How to stay at a 4 star Paris hotel for free?

A free stay at a beautiful 4-star hotel in the City of Love? Now who wouldn’t want that??

I am excited to share this post because many of you expressed a lot of interest in learning more about Travel Hacking. If you are new to Travel Hacking, let me give you a quick introduction. Travel Hacking is when you strategically sign up for credit cards with huge sign up bonuses and perks that will enable you to book flights and hotels for free, using points. These credit cards also offer a lot more than that! Here are some things that you should absolutely know before signing up for these cards.

1. Sign up for new credit cards only if you have a good credit score, always pay off the credit card balance in full, are good with handling credit cards and credit card debt in general, are good with keeping track of your budget and expenses. I highly recommend against getting credit cards if you do not do all of these.
2. Although many credit cards do not have an annual fee, the ones with better perks and point conversion rates usually do. These can range anywhere from 90 USD to 700+ USD. So always evaluate how much of the perks you will actually use before getting a high fee card.

You are bound to be more successful in travel hacking if you already have a goal on where you want to go. This is so that you can get the most relevant credit cards that will get you there.

Staying for free in Paris

In our case, I wanted to go to Paris and get a free hotel stay. But ironically, I had signed up for this particular credit card way before we planned this trip so I had to look for specific hotels. This constraint is usually okay if the credit card offers a lot of travel partners or has a wide collection of places you can use it at.

The IHG premier credit card offers the following benefits and the best time to sign up for a new card is when the sign up bonus offer is at its highest. This card offered 175000 IHG points for sign up and has an annual fee of 95 USD. Let me walk you through some of the amazing benefits.

• You can enjoy a free anniversary night at one of the eligible IHG Hotels and Resorts worldwide which can actually offset the 95 USD annual fee if you use it.
• For every 3 nights that you redeem using points, your 4th night is free. Booking with points also means the reservation can be cancelled until the last minute without any additional fees.
• You can earn up to 50 USD in United TravelBack Cash each year when you link your United MileagePlus account.
• You can get a statement credit of upto 100 USD every four years for any fee you pay for Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or Nexus.
• Automatic Platinum Member status!

Amazing right? So I happily signed up for the card and had a lot of points that I was looking to use during one of our trips.

Upon doing some research, I found out that there are some nice IHG hotels in Paris. I specifically liked the one in Gare de Lyon Bastille since I had enough points to cover our stay, it was a 4-star hotel, had great reviews, it is super close to the metro station which made our commute easier.

I booked a 4 night stay because if I use points to book 3 nights, then I get the 4th night for free! The reservation could also be cancelled at any point so this put my mind at ease.

IHG has a dozen brands to choose from such as Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Kimpton, Six Senses etc. which range from budget to luxurious options. They have 6000 hotels in more than 100 countries so you are not short of options at any given time!

The Points Guy values IHG points at 0.5 cent per point. You can use their website to see how many points are needed at different hotels in your chosen destinations. Here are some points to remember before booking.

• Make sure that you get at least 0.5 cent per point value when booking with points. Otherwise choose cash.
• Stay for at least 4 nights to get a free night on top of a 3 night stay.
• The more flexible your dates are, the more value you get for your points.
• But if you are traveling during a busy season, points are a great way to cover your expenses even if you need to redeem a lot more points per night.

Hope this post was super useful to you. Feel free to leave comments if you have any questions or thoughts and subscribe below for more such future posts!