Frequent Miler on the Air - Fine Hotels + Resorts® vs The Edit by Chase Travel℠ | Coffee Break Ep93 | 2-17-26

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Fine Hotels + Resorts® and The Edit by Chase Travel℠ are hotel programs offered by American Express and Chase, which offer a similar array of perks. But that doesn't mean there aren't significant differences. Greg discusses a recent stay where he used both of these back-to-back.Fine Hotels + Resorts® vs The Edit by Chase Travel℠(00:40) - Read more here(00:55) - On paper, Fine Hotels + Resorts® is better in most ways(02:20) - Except...(04:28) - Greg's Experience Fine Hotels + Resorts® vs The Edit by Chase Travel℠: Pendry Chicago(02:06) - Commonalities(06:55) - Differences(12:02) - Confusing pointsVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Today's coffee break. Fine hotels and resorts versus the edit. These are both hotel programs offered by American Express and Chase. And there's a lot of similarities between them.

They both offer luxury perks, like usually free breakfast, a room upgrade and other things. But there are also big differences between them. So today we're going to talk at a high level about what are the differences sort of on paper. And we're going to dive into an experience I had recently where I had – I used both types of programs at one hotel back to back. and so I can talk about what happened to me during that experience. Yeah, all right. So high level on paper, Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts is better in a number of ways. First of all, one of the stated benefits of the program is daily breakfast for two at all properties.

Now, a lot of properties through the edit offer breakfast, but not all properties apparently do, or at least it's not listed with some properties, whereas Amex always lists daily breakfast for two. Now, there are some places like in Las Vegas where that will be provided as a dining credit because there's a lot of restaurants at those resorts. But nonetheless, daily breakfast for two is one of the guaranteed benefits of fine hotels and resorts. Speaking of guaranteed benefits, the other big one for me is a 4 p.m. late checkout. That's guaranteed with Amex fine hotels and resorts. And that can be really beneficial because there are times, even like, for instance, as a high at globalist, I get 4 p.m. checkout at most places, but not at

resorts. However, if you book through fine hotels and resorts, you are going to get that 4 p.m. late checkout because it is guaranteed. So that's a really nice benefit to have. And the other key advantage that Amics Fine Hotels and Resorts has is that Platinum cards have a twice annual $300 prepaid hotel credit that can be used for a Fine Hotels and Resorts booking. An FHR only requires a one-night booking. You can use that benefit even if you're only staying for one night. So in some cases, that can make a night free or close to free or sometimes even you you get a couple of nights at the right FHR property for free with that $300 credit or close to it. But there are some situations where Chase is better.

So Chase offers much better value for points when you're booking edit properties. It's right now, as we record this, a floor level, I think, of 1.65 cents per point. And sometimes it's boosted to two cents per point. If you're booking fine hotels and resorts through Amex, you're only getting one cent per point. So you definitely, if you want to use points towards your luxury booking, Chase is the way to go. Chase also has two annual credits. They're $250 credits for the edit bookings of two nights or more. And first of all, you can use those two credits at any time during the year. So rather than, I should mention with Fine Hotels and Resorts with Amex, if you have a platinum card, you do get that

$300 prepaid hotel credit twice a year, but it's once January to June and once July to December. So you have to be making your bookings during different parts of the year. Whereas with Chase is the edit, the edit credit on the Sapphire reserve, you get two of those $250 credits for two-night bookings or more, and there's no time restriction apart from the fact that they have to be used at some point during the calendar year, so you could be making two bookings tomorrow and use those two credits, and that would be a nice advantage there. There are also some cases, there's a temporary stacking credit that can stack on top of that right now, or a couple of options there where you've got some stacking ability with Chase, so there's potential advantage

there as well. And in the deep dive that we've done in a couple of cities, when Greg looked at a couple of cities or I don't know, actually I can't remember if it was you or me that wrote that post. But at any rate, we found that Amex is usually cheaper than Chase for similar properties or the same properties, though there are times when Chase has a better price than Amex.

But it can't be disputed really that Amex has far more qualifying hotels in their luxury booking platform. There's just way more options. If you're booking through fine hotels and resorts, then through Chase's The Edit, at least as we record this. Hopefully that'll continue to improve over time. But there's your high-level overview of the two programs. But we should dig into some actual experience.

We'll be right back with my experience with both programs at the Pendry, Chicago, after this. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources.

