the stay.

The one problem was that the website said that the booking was for paying at the hotel. To get the AMEX statement credit, you need to pay in advance through the Delta Stays website. Fortunately, when I clicked the link for the reservation, I was given a choice to pay in advance or to pay at the hotel. I chose to pay now with my Delta AMEX.

The downside of booking with Delta Stays

Since hotel chains consider travel portals as OTAs, booking through these websites means missing out on stay credits and loyalty benefits. However, since this stay is at a limited-service property, we won’t miss out on a free breakfast by booking through a third party. Additionally, we already have Hilton Gold status from our other credit cards, so we don’t need the night credits.

It’s worth $150 to book through Delta Stays when staying at a limited-service hotel. I’d feel differently if we were staying at a resort hotel where status matters more.

Would I use Delta Stays again?

Booking hotels through Delta Stays earn 2 SkyMiles per dollar. Since SkyMiles are worth around 1 cent each, that’s a 2% rebate on hotels booked through the Delta portal. I can earn up to 10X points with other travel portals, so Delta Stays isn’t competitive with other websites. However, I’ll look to use it once a year to use the credit with my Delta co-brand AMEX card.

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