Are Amex Hotel Collection bookings more expensive than booking direct?

Last week we published the results of the searches I carried out while trying to determine if making a booking with the Amex Travel Fine Hotels and Resorts program was more expensive than booking directly with a hotel or a chain.

This is the second part of the research that I did and it compares the cost of booking Amex Hotel Collection hotels (through Amex Travel) with the cost of booking the same hotels directly or through the chains to which they are affiliated.

If you’ve read the Fine Hotels and Resorts (FHR) article, the upcoming introduction will look very familiar (because my reasoning for checking these prices was the same in both cases), so feel free to skip what comes next and fast forward to the results.

Introduction

One of the key benefits associated with the refreshed Platinum Card® from American Express is the $600/year hotel credit (split across two 6-month periods) which can be triggered when a card member uses their card to pay for eligible prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts and the Hotel Collection bookings through American Express Travel.

This benefit has been widely touted as an important path to getting great value out of the Platinum Card and a great way to recoup most of the card’s hefty annual fee ($895). But is this benefit as good as it sounds?

You don’t have to search the internet for very long before you find people suggesting that the value of the Platinum Card’s hotel credit is overblown because bookings through Amex Travel come with a mark-up and that booking directly with a hotel or with a chain is cheaper, so what’s the truth here?

The Platinum Card hotel credits

The Platinum Card’s annual $600 hotel credit is split in two – cardholders get a $300 credit which can be used between January and June and a second $300 credit which can be used between July and December every year.

These credits can be triggered by booking a stay of 1-night or more at an Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts (FHR) property or a stay of 2-nights or more at an Amex Hotel Collection property, so let’s take a look at what the Hotel Collection prices look like.

The methodology I used

I kept this as simple as possible.

• I picked 20 major cities from around the world
• I picked a random weekend in 2026 (a Friday and Saturday night)
• I entered the cities and the travel dates into Amex Travel and then semi-randomly* selected a Hotel Collection property form the list of properties presented to me (if such a property was available).
• If there was no Hotel Collection property available on the dates I chose, I didn’t redo the search as showing where a search came up empty may give some indication as to where the Hotel Collection may have weaknesses.
• I compared the best prices shown on Amex Travel with the best prices shown by the hotels/chains through their own booking channels to see what (if any) differences there were.
• Where possible, I noted down the best non-flexible rate on offer and the best flexible rate on offer across all the platforms I checked and I made sure that I was comparing like with like.
• I also made sure that the type of room being offered (size, view, etc…) was the same on Amex Travel and on the hotel sites.

*My selection was semi-random and not completely random because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t accidentally include too many properties from the one chain or brand in my search results.

Amex Hotel Collection

As a reminder, these are the benefits that accompany an Amex Hotel Collection booking:

• 12 pm check in (subject to availability)
• A room upgrade upon arrival (subject to availability)
• $100 room credit towards eligible charges (which may include food and beverage, spa, or other on-property charges – eligible charges vary by property)
• Late check-out (subject to availability)

Unlike Fine Hotels and Resorts bookings, nothing other than the room credit is guaranteed with a Hotel Collection booking.

You’ll find the full search results in a table at the end of this article, so the table below just shows the key data.

• A red number shows where an Amex Hotel Collection booking would have been $50+/night more expensive than booking directly with the hotel.
• A yellow number shows where an Amex Hotel Collection booking would have been between $25 and $50/night more expensive than booking directly with the hotel.
• A green number shows where an Amex Hotel Collection would have been no more than $25/night more expensive than booking directly with the hotel (a green number in brackets indicates that booking with Amex would have been cheaper than booking directly with the hotel).

A key thing to keep in mind as you view the data is this:

In all but three instances, Amex Travel only offered fully flexible rates at the properties I selected. In some cases, the chains and/or properties offered fully flexible rates and a cheaper less flexible rate.

If you’re only interested in booking a flexible rate, the column you should focus on below is the second from the right (“difference/night flexible rates“).

