How I stayed in a $1,500 per night hotel room for FREE

Imagine standing at the front desk in the gold-leafed lobby of one of the nicest hotels in Paris. The impeccably dressed clerk hands you the bill and informs you that you’ve been upgraded to the King Suite from the standard room you booked. You glance down at the paper in your hand, which indicates that you owe exactly zero euros for your hotel stay.

This happened to me at the Intercontinental Le Grand in Paris, and it’s not the first time! I have saved thousands of dollars on hotel rooms through membership rewards programs.

In February, my partner and I stayed at the Le Grand for free. We got five free upgrades from the standard room and ended up in a $1500 room for our anniversary! How? By taking advantage of IHG’s membership rewards program.

What is a membership rewards program?

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A membership rewards program is a loyalty program where brands (in this case, hotel chains) compensate you with points and status for becoming a member and spending money at their properties. The hotels do this to incentivize you to stay at their brands more, so you can earn more points, and eventually earn a free stay at their hotels.

Why join a hotel loyalty program?

There are many benefits to joining hotel loyalty programs. These will vary based on the hotel chain, but there are a few benefits common to most loyalty programs.

Free/Discounted Stays

By earning points on your membership account, you will be able to build up to a free night. Some programs also offer free night certificates that you can earn through holding specific credit cards, spending a certain amount of money on their credit cards, or participating in a promotion.

The idea is that you will spend money at the hotel over and over again so that eventually you can stay at their brand for free. Read on to figure out how to hack this so you can stay for free without spending a ton of money!

Status

Hotel status goes by many different names based on the different brands. Some are coded by silver, gold and platinum, some are coded by club and various levels of elite, and some have completely random names for each status. However, there are a few commonalities between most status programs. The higher your status, the more benefits you will get from the hotel. The more benefits you have, the more money you can save.

Status provides benefits such as:

Faster rates to collect points
Cheaper rates for hotel rooms
Early check-in
Late check-out
Dedicated customer service phone lines
Free internet (still not sure why this is a status thing… everyone should get this)
“Welcome” amenities such as points, drinks, free breakfast, etc
Complimentary room upgrades
Guaranteed room availability
Access to special areas such as executive lounges that have food, drinks, etc.

For example, here is IHG’s status chart (as of August 2019):

And here is Hilton’s status chart (as of August 2019):

What’s the best way to get a free hotel night?

The way the hotels hope you earn your free hotel nights is by spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of nights sleeping in their hotel rooms. My partner and I do this for work, and it is great because our companies pay for the rooms but allow us to earn the points. However, it takes a long time and a lot of traveling.

The good news is you can skip all of that time and expense. The easiest and fastest way to get a free stay in a hotel is by signing up for a hotel co-branded credit card. For example, I signed up for the IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card to earn a free night certificate. That free night certificate is how I stayed in the Intercontinental Le Grand in Paris for free.

Please note that the program rules have changed as of late 2018, and redemptions of free night certificates have been capped at properties worth 40,000 points or less. This was the case for my anniversary night certificate as well, but somehow it allowed me to redeem for the Le Grand, a 70,000 point hotel.

It never hurts to try redeeming your certificates for the properties you really want. If this doesn’t work for you, it’s still possible to get a night at an amazing property for 40,000 points. And a free night is a free night!

Combine this strategy with signing up for points-earning promotions, and you will be on your way to several free nights in no time. If you also use the 4th or 5th night free benefits, you could be staying even longer for no money at all!

IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card

With the IHG Rewards Club Premier credit card [not an affiliate link], you’ll get (in August 2019):

125,000 IHG rewards points
1 free night per year
Automatic Platinum Elite status (see chart above for benefits)
Fourth reward nights free
Global Entry or TSA pre-check for free (reimbursed on your statement)
And bonus points for every dollar spent.

Please note that the credit card has an $89 annual fee. Additionally, in order to earn the 125,000 rewards points, you have to spend a minimum of $3,000 on the credit card within 3 months of opening the account.

Hilton Amex Surpass

The other credit card I would recommend to you is the Hilton Amex Surpass (previously called the Ascend) credit card. Please note this is an affiliate link, so we will get credit card points if you sign up for this credit card through our link.

Using this credit card (and the Hilton Honors Amex – which is a totally separate card), we are staying 5 nights in Hawaii in September… for free! I’ll be sharing an in-depth post about this soon. This link is also an affiliate link, you can click “View all cards with a referral offer” at the top of the page to see the Hilton Honors Amex offer.

As of August 2019, the benefits of the Hilton Amex Surpass Card are:

125,000 Hilton honors points
1 free weekend night award
Automatic Gold status (see chart above for benefits) – the free breakfast alone is worth hundreds
Fifth reward nights free
Priority Pass Select membership
And bonus points for every dollar spent

Please note that the credit card has a $95 annual fee. Additionally, in order to earn the 125,000 rewards points, you have to spend a minimum of $2,000 on the credit card within 3 months of opening the account.

Before you get a travel credit card

I do not recommend signing up for any credit cards if you are in credit card debt. Additionally, I don’t recommend signing up for this credit card if spending $3,000 in three months would cause you to spend more than usual or spend on things you would not usually spend on just to hit the minimum. Nor do I recommend signing up for this credit card if you can’t pay off the balance immediately.

This strategy is supposed to save you money, not cost you money. Spending more on unnecessary expenses or paying interest on purchases will cost you money that is not worth the free hotel night. I urge you to consider if you have planned expenses you could use to reach the required spend before applying for a travel credit card.

Our Experience With Free Hotel Nights & Status

As you know, we got a $1,500 suite in Le Grand for free. Additionally, we received a few benefits from having the automatic Platinum Elite status from holding the IHG credit card.

Thanks to our status, when we stayed at Le Grand, we also got treated to:

5 upgrades from the room type we booked
Free wine for 2 at the winter garden restaurant (Which was breathtaking, and the food was delicious. See photo above.)
And champagne magically appeared in our room while we were out visiting the Eiffel tower!

Conclusion: How to get free hotel nights

We accrue hundreds of thousands of hotel points through “travel hacking”. Most of our points come from 2 things:

1) Credit card sign-up bonuses – the 125,000 point offer currently on the Hilton Amex Surpass (previously Amex Ascend) when you’re referred by a friend or the 125,000 points on the IHG credit card PLUS a yearly free night certificate.

HILTON AMEX SURPASS [affiliate link]

IHG REWARDS CLUB PREMIER [not an affiliate link]

2) Points earned on paid stays. By signing up for the hotel rewards programs, which are free, we get points every time we stay. Since my partner and I both travel for work, we get points for hotel rooms that our companies pay for. We also keep our eyes peeled for promotions that will help us earn points faster!