As well as credit cards, you might not know that it’s possible to book travel through American Express. 

We recently earned a £200 travel credit on our Platinum credit card so thinking I’d use it towards a couple of nights in Bangkok, I wondered how Amex’s prices stacked up against my fave hotel booking site, hotels.com.

The good thing about Bangkok, is that hotels are pretty cheap and it’s possible to stay in some really high end places much cheaper than you would be able to in Europe or North America. 

Amex offers all standards of hotels but I was most interested in The Hotel Collection and Fine Hotels & Resorts. Not only are these hotels highly regarded 4 and 5 star properties, but Amex has specially negotiated deals including complimentary room upgrades, guaranteed late check out, free breakfast and even free money to spend on dining or spa treatments at the hotel. Stacking these deals with our £200 travel credit should make for a great value stay in a spectacular hotel. But, is it value for money or too good to be true?

For my 2 night stay in Bangkok, I want to be near Siam Square so have selected a handful of hotels near there and compared the Amex deal to my go-to hotels.com. 

Hotel	Amex Benefit	Amex Price and cancellation	Hotels.com Price and cancellation
Como Metropolitan	The Hotel Collection Up to $100 hotel credit Room upgrade, subject to availability	£340.16 room only 2 days prior to arrival	£353.00 inc b/fast 2 days prior to arrival
So/Bangkok	The Hotel Collection Up to $100 hotel credit Room upgrade, subject to availability	£363.42 room only  1 day prior to arrival	£363.00 room only 1 day prior to arrival
Grand Hyatt Erawan	The Hotel Collection  Up to $100 hotel credit Room upgrade, subject to availability	£387.46 room only 5 days prior to arrival	£414.00 room only 5 days prior to arrival
Siam Kempinski	Fine Hotels & Resorts  $100 hotel credit Room upgrade, subject to availability  Free breakfast  4pm check out	£603.90  3 days prior to arrival	£694 inc b/fast 2 days prior to arrival
St Regis	Fine Hotels & Hotels $100 hotel credit Room upgrade, subject to availability Free breakfast 4pm check out	£526.43 1 day prior to arrival	£684.00 inc b/fast 1 day prior to arrival

As you can see, Amex does pretty well competing on price. The cancellation deadlines are also comparable. In all cases except the St Regis, the same room type was available. At the St Regis, Amex had a king room available whereas hotels.com’s cheapest room was a junior suite. One annoying thing is that it’s not easy to tell exactly how much of the “up to” $100 you actually get at The Hotel Collection properties. That credit could easily be swallowed up with breakfast whereas a breakfast inclusive rate on hotels.com could be better value. 

You can also only access The Hotel Collection rates if you have a Gold or Platinum Amex card and Fine Hotels & Resorts will need a Platinum or Centurion card, which carry membership fees. Considering you can access similar benefits through luxury travel agents as I wrote about here, you wouldn’t take out one of these cards just to access these hotel rates. 

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that you can earn 10% cashback on hotels.com bookings via Topcashback and earn hotels.com rewards, worth another 10%, so that can change the maths significantly, even if earning Amex points on your spend with them. Most hotels also won’t recognise any status benefits in their loyalty club for bookings made through hotels.com but The Hotel Collection and Fine Hotels & Resorts bookings do earn hotel points and count towards status.

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