A few months ago, I wrote about our plan to live as much as possible at major, global hotel chains using a combination of hotel loyalty points and paid stays. http://ournomadicexperience.com/elite-hotel-status-nomadic-living-strategy/ With our elite hotel status, we hoped to live comfortably and inexpensively by taking advantage of free meals and upgraded rooms. Two and a half years ago, we retired at age 53 and live full-time traveling the globe with a suitcase and backpack each.
Our goal was to average under $30 per night in accommodation expenses using this lifestyle. The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics says that the average US family spends $52 per day on shelter. Most people only consider the cost of their mortgage or rent in their shelter costs, but the Bureau of Labor and Statistics considers all shelter costs like utilities, insurance, maintenance, household goods, etc. Thirty dollars a day spent on shelter is significantly less than what the average US household spends.
Elite Hotel Living for $26 per day
So, how did we do? We stayed in a total of 45 nights in hotels that are part of the Hilton, Marriott, Starwood, and IHG chains. Of those stays, we used points or free night certificates for 21 nights and paid for 24 nights. Our average net cost per night was $26.24 when we subtract the value of the points we earned during our stays from our out of pocket costs. At the time, we had Diamond status with Hilton, their highest status, but only Gold status with Marriott and Starwood. Our points earning and benefits would have been even higher if we had Platinum status with Marriott and Starwood, which we will achieve in August of this year.
The year before we retired, we accumulated over one million hotel and airline reward points. http://ournomadicexperience.com/over-million-hotel-airline-points-year/ We have continued to earn points since retiring and had about 750,000 hotel reward points before we started the 45 days of staying in branded hotels. We could have simply used hotel reward points for all our stays, but often it is a better long-term value to pay for a hotel room rather than using points. In fact, we earned more points from our 24 paid nights than the number of points we used for our 21 redeemed nights! We did this by taking advantage of bonus points offers by the hotels during this period and by judiciously choosing whether to pay for a stay or use points based on the cost in points or cash.
Although hotel reward points don’t have a cash value, you can’t redeem them and get money, they do have value based on what they can get you, usually free rooms. I used the estimated values of hotel points published by The Points Guy to determine what I thought the value of the points we earned from our stays are worth for future travel. https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/
Details of where we stayed
From March 28, 2018, to June 25, 2018, we stayed as often as we could at properties that are a part of a major global hotel chain. During this period, we were in the countries of Myanmar, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. In total, we spent 45 nights at major hotel chains. Some of the places we traveled to did not have a hotel that was a part of a major chain. For example, in Myanmar, we stayed 2 nights at a Hilton, but there were no other major hotels in any of the other places we stayed. In Nepal, we went on a 9-day trek and our other time was spent in cities with no major hotels. In Indonesia, we stayed in a couple of small villages where there were no major hotel chains.
We always book the lowest cost room at the hotel and hope that we get upgraded. With our elite status, we typically get an upgrade wherever we stay. Sometimes the upgrade is simply to a room on a higher floor or one with a better view, while other times we get upgraded to multi-room suites.
For complete details on where we stayed, the cost, points earned or spent per stay, whether we were upgraded or not, etc. see the spreadsheet on this link. Spreadsheet of 45 Day Hotel Stay Details
Benefits of elite hotel status
– Upgraded rooms
We were upgraded to a one-bedroom suite for 45% of the nights we stayed. For all the nights we were upgraded in some way due to our status, for example, a larger room, room with a better view or room on a higher floor.
It is very nice to get a large, upgraded room for the cost of the least expensive room in the hotel. There is no guarantee that we will get a suite, but we certainly enjoy it when it happens. If we had to pay for a suite, the price could be over twice what we paid for a regular room.
Susan enjoying the living area of our upgraded one bedroom suite at the Conrad Hotel in Bali. The standard room that we booked was 485 square feet – still fairly large by hotel standards. This upgraded suite is 1185 square feet – larger than the last house we owned.
-Meal amenities
Besides the perks of room upgrades, there are other tangible benefits to having elite status. The most valuable to us is free breakfast, afternoon tea, or evening hor d’oeuvres. For hotels that have an executive lounge, you typically also have access to free coffee, soft drinks, and light snacks such as fruit, nuts, and cookies all day.
The value and quality of the food you get can vary by hotel. The free breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn was not that impressive, your typical low-end buffet with hot and cold items, but still adequate. The food at the Conrad in Bali was fantastic! I enjoyed made to order eggs benedict each morning and handmade espressos and cappuccinos at breakfast and throughout the day. In the afternoon, we got custom juice cocktails and formal English tea with tiny sandwiches, pastries, and other treats. In the evening we were served unlimited heavy hor d’oeuvres and custom drinks. We didn’t factor in the value of the free food in our analysis, but we were served a total of 67 times (either breakfast, afternoon tea, or heavy hor d’oeuvres) during our 45-day stay. Even assigning a minimal value of $5 USD per person for each of those meals, that is $670 worth of value that we received.
