While I love credit card rewards, I’m also a huge fan of the many perks associated with often high annual fee cards. At worst, these are marketing to get folks to consider the product. At best, these are actually really valuable for cardholders and meaningfully (or fully!) offset the associated card fees.
Cue American Express Delta products (Consumer – Platinum & Reserve, Small Business – Platinum & Reserve). These cards are chalk full of benefits, from Companion Passes to Resy credits to $150-250 (card dependent) Delta Stays refunds. That last one is what I’ll focus on quickly here in this post.
What is Delta Stays?
You’ve used Expedia or Kayak to search or book before. That’s it. Simple, straightforward travel booking for hotel stays. There’s some added loyalty benefit for Delta Miles earned on reservations, but outside that I’ve found it’s six of one half dozen of another. No better or meaningfully worse.
EXCEPT when you get a big credit, it’s worth using.
- Gold offers $100 (Consumer) or $150 (Small Business)
- Platinum offers $150 (Consumer) or $200 (Small Business) annually for any prepaid stays.
- Reserve offers $200 (Consumer) or $250 (Small Business) annually for any prepaid stays.
- These are calendar-year, meaning as of January 1 everyone is eligible again. And they’re largely no asterisks. As long as you prepay (not all hotels will allow that option, but most do) you’re golden. Credits post nearly instantly, and boom, your travel is discounted heavily.
So what’s the actual scheme?
- 2025 was a bit of a tough year with a health-cancelled trip to Canada in September delayed until 2027 (pro tip: don’t break a leg!) Knowing I had the $200 credit, I booked a stay using Delta Stays for our transit hotel (Halifax the day of arrival). Paid with the Delta card, cancellation policy allowed full refunds, and then was ultimately forced to cancel a few months after booking. I expected AMEX to claw back the credit provided, but four months later, they still never have!
- Effectively I spent $181.30, got a $181.30 credit, and then later got a $181.30 refund. Pretty sure that’s quite literally the definition of free money. Cha ching!
How do YOU best take advantage?
- If you’re traveling, use this credit to get a serious (up to 100%!) discount on your hotel. Also bank a few Delta points for the booking, while you’re at it. If you’re staying for multiple days, book as close to your credit amount ($100-$250 depending on the card) on Delta Stays, and book the rest on any other typical travel card you have using the best available rate (Delta Stays is probably not the lowest). Contact the hotel to have them link the reservations. Boom.
- If you’re not traveling, book a refundable hotel on the card, pay your statement, and cancel the refundable reservation a month-ish out from booking. Bank that credit. If AMEX isn’t smart enough to have a policy to prevent this, they should be perfectly fine paying for it (the annual fees are hefty, after all!) Make the big bad bank pony up.
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