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The Points Guy believes that credit cards can transform lives, helping you leverage everyday spending for cash back or travel experiences that might otherwise be out of reach. That's why we publish a variety of editorial content and card comparisons: to help you find a great card to turn your goals into reality.
Our site may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened with our partners, and this may impact how or where these products appear. While we don't cover all available credit cards, our editorial team creates and maintains all of the analysis of these cards, and our content is not influenced nor subject to review by any credit card company, bank or partner prior to (or after) publication. Please view our advertising policy and product review methodology for more information.
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How I earned 29,000 Loyalty Points and 23,000 AAdvantage miles on a single $800 hotel stay
TPG's director of travel content Eric Rosen has used points and miles to visit some of the world's most remote corners, including swimming with whale sharks off Western Australia's Ningaloo Coast, exploring the wilds of Botswana's Okavango Delta and tasting the high-altitude wines of Argentina's Mendoza region.
December 5, 2025 • 7 min read
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Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
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By commenting, you agree to our Community Guidelines to help create a positive space for conversation. The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser, our partners, or The Points Guy (“TPG”). They have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these parties. All responses are submitted by individual contributors, and neither the bank advertiser, our partners, nor TPG are responsible for ensuring that all posts and/or questions are answered.
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Quick summary
AAdvantage Hotels bookings can provide substantial Loyalty Points and redeemable miles, especially when combined with elite status and select cobranded cards.
Strategic hotel stays may help travelers quickly reach or surpass American Airlines AAdvantage elite status thresholds.
Earnings can be further boosted through Loyalty Point Rewards, which offer percentage bonuses on partner activity after reaching certain milestones.
Booking through AAdvantage Hotels often means sacrificing hotel chain points and elite perks, but the Loyalty Points haul can outweigh these drawbacks for some travelers.
What to consider
To maximize Loyalty Points and miles, stays often need to be at higher-priced hotels, which may not suit all budgets.
Hotel chain benefits like points accrual and elite recognition are typically not honored when booking through AAdvantage Hotels.
Elite status qualification periods and Loyalty Point Rewards have specific timelines, such as benefits expiring or resetting at the end of the status year.
What you'll miss from the article
A detailed walkthrough of how stacking elite status, cobranded cards and Loyalty Point Rewards can dramatically accelerate your progress toward AAdvantage elite tiers.
Generated by AI with support from our editorial team.
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.
I’ll be honest; when American Airlines overhauled the American Airlines AAdvantage program a few years back so that you earn elite status primarily based on spending with the airline, its cobranded credit cards and other partners, I figured I’d rarely make it past AAdvantage Gold or AAdvantage Platinum status. And that’s largely been true.
I tend to fly with a lot of different airlines, and I put spending on a variety of rewards credit cards at any given time, depending on what welcome bonuses and other benefits are available to me.
This year, however, I was within spitting distance of AAdvantage Platinum Pro status and its perks by the time October rolled around, so I started thinking about ways to get past that threshold, and I turned to one of my secret weapons for earning a lot of Loyalty Points quickly during a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina: AAdvantage Hotels bookings.
ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY
AAdvantage Hotels: My secret weapon for earning elite status
You see, you can earn thousands of bonus miles and Loyalty Points on AAdvantage Hotels reservations — even on short stays.
For example, booking a two-night stay at the Dream Downtown in New York City last year helped me nab a cool 15,000 Loyalty Points, and that got me over the line to AAdvantage Platinum status after a year of flying and spending on my Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® (see rates and fees).
The information for the Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY
Loyalty Points are what count toward elite status, and AAdvantage bonus miles are frequent flyer miles you can redeem for award tickets with American Airlines and its partners.
You tend to earn more Loyalty Points and AAdvantage miles on AAdvantage Hotels stays if you have AAdvantage elite status and also hold an AAdvantage cobranded card. As luck would have it, I have both.
