HUGE Value from Amex FHR at Conrad DC (All Benefits Explained)

So you get this fantastic view of DC, come a little closer. Hey guys, welcome to the show. We are at Conrad in DC today, Washington DC, and we booked this hotel, well we booked this room here using the Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection on the American Express Platinum card. And guys, if you don't know, the Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection is one of the best benefits of the Amex Platinum, and it's where you get basically, even if you don't have status with the hotel, as long as you book through their collection, you get a load of extra benefits. I'm going to take you all through all those extra benefits today, and you also get five points per dollar on that pre-paid hotel stay, it has to be pre-paid to get five points per dollar. Also, we booked an additional room using my Hilton Diamond status, I paid 80,000 points for one night, plus 400 or so for the other night, and that was actually for my mom to stay in, and she got an upgrade, a really sweet upgrade to a deluxe king corner room, and we'll show you that at the end of the video, so stick around for that as well. But first of all, this is the main room, it's a double queen that we got for myself, my wife, and my two kids. It's got two queen beds, it's got a beautiful bathroom, it's got some pretty nice views of DC, actually I joked because it's got fountains outside the window in Little Park, and I joked it's kind of, well basically it's the Bellagio, guys, fountain view room, anyway, another nice thing about the room as well, it's got a Nespresso machine as well, which I always love to have nice Nespresso coffee in the morning, but anyway, these are the benefits that you get when you book using the American Express Platinum card, fine hotels and resorts collection. And guys, before we start, I want to first mention that there is also a $200 annual credit for the fine hotels and resorts collection and the hotel collection on the Amex Platinum. I actually forgot about this because I already used it at the Bellagio earlier this year in February, but anyway, you do get a $200 credit for fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection every year, every calendar year, but if you book the hotel collection, you must stay two consecutive nights for any benefits including the credit. Okay, let's get back to the fine hotels and resorts collection benefits at the Conrad. So you get a 12pm check-in when available, which is slightly earlier, I think probably their time is normally like three o'clock or something like that. You get a room upgrade on arrival when available. Now this room was not upgraded because we'd already booked a Deluxe Queen. There's actually no, apparently there's no upgrade from that. There is an upgrade you could get potentially to the Sakura Club level, but that's like a very huge upgrade where you get access to this club and you get breakfast and dinner in the club every day. We thought about actually paying to upgrade to that, but because of all the benefits from the fine hotels and resorts collection, we actually realised it was not cost-effective to benefit because we get breakfast for free anyway, as a benefit of the fine hotels and resorts collection and well, you're going to see the benefits in a second. So that was the next thing. Free breakfast for two, located in the Blue Willow room at a total of $60 per night. Now I believe that is $10 more than you get if you're Hilton Diamond or Hilton Gold. You get the free breakfast here, I believe it was $50, which is what they told us for my mom's room because I booked through Diamond. So $50. But anyway, breakfast is really nice. I'll put some pictures of it on screen. I think the first day I had like eggs and bacon, the second day I had oatmeal, the avocado toast looked really good. Some of the people at our party had that, my wife had it and they serve it in this really interesting room called the Blue Willow room, which has this like blue Chinese style china on the wall or broken up plates and teapots and stuff. It's kind of nice. They've got wine there too, a big wine closet and stuff. So anyway, it's a very nice room. So breakfast at the hotel, definitely good. There's no buffet though, it is waiter service. So you know, it is what it is, you know, it's just, yeah, it's a la carte. All right, next on the list we have complimentary Wi-Fi, which is the premium Wi-Fi. So it's a bit faster apparently than the regular Wi-Fi. I don't know about that guys. I didn't use it. I don't care. I think half the time I wasn't even logged on to Wi-Fi. I have Google Fi. It's like 20 gigabytes of high speed data per month. I never use it all up. So I don't even care really about Wi-Fi or I watched a few things on Netflix without even bothering to log on. But yeah, if that is important to you, then free Wi-Fi. Guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout. That's really useful because in a minute we're going to go to the Natural History Museum and what we're going to do, we're going to move the stuff from my mom's room into this room because this room was booked through Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection. So we have the 4 p.m. late checkout for this room. So yeah, that room I think, because I'm Diamond, she said you could check out at like 1. We give you like a 1 p.m. late checkout for Diamond. But Fine Hotels and Resorts from American Express, 4 p.m. late checkout. Really great benefit. And then next, the last thing on the list is the $100 experience credit for food and beverage and we use that at their restaurant which is called Estuary on the first night and it is a really nice restaurant guys. Really amazing. I'll put some pictures on screen. It's a wonderful environment. They've got like this open fire, fire pit. I guess it's gas, right? A gas fire pit or whatever. Really nice views of D.C. out the window. They've got comfy sofas and stuff. And then the food. The food was really good. We had like shrimp cocktail for starters, Caesar salad. Then I went on. I had a steak. My mom had some fish dish, creme brulees for dessert. My steak, by the way, it was cooked like really, I asked for medium. It really was 100% perfect medium and so much sort of charred, crispy stuff on the outside. One of the best steaks I've had in a long, long time. Just a little bit salty. I would say that was my only criticism, but other than