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Which credit cards are best for high luxury hotel spend? With many clients' hotel spend in the high five figure range, it's worth leveraging that spend to earn significant points and thus frequent flyer miles. After all, why only earn 80,000 points when you could be earning 320,000 points or miles? Plus, depending on the card, you may be able to have trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance coverage.
While loyalists to a particular hotel brand will prefer that brand's co-branded card, we find the cards below most valuable for our clients booking true luxury hotels, which tend to not offer a branded card: think Cheval Blanc, Four Seasons, Belmond, Rosewood, Oetker Collection, Rocco Forte, and similar.
1. Chase Sapphire Reserve or Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business: 4X Points per Dollar on Hotels
The revamped Chase Sapphire Reserve is more expensive than we'd like, at an effective $495 annual fee per year (the annual fee is $795, but there's a $300 annual travel credit each account anniversary year that's easy to use). But the category bonus for hotels, which used to be 3X, is now 4X for all hotels booked directly (this is also true for flights booked directly). For someone spending $80,000 per year on hotels, that's worth an additional $1600, if valuing Chase Ultimate Rewards points at 2 cents per point. But even on more modest annual hotel spend of $20,000, that's an additional 20,000 UR points, or an additional $400, helping to significantly defray the annual fee.
Also note that these 4X points per dollar for hotels are earned with our luxury hotel bookings for TravelSort Clients, which include not only valuable preferred partner perks and often higher priority for upgrades than with AMEX Fine Hotels & resorts.
Virtually all of our luxury hotel reservations are made with the hotels directly and charged by the hotels. On the occasions where we're able to provide special wholesale rates to clients, these are disclosed so that clients are aware that they won't be earning category bonuses or loyalty points (if applicable) on these bookings.
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2. Wells Fargo Autograph Journey Card: 5X Points per Dollar on Hotels
The Wells Fargo Autograph Journey card earns 5X points per dollar on hotels and has only a $95 annual fee. So what's the catch? It doesn't have as many transfer partners as the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Wells Fargo Autograph Journey points only transfer 1:1 to British Airways Avios / Iberia Plus Avios / Aer Lingus Avios; Air France-KLM Flying Blue; Avianca LifeMiles; and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. But if those work for you, it can be a great deal.
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3. Ink Business Preferred: 3X Points per Dollar on Hotels and Other Travel
For clients who were disappointed that the revamped Chase Sapphire Reserve dropped the 3X points in other travel, we've recommended getting the Ink Business Preferred Card, which has only a $95 annual fee and earns 3X on all travel, including hotels. If you hate playing the “coupon game” of the AMEX Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve, this is your card. Points transfer to the same Ultimate Rewards points transfer partners that CSR points do.
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4. Citi Strata Premier: 3X Points per Dollar for Hotels
The Citi Strata Premier card earns 3X Citi ThankYou points per dollar spent on hotels booked directly (including those booked by TravelSort with preferred partner benefits), and the card has a $95 annual fee. Citi ThankYou points transfer to many of the same airline frequent flyer programs that Chase Ultimate Rewards points do (although not to United MileagePlus, which UR points do), plus they also transfer 1:1 to American Airlines AAdvantage, which other credit cards do not, due to Citi's relationship with AA. ThankYou points do not transfer to Hyatt, which Ultimate Rewards points do.
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5. AMEX Blue Business Plus: 2X Points per Dollar for Hotels (and Everything Else)
While we'd recommend earning at least 3X points per dollar on all hotel spend, if it's important to you to not pay any annual fee at all, the AMEX Blue Business Plus has you covered. You'll earn 2X Membership Rewards points per dollar spent not only on hotels, but on everything else (up to $50,000 per calendar year).
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