If we had reached Platinum status for Starwood, we would have had more meals – breakfast at the Element Hotel in Ubud, for example. Breakfast at the very low-end hotels like the Hampton Inn, (none of these are in Indonesia or Malaysia) or Fairfield Inn, are free for all guests, but are typically of poor quality. At other hotels, the breakfast quality is a lot better but requires elite status to get it for free.
Maximize the value of your points
To get the most value from your hotel reward points you need to both earn and spend your points wisely. We feel that we squeezed as much value as we could out of our points. First of all, we traveled to an area where global chain hotels were abundant and relatively inexpensive. Second, we used a variety of strategies to get the most out of our points.
– Evaluate whether to pay in points or pay with cash
We pay special attention to where we stay and weigh whether it is more beneficial to pay for a stay or to use points. The number of points required per night varies greatly depending on the property and the season. For example, we paid $115 USD per night for a stay at the Conrad Hotel in Bali. If we used points, it would have cost us 90,000 points per night. We would have received a value of 0.12 cents per point. Just across town, we used 4000 points per night for a five-night stay at the Hilton Garden Inn. If we had paid for the room it would have cost $58 per night, a value of 1.4 cents per point – over ten times the value per point we would have received at the Conrad.
– Earn as many points as possible for paid stays
Take advantage of promotions to earn extra points
In addition to comparing the cost of the room using points versus paying cash, we also consider any ongoing promotions. For example, Hilton had a program offering double points for stays May through August. Marriott had a promotion awarding a free night certificate if we completed two stays within five months, so we made sure to make two stays at Marriott properties during this time.
Use hotel credit cards to pay for stays
We have one or more credit cards sponsored by each of the major hotel chains. These credit cards typically give you many more reward points when used to book a hotel room of the sponsoring credit card. For example, our Hilton Honors American Express Ascend card gives us 12 points for every dollar we spend at a Hilton family hotel.
Some of these hotel credit cards come with an annual fee. For many of those cards, we are awarded a free night certificate once per year. These free night certificates can come in very handy especially in an area where hotel costs are high, for example, Singapore. We used two free night certificates to stay at the Intercontinental Hotel. Our annual fee for the IHG credit card is $49. The per night rate at the Intercontinental is over $500 USD per night. Normally, Singapore would be way too expensive for our low-cost living budget, but the free night certificates make it possible to visit at least for a few nights a year without totally breaking the budget.
Achieve elite status at hotels to get more points
For frequent travelers like us, having elite status not only gives you benefits like upgraded rooms but the higher your status, the more points you earn. For example, with Hilton Diamond status, not only do you earn twice as many points as someone with no status for every dollar you spend at a Hilton hotel, you also get a “Welcome Bonus” when you check in of 500 or 1000 points depending on the hotel. The cool thing about this is that you get the bonus points even if you are using points for your stay! There are shortcuts to elite status. Check out this post for ideas on how to achieve elite status quickly. http://ournomadicexperience.com/get-elite-hotel-status-quickly/
There were a number of promotions in effect at the time of our travel. Hilton had a double points promotion and Marriott had a targetted promotion where you got a free night certificate worth up to 25,000 points when you completed two stays within a certain period of time. By taking advantage of these promotions, using a hotel credit card, and leveraging our status, we earned over six times as many points as someone without status using a generic credit card or cash for stays.
Other benefits of global brand hotel stays with elite status
We have stayed in many nice hotels and nice Airbnbs that are not part of a global chain. However, there are benefits to staying with global chains:
- consistent, predictable quality – global brands have standards for service, cleanliness, etc. that must be upheld globally. You also have a pretty good idea of what to expect based on the hotel type even if you don’t even look at a description of the specific hotel. For example, I knew that the Conrad was going to be much more high-end and comfortable than the Hilton Garden Inn.
- recourse if something goes wrong or is not as expected – we have learned that staying at a single location, private hotel can be a bit hit and miss and hard to judge if there are just a few reviews on booking.com or wherever you book your room. If something is not up to par it is tougher to get it fixed or to get compensation.
- Other benefits can be as simple as free bottled water, free or upgraded internet access. One hotel even offered free pressing of two articles of clothing. In most hotels, we got a welcome gift of a fruit plate or assortment of nuts and dessert upon check-in due to our status.
A typical welcome plate of fresh fruit that is waiting in our room when we arrive.
Conclusion
Our elite status hotel living strategy is working out well in Malaysia and Indonesia. We have been able to stay in comfortable, well-equipped hotels for an average of $26 per night, what it would cost to stay at lesser quality independent hotels and backpacker focused locations. This strategy will probably continue to work well in Malaysia and Indonesia. It would likely work well in China and India as well where there are many global hotel chain locations. This strategy would probably not work that well in higher cost countries like the USA, Canada and most of Western Europe.
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