that, absolutely beautiful. And yeah, the seafood is really good. A lot of it's caught in the estuary of the Potomac River, which is the river here. I guess that's why the restaurant is called Estuary. All right, guys. So that is a little tour of our room and all the benefits of the American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection that you get at this hotel. In just a second, we are going to show you the upgraded corner king room, which is really, really cool. But first of all, if you are into American Express cards or any credit cards for that matter, and if you want an easy way to keep information about all your cards in one place, I do recommend the app Max Rewards. It pulls the data from all your different credit card accounts into one easy to use dashboard. So you can view transactions. You can view your points and miles or cashback balances. It warns you of upcoming bills. And then if you do use American Express cards, the premium version of Max Rewards also activates Amex offers for you. So you never miss a deal. You know, there's offers that you add to your card. Well, it activates all of those. So I have literally like over 100 offers on my card. And what happens is that when you activate 100, Amex actually puts new offers into your account that you wouldn't otherwise get. So you get these phantom offers, you get access to these extra offers so you can save extra money. And I sometimes have even saved money without even realizing it. I come home and I've got an email saying, wow, you save $15 on some pet food or something like that. Anyway, guys. So Max Rewards. Give them some love, guys. They've been sponsoring the channel for a long, long time. Link is below. It is a very useful service. I use it myself. Do check it out. But anyway, without further ado, let's go and take a look at the Deluxe King Corner Room. Hey, guys. Welcome to the Deluxe Corner King Room. So follow me. So this is actually what my mom got upgraded to from my Hilton Honours Diamond status, like we said earlier. And we're just going to give you a little bit of a room tour. So you've got this massive king bed. This is pretty big. I don't know if it comes out in the footage, but it is pretty big. But the real awesome feature of this room is sort of the wraparound window that you've got here, floor to ceiling windows, and it goes basically all the way around the corner of the room. So just check out this view. Is it electric? Maybe it is. I don't think it is. There we go. Or maybe it is electric. There we go. Electric curtains. And wait a minute. Okay. There we go. So you get this fantastic view of DC. Come a little closer. So you've got a fantastic view out this side, and then you can actually see a long way down the road that way as well. Wow. Really, really cool. And the interesting thing too is that the TV actually sits in front of a window. It's kind of rare. You don't really see that. Normally the TV is in front of a wall. One thing I don't like though is how they left this. Why didn't they just paint this or put some cladding around it? Maybe marble would be nice, but obviously it's a supporting beam for the building, supporting column. But they just left it concrete. It's not really that nice. Let's have a look at the bathroom. So the cool thing is as well, the bathroom also has a floor to ceiling window. This one's not electric, but it's not frosted at all. So you've got to just make sure you don't forget and come out of the shower naked and you're sort of like, oh, let's see now, because everyone can see you down there. So there's literally people walking around that could see you. But anyway, you've got the shower, you've got the toilet. This hotel doesn't have bathtubs in all the rooms. Well, there may be like one or two suites that have bathtubs, but most of the rooms don't have bathtubs. But you can check out the shower here, it's pretty nice. Like in our room, you've got both the shower head up here and you've also got this one down here as well. So you've got two options, toilet there and a beautiful countertop with basically everything you need. So that is the Deluxe King Corner Room at the Conrad in Washington, D.C. All right, guys. So thank you for watching this video. Just a few final thoughts about this hotel. I would say it is thoroughly worth booking. I've stayed at the W here before, and I would say the W, the room is a bit on the small side. This room, it's a really good size. So really nice size room. The staff here are very, very welcoming and friendly. So that's a big plus for the hotel. They even remembered our kids' names throughout the whole trip. Like hi, Lauren, hi, Amber. Like that's amazing. They gave the kids a little teddy when they arrived. This one actually lost an eye. I mean, they didn't give it to him like that, but anyway. They got another one from reception. But yeah, I would say if you're booking, you know, you're just a couple, book a Deluxe King Room and then you probably will get upgraded, you know, if you're Hilton Diamond or if you're booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts, you'll probably get upgraded to that really cool Deluxe King Corner Room. And if you want a bit more of a luxurious experience with like fully included food and stuff and you don't want to book through the Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts or perhaps you don't have the Amex Platinum or whatever, you could do an upgrade to the Sakura Club level. I think if you're Hilton Diamond, it costs $170 per room per night. But it could work out worthwhile because your breakfast and your dinner is then 100% paid for in the Sakura Club, which is that club lounge that they have there. And I think they have snacks throughout the day. So you could probably get away with just eating in the Sakura Club. And if you think about it, you know, restaurants in D.C. can be quite expensive. So depending on how much you're planning on spending, $170 could be a real bargain to get all your food paid for. It definitely works out better. But for us, booking through Fine Hotels and Resorts and having free breakfast through Hilton Diamond status, we felt it was better not to do that. But you know, you can weigh it up and look at it yourself. All right, guys, thank you for watching this video. We've had a great time in D.C. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. Thanks to Max Rewards for sponsoring. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.