All those friends who love to laugh at your $450 a year credit card won’t be chuckling any longer. Nope, not when they find out that your last trip was longer, better and cheaper than theirs – all thanks to that expensive “love to hate” piece of plastic in your pocket. We recently put one credit card benefit to the test, and the result: more than $1000 in savings on a single vacation. Imagine what you could do with a year’s worth of travel?
We’re Talking About The Citi Prestige 4th Free Benefit, Which Applies To Every Hotel You Book, All Year Long…
A key benefit if the Citi Prestige card, which charges a hefty $450 annual fee, is the 4th night free benefit. Regardless of the room price, on an unlimited number of stays- you get the room rate for the 4th night of any stay comped. Yeah that’s right – you could make your annual fee back in a single 4 night booking.
Here’s A Practical Example In Action For A Random Trip…
Let’s take Langham in Sydney, Australia. Rooms are about $350 a night, and there’s no argument that it’s a steep price – but it’s awesome. Using the 4th night free benefit, you’d save roughly $350 on a four night stay, dropping the room rate down to more like $262 a night. Solid! On this specific trip, we’ll have 14 days of hotel stays, so this will be used 3x, for a savings over $1000. Best part? You can book any hotel – directly online at the Citi website, with the savings built in.
The Key Here: Do This Over And Over Again, All Year…
The Citi Prestige card comes with airport VIP lounge access for cardmember and at least one guest, and also offers a $250 travel credit – good for any travel purchase. Basically, your net loss on the annual fee is only $200 after the travel credit kicks in, assuming you value airport lounge access and the 75,000 point sign up bonus (worth at least $750) at zero (which you should not). If you then use the 4th night free benefit over and over, you can come out with multiple $1000’s in savings over the course of the year…
Is It For You? That Totally Depends On Your Travel Patterns…
If you only stay 2-3 nights max in the same place on your travels – this benefit is useless. If however, you find yourself staying 4+ nights a couple times a year, for business or pleasure, this is an incredibly overlooked opportunity to save. And yes, you could theoretically book two back to back “four night” stays to pay for 6 nights on an 8 night stay, though it’s been rumored you may need to use two separate hotels (worth trying). Clever eh?
Cool article, I enjoy your site. One thing to note is that if you do 4 nights back to back, they *must* be at different hotels. Otherwise the Prestige concierge will mark it as one stay.
Is this math right: you still spent 14 X $350 = $4,900 to get $1,050 back = $3,850 net in just hotel expenses for 2 weeks?
This might be true for business travelers (read bloggers).
For us “regular ones” Citi Prestige is a long shot after all the other changes.
I try to pay for our leisure travel with points/miles.
However, I got $50 statement’s credit for 7 months (if I spend $1500) and decided to keep the card for another year (for other sinister reasons). Then we’ll see.
I love this card. If you stay in cheap hotels you don’t need it. But, if you travel a bit you can make a bundle on it. Stay at good hotels, enjoy a bit of luxury at 25% off. If you take the Marriot challenge and stack platinum status on top of this, you get some great deals.