What is the cheapest city for a card program hotel?

Bangkok, on every list that has it, at a median of about $304 to $364 a night all-in in the late-August 2026 snapshot. Shanghai, Beijing, Atlanta, Lisbon and, on the Capital One list, San Francisco are next.

What is the most expensive?

Milan on the Chase lists, at about $1,663 to $1,749 a night. New York is expensive on every list, from $812 on Capital One to $1,182 on Bilt.

Why does the same city cost so much more on one list than another?

Different hotels. London is $518 across 88 Amex hotels and $747 across 37 Edit hotels because the Amex list includes many four-star Hotel Collection properties and The Edit does not.

Are these portal prices?

No. They are open-market meta-search estimates with taxes and fees added, and the city medians are medians of hotel medians over about a year of nights.

Places

The cheap luxury cities, and the expensive ones

By Steven · Updated 2026-09-02 · 5 min read

The perks in these programs are roughly fixed. Breakfast for two and a $100 credit are worth the same in Bangkok as in Milan, and the room is not. So the cities where a program hotel is cheap are the cities where the package is proportionally richest, and I wanted to know which they were. This is a pass over the August 28, 2026 snapshot, city by city, across all seven lists, using the median all-in nightly rate of each hotel over about a year of prices and then the median of those for the city. Only cities with at least eight hotels on a list are counted.

The cheap cities

Bangkok is the cheapest big city in the catalogue on every list that has it: a median of about $304 a night across 13 Capital One Premier hotels, and $364 across 28 on Amex and 19 on Bilt. Shanghai and Beijing on the Bilt list came in at $350 and $333, and Shanghai on Amex at $387. Those are five-star hotels, Shangri-Las and St. Regises, at prices a mid-range chain charges in Chicago.

In the United States, Atlanta was the cheap Edit city at about $363 and the cheap Renowned city at $348. Washington was $371 on Capital One, $481 on Amex and $569 on The Edit, which is the same city on three lists and a good illustration of how the lists differ. And San Francisco, which I did not expect, came in at about $333 on the Capital One list across 13 hotels. That is a city whose hotels have been discounting since 2020 and it shows.

In Europe: Lisbon at $368 on Capital One, Madrid at $389 on Capital One and $568 to $602 on the Amex and Chase lists, Barcelona at $406 to $470 depending on the list. Singapore was consistently in the $415 to $488 band, and Las Vegas at $407 to $425 everywhere it appears, with resort fees already inside the number.

And London, which is expensive as a city and cheap as a program city: $442 on Capital One, $518 across 88 Amex hotels, $660 on Citi, $747 on The Edit and $780 on Bilt. The spread between lists in one city is the point. The Amex list has 88 London hotels and a lot of them are four-star Hotel Collection properties; The Edit has 37 and they are the Connaught end of the market.

The expensive cities

Milan is the most expensive city in the catalogue with enough hotels to count: about $1,663 across ten Edit hotels and $1,749 on Renowned, though only $446 on the nine-hotel Capital One list, which is a different set of hotels entirely. New York is expensive on every list, from $812 on Capital One through $932 on Amex, $977 on The Edit and $1,024 on Citi to $1,182 on Bilt, whose New York hotels are the most rarefied set here.

Rome runs $819 on Amex and $1,121 on The Edit. Paris is $629 on Capital One, $687 on Amex, $932 on Citi and $1,005 on The Edit. Florence is $665 on Amex and around $950 on Citi and Bilt. Playa del Carmen on the Bilt list, which is Mayakoba and the like, was $1,036. Tokyo ranged from $661 on Capital One to $954 on Citi, with the Chase lists at $897.

The pattern in the expensive column is the same as the cheap one. It is less about the city than about which hotels in that city the program chose, and Chase and Citi chose the palaces.

Reading this against the credits

A $300 credit on a two-night stay in Bangkok at $304 a night is half the bill. The same credit in Milan at $1,663 a night is nine percent. That is the whole argument for pointing the credits at the cheap cities and paying cash in the expensive ones, and it runs against the way most people use these programs, which is to book the Milan palace they wanted anyway and be pleased about the breakfast.

The other reading is the one I find more useful. In the cheap cities the choice of program barely matters, because the cheapest hotel on any list is cheap. In the expensive cities the choice of list is the decision: the same New York trip is a $812 night on Capital One and a $1,182 night on Bilt, and both are “a luxury hotel in New York.”

What this leaves out

Everywhere with fewer than eight hotels on a list, which is most of the world. Beach and ski destinations, where the median of a year hides a season. And the portal price, which is what you pay; these are open-market estimates with taxes and fees added, and a hotel in two programs carries one number here. The figures are from the snapshot of August 28, 2026 and will move; the order of the cities moves much less than the prices do.

What is the cheapest city for a card program hotel?: Bangkok, on every list that has it, at a median of about $304 to $364 a night all-in in the late-August 2026 snapshot. Shanghai, Beijing, Atlanta, Lisbon and, on the Capital One list, San Francisco are next.
What is the most expensive?: Milan on the Chase lists, at about $1,663 to $1,749 a night. New York is expensive on every list, from $812 on Capital One to $1,182 on Bilt.
Why does the same city cost so much more on one list than another?: Different hotels. London is $518 across 88 Amex hotels and $747 across 37 Edit hotels because the Amex list includes many four-star Hotel Collection properties and The Edit does not.
Are these portal prices?: No. They are open-market meta-search estimates with taxes and fees added, and the city medians are medians of hotel medians over about a year of nights.

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