Marriage helps with hotel promotions

There are many joys of being married and one is that I can make one 3 night stay at a hotel count for 3 separate stays. Without being married, the only other way to get 3 separate stays is to stay somewhere different every other night. I like seeing new hotels but a vacation is really a vacation when you don’t have to pick up your stuff and relocate. But for almost all hotel promotions you need a certain number of stays. And if you stayed 3 nights in a row at a hotel it would only count as 1 stay. This is the difference between stays and nights. Stays are per checkin. This is why I either hotel hop or have my wife check in one night.

For example, during the last Radisson promotion, they gave you 9,000 points back after each stay booked with points. I book 1 night in the Radisson Shanghai with my points, one with hers and one again with mine. This was a 3 night stay that counted as 2 stays for me and 1 for her and we got 24,000 points back total. It was easy, I walked down stairs and said “I’m checking out and she’s checking in”, and then we switched room keys and went back to the same room.

There’s only one problem in all this. For Radisson, Hilton and Hyatt we have similar status’ or status goals but at Marriott I’m currently Platinum and she’s not. It’s not even in the foreseeable future that she will try and therefore I don’t want my elite qualifying nights to go to her. I also want to get the free breakfast and all that jazz, as well as the welcome points.

If we both are enrolled in a promo where you get points for every night then it’s fine. But if the current promo takes a larger number of nights, then splitting between two people means twice the reward, but twice the work. Again, this might not be worth it if one of you is going for the Status or already has it.

If both of you or neither of you is concerned about the status then splitting your stay between two people is almost always worth it. Obviously if you were going to fall short of a promotion goal because of it, it’s not worth it but that’s rarely the case. For example, lets say you have a four night stay coming up. You and your spouse both register for Marriott’s Megabonus promotion, currently you get a free night certificate (for category 1-4 hotels) for two stays. (Also, create an account to refer yourselves to get the refer-a-friend bonus (I already did a post on this)). Now, when you book the ticket book 4 individual stays, every other night in your spouse’s name. You’ll get the normal points plus 2 free night certificates instead of none.

This is not for sure and completely depends on the hotel, but it may help you get room upgrades. I theorize that if you are only staying 1 night then upgrading your room is of less cost to the hotel. Certainly if you are upgraded upon arrival and the room has been pre-allocated to someone else, you could be demoted. But this means that you wouldn’t have enjoyed the room otherwise, even if for one night.

Again, splitting your nights may not always benefit you but still, being married gives you more options for pursuing hotel promotions on one vacation.