To truly master travel rewards you have to be able to work across multiple systems and efficiently identify the highest yield approachs for your spending. I've talked before about the power of earning from food with an Amex Cobalt, or from your uncategorized spend with Amex Business Gold or a premium Aeroplan or Avion card. But once you've accumulated plenty of points for flights, you may notice that a new regular expense crops up - hotels!
In this article I'm going to go over ways to use hotel spend to further juice up your Aeroplan rewards and touch on some hotel programs that you can also take advantage of.
Earning Travel Points on Hotels
For the sake of comparison I will be showing different properties via 3 different booking means and discussing the relative benefits and drawbacks of each. The stays will be the same 4 nights long 2 months in the future from now. Note that not all properties are available with all booking approaches.
Aeroplan Hotels
Aeroplan offers a booking portal where users can either redeem their AP points for stays, or earn them on cash bookings. As is typically the case, the redemption values for AP points in this way are less than you'd get for flying - also we are focusing on earning for now regardless. The default earn rate here is 2x AP per dollar, but if you've obtained 25K status (for example by using the eStore) you earn an additional 3x (ie. 5x)
Prices are charged in CAD so you don't have to worry about forex, and the earn is in addition to what you earn on your credit card (ie. an Aeroplan card). Occassionally they will run promotions with additional point earn on top of this, but for 25K status this is a respectable earn rate. Unfortunately as this is a third party booking you can not expect any hotel status related perks, so if that is a priority to you I would leave this for circumstances where your favourite brand doesn't have a property nearby.
Rocketmiles
A lesser known tool, Rocketmiles offers the ability to earn in many different point systems including some more challenging to access ones like Alaska Air and EVA. Notably, RM is an official Aeroplan partner and they give above average rewards to those who choose to earn in AP. Unlike the AP travel portal, RM offers large flat point amounts for stays. Note that the site defaults prices into USD, but you can change it to CAD and the exchange seems appropriate. For example the JW in LA is priced at $2021 USD or $2792 CAD which is essentially at the spot exchange. If for whatever reason the exchange isn't so good consider using a no forex card.
In the LA example RM came through 1300 more AP return but a $250 higher price. RM also offers the ability "earn even more" in exchange for paying more, further exaggerating the difference. They generate a "business-friendly receipt" which doesn't disclose that more was paid for extra points. This is clearly targetted at those who can either deduct the expense or who have someone else footing the bill. The cost per point is typically too poor to consider doing it with personal dollars.
In this example, 4k extra points for $100 is a cost of 2.5cpp, above our typical target value for points.
But don't be so quick to write RM off, with a bit of searching you can find some incredible value compared to AP.
In this example the cost is similar (cheaper even) but you earn an additional 30k AP, in fact you are earning over 15x! It should be noted miles earned from RM do not count towards 25K status from EDQ, but regardless this would be an incredible way to earn points for your next flight.
Hotel Partners
Aeroplan also partners with many hotel chains to allow you to either earn in Aeroplan for stays booked with them, or to convert their points to Aeroplan. This includes many of the major chains such as Hilton, IHG, Marriott and others. While it typically makes sense to focus your stays with one chain to maximize status and retain your points in their ecosystem for higher value, there are exceptions. If you are going to stay at a hotel outside of your usual loyalty program (eg. city with no Marriott, therefore you end up at an IHG) it can make sense to earn or move the points to AP.
You should consider that the earning and converting options are not equal can't be stacked with the benefits of AP hotels or RM. For example, Mariott allow you to earn 2x AP directly per USD spent on room rate. Alternatively the lowest Bonvoy status earns 10x Bonvoy per USD on room rate and converts at 3:1 to AP rate (minimum 3k transfer), leading to a ~3.33x earn. Furthermore, as your Bonvoy status rises, so does this earn rate, meanwhile the 2x would stay constant - as such, even if you want AP points instead of Bonvoy it is better to earn in Bonvoy and convert.
That said this is still significantly less than earning 5x on total room cost in Canadian with AP Hotels if you have Aeroplan Status - it's a higher rate, on not just the room rate, and based on the canadian cost. Using the same JW in LA for the same dates we find the cheapest base room rate is $418 USD a night. That means a total of 3344 AP or 16,720 Bonvoy (which converts to 5000 AP with 1720 Bonvoy remaining) on a 4 night stay. The kicker? With taxes the cost is $1943 USD, and even if you use a no forex card at current spot rate that would be $2685 CAD - meanwhile AP hotels was $2547 and over 12k points back.
This general approach works for other hotels, just make sure to check the specific earning terms. Some earn fixed amounts (wg. Best Western and Choice give 250 AP per qualify stay), some can only earn in their own currency and then be converted (eg. 10k Hilton to 1k AP), and some can do either (eg. Marriott Bonvoy as above, IHG can earn at 2 per USD or convert at 5:1). If considering conversion you'll want to make sure you include the differing earn rates of each program in your comparisons. Many programs offer higher and higher earn rates as you climb their status system - but if you're doing that I would assume you value their own hotel points already.
What if you Value Hotel Points?
