Best Credit Cards For Hotel Spend

A list of the 50 best credit cards for hotel spend based on your spend pulled from a database of 250+ cards. Compare and calculate rewards.

When it comes to hotel spending, the best returns will usually come from hotel credit cards which will earn you bonus hotel rewards points as well as grant additional benefits such as complimentary elite status, room upgrades breakfast, annual free night awards, complimentary breakfast, and much more.

Hotel Credit Cards

If you're loyal to a specific hotel chain, you'll want to check to see if they have a co-branded credit card. Hotel credit cards generally offer better returns than the top bank rewards credit cards.

Hilton offers the best line-up of credit cards when it comes to spend versus rewards. They offer a great return across multiple bonus categories along with complimentary Hilton Honors elite status ranging from Hilton Silver up to their highest of Hilton Diamond. If you enjoy staying at Hilton, picking up a Hilton credit card is a must.

Hyatt is another hotel loyalty program that offers great rewards. Hyatt Points are worth an average of 1.8 cents with the ability to get as high as 2 cents or more without much effort. The Chase Hyatt Credit Card offers a great return on Hyatt spend and grants an annual free night along with complimentary Hyatt Discoverist Status.

If you enjoy IHG Hotels, IHG is yet another great hotel chain that offers some pretty good rewards. The IHG Premier Card offers a wonderful 10x on IHG spend, comes with complimentary IHG Platinum Status, and a free night annually.

Several other hotel brands offer great returns as well including Marriott Hotels, Best Western, and Wyndham.

General Hotel Spend

If you're not loyal to any hotel brand, typically book hotels through online travel agencies (e.g. Expedia, Hotels.com), or you just want to earn other rewards, there's lots of non-hotel branded credit cards that earn on hotel and general travel spend.

On the Membership Rewards side of the fence, the American Express Green Card offers triple points on travel and dining purchases. It also offers annual credits for CLEAR and Lounge Buddy.

The Chase Ink Business Preferred is great option if you're looking to earn Ultimate Rewards Points on travel, internet, cable, Lyft, and several other categories. The Chase Sapphire Reserve is also a great option, but you'll want to make sure you spend enough between travel and dining to make up for the high annual fee of the card.

The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is another solid option for travel as you'll earn triple ThankYou Points. The card also earns on gas station, dining, and entertainment purchases which makes it great for travel overall.

Outside of credit cards with transferable points, you have the Wells Fargo Propel AMEX as a solid option that earns a great return on travel (including gas), dining, and streaming service purchases.

The best cash back option will be the Bank of America Cash Rewards Card or the Bank of America Business Advantage Cash Rewards.

If you don't want to dabble in any of the cards listed above, you can always grab up a flat rate credit card that earns a great return on everyday spend. This includes cards such as the Citi Double Cash and PayPal Cashback Mastercard.

Best Cards By Category Calculator

The Best Credit Cards By Category Calculator below will find the best credit cards for the listed categories based on your spend and the filter options selected. This will output a list of up to 50 credit cards sorted by total return.

Compare credit cards side by side based on spend, benefits, and fees.

I recommend using the Rewards Calculator which allows you to compare results side by side other cards, factor in sign up bonuses, add authorized users, select elite status (hotel cards), and much more.

Category Spend

Enter your spend per month, year, or quarter for the listed categories. You can then click Get The Best Cards to get the list of results.

Hotel (Generic)

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Spend Duration

You can set the duration of the spend for the categories listed above. If you're looking for the best card for only n-months worth of spend, this is where you change the option. If you want to calculate based on a full year, you can leave it set to a duration of 'year'.

Adjust Transferable Points

Some rewards programs allow you to transfer your earned points to airline, hotel, and other loyalty programs. These programs will generally have higher point values when doing such. Since these matter so much when choosing a credit card, you can enter your own point value for these programs to include in the calculations. You can set any of the currencies listed below to 0 to calculate based on the non-transfer value (in which most are 1 cent per point with the exception of Chase's 1.25/1.5 cent redemptions).
When transferring to other programs, you should be able to get 1 to 2 cents in value for most of the programs listed below, so I defaulted most to a low average of 1.5 cents. You can click on the to learn more about the value of the currency (opens in a new tab/window).

Include Annual Credits/Bonuses

Several credit cards feature annual bonuses. These are usually anniversary bonuses for having the card, airline credits, hotel credits, and more. If you want these included in the calculation, you can check thy box below.

Bank

The bank that issues the card. De-select the banks that you do not want in the results.

Network

The network that the card is tied to such as VISA, Mastercard, Discover, or AMEX.

Card Type

The type of card such as a co-branded airline card, bank rewards card, or cash back card. Do note that some store cards will appear under cash back if you're able to redeem cash back like a normal cash back credit card.

Reward Type

The type of rewards the card earns. This will either be points, miles, or cash back.

Personal/Business

Toggle the showing of personal or business cards in the results. Card combinations are also featured on this site. The combo option is only available if it's more than one category you're enter spend for.

Annual Fee

The range of fees you're willing to pay to wield such awesome credit cards. The First Year Free (FYF) / First Year Reduced (FYR) option will only show FYF/FYR cards that has an second year (and onward) annual fee that falls within the range you entered.

Income Requirements

Some credit cards require a certain amount of annual individual or household income. Enter a max income or enter -1 to show all cards.

Foreign Transaction Fees

Toggle whether to include credit cards that have a foreign transaction fee, foreign conversion fee, or any other type of charge that has to do with making purchases outside of the region.
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Results

Do note that results may take a few seconds to generate after doing a search.
You can click on the 'Rewards Calculator' for any of the cards listed in the results to calculate even more accurate results. You'll be able to enter spend for other categories, toggle fees, add authorized users, and more.
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Page Last Updated: 2020-09-17
Article By: Robert Flowers III
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Editorial Note: All opinions expressed on this site are my own and not those of any bank, rental car company, credit card issuer, hotel company, or any entity mentioned herein. Opinions, calculators, and other editorial content on this page have not been approved or endorsed by any entities on this site.

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About These Calculators: These calculators are provided to help you estimate the value of points and miles, the calculations of rewards earned with credit cards, and the transfer of rewards between programs. They are for illustrative purposes only. They are meant to provide estimates and may not reflect the exact amount of rewards you will receive. Be sure to read the terms and conditions of credit cards and rewards programs before applying/signing up as benefit and perk changes may not be reflected immediately on this website.

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