If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. All right, and we're back. So we talked about the differences and similarities between Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts and Chase is the edit. But now let's drill into Greg's direct experience.

using both programs at the same property. Yeah. So I spent a long weekend at the Pendry Hotel in Chicago. And what I did is I booked the first two nights through Chase, through the edit, and the final night through American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts. And I know this is not, you know, a good study that will show, like, what you should expect is a difference. I just thought it would be interesting to hear.

real live case, you know, example of what it was like booking with one versus the other and what the differences were. Your experience may vary. Your experience almost certainly will vary, especially if you do a similar experiment at another property. All right. So given that I booked both of both parts of this day with both programs, let's talk about what was in common. And for both parts of the stay, we were supposed to be upgraded. We weren't. Now, it's possible that if I had just checked in separately to the fine hotels and resorts part of the day, which was the second part, maybe I would have been upgraded there. But when I checked in on Thursday for the three nights day, I asked that we'd be kept in the same room for all three nights.

So that might have sort of ruined that experiment for Amex's side. In both cases, we got a welcome amenity. So there was this nice little box of chocolates that came, that was in our room already when we checked in on Thursday. And it came to our room Saturday night for our Saturday night's day. So that was nice. And in both cases, free breakfast was delivered in the same way, which is we had $60 credit per day. for breakfast. And in both cases, that was not enough for two people to have breakfast, if you include like coffee. And even the cheapest item on the menu plus coffee, plus tax

and tip came to more than $60 for two people. But it was close enough that I wasn't going to sweat it. All right. So that's what was in common between the two. Now let's talk about, I was actually surprised to see that, there were a number of advantages to the chase part of the stay. Because like, you know, as Nick pointed out earlier on paper, Amex has a lot of advantages, and I didn't really think there'd be any advantages to chase, other than the fact that your points are worth more. And so that was a big advantage is that my points were worth two cents each towards a stay. So what I did was I paid, I divided up the payment into partial points and partial cash. And so I made sure the cash part would be offset by the credits and then I would pay the rest with points and get that two cents per point value. And that's what I did. And that worked really well.

I another difference between Chase and Amex, it's not really advertised, but it happens routinely is that Chase includes the resort fee in the price that they charge you up front. So, Amex lists the resort fee as part of the overall cost, but then it'll say you pay that portion at the hotel, whereas you pay the rest up front. In Chase's case, you pay it all up front, and then they pay the hotel for the destination fee. Now, that can be very negative because a lot of people have had experiences where the hotel doesn't recognize that it was prepaid and we'll charge them again. And there are also cases like if you have, for example, Hyatt Globalist status where you shouldn't be charged a resort fee because of your status. Well, you've already paid the resort fee. Then you have to go through a whole process to try to recover it if you want to. So those are some negative things.

But there's also some good things about prepaying it. One is that if you're getting that 2x points boost like I was, you're getting that value for the resort fee. or if you're not using points and you're just paying through the portal, when you pay through the portal with Chase, you get eight points per dollar. So it'd be a way to earn eight points per dollar on the resort fee, which you can't do when you're paying at the hotel. So there's some advantages there. And in my case, the resort fee was correctly taken off the bill. So I literally, for the entire part of the Chase stay, had zero to pay at the hotel when I checked out of that part of the stay, the bill came in zero.

Even though breakfast costs more than the $60. Yes, it did, but both programs give you $100 stay credit that can be used for various things. And we managed to kind of thread the needle such that we did use it to pay for lunch, but lunch was less than $100. And what was over the lunch cost covered the two mornings of breakfast, the overage. of breakfast. And in fact, I think the total I used up of that $100 credit was like $94. And I felt a little disappointed in myself that I didn't get like a $5 mini bar item or something. Nothing in the mini bar? Come on. Yeah. Rookie mistake. I should have been tracking. Must have been some M&Ms.

I don't even know if there's anything that cheap, but maybe, maybe. Right. So, so, yeah. So, that was good. The other thing that was sort of interesting, I didn't take advantage of. it, but the $100 state credit on Chase's side could be used at what is the equivalent of the hotel-like store. They don't actually have a dedicated store at the Pendry, Chicago. What they have is a wall of merchandise, and you can actually apply your state credit to anything you buy off that wall, whereas the Amex thing explicitly, you can't. And they told me that when I was checking in, and it was also listed.

