Disclaimer: Please be aware that offers for credit cards referenced in this post may have changed since the time of publication.
Good morning from Taipei! I’ll be in Asia for just a short trip, before heading back to Vancouver. Unfortunately, that’ll mean I’ll miss Black Friday in the Americas, but that means I’ll be able to spend less money. However, there are also lots of great travel deals online this weekend. One of them that I noticed on Twitter I thought was worth mentioning is a Fairmont Hotels deal.
Fairmont Gift Card Promotion
Tomorrow, November 28, you’ll be able to get a $100 Fairmont Gift Card when you spend $500 USD or CAD on e-gift cards. The purchase must be made between 1pm to 4pm Eastern Time. This would be made online on the Fairmont store, and you’re limited to one free gift card per order. You can apply these to any non-prepaid Fairmont stay and are able to use multiple gift cards per stay.
Fairmont Gift Card Promo
This promotion gives you a fixed 17% rebate if you plan to have a Fairmont Stay in the future. However, what makes this potentially even more lucrative is possibility that this will stack with the AMEX (Canada) Fairmont Promotion, where you get a $100 statement credit with a purchase of $500 CAD or more. The terms and conditions of that offer do state that the transaction has to be made at a qualifying property, but you never know. If the two promotions are able to be stacked, that’s an even bigger 33% rebate.
Fairmont has a decent network of upper-upscale – luxury hotel properties in North America. It is a chain I’m considering putting stays into qualifying for elite status, since I have the American Express Platinum Card, offering 60,000 Membership Rewards points signup bonus. As a cardholder, I am eligible to qualify for a fast-track to top-tier Fairmont Platinum status. To qualify, I’ll only need 5 stays or nights instead of 10 stays/30 nights to qualify. I think the Platinum Card is a one of the best credit cards in Canada for travel benefits. I reviewed the card here.
While not like most traditional hotel elite status programs with free breakfast, club lounge access, and other benefits, status in the Fairmont’s Presidents Club program is fairly useful.
Fairmont Elite Status
Taking the dining/spa certificates at half of their face value, the complimentary night at $250, and the rooms and suite upgrades certificates at tens of dollars each, you’re still getting rebate worth several hundred dollars. If you are able to find properties at destinations where you would travel to, and have room rates of less than $200, you’re getting quite a lot of value in return just for leveraging these promotions and deals. The value proposition increases even more with if you can get the additional benefits of being on a Fine Hotels and Resorts rate with Virtuoso or American Express.
On top of that, there’s even more than can be done, that I’m not revealing publicly. If you a loyal reader are interested in knowing, send me an email that says you won’t share the deal publicly, and show proof of equivalent elite status that you’ve been a loyal blog reader. 😉
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You’re forgetting about the additional Platinum benefits. You listed the ones that everybody gets automatically, but we get to select additional benefits from a menu of additional items at the beginning of the year. For example, you could choose from an extra suite upgrade, you could choose Fairmont gift cards, you could choose an extra $100 in dining/spa credits. The change up the menu each year, but last year were choosing 2 benefits from a list where each could have been worth another hundred bucks or so.
I started as a FPC Platinum member through the Amex PLAT5 promotion years ago, but loved the properties so much, have completed so many nights, I prequalified naturally with nearly 40 nights just from my vacation travel.
The value in the upgrades is really unlocked in knowing which properties offer the most bang for the certificates, and which ones I’m just better paying cash for the nice suites. Some properties let you upgrade more than a single suite category, and can get some very sweet rooms. I’ve also cut side deals by calling individual properties directly to upgrade further.
Fast track to Platinum, is that only for Canadian AmEx Platinum? I’m a Fairmont Premier with an US AmEx Platinum.
That’s correct – unfortunately only for Canadian American Express Platinum Holders
Jeff – Do you know if the Amex Plat fast track benefit allows you to renew the Fairmont Plat status every year with just 5 nights? Or is it just for the first year?
It’s every year, to my knowledge.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the you can earn FPC stay credits by staying at Swissotel hotels. Depending on where you book these can be considerably cheaper than Fairmont hotels ($121 CAD for a hotel room in Bangkok for example) and combined with the Amex Plat fast track, you can get a free hotel night at Fairmont for a lot less!
This is true, but with one caveat. You can only earn stay credits and benefits when staying at Swissotel and Raffels hotels after achieving Premier or Platinum status in FPC. You cannot use stays at Swissotel for the purpose of first earning your FPC status, but you can use them to maintain your status.