Make Sure To Sign Up For Summer Hotel Promotions For Extra Points!

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It’s after Memorial Day! That means it’s now OK to wear white pants (except in Florida where it’s always acceptable), and the hotel chains are out with their summer hotel promotions. These offers give you bonus points for your hotel stays and you need to actively enroll for them, as they’re not automatically activated. You also really should read the fine print to make sure you don’t lose out on points because of a technicality.

I always recommend signing up for these offers even if you don’t expect to stay at any of these hotels. You never know when a last-minute hotel stay will happen. (Note: I’m already signed up for some of these but for those where I’m not, I’m doing so for each offer as I write this post.)

Here are the offers for the major hotel chains this summer:

Choice Hotels (Quality Inn, Comfort Inn, Econolodge)

Choice Hotels’ promotion is great if you are planning on going on a road trip this summer. If you stay two separate times between May 11 and July 31, 2017 you will be awarded 8,000 points for the two stays. During this promotion if you do not want to keep the points, Choice is allowing you to trade those 8,000 points for a $50 gift card for stores like Apple, Amazon.com, Lowe’s, Bass Pro Shops, Shell, Olive Garden and Chili’s among others.  You are able to sign up for this offer and see the full list of partners at the webpage here. You do need to book directly with Choice by their website, app or the hotel (no third party bookings like Expedia or Hotels.com will count). You also have to set your earning preference to Choice points.

Hilton – Go More Get More

Stays at Hilton brand hotels between May 1 and August 31, 2017 will earn double points on all eligible stays. If you happen to be a Diamond level member of the Hilton Honors program, you will earn triple points. Most of the 4,900 Hilton brand hotels worldwide are participating in this promotion, except of some hotels in Mainland China. For this promotion, you need to be signed up PRIOR to the check-out of the stay in order to get the bonus points. You can sign up for the promotion with this link.

(Note: I have often had problems signing up for Hilton promotions because I like to practice safe password techniques and Hilton’s sign-up page can not handle complicated passwords that have symbols. A work around for this is to sign in to your account, change your password to a simple password, go back to the promotion page to enroll and then you can log back into your account and change the password back into a “tough” password.)

IHG (Holiday Inn)  – Accelerate

NOTE: This Accelerate promotion ended on August 31, 2017 . To see the current promotion, CLICK HERE!

IHG consistently has the most interesting promotions. Instead of giving the same offer to all members, IHG creates a unique offer based on things like your past stay history, if you have an IHG co-brand credit card, if you use the IHG app, if you have purchased points, etc. These offers usually give some points for achieving a certain tasks like getting 2,000 bonus points for staying on a weekend, 5,000 points for staying a two different IHG brand hotels and an extra 2,500 points for booking with the IHG app. If you complete a certain number of tasks, you get a huge kicker bonus for your troubles. Travel Hackers tend to either LOVE or HATE these promotions because sometimes you can complete all of the tasks with a minimum amount of nights (you can overlap the tasks, like in the above example you could stay for a weekend in a Holiday Inn Express and book with the IHG app. You’ve now completed 2 of your tasks and are 1/2 way to the third one.)

Unfortunately, other times you get a task that you can not complete (like you need to make a stay in Europe or stay at a Crowne Plaza) that makes it difficult to get the kicker bonus. If this is your situation, you should not give up on the promotion as you might still be able to collect several of the smaller bonuses.

You can log in here and see what your offer is. Your stays need to be between May 15 to August 31, 2017. It is important to read the fine print because some of these offers need to be BOOKED AFTER you sign up for the promotion. Also IHG is notorious for not posting the completed tasks in a timely manner so it is on you to make sure your points post.

Marriott – MegaBonus Infinite Points

Marriott’s promotion is pretty straightforward but you need to have multiple stays to take advantage of it. You will earn 2,000 bonus points per stay, starting with your SECOND stay. You will also get an extra 2,000 points for each time you stay at a different one of Marriott’s EIGHTEEN brands of hotels, not counting the one you stay at for the first stay. The promotion runs from May 27 to September 4, 2017 and you need to register by August 30th. The terms and conditions are listed here and you can sign up by signing into your account here.

Ritz-Carlton – Summer Sojourns

If you’re lucky enough to be staying at a Ritz-Carlton hotel this summer for two or more nights, it’s a good idea to register for this promotion. Simply put, you’ll earn double points for every stay of two nights or longer between May 27 and September 4, 2017. You’ll need to register for the offer here before August 30th. It is important to note that you only need to be a member of Marriott Rewards OR Ritz-Carlton Rewards, but not both and you are only able to sign up for the promotion from the program you are a member of. Choose wisely.

Starwood – SPG Take Three

Starwood’s promotion this summer will give you extra points for stays of 2 nights or longer. You can get 3X points on weekends and 2X points on weekdays for stays between May 27 and September 4, 2017. You need to register for the promotion by August 30th in order to get the extra points but if you do, all stays during the eligible time period will earn the bonus points. Not ALL Starwood hotels participate in these promotions so there is a list of of the hotels that are taking part along with a FAQ on the signup page.

So are you planning on traveling this summer? Be sure to sign up for these above promotions so you don’t leave extra points behind!

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