The Fine Print

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How we book five-star hotels mostly on points — and the costs nobody flags.

There's a lot of advice online about “free” luxury hotels on points. Most of it comes from people who haven't actually done it. We have — so here's the honest version: what the premium cards really cover, what they don't, and the exact receipts to prove it.

The short version

Two cards do the heavy lifting: the Amex Platinum (Fine Hotels + Resorts) and the Chase Sapphire Reserve (The Edit). Between them the hotel credits now run to roughly $1,350 a year — $600 on the Amex side, and up to $750 on the Chase side once the newer participating-brand credit is counted.

On the Chase side those credits come in three separate layers, and Chase's own guidance says to think of them that way:

• The Edit credit — two statement credits of $250 each per calendar year, on prepaid bookings with a two-night minimum.
• The participating-brand hotel credit — up to $250 more, on prepaid two-night bookings at named brands including IHG, Montage, Pendry, Omni, Virgin Hotels, Minor Hotel Group and Pan Pacific. This one runs through 31 December 2026.
• The $300 annual travel credit — the flexible one, applying broadly across travel spend.

They layer in that order, and here is the part most people never reach: all three can apply to a single stay if the reservation total exceeds $800. Our InterContinental booking was at an IHG property, which is exactly the case the brand credit now covers — the same stay booked today would stack further than it did for us.

The perks on top. Room upgrade when available, breakfast for two, early check-in and late checkout (guaranteed 4pm on FHR; subject to availability on The Edit), a welcome amenity and Wi-Fi. The property credit is $100 on The Edit's Hotel + Resort and Boutique collections and $200 on the All-In collection — it is not uniform across every Edit property, which is easy to misread.

Prepaid rates aren't dead points. The Sapphire Reserve earns 8x on Chase Travel purchases including The Edit, against 4x on hotels booked direct. The Platinum earns 5x on prepaid hotels booked through Amex Travel.

You may now keep the hotel points too — conditionally. Chase runs a program it calls Loyalty Plus, under which qualifying bookings can earn the hotel's own points, elite night awards and status benefits. Chase names IHG One Rewards and Accor Live Limitless. Two things to know before you count on it. Chase says outright that not all properties within participating brands qualify — look for the “Eligible for Loyalty Plus” banner and add your loyalty number at checkout. And IHG's own published member terms exclude third-party channel bookings from earning, without naming Chase Travel as an exception. The two positions are not reconciled anywhere public, so check that your points actually posted a week after checkout, while you still have the paperwork. Do not expect Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors or World of Hyatt points on a Chase Travel or Edit booking — Chase does not claim it and Marriott's terms bar it.

What redeeming points is worth has changed. Points redeemed through Chase Travel are worth 1 cent each as the baseline. The old guaranteed enhanced rate is gone, replaced by Points Boost — a variable uplift worth up to 2x on selected, rotating hotels and flights, Edit properties among them. Chase's own example: a stay needing 200,000 points at the base rate can take as few as 100,000 when boosted. The practical consequence is that there is no longer a fixed rate to plan around. Check, per search, whether the property in front of you is boosted. Anyone still telling you these points are worth a flat 1.5 cents is working from an older version of this card.

Two caveats we learned the hard way. The part of a Chase booking covered by a statement credit earns nothing — Chase's terms say so outright. And any part you pay with points isn't a dollar spent, so it doesn't earn either. On our InterContinental stay the 8x applied only to the cash left after points and credit.

These figures are current as of 6 September 2026 and every one of them is taken from the issuer's own pages, not from a comparison site. Card terms change constantly — verify with the issuer before you book.

Real stay #1 — a birthday at the InterContinental Los Angeles

We booked it mostly on points through The Edit for my partner's birthday. It's the tallest hotel in Los Angeles — breakfast above the clouds, and a nightcap at Spire 73, the tallest open-air bar in the Western Hemisphere. Five stars, and we'd do it again tomorrow.

The fine print? Parking. $65 a night, plus a $6.50 City of L.A. parking tax — $71.50 a night, on our own card. That's not a knock on the hotel; every downtown hotel charges for parking. It's just the number to budget for going in.

Real stay #2 — the tea trick at The Londoner

Booked on Amex FHR. The $100 property credit went toward a legendary afternoon tea, and a property promotion gave us a complimentary fourth night — though you'll never see it as a “£0” line. It's blended into the average nightly rate, real but invisible on the bill.

Be careful what you expect here. A free night is not a standard Fine Hotels + Resorts benefit, and ours was more generous than the usual version. Amex's own wording is that some properties may offer a complimentary third night when you book at least three consecutive nights, and that it varies by property. We got a fourth because that particular hotel was running its own promotion — which is the point: the free night comes from the property, not from the card. So it is worth looking for on a specific hotel, and worth nothing at all on most of them. What FHR does give you every time is the $100 property credit, daily breakfast for two, guaranteed 4pm checkout, and a room upgrade and noon check-in when available.

How to actually pull this off

This is what we do, not financial advice. Card terms change constantly — verify current terms with the issuer before you book. Some links below are affiliate links (#ad); they never change what you pay.