If you like to frequent a specific chain of properties you likely wont want to convert your points to AP. Hotel point fans should instead consider a fair market value for their points when choosing between options. If you're a Bonvoy fan, and you value BPs at 0.8cpp and AP at 2cpp you would be reluctant to convert at 3:1 (it would be like buying AP at 2.4 cpp) unless you needed the points for an amazing redemption, of course this differs significantly if you employ a higher or lower value.
Add in the fact that at the Silver status you get immediately with a Bonvoy Amex card would increase it from 10x per usd on room rate to 11x, if you have Gold (perhaps from the Amex Platinum) it is 12.5x and so on and the case for booking directly with a chain you frequent could be stronger than targeting AP points.
When considering multiple point currencies I like to convert them all back to effective cash back rates and 12.5x at 0.8cpp is 10% back, not too shabby! Again this is only on the room rate, so it will be somewhat less than earning 5x AP at 2cpp on the whole cost - but close enough that hotel status holders would likely rather get any status perks.
Continuing on the Bonvoy tangent, consider which card you should use and its impact on the resulting rewards. Using an TD AP VIP earns you 1.5x on travel (3% back at 2cpp value), but the Bonvoy card earns 5x on Bonvoy properties (4% back at 0.8cpp). If you're booking internationally though, both of those have to be adjusted for their 2.5% forex fee, a no forex card could then be a candidate to consider.
But worry not Bonvoy fans, there is one final trick to benefit both you and your Aeroplan collection.
Estore Bonus
You may already be familiar with the eStore, but if not I recommend you read my article on it - despite being a bit glitchy at times it is one of the more powerful ways to harness your spending into AP points. Lucky for Marriott fans Bonvoy is one of the partnered vendors with a typical base earn of 2x APP on price minus taxes and fees, increasing to 4x for those with 25K status. The beauty here is that you're still booking with Bonvoy so you can still expect your status benefits and use your Bonvoy card for additional earning.
Putting it All Together
Continuing with the JW in LA, using a Bonvoy card with its included silver status, and lets say youre 25K with AP for demonstration. Base room rate of $418 USD, with the 2.5% forex fee, that's $591 CAD. At the base eStore 2x for 4 nights gives 4728 AP, or if you're 25K 9456 AP. You also earn your 11x per USD room rate in Bonvoy, or 18,392 BP. Next we add in the credit card bonus of 5x BP per CAD spent at Bonvoy properties, the total room cost with taxes was $1943 USD or ~ $2751 with conversion and forex fees, so 13,755 BP.
The total result was $2751 CAD spent, 9456 AP and 32147 BP, at values of 2cpp per AP and 0.8cpp for BP you earned $189 in AP $257 in BP, a net cost of $2305. Compared to the AP hotels booked we spent $2547 CAD, 12732 AP earned, for a net cost of $2292. In this case nearly a wash. Well that seems like a lot of work to find out that it doesn't matter that much in this example, but for better or worse it isn't always so close. For whatever reason the JW was cheaper on the AP website so it had a ~$200 head start. When the pricing is more similar between the two, using the eStore for Bonvoy outperforms handily, and as shown above sometimes Rocketmiles brings incredible value.
In order to capture this value with the least effort I made a spreadsheet that allows me to input my point values, status multipliers, estore multiplier etc. It automatically pulls the current CAD to USD conversion, and it allows you to factor in a discount rate for business money (ie. you might be willing to spend a bit more business money to earn more personal points). It also compares using different credit cards (my TD AP VIP, Scotia Passport Visa Infinite for no forex, and Amex Bonvoy). I've applied this spreadsheet to both a 4 night multi city cost sensitive trip which improved my "net benefit" by about $250 and then to a more luxury focused 7 night trip for a benefit of $900. By putting in the effort up front to make this spreadsheet I can efficiently extract maximum rewards going forward.
Conclusion
I hope that by exploring a couple different ways to book hotels and their various quirks I've demonstrated that there can be ongoing value to extract by optimizing your approach. Rocketmiles is worth a quick check given its occassional incredible value, and if your a Bonvoy fan the estore approach is often your best bet unless Marriott is listing the price higher than elsewhere. Having a spreadsheet to automate this for you is critical otherwise the time spent will destroy the relative benefit of the effort. Interested in my spreadsheet? I'm willing to share it or help you make your own as a sign of gratitude if you use one of my referral links below.
Sample screenshot of part of the spreadsheet
Referral links
Want free hotel stays? Get the Amex Bonvoy, or maybe you'd rather the business version of the card (or both).
With its best in market 5x multiplier Amex Cobalt is a powerful point earner that can get you on flying for free 5 times faster than much of the competition, or to convert to even more bonvoy points - sign up here.
To see the access the best offers for different Amex card such as the Business Gold, or Platinum click here. Or to compare all the cards I can refer to, check out my card comparison tool.
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If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible.
Check out my Keeper Cards series to see other cards worth exploring
Disclaimer
These posts are all made in good intentions and are to the best of my ability accurate at the time of writing. That said, the official terms and conditions and current sign up bonuses should be verified and interpreted in the context of your personal financial situation.
