Program guides
The programs
What each card’s hotel benefit requires, what it pays, and where the fine print bites.
- Chase’s $500 Edit credit, and the extra $250 for 2026
The Sapphire Reserve now carries two hotel credits: up to $500 a year on Edit stays plus a 2026-only $250 for seven hotel brands. What qualifies, how they stack, and what they don’t do.
- Amex FHR vs The Hotel Collection: two programs, one $600 credit
Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection both count toward the Platinum’s $600 hotel credit, but the perks, minimum stays, and eligible cards are different. Where each one is cheap, and which to book.
- Chase’s The Edit vs Amex FHR: same idea, different fine print
Both are curated luxury-hotel programs with packaged perks. The minimum stays, the $500 vs $600 credits, and the checkout guarantee are where they split. Plus how much the two lists overlap.
- Renowned Hotels & Resorts: the luxury program on United’s cards
Chase rebuilt its Luxury Hotel & Resort Collection as Renowned and moved it to the United co-brand cards: breakfast, a property credit, no minimum stay, and a list that is mostly The Edit under another name.
- Bilt’s Home Away From Home, explained
Bilt’s luxury hotel list is the odd one out: booked at bilt.com, unlocked by member status rather than a card, with breakfast and a $100 credit per stay. It is also the most international list on this site.
- The Premier Collection: Venture X’s quiet luxury program
Capital One’s curated hotel list gives Venture X cardholders breakfast for two, a $100 experience credit, and upgrades, with no program minimum stay. By the numbers it is also the cheapest list on this site.
- The Reserve by Citi Travel, and the Strata Elite’s $300 credit
Citi’s new luxury hotel program pairs FHR-style stay perks with a $300 annual credit that only fires on prepaid stays of two nights or more, and takes the money off at booking rather than afterward.
- Leading Hotels of the World: Sterling perks on the Amex Platinum
LHW is a collection of 400+ independent five-star hotels. Platinum cardholders get Leaders Club Sterling status free: breakfast for two, upgrades, and member rates at lhw.com. It is a European list, and a seasonal one.
- Which card gets you which hotel program
Seven hotel programs, six issuers, and a lot of fine print about who can book what. The card-by-card map: what each one unlocks, the minimum stay, the credit, and where the booking happens.
- What changed in the card hotel programs, 2025 into 2026
Chase rebuilt its Edit credit and added a one-year $250. Amex went to $600 in halves. Bilt opened Home Away From Home to lower tiers. Citi arrived. A dated log of the changes that matter, and the pages here that were updated for them.
- The same hotel, six programs: how much the lists overlap
About 5,900 distinct hotels sit behind 10,700 program listings. Forty percent are in two or more programs, six are in all seven, and the two Chase lists are 82% the same. What that means when you hold more than one card.
Prices and timing
How the numbers on this site are made, what they miss, and what a year of nightly rates shows.
- Where our prices come from, and how to read them
Every price on Credit Stays is a hotel meta-search estimate with taxes and fees added, refreshed on a rolling cycle and ranked by the cheapest bookable stay over the coming year. The method, the coverage, and its limits.
- Why our price is higher than the rate you saw: taxes and resort fees
Every price here is all-in. That means a New York hotel carries 14.75% plus a nightly fee, a Las Vegas one carries its resort fee, and a Paris one carries a per-person city tax. The table, and the arithmetic.
- How to read a hotel’s price calendar
Open any hotel and you get a year of nightly prices coloured against that hotel’s own typical rate, with the cheapest stay marked as one band. What the colours mean, what a blank day means, and how to get from a cheap night to a booking.
- What a night actually costs in each program
Medians, quartiles and the number of hotels under $300 a night, program by program, from a snapshot of roughly 9,800 priced listings in late August 2026. Capital One is the cheap list; New York is the expensive city everywhere.
- January is the cheap month: what a year of nightly prices says about timing
Across every card program, nights in November through February run 3% to 7% under each hotel’s typical price and September and October run 3% to 7% over. Weekends barely matter. The month-by-month figures, and what they don’t tell you.
- How this site is built, and what it doesn’t do
One person, seven hotel lists, a small server that re-prices hotels around the clock, and a static site rebuilt from the result. Where the lists come from, why matching hotels is the hard part, what it costs, and what breaks.
Places
Where the hotels are, which cities are cheap, and how much the seven lists overlap.
- Where The Edit’s 1,400 hotels actually are
Chase’s list is 39% American, 109 hotels deep in California, and heavier on Marriott and Four Seasons than any other program. Countries, states, cities, brands and what a night costs in each, from the late-August 2026 snapshot.
- The cheap luxury cities, and the expensive ones
Bangkok, Shanghai, Atlanta and, oddly, San Francisco are where a program hotel is cheap. Milan, New York, Rome and Paris are where it isn’t. City medians across all seven lists, all-in, from a snapshot of roughly a year of nightly prices.
- Las Vegas on a card program: cheap five-stars, resort fees included
The Strip is the cheapest big city on every list here once resort fees are in the number. Which Vegas hotels are in which program, what a night costs at each, and why the same MGM Grand room is $152 on one tab and $304 on another.
- New York on a card program: the expensive city, and where it isn’t
New York has more program hotels than any other city and the highest prices on every list. Which hotels each program lists, the cheap end of each, the January effect, and the hotels where the cheapest night is half the usual one.