how to earn free or discounted hotel rooms
We have some pretty awesome vacations this Summer. We took a 5 day vacation and were able to stay at hotels for free. Nice hotels too. This all was possible because we used our Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card to accumulate points. I will share how we got free hotel rooms below. There are affiliate/referral links below that I receive a small commission.
how to get free hotel rooms
Nothing was free at first. We knew we were taking a trip to Hawaii. We researched different credit cards companies that offered bonus’ and found that there were several that offered bonus points for spending certain amounts of money within a time period. I knew we could do this easily with our vacation to Hawaii, so we applied for the card and when it arrived, we booked our airline and hotel on the card and met their requirements for bonus points.
We continued to use the credit card and accumulated more points. We were taking another trip and we were able to book hotels for that trip using the points we earned from booking the trip to Hawaii. It allowed us to have a vacation where the only expense were the meals, gas and souvenirs.
While it seems like it’s just simple to do, it requires discipline. When you charging all your expenses on the card, you need to discipline yourself to pay off the card weekly, so you do not go into debt.
When we received our bonus points on the credit card, we were able to book our rental car (Jeep) in Hawaii with our points (saving us $700+). I will take a win with that.
hotel rewards program credit card
We were able to stay in very nice hotels on vacation by following this process. We did not compromise on the quality of hotels because we used points for our cheap hotel stay. There were boutique hotels we stayed in. Hotels with pools. Hotels that offered breakfast. We actually stayed in really nice hotel rooms for free. Pictured are hotels we stayed in for free!
My kids enjoyed seeing what free looked like. We had suites with 2 bedrooms and a fireplace. A boutique hotel loft on the 3rd floor that was 1500 square feet. We stayed in more traditional rooms too, and experience historic hotels as well.
One thing you can do, is use your points for hotel rooms for deep hotel discounts off nice rooms and pay the difference if you don’t have enough points.
You can redeem your points on more than just hotel rooms, you can accumulate them for gift cards, flights and more.
Do they hotels know that you got the room for free? It doesn’t appear so. We were told that several times that we had paid by a third party booking site and would get our receipt from them.
We did have to use a credit card each time to secure any incidentals that might have been charged to the room. I have found this is standard even when we pay for the rooms.
What ways do you save money when you travel? Where do you want to travel for free?