In October, I was thinking of taking a quick jaunt down to Buenos Aires, so in addition to looking for decent award rates at old TPG favorites like the Palacio Duhau — Park Hyatt Buenos Aires, I decided to see what AAdvantage Hotels bookings were available.
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Earning 29,000 Loyalty Points and 23,000 AAdvantage miles with just 1 hotel stay
That’s how I came across a two-night stay at the Park Tower, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Buenos Aires for $790, including taxes and fees, on which I would earn 15,000 Loyalty Points as an AAdvantage Platinum member with multiple AAdvantage cobranded cards.
I paid for my reservation with my Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®(see rates and fees), which I had recently applied for and earns 10 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on AAdvantage Hotels bookings. The stay was refundable up until a few days before check-in, making it extra flexible.
ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY
The thing about airline cobranded cards and airline elite status is that each tends to let you compound your earnings in interesting ways, and my AAdvantage Hotels stay at the Park Tower crystallized that for me.
First, I earned 15,000 bonus American Airlines AAdvantage miles for my stay, plus 10 miles per dollar spent with my Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card, which netted me an additional 7,100 miles on top of the 790 extra miles I earned from the $790 charge for the stay. So, I ended up with 22,890 bonus AAdvantage miles for my stay. Thanks to a couple of charges at the hotel, that rounded up to 23,000 miles.
ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY
I also earned 15,000 Loyalty Points toward elite status thanks to the booking conditions, plus 790 more Loyalty Points for putting the charge for the stay on my AAdvantage card (1 Loyalty Point per dollar that I spent).
Here’s where things got interesting, though. Because I had already earned 60,000 Loyalty Points, I had unlocked a few Loyalty Point Rewards. Those included a 20% bonus on qualifying activity with partners, including AAdvantage Hotels bookings, within six months of earning those 60,000 Loyalty Points. That meant that instead of earning 15,000 Loyalty Points, I earned 18,000 of them during this stay.
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What’s more, this hotel stay put me over 90,000 Loyalty Points earned for the year so far. That triggered an additional 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points as a benefit of my Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card.
So, when the final numbers were in, I had earned just over 29,000 Loyalty Points (thanks to some charges at the hotel) by the time I checked out.
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The downsides to booking AAdvantage Hotels
I don’t often book AAdvantage Hotels throughout the year for a variety of reasons.
First, to earn the most miles and Loyalty Points, you tend to have to stay at expensive hotels with high nightly rates — sometimes well over $1,000.
Second, if you book a hotel within a chain, such as Hyatt or Hilton, you cannot expect to earn hotel points or enjoy your elite status benefits. I was lucky that the Park Tower honored some of my Marriott Bonvoy elite benefits like free breakfast and late checkout, but that tends to be very hit or miss based on TPG staffers’ experiences.
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Still, it can be worth forgoing the hotel points and elite perks for big Loyalty Points and AAdvantage miles paydays like I enjoyed on this recent trip, especially when you can unlock certain benefits like the Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card's Loyalty Points boost and Loyalty Point Rewards to compound your earnings even further.
Bottom line
My stay at the Park Tower in Buenos Aires got me even closer to AAdvantage Platinum Pro status than I anticipated. Now, I’m thinking I might just be able to shoot for AAdvantage Executive Platinum status with a few well-timed AAdvantage Hotels bookings before Feb. 28, 2026, the end of the elite status period.
ERIC ROSEN/THE POINTS GUY
Since I have earned over 100,000 Loyalty Points, I have already unlocked another Loyalty Point Reward to earn 30% with partners within the next six months, meaning my next AAdvantage Hotels booking could be even more lucrative. I have three months to strategize each and every hotel stay until the elite status year resets with American Airlines, but a few work and leisure trips may be just the ticket to AAdvantage Executive Platinum status for me in 2026.
Comments
By commenting, you agree to our Community Guidelines to help create a positive space for conversation. The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser, our partners, or The Points Guy (“TPG”). They have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these parties. All responses are submitted by individual contributors, and neither the bank advertiser, our partners, nor TPG are responsible for ensuring that all posts and/or questions are answered.