and I got two documents for both parts of the stay of what benefits you get. And it was listed as something you get on the chase side only. And there was nothing on the wall that was $5 and change so you could use up the rest of your credit? There probably was, but I didn't check. Oh, man, swing it. I wasn't tracking my credits along the way, which was bad of me. Fair enough. The final thing that seemed better about the chase part of the stay has to do with earning

points. Both programs, if you're booking a, you know, a chain hotel that belongs to a point program and you put in your loyalty number, you're supposed to earn points and elite credits for the stay. And with the chase part of the stay, it looks like I did earn points from that part of the stay. Now, this is a preferred hotel, so it's very different. from if you're staying at like a Marriott or IHG or, you know, Hilton type of thing, because Perreterot tells their points program is not quite half-baked, to put it generously. And so anyway, the thing is, I did earn points, but it's unclear exactly which part of which stay those points came from. it seems to line up better with my Chase stay than with my MX stay as far as the date the points credited and the number of points.

But it's not at all a slam dunk because when I backed out Chase's fees and taxes to come up with like the base earning rate, I should have been able to figure out how many points I would should have earned from that stay. And using that calculation, it did not come out to what I earned. And my activity, as shown in my I prefer account, shows 6,210 points earned, but then it shows 6,210 points removed, like it shows a minus next to them. But they weren't removed. They're still in my account. So all of this is to say something weird and wonky happened.

I really doubt that you can count on that being something that's likely to be repeated one way or another. Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all at the very same hotel if someone did the same experiment if it'd come out totally differently in terms of point earning. So yeah. And as far as my stay goes, so I mentioned now what the chase advantages were. There were a couple advantages to that mixed day. One is it was slightly cheaper on a per night basis. Not a lot. Just about 10 or 15 bucks cheaper. And of course, I had the 4 p.m. late checkout.

I didn't use it, but they gave that to me automatically. They didn't even ask if I want it. They just said, you have that. And so that's pretty cool about the Amex part of this day. So, yeah, so there you go. What do you think, Nick, do you think, did any of that surprise you? Well, surprise, I don't know if that's the right word. but I, well, I think it's interesting to me that, A, we don't know where you earned points,

although, again, that's kind of, or which stay triggered the points. It's kind of par for the course because it was preferred hotels. I think that that experiment would come out significantly differently if it were a Marriott or a Hyatt, I think. So that part seems surprising on the surface unless you've followed Greg's coverage of preferred hotels over the last few years. And then you're like, they had his reservation when he got there. that's the surprising part, you know, because I feel like all of the various preferred hotels and choice

points, things, there's been a lot of confusion there over the last couple years. It does seem like it's smoothed out. But I think that the bottom line is that either of these programs can be really good in the right situation. You know, I think that you have to find the state that fits. But when you do, I think either one of them can be good. I still am going to prefer find hotels and resorts because there are plenty of situations where I only need one night and where the four-privile. PM checkout is a really integral part of things for me. So overall, I think I tend to lean towards fine hotels and resorts, but this is nice to see that the Chase booking did work out about as well anyway.

Oh, that's my other question. So you had the $60 credit for breakfast each day. And that was the same with both programs. So the breakfast benefit was delivered the same way with both programs. Yeah, they were worded slightly differently. one of them said $30 per person for up to two people. The other one said $60 a day. And so I think that could matter if you had deliberately booked a one person's day. Maybe you would have only gotten $30 per day with, you know, so it's a good idea when booking, even if it's just for you,

to put two people in the reservation just so that in that sort of situation, you'll get the full credit. Yeah, well, I think that maybe if there's anything surprising, maybe that's it because the $60, you said, did not fully cover breakfast. And Amex does list breakfast for two as a benefit. So that's a situation where maybe it'd be worth following up with Amex after the fact and saying, listen, it says daily breakfast for two, but this did not fully cover breakfast. Of course, hotel could come back and argue, yes, it covered your food. You just happened to also want coffee.

That's true. That's true. So who knows how that would shake out. But overall, two good programs. Yeah, yeah, totally. And it's also worth noting that, you know, I think I got kind of lucky that the stay was only slightly more expensive through Chase than through Amex. Because sometimes you see it drastically more expensive. And in those cases, you know, Amex is so clearly superior because, you know, you could be paying more than $250 more for a change.

chase stay that will, you know, completely wipe out the value of, of the credit that you get with your safari reserve card. So it's just something to keep in mind and to keep a watch out for. Because when I did a deep dive, looking at hotels in London and New York that were in both programs, I did find, if I remember right, around half the properties had the same price, but when they were different, they were almost always more expensive on the chase side. So something to keep an eye on. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list,

follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love wingnet travel podcast. every Monday I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicegate.com.