For years, I considered hotel credit cards among the easiest to justify keeping. Pay an annual fee, receive a free night certificate and use it at a hotel that costs more than the fee. As long as the math worked, the card earned its place in my wallet.
The problem is that my wife Sharon and I now receive a combined nine hotel free night certificates every year:
- Four Marriott free nights
- Four IHG free nights
- One World of Hyatt free night
Nine free hotel nights sounds great. However, I’ve started to realize that these certificates aren’t always saving us money. Instead, they’re influencing where we stay.
Our travel style is changing. We’re increasingly interested in independent hotels, historic properties and places with some personality rather than automatically choosing whichever chain hotel lets us use a certificate. That’s left me seriously reevaluating how many hotel credit cards we need to keep paying for.
After reviewing our collection, I’ve decided four of them need to go.
Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card
The Hilton Surpass Card is one of the easier decisions.
The card has a $150 annual fee and includes Hilton Honors Gold status, along with up to $50 in Hilton statement credits each quarter. You can also earn a Hilton free night after spending $15,000 on the card during a calendar year.
Those benefits can make the card worthwhile, but they don’t do much for us anymore.
We already have Hilton status through other cards. Also, I don’t want to put $15,000 in spending on the Surpass just to earn another hotel certificate. I’ve already decided that pursuing a Hilton free night this way doesn’t fit our current strategy.
The quarterly Hilton credits are only valuable if we stay at a Hilton each quarter. Otherwise, they become another set of credits we have to remember to use.
Without an automatic annual free night, there isn’t enough here to justify keeping the card.
World Of Hyatt Business Credit Card
The World of Hyatt Business Card is another relatively straightforward cancellation.
It has a $199 annual fee but doesn’t provide an automatic anniversary free night. Its benefits are more useful for someone putting significant business spending on the card or actively pursuing Hyatt status.
That’s not what I’m doing with it.
We still have a personal World of Hyatt Card, which provides a Category 1-4 free night every year and five elite night credits. That’s the Hyatt card that still fits our needs.
The business card costs $199 and doesn’t provide a benefit we would miss, so it no longer deserves a place in the wallet.
Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card
The Marriott cards required more thought because we currently receive four Marriott free night certificates every year.
Two are worth up to 85,000 points. Those come from Sharon’s Ritz-Carlton Card and my Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card.
I don’t plan to get rid of either.
The two 85,000-point certificates work well together. We can use them for a two-night stay at a hotel that would otherwise cost more than we would want to pay. Combined with the Brilliant Card’s monthly dining credits and Marriott Platinum status, those cards still have a role in our travel plans.
Our other two Marriott certificates are worth up to 35,000 points. One comes from Sharon’s legacy Marriott Premier Business Card from Chase, while the other comes from my Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card.
We can easily use one 35,000-point certificate each year. But I’m less convinced that we need two.
Sharon’s Chase card is no longer available to new applicants. If she closes it, she won’t be able to get it back. The Marriott Bonvoy Business Amex is still available, costs $125 annually and largely duplicates benefits we already have elsewhere.
Since I mostly keep that card for its 35,000-point certificate, it’s the obvious one to eliminate.
That will leave us with three Marriott certificates each year: two 85,000-point certificates for a nicer two-night stay and one 35,000-point certificate for a more ordinary night. That feels much more manageable.
One Of Our IHG Credit Cards
IHG is the most complicated part of this decision.
Between us, we currently receive four IHG free night certificates every year. We’ve been able to use them, but four certificates are becoming more than we naturally need.
There’s also an important limitation. The fourth-night-free benefit on IHG Premier cards only works when you book a four-night stay entirely with IHG points. You can’t use free night certificates for part of the reservation and still receive the fourth night free.
In other words, our four certificates don’t combine into the equivalent of the fourth-night-free benefit. They’re two entirely separate ways of booking stays.
I don’t want to give up the fourth-night-free benefit because it has saved us a meaningful number of points. However, we don’t need multiple cards providing the same benefit. As long as we retain one Premier card, we can still receive the fourth night free on award stays booked through that person’s IHG account.
The legacy IHG Select cards are also difficult to replace, and their lower annual fees make them easier to justify keeping. Therefore, one of our duplicate IHG Premier cards is likely to go.
If we ever decide we need another Premier card, the IHG Premier Business Card remains another possibility. Chase currently treats it separately from the restriction preventing someone with another personal IHG card from applying for a new personal card.
What We’re Keeping
After these cancellations, we’ll still have seven annual hotel certificates:
- Three Marriott free nights
- Three IHG free nights
- One World of Hyatt free night
Seven is still a significant number, but each remaining certificate has a clearer purpose.
We’ll have two high-value Marriott certificates we can use together, one lower-level Marriott certificate we know we can use, enough IHG certificates without four competing for our trips, and one Hyatt certificate that remains relatively easy to redeem.
We’ll also save $573 in annual fees by dropping the Hilton Surpass, World of Hyatt Business, Marriott Bonvoy Business Amex and one IHG Premier card.
Hotel Credits Have Also Changed The Equation
There’s another reason we don’t need as many chain-specific certificates as we once did.
We now have access to hotel credits through programs such as Bilt, Chase Travel, American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts, Citi Travel and Delta Stays. Those credits give us more ways to reduce hotel costs without automatically choosing Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt or IHG.
Our recent stay in Québec City was a good example. We used Bilt hotel credits toward an independent property we actually wanted to stay at. A hotel certificate would have limited us to whichever chain properties were available.
Portal credits have their own drawbacks, and I wouldn’t use one without comparing prices and booking terms. But they give us more flexibility than a certificate tied to one hotel company.
Free Nights Aren’t Really Free
None of this means hotel credit cards are a bad deal. We’re keeping several because their certificates and other benefits still work for us.
But annual free night certificates aren’t free. We’re prepaying for them through annual fees, and each certificate comes with restrictions involving the hotel chain, maximum point value, availability and expiration date.
The old calculation was whether we could redeem a certificate for a room costing more than the card’s annual fee. I’m no longer convinced that’s enough.
The better question is whether we would have chosen that hotel without the certificate.
If the answer is no, the card may be saving us money on a stay we wouldn’t otherwise have booked—or steering us away from the hotel we really wanted.
Our travel preferences have changed, so our credit card collection needs to change with them. Canceling four hotel cards won’t mean giving up on hotel loyalty programs. It will simply mean having fewer annual fees and fewer certificates telling us where we ought to stay. Your Mileage May Vary.
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