If you would be prepared to book a rate that requires full prepayment or a rate that has a relatively harsh cancellation policy, the column you should focus on below is the one on the far right (“difference/night Amex best rate v Hotel best rate“).

In summary:

• Three of the locations selected (Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Rio de Janeiro) did not have any Hotel Collection properties available for the dates that I searched and I was checking dates over 6 months out.

When comparing flexible rates, a Hotel Collection booking through Amex Travel was:

• Cheaper than booking direct in 1 out of 17 instances.
• The same price as booking direct in 2 out of 17 instances.
• Between $1 and $25 more expensive per night than booking direct in 9 out of 17 instances.
• Between $25 and $50 more expensive per night than booking direct in 1 out of 17 instances.
• Over $50 more expensive per night than booking direct in 4 out of 17 instances.

When comparing Amex FHR rates and the cheapest rate being offered by the property, a Hotel Collection booking through Amex Travel was:

• Cheaper than booking direct in 1 out of 17 instances*
• The same price as booking direct in 0 out of 17 instances.
• Between $1 and $25 more expensive per night than booking direct in 5 out of 17 instances.
• Between $25 and $50 more expensive per night than booking direct in 2 out of 17 instances.
• Over $50 more expensive per night than booking direct in 9 out of 17 instances.

*This was at the Melia Shanghai Parkside where, surprisingly, Amex offered a non-flexible rate while the property did not.

There were a few nuances within the results that may make a difference to the way some people may view them, so for the sake of completeness, here they are:

1. At the Ned in London, both of the rates that Amex offered (flexible and non-flexible) included breakfast, the hotel’s rate did not.
2. At the JW Marriott Madrid, the Viceroy Chicago, and the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, the Amex rate included breakfast, the hotels’ own rates did not.
3. For the Hoxton Paris, the hotel rates that I used were not the reduced rates that you get if you have the $216/year Hoxton Disloyalty membership.
4. Someone with access to the Hyatt Leverage rate could have saved a further $120/night when booking the Tribune in Rome with Hyatt and that would see Amex Travel charging over $175 more per night than Hyatt.
5. At the Kimpton in Shinjuku (Tokyo), the Kimpton rate included breakfast while the Amex rate did not.
6. Someone with access to the Hyatt Leverage rate could have saved a further $40/night when booking the Andaz 5th Avenue with Hyatt and that would see Amex Travel charging over $107 more per night than Hyatt.

Thoughts

As was the case when I looked through the results from my Fine Hotels and Resorts (FHR) searches, I was a little surprised to see Amex Travel being this competitive when it comes to flexible rates, but I wasn’t overly surprised that bookings through Amex look a lot less attractive if you’re prepared to make a non-flexible booking directly with a hotel/chain.

As I’ve said before, I appreciate that a selection of 20 searches (only 17 of which returned results) isn’t big enough to form a statistically valid sample size, but I still think that the results give a reasonable (if general) insight into what you’re likely to find when you check the Hotel Collection prices you’ll find on Amex Travel and the check what the hotels are offering.

The results show that at 12 out of the 17 searches that yielded results, the flexible Hotel Collection price was within $25 of the flexible nightly price offered by the direct booking channels.

And don’t forget that in one of those 12 searches it was cheaper to book with Amex than booking directly with the hotel, and in two of those 12 searches the Amex rate included breakfast for two people while the hotel rates did not.

Given that Amex Hotel Collection bookings guarantee a $100 room credit (of some kind) and give you a reasonable chance of an upgrade, an early check-in, and a late check-out, that’s not bad at all and it makes me think that if you need to make a flexible booking, the Platinum Card credit offers real value when booking through the Hotel Collection.

Of course, you have to keep in mind that Hotel Collection bookings are viewed as 3rd party bookings by the hotels and that means that Hotel Collection bookings will not earn guests points in the hotel’s rewards program and guests with Hotel Collection bookings are not entitled to any elite status benefits that they would have been entitled to had they booked directly with the hotel.

At hotels without a loyalty program, this is obviously irrelevant, but if you hold valuable status with a hotel program and you’re considering a Hotel Collection booking at a property where your status would normally get you quite a few extras, you’ll have to work out how much those extras are worth to you and then include that value in your calculations.

