How I Got $1000 in Value From ONE Amex FHR Hotel Stay

The American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection is one of the most valuable benefits of the American Express Platinum Card. It features some of the world's best hotels. You get perks like free breakfast, late checkout and $100 to use towards dining during your stay. And the Amex Platinum Card has a $600 credit which is split into $300 every six months that you can use towards the cost of the room as well. Today I want to go through a recent trip I did to a Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection property, the Conrad DC, and show you how I got over $1,000 in value back by using my Platinum Card and a few other special tricks. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka The Credit Shofu and on this channel I cover US credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into it. So this is the Conrad DC. I've stayed here before. It's one of my favorite hotels to stay at in DC due to how new and modern the hotel is and especially the rooms. All right guys, we're going to check out the bathroom. Check this out, follow me. Whoa, isn't that cool? There are some cool amenities like a rooftop bar, a great restaurant and the location is really convenient. Just a 10-minute scooter ride from the Washington Monument right in the middle of When you book through the Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection or FHR, you get a welcome gift. All right guys, so we just got into the room at the Conrad and, you know, if you book through the Fine Hotels and Resorts Collection, they normally give you like a little welcome gift. So this is the card. We got like a card from the general manager. They gave us these kind of nicer bottles of sparkling water. So let's check that out. There we go. Try some of that. I mean, water is water, right? I can't really tell the difference. But anyway, this is what I'm most excited about. I don't know whether maybe this is chocolates or something. Let's open this up. Okay, it's got a kind of cute little thing there. Okay. All right, let's have a look. I have no idea what that is but... Okay, what is that? Some cherries? I think it's chocolate. I think it's chocolate. Let's try one. Oh, it smells nice. Is it safe? You want to try one first? No, I'll try it. I'll make sure it's safe for the whole family. Oh yeah, it's like chocolate raisins or something. It goes well with the water. To be honest, this welcome gift wasn't as impressive as what I got at the Fairmont Orchid in Hawaii. But this hotel has more of a business vibe, whereas that place is like a vacation destination. Anyway, let's get into how I booked this and how I squeezed the maximum value out of all the credits and benefits Amex offers. So first of all, let's talk about the hotel credit. This is $600 per year split into two amounts of $300. Thus, what Amex seems to want you to do is spend this on two separate trips, okay? One in each half of the year. This would mean that if you were doing a trip of two nights at $500 per night, total is $1,000, you get $300 back. So you're still spending $700. It's only a 30% discount. Well, in that case, right, if the hotel was that exact price, rather than a free trip. But what I like to do is to be a lot closer to getting a free trip, all right? So this is a little trick that I used. The hotel credit resets at the beginning of the year and also halfway through the year. So you can only do this if you're booking either at the end of December and the beginning of January or at the end of June and the beginning of July. I booked one room on June 29th and then I waited a couple of days for my credit to reset and I had another $300 available in early July. And on July 2nd, I booked another room and that night was booked directly after the first night that I had booked. Thus, I now had a two night trip booked as two separate bookings. And the hotel is okay with that. You just got to tell them when you check in so that you can keep the same room. Obviously, it has to be the exact same type of room. And I got the $300 credit refunded for both of them. You can see here two charges from FHR. One is for June 29th and the other is for July 2nd. The first one is $529. The second one is $537. It went up, you know, the price went up sadly in a couple of days that I waited. And both have the $300 credit applied against them. Thus, my two night stay that would have cost $1,066 only cost me $466. That's around a 60% discount. A five-star Conrad Hotel with me paying the price of a Hampton Inn. But that is not all. We now have a load of credits. Here's everything that Conrad gives you through FHR. $100 credit towards eligible food and beverage charges, room upgrade upon arrival where available, 12pm check-in where available, guaranteed 4pm checkout, complimentary Wi-Fi, daily breakfast for two. This is $60 credit per day. Now let's go through which ones of these I was actually able to take advantage of. The $100 credit for food and beverage is supposed to be just once per stay. Even if you book two separate bookings, you should get it just once. But it depends on the hotel. And if they don't flag it, sometimes you get it twice. And this time looking at my receipts, it seems I indeed did get it twice. This was for dining in the restaurant that they have called The Estuary. I spent $370.50 at this restaurant between the dinner on the first night and then the two breakfasts I had on my second night I ate elsewhere. And I was refunded $100 twice for I guess a combination of the first night's dinner and then the two breakfasts. I don't know. It's kind of wacky. I didn't spend over $100 on breakfast on the second stay anyway. I was like $70. So I don't know why they gave me $100 back. But whatever. Looking at my bills, it seems that's what they did. Okay. $100 twice. Next thing on the list is a room upgrade. I didn't get this because I'd already booked a deluxe room with two queen beds. And this hotel doesn't have any other higher class of room with two queens that they could upgrade you to. Next is 12 p.m. noon check-in. I did not take advantage of this since I arrived at about six in the evening. Next is guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout. I did use this and I love this benefit. Not only can you store your luggage in your room as opposed to putting it in like a luggage room where it's all locked up and stuff, but you can be out and about for most of the day. We went on a tour of the Capitol building. Okay. We saw all the like paintings and the rotunda and everything. It's really cool. And while we were out, we actually saw the president too. Look, that is his unmistakable silhouette. And then we came back at like 3 p.m. We had an hour to like get ready. I had a shower, collected all of our things, and then drove home feeling really comfortable at about 4 p.m. Next, complimentary Wi-Fi. Is that really an FHR benefit? I thought most hotels give you free Wi-Fi, so nothing really to write home about with this. I have high-speed data on my phone anyway, so I really wouldn't miss it. All right. Lastly, we have the free breakfast in the form of a $60 credit each morning. That is two mornings that I stayed, so it should be $120. But it seems, judging by what the hotel charged me, which was one charge of $125.40 and another charge of $145.80. That's what appeared on my credit card statement versus the total amount of money I spent, which was $370.50 at the restaurant, plus $80 times two for two days worth of parking. So that gives us a total of $530.50. That leaves me with $259.30, which I got for free, which I probably missed off a few cents somewhere, but it's basically $260, indicating to me that they gave me the $60 breakfast credit only once and the $100 property credit twice. Now, it's supposed to be the other way around, so I'm not going to complain. That brings the total amount of value so far to $860, but there is more. So I booked through FHR, and thus I used the Amex Platinum to prepay the room rate. And thus I earned 2,345 Amex points for the first night I booked and 2,690 points for the second night, because the price was slightly different. The total is $5,035, or a value of $50.35 at one cent per point. So ignoring the cents, that takes our total value to $910. But then I paid the additional room charges like the restaurant and the parking and stuff with the Hilton Honors Surpass card. So I got the $50 credit, which is a quarterly credit on that card. I got $50 back. That brings us up to $960. But then for having that credit card and being a gold member, which I get from the card too, I earned 19,348 points. It seems only the second night was eligible for point earning. I have no idea why. I mean, maybe if I complain and ask, I might be able to earn points for the first night, but it's actually touch and go whether you actually earn points if you've booked through a third party. So I think I'm just not going to draw attention to it. I'll just accept those points. At half a cent per point in value, that is going to be roughly $100 in value, okay? Well, slightly under $196 or something, but let's just say 100. When we add that to my current total, that takes us up to $1,060 in value. All right, guys, I've gone on long enough with this video. I just wanted to show you how you can really stack the value. Let me know in the comments some examples of points, redemptions, or times when you've really stacked multiple cards and deals to really rinse the most value you can out of a trip. I'd love to hear your stories. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.