If you are doing any travel at all this summer, it's a great time to sign up for various hotel promotions. All the major hotel chains are offering free nights and lots of frequent flyer miles.
Hyatt is offering a Big Welcome Back promotion, where you get a free night certificate for every two stays (hint: never stay in the same hotel more than one night!). These must be used by August 31, 2010 but can be used at any Hyatt. The catch is that they can only be used on a standard room, so if all the standard rooms are booked, you can't use them. Hyatt is also offering instand platinum status, made good until 2012 with five stays. And they're offering 3,000 AA frequent flier miles per stay, with a 10,000 bonus after the fifth stay. So stay six nights at a Hyatt Place and get three free nights at an upscale Hyatt plus 25,000 American Airlines miles. Not a bad deal.
Marriott is offering a free stay at a Cat 4 motel with every three stays. Plus you can sign up for 5,000 Delta miles per stay, starting with the second stay. Not nearly as good as the Hyatt offer, but a good deal.
Bringing up the rear is Hilton, with one free stay per four nights. But the certificates are good anywhere and last longer. Hilton also has some frequent flyer offers, but I'll leave you to research those for yourself. The best way to research these things is to visit the hotel section of
www.flyertalk.com.
The best deal, even for Hilton members, is clearly with Hyatt. You can take the 25,000 AA miles and transfer them into the Hilton program for 50,000 Hilton points. Six nights at most luxury European Hiltons costs 175-225,000 points, so five nights at the cheapest Hyatt Place hotels can put you one-fourth of the way to a luxury European vacation.
Of course, you'll have to broaden your horizons a little to take advantage of the Hyatt offer. Mississippi doesn't have even one of their hotels.