Hotel co-brand credit cards offer similar benefits. Most cards offer hotel status, and some even provide a free night for renewing the card for another year and paying the annual fee. However, there are two co-brand cards that go a step further than that and offer a free night once you spend a certain amount on the card.
Both the World of Hyatt Visa and the Hilton Honors Surpass AMEX award a free night when cardholders spend over $15,000 in a calendar year. But which one of these cards provides a better benefit?
World of Hyatt Card
The World of Hyatt card provides a free night at a category 1-4 property to all cardholders upon your anniversary. In addition, you can earn an additional free night at a category 1-4 property by spending $15,000 in a calendar year.
While limiting the free night to lower hotel categories eliminates the ability to use it in major U.S. cities like New York, there are still some category 4 hotels in places like Washington D.C. In addition, it’s much easier to find lower-category hotels in Asia, like this amazing category 3 hotel we stayed at in Vietnam.
I redeemed our free night at the Grand Hyatt Washington, where rooms were going for close to $400 per night. The hotel is in a great location for touring the city by foot and rooms were spacious, even if we had a view of the atrium.
While it was a great use for a free night certificate, I was fortunate to find a Hyatt hotel where we could use the free night before it expired. That’s why I changed my tactics and moved our expenses to the Hilton Surpass AMEX the following year.
Hilton Honors American Express Surpass
While the Hilton Honors Surpass AMEX doesn’t offer a free night for all members, you can earn an almost unlimited free night for spending $15,000 on the card in a calendar year. Granted, there are a handful of properties that are excluded from the free night benefit, but you can redeem your free night at almost every Hilton property as long as there’s a base room available to book with Hilton Honors points.
Our problem is that we don’t often stay with Hilton. I had a perfect use in mind for our free night because we were going to need a free night in Barcelona before our cruise this fall. However, we had to postpone those plans and I needed to find a use for the free night. You see, the free night expires 1 year after it’s added to your account, and there are no extensions to the expiration date.
Just like our Hyatt free night the year before, I was in a use-it-or-lose-it situation. We needed a room for our stay in New Braunfels, TX, and I looked at the nearby Hilton hotels. There was a hotel that was charging 40,000 points or $300+ for a Friday night stay. I don’t fault hotels for hiking up prices in peak season. While I know many people will scoff that I used my Hilton certificate at a low-level property, I had a choice of spending it or letting it expire. At least I was able to save $300 or 40K points.
Which Free Night is Better?
When comparing the two free nights, I was able to get more from the Hyatt certificate than I did from the Hilton free night. However, that’s only because my plans for using the Hilton free night fell through, and I had to find the best, worst option to use it before it expired. While I lucked into finding a Category 4 Hyatt, that’s not always going to happen. Therefore, I’m going to focus on getting the Hilton free night, which we can use at most any Hilton property worldwide, instead of a Hyatt free night, which is capped at a category 4 hotel.
If I was able to spend $15,000 on each card and earn both free nights, that wouldn’t be bad either.
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