If we now move on to consider what happens when we include non-flexible rates into our thinking, you’ll see that the story changes. Things don’t look so good for Amex Travel.

If you’re happy to book a non-flexible rate, the search results show that you may be able to save quite a bit of money by avoiding Amex Travel and booking directly with the chains/hotels.

In 4 of the 17 searches, a guest could save over $119 per night by choosing to book the best rate offered by the hotel rather than the best rate offered by Amex Travel, and if you don’t mind making a non-flexible booking, you would have to be pretty desperate to use your Amex credit to choose Amex over a direct booking in these examples.

In 5 of the remaining 13 searches, a guest could save over $62 per night by choosing to book the best rate offered by the hotel rather than the best rate offered by Amex Travel, so in total, in 9 of the 17 searches, the best rate offered by the hotel was at least $62/night cheaper than the best rate Amex Travel showed.

Don’t forget that you have to book a stay of at least 2-nights when making a Hotel Collection booking, so you could rephrase what I’ve written above and say this:

In 9 out of the 17 searches, someone booking though the Hotel Collection would pay at least $124 more for their stay than they would have done had they booked directly and chosen the hotel’s non-flexible rate.

Given that the only thing guaranteed in a Hotel Collection booking is a single $100 room credit and given that Hoel Collection bookings are ineligible for hotel rewards and elite status recognition, these Amex Hotel Collection bookings are not looking like great value.

Sure, your Platinum Card hotel credit would negate the extra cost of booking though Amex Travel, but you would then have to accept that you won’t be getting full value out of your card’s credit. Your $300 credit, in this case, would be saving you, at most $176 ($300 – $124).

If you’re using the hotel credits to justify holding a card that’s costing you $895 in annual fees, suddenly you’re in a little trouble because the credits aren’t recouping as much of that annual fee for you as their $600 headline value would suggest.

For balance, I should point out that in 5 out of the 17 searches that yielded results, booking a flexible rate though the Hotel Collection rather than booking a non-flexible rate directly with a hotel would only cost a guest, at most, $19 more/night ($38 more/2-night stay), and that not too back considering you have a $100 room credit coming your way.

But I don’t think that’s the key takeaway here. The key takeaway is that more times than not, someone who is happy to book a non-flexible rate will be better off avoiding the Hotel Collection and booking directly with the hotel/chain.

Bottom line

From the relatively small sample of data that I’ve gathered, this is what I’m taking away:

The Amex Travel Hotel Collection rates are often very competitive when they’re compared to the flexible rates offered directly by the hotels, so as long as you’re not giving up too many elite benefits and rewards points by booking through Amex, more often than not, you can use the Hotel Collection to get a lot of value out of your Platinum Card hotel credits.

If you’re comfortable booking non-flexible rates, however, the results tell a different story because the best prices available through Amex Travel (usually flexible rates) can be considerably more expensive than the best rates offered directly by the hotels (rates which are usually not flexible).

If you add to that the fact that not only will you be paying more by booking through Amex Travel, but you’ll also probably be missing out on hotel rewards points and elite status benefits (which all have a value), it starts to get hard to justify a Hotel Collection booking.

Yes, your Hotel Collection booking would allow you to use your Platinum Card hotel credit, but if you would be otherwise happy to make a non-flexible booking, you would be using your Amex credit to overpay for a stay and in doing so, significantly reducing the value you’re getting from one of the Platinum Card’s key credits.

So, to sum up (in a very general way):

If you’re looking to make a flexible booking, there’s a very good chance that a Hotel Collection booking will give you a good opportunity to get great value out of your Platinum Card hotel credit.

If you’re happy to make a non-flexible booking, there’s a good chance that by making a Hotel Collection booking you will be overpaying for your stay and significantly reducing the real value your Platinum Card hotel credit is giving you.

Have you been using Amex Travel to search for rates at Hotel Collection properties? What have your experiences been like?

Note: As promised a little earlier, here’s the full set of Hotel Collection search results in tabular form: