When it comes to booking hotels, we have more options on the market than ever before. This gives us the luxury of shopping around when booking our next hotel stay and wanting to maximize the value of our hard-earned points, miles, and dollars. However, with so many options, it can be difficult to know when and where it makes the most sense to book our hotel stay.
Let’s take a deep dive into the major hotel booking options that you are most likely to encounter. We’ll cover pros and cons and special perks that may be available for you to stay in style on your next hotel visit!
What are Hotel Booking Portals?
Hotel booking portals are online platforms that allow you to search, compare, and book accommodations across a wide range of options and properties to best suit your needs. Often, you can also see an overview of pricing for multiple days, which may influence which days you decide to travel. The general categories of hotel booking portals are:
- Bank-associated travel portals like Expedia for TD, Scotiabank Scene+ Travel, or American Express Travel
- Public online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Booking.com, or Hotels.com
- Premium credit card travel portals, including American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts (FHR) and Capital One Premier Collection
The Major Hotel Booking Portals: A Breakdown
American Express Travel (Including Fine Hotels & Resorts and The Hotel Collection)
American Express Travel is open to any American Express cardholder in Canada and the United States. Depending on the country of the credit card you hold and log in with, your Amex Travel portal may look slightly different; however, they are functionally identical.
Generally, using your American Express Membership Rewards points for a redemption in the Amex Travel Portals is a poor use of your hard-earned points, especially when you get much better value by transferring out to transfer partners. Additionally, the cash prices on the portal are comparable to those on other portals that are mentioned in this article.
However, if you hold the American Express Platinum Card or the American Express Business Platinum Card in Canada or the United States, you will have access to the Fine Hotels and Resorts and The Hotel Collection programs through Amex Travel.
The American Express Platinum Card is a premium card that offers benefits including a $200 travel credit, a $200 dining credit, airport lounge access, instant elite status with Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton Honors, and more.
Check out our American Express Platinum card review for more details.
100,000 Membership Rewards points
$10,000
$2,000+
$799
Yes
–
Fine Hotels and Resorts is an exclusive booking platform for cardholders to book hotel reservations for exclusive and luxury hotels with added benefits, including:
- Room upgrade (when available)
- Free breakfast for 2 people
- Early check-in and guaranteed 4 pm late check-out
- Property experience credit (often in the form of a $100 USD property credit)
For more information on how to maximize the use of the program, check out our definitive guide to Fine Hotels and Resorts.
Capital One Travel (including Premier and Lifestyle Collections)
If you’ve read a few of my articles, you’ll know how much of a fan I am of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Card, and one of the reasons is the Capital One Travel portal! You can earn 10x Capital One Miles per dollar spent on hotel stays booked through Capital One Travel, which is a great return on spend for any cash stays you have coming up!
The Capital One Venture X Rewards Card offers unlimited airport lounge access, an annual $300 travel credit, and more.
Click to learn how to obtain and optimize the Capital One Venture X Rewards card as a Canadian!
100,000 Capital One Miles
$10,000
$1,850+
$395
No
–
Capital One also has its own luxury hotel booking program – the Premier and Lifestyle Collections. When booking with the Capital One Premier Collection, at a minimum, you will receive the following benefits:
- $100 USD experience credit that can be used towards food, spa, or other amenities available at the property. This will be automatically applied to your bill at the end of your stay
- Daily breakfast for two people. The way this will be applied depends on the property (e.g., daily statement credit to be used at the restaurant, access to a breakfast buffet, etc.)
- Early check-in and late check-out times
- Room upgrade, when available
- Complimentary WiFi
- Earn 10x Capital One Miles per dollar spent on the booking (standard for all hotel bookings through the Capital One Travel Portal)
Check out our detailed guide on the Capital One Premier & Lifestyle Collections to learn more about this awesome program!
Chase Travel (including The Edit)
The Chase Travel portal has been a mainstay in the points and miles space for a while now and remains one of our favourites to use. Just like their American Express and Capital One counterparts, the Chase Travel portal is open to anyone who holds a Chase credit card, such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is an incredibly valuable US credit card that earns Ultimate Rewards points which can be transferred to numerous frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs.
Check out our Chase Sapphire Preferred card review for more details.
75,000 Ultimate Rewards points
$5,000
$1,275+
$95
No
–
The benefit of using the Chase Travel Portal is being able to redeem your Chase Ultimate Rewards points for a fixed value of 1.25 USD cents per point if you hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Preferred cards, or 1.5 USD cents per point if you hold the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
This redemption opportunity offers great value when using your Ultimate Rewards points for redemptions on independent hotels. We used the Chase Travel Portal for our trip to Santorini as the majority of the hotels on this Greek Island were independent hotels.
However, this strong fixed-value travel program will be phased out starting on October 26, 2025. All Chase Ultimate Rewards points earned after this date will be redeemed through the Chase Travel Portal at a base rate of 1 USD cent per point, regardless of the card you hold. To get more value than this, you want to look for hotels (and flights) labeled with “Points Boost.” These bookings will have up to 2 USD cents per point value.
The eligible Chase card you hold will also determine the number of Points Boost options you have available to you and the value of your “upgraded point.” For example, while holding the Chase Sapphire Reserve unlocks up to 2 USD cents per point and more options, you are capped at 1.75 USD cents per point (good luck finding these opportunities) and fewer options.
In our opinion, this is a huge bust in the points and miles space, as now, we do not have a strong fixed points travel program that consistently offers over 1 cent per point value. How Chase is making up for this devaluation is the introduction of their luxury hotel program called ‘The Edit’.
The Edit is only available to Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders and is Chase’s answer to American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts and Capital One Premier Collection. The benefits of booking through The Edit are as follows:
- Daily breakfast for 2
- $100 property credit (Includes dining, spa, or other activities at the property)
- Room upgrade at check-in if available
- Early check-in/late check-out if available
- Free Wifi
The Chase Sapphire Reserve card is a premium credit card that offers a number of valuable benefits that includes travel credits, airport lounge access, and more.
100,000 Ultimate Rewards points
$5,000
$1,700+
$795
No
–
In addition, hotels part of The Edit will have the most options available for Points Boost and will have selections that offer 2 USD cents per point (although these are reported to be rare).
Public Third-Party Online Travel Agencies
The popular online travel agencies that you will encounter when looking for options for your next stay will likely be Expedia, Hotels.com, and Booking.com. At first glance, there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about using one of these portals. However, you may be leaving some value to be had on the table when you default to using these options.
For example, if you have hotel elite status, such as Marriott Bonvoy Titanium Elite status, you should not expect to have your elite benefits honoured if you use one of these third-party travel agencies. Additionally, you may not get credit to your loyalty account for the nights stayed.
You also do not get any valuable loyalty rewards with these sites outside of the points you earn with the credit card you use to book it. In the same line, there really is no way to redeem your points and miles unless you use your points for statement credit, such as redeeming TD Rewards points for TD Book Any Way Travel.
However, these sites are not all bad news. Sometimes, the destination you go to may not have any large hotel chains where you can book directly online, or they may not be available in any of the portals we talked about (this happened to us when we went to Greece!). More often than not, these options will show up on Booking.com. You can also book service apartments for accommodations through Booking.com, which may be helpful if you travel with a large entourage! In that case, a great strategy would be to use one of these online travel agencies!
Bank-Associated Expedia Portals
This next category is a hybrid between credit cardholder-exclusive travel portals and public online travel agencies. Scotiabank and TD both have their own travel portals available to their travel rewards credit cardholders.
However, unlike American Express, they have outsourced their portal to be run by Expedia, one of the largest online travel agencies in the world. For all intents and purposes, these branded travel portals function exactly like vanilla Expedia would – they also have the same availability and pricing.
The benefits of these portals are being able to use your Scene+ points or TD Rewards points at an increased value for redemptions, versus applying your points as a statement credit. You also earn more points per dollar when booking through these co-branded portals.
Scene+ Travel is Scotiabank’s version of Expedia and can be accessed by simply being a Scene+ rewards member. That means that you don’t actually need to hold a Scotiabank credit card to use the travel portal.
Additionally, members will earn 3 Scene+ per dollar spent on bookings in the portal. If you pay with the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card, you can get an additional 4 Scene+ points per dollar.
The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card earns up to 6x Scene+ points at Empire grocery stores and charges no foreign exchange fees on purchases made in foreign currencies.
Check out our Scotiabank Gold American Express card review for more details.
Earn when you apply through Frugal Flyer.
50,000 Scene+ points
$7,500
$650+
$120 (FYF)
No
Jan 1, 2026
Considering that Scene+ points are redeemed at 1 cent per point, you can get up to 7% back in Scene+ points when booking through this portal. Check out our complete guide to the Scene+ Travel Portal for more information on how to maximize earning and redeeming!
Similarly, Expedia for TD is only available to TD Rewards credit card holders, such as the TD First Class Visa Infinite Card. Again, the functionality of this portal is identical to vanilla Expedia in terms of availability and pricing.
The best use for your TD Rewards points is redemptions through Expedia for TD. This way, you can unlock the maximum value of your TD Rewards points at 0.5 cents per point.
The TD First Class Travel® Visa Infinite* Card earns 8x TD Rewards on purchases at Expedia for TD, plus a $100 Expedia for TD credit and TD Rewards birthday bonus.
Check out our TD First Class Travel® Visa Infinite* Card review for more information.
165,000 TD Rewards points
$7,500
$825+
$139 (FYF)
Yes
–
Check out our complete guide to Expedia for TD to learn more about all aspects of this travel portal!
Rove Miles
Rove Miles is the new kid on the block. It markets itself as “the first universal airline mile.” It is both a travel portal and loyalty program where you can earn miles by booking flights and hotels through their platform and earn their proprietary points currency. From there, you can use your miles to redeem through the Rove Miles travel portal or even transfer them out to a number of transfer partners.
As this is still a relatively new platform, it is difficult to have a good pulse on pricing, availability, and redemption rates. However, they seem to be backed by a venture capital firm, meaning it may be worth keeping an eye on them as they might run aggressive introductory offers to attract people to their platform, meaning even greater value for users in the short term.
When Does It Make Sense To Use a Hotel Booking Portal vs. Booking Direct?
With so many options on the market to book hotels, including booking directly with the hotel chain, it begs the question: how should we determine which platform to use? Here’s the TLDR:
Book direct with hotels when:
- You want to earn hotel points or elite night credits
- Guaranteed elite benefits that come with your status
- You see an amazing redemption available on the hotel’s site
Book through a portal when:
- You don’t have elite status, but want to unlock luxury benefits that come with programs like American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts and Capital One Premier Collection
- You want to redeem your bank points currencies like TD Rewards or Scotiabank Scene+
- The hotel you are booking is an independent hotel that is unavailable otherwise
- You are making a cash booking to unlock increased earn rates by using credit cards with their associated travel portals (e.g., Capital One Venture X Rewards Card paired with the Capital One Travel Portal for 10x Capital One Miles on hotel bookings)
As a general rule, if you choose to use a third-party travel portal to book your hotel stay, don’t expect to receive any points or nights to your loyalty account for your stay, or for you to receive any of your elite benefits. This includes bank-associated portals like American Express Travel. However, this is NOT a hard and fast rule – there may be instances in which you may still receive benefits and rewards for your stay.
It also doesn’t hurt to reach out to the hotel directly via email or chat, but your mileage may vary. Thus, if you are really set on receiving your elite benefits, or if you are a few nights short of reaching a new elite status or reward, it will be best to book directly with the hotel.
However, if you don’t have elite status, booking through luxury hotel portals like American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts can get you access to “elite status-like” benefits without actually having any status.
Additionally, if you are booking with cash, your return on spending will almost always be better when using a credit card’s associated travel portal. For example, if your company is going to reimburse you for a hotel booking for a business trip, I would recommend you reach for a card like the Capital One Venture X Rewards or Scotiabank Gold American Express Card to get great point returns.
Conclusion
As you can see, the options are almost endless when it comes to platforms with which to book your next hotel stay. There are pros and cons to booking directly with a hotel versus using one of the portal options that we talked about here. The important takeaway is that there is no universal option that is better than the other. Make sure you critically appraise the value of each option before you make your next hotel reservation!
Quentin Tsang
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A couple ways to get some bonus points/miles when booking accommodations that are less known:
If you are booking through Booking.com and collect Flying Blue miles -access Booking through this link and get bonus Flying Blue miles: https://www.flyingblue.us/en/earn/partners/hotel-booking-com?country=DE
If you are booking an AirBnB, book though this link and get bonus British Airways Avios points: https://www.britishairways.com/content/en/ca/the-british-airways-club/avios/collecting-avios/hotels/airbnb
as always, make sure the cost of the booking doesn’t go up if accessed through a portal.
Great tip Andrea, thank you!