I’ve been keeping track of every hotel we’ve stayed at for the last few years, and decided to make a map of all our hotel stays (color coded by brand).
We’ve had quite a ride in our years of doing full-time travel. Even just hotel experiences alone in the last years, it’s been incredible beyond my wildest dreams.
In 2011 we stayed on the 89th floor of the Park Hyatt Shanghai – one my favorite hotels. There’s nothing like staying in a skyscraper.
And at the end of 2015 we spent two weeks in French Polynesia in InterContinental & Hilton Hotels, and the hotel we spent the most time in is all 1,000+ sqm suites over the water. Going there was on my bucket list as a kid.
Breakdown:
110 IHG hotels
35 different InterContinental hotels
50 Club Carlson hotels
21 Hyatt hotels
20 Hilton hotels
14 Marriott hotels
8 Starwood hotels
55 other
The truth is that it’s way higher but we didn’t keep track of where we stayed the first year, or it was just some random place.
Map Of Hotels (2011 – 2015)
The idea is that you could click any hotel and see how much we paid.
Unfortunately it doesn’t show time. This is an issue considering that we’ve been to the Radisson Blu or InterContinental in Budapest many times… yet there is one dot for each hotel. So when I zoom in and click the Radisson Blu in Budapest it says 3 nights… and we’ve probably spent weeks in that hotel. So data shown is limited.
Also, early in our travel, I didn’t keep track and often didn’t stay in fancy hotels where I’d remember the name. So all of our Peru travels were in hotels that usually cost less than a Big Mac.
Costs
We’ve done lots of breakdowns of expenses, and we’ll do some more.
The truth is that we spent about $7,000 a year on hotels – less than $600 a month.
Some posts to check out are:
Breaking down a year’s worth of stats / expenses
Laying out all of our IHG expenses
6 ways to get amazing hotel deals
47 days of hotels in Egypt for free
How we did 2 weeks of hotels in Bora Bora, Moorea, & Tahiti free
Strategy Overview:
IHG Points Strategy
The post above on IHG stats lays it out. When there is a great points earning promotion – like stay three nights and get 50,000 points or two free nights, we both do it.
Find a cheap hotel to complete the promotion, then find great hotels to redeem the points at.
Our first taste of this was spending $150 at Holiday Inn hotels in Thailand, to earn 50,000 IHG points. Then the InterContinental Fiji went on points sale (IHG PointBreaks) and we redeemed 40,000 of those points for 8 nights! That’s where this photo was taken:
Earn cheap, then we redeem the points wisely… usually.
Club Carlson Points strategy
Truthfully we use Club Carlson a lot less now. They had great earning promotion, and then the credit card came along and gave a free night per award booking of 2+ nights. We always used it as a 50% off… but that benefit went away!
One good deal still around is that they give Club Carlson Gold members (you can status match), the ability to get a 50% off weekend rate in Europe (book here). I’ve seen hotels like the Radisson Blu in Sofia for $50 a night, and it’s a great hotel.
Hilton Points strategy
Simply put, there are 15 different credit cards that can earn Hilton HHonors points. 15! And the Citi one is repeatedly generous to us.
We just keep getting Hilton cards, and redeeming them super cheaply, like with 5th night free and under valued hotels.
Check out the Complete Map of Hilton Hotels.
Hyatt, SPG, & Marriott points strategy
Will all these I get around to the credit card bonuses eventually. But I don’t like their programs for earning points and the value proposition for earning their points is pretty low.
I will no longer use Chase points to transfer to Hyatt because they are too valueable.
SPG points are too valuable transferring to miles, except their category 1 & 2 hotels (which is all we’ve stayed at).
I totally gave up on Marriott.
If a freebie comes my way I’ll bite. But right now, I don’t see their programs offering any value for me.
Airbnb & Other Hotel Strategies
It’s only recently we started using airbnb, and we actually like it. Especially in groups. We’ve mostly used airbnb in eastern Europe where there are few other options.
And right now they’ve increased their referral bonus to $35 – click here to get $35 toward airbnb.
Other hotels are either because there are no good points options, or because of another deal. I believe it was Orbitz or Expedia who gave away a $100 coupon on hotel bookings over $100. It was good per booking.
So I just booked $100 a night hotels back to back.
It’s how we got this awesome hotel over looking the Krakow old town square for a few bucks:
We have also dabbled with Best Rate Guarantees.
Sometimes the best deal is a non-points related promotion, and sometimes there are no points hotels.
Conclusion
But we didn’t just save money we experienced some nice hotels (favorite hotels in 2013, 2014, 2015).
Radisson Blu Vienna
InterContinental Hong Kong
InterContinental Kiev
InterContinental Davos Suite
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