The Best Ways to Book Fairmont Hotels & Resorts With Points and Miles

BY 

Andrew Kunesh

- UPDATED: December 2, 2020

1. Use Points  / 
2. Use Flexible Points

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Fairmont Hotels is one of the more overlooked global hotel brands. It has over 70 properties in 24 countries worldwide and recently beefed up its loyalty program after it was acquired by Accor, a global hotel and hospitality company.

This acquisition brought Fairmont properties underneath Accor’s new Live Limitless loyalty program, making it easier to redeem for free nights at Fairmont properties worldwide. In turn, this shut down Fairmont’s legacy loyalty program and matched existing points balances and elite status to Accor.

However, Accor Live Limitless points are still hard to earn in the U.S.

There are no U.S. co-branded credit cards, nor are there any partnerships with any U.S. airlines, so you’ll have to get creative if you want to stay at a Fairmont property (like the 5-star Fairmont Banff Springs) for free.

And that’s where we come in.

We’ll show you all the best ways you can redeem points and miles for free nights at Fairmont properties worldwide. We’ll start by looking at redeeming Accor Live Limitless points at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and then we’ll move into redeeming credit card points for Fairmont stays.

Redeem Accor Live Limitless Points for Fairmont Stays

Earning Accor Live Limitless Points

As discussed earlier, Accor purchased Fairmont in 2016 and merged the brand’s loyalty programs in 2018. This shut down Fairmont’s legacy loyalty program and converted Fairmont points to Accor Live Limitless points.

These points aren’t particularly easy to earn if you’re based in the United States. In fact, the easiest way to earn these points is by staying at Accor or Fairmont properties worldwide.

You’ll earn points based on the type of Accor property you stay in and on how much your hotel stay costs. Those with higher Accor Live Limitless status will earn more points, too – here’s how many points you can expect to earn based on your Accor property of choice and status tier:

There are other ways to earn Accor Live Limitless points, too. Some of these include hotel incidental purchases (minibar, spa, etc.), dining at Accor hotel restaurants, shopping through the Accor shopping portal, and by taking advantage of Accor’s Air France-KLM partnership.

This partnership lets you earn Accor Live Limitless points when you fly on Air France and KLM and earn Air France-KLM Flying Blue points when you stay at Accor properties worldwide. You can also transfer Flying Blue miles to Accor Live Limitless at a rate of 4,000 Flying Blue miles to 1,000 Accor Live Limitless points.

Redeeming Accor Live Limitless Points For Fairmont Stays

Redeeming Accor Live Limitless points for Fairmont stays is simple. You can use 2,000 Accor Live Limitless points to cover €40 (~$44.30) of a hotel stay up to the entire cost of your hotel stay. This redemption rate stays the same for all Fairmont and AccorHotels properties — just note that you have to redeem in increments of 2,000 points.

This means that a $450 Fairmont hotel stay would cost roughly 20,000 points and you’d be responsible for just under $10 in fees.

To book an award night, simply log into your Accor Live Limitless account and search for the Fairmont hotel of your choice. Then, select the Pay with Points option on checkout — note that you’ll need at least 2,000 points in your account in order to redeem points.

This is a solid option if you already stay at Accor properties or have another way of earning Accor Live Limitless. However, with limited points earning options for U.S. members, it’s not the most practical option.

Book Fairmont Stays Through the Chase Travel Portal

You may already know that cards under the umbrellas of Chase Sapphire, Ink, and Freedom allow cardholders to redeem their Chase Ultimate Rewards points towards paid hotel stays through Chase’s Travel Portal. As you’d expect, this includes Fairmont and other Accor properties worldwide.

Your cent per point value depends on the type of Chase credit card you have — here’s how much points are worth towards paid hotel stays for each Chase card:

• Chase Freedom Unlimited® card: 1.0 cents per point
• Chase Freedom® card: 1.0 cents per point
• Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: 1.25 cents per point
• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card: 1.50 cents per point
• Ink Business Cash® Credit Card: 1.0 cents per point
• Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card: 1.25 cents per point
• Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card: 1.0 cents per point

So if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you can redeem 30,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points for a $450 Fairmont hotel stay with no out of pocket expenses. Alternatively, you can pay for part of a hotel stay with your points and use cash to cover the rest, giving you an easy way to discount your Fairmont hotel stays.

How to Book

Booking a hotel stay through the Chase Travel Portal is simple. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log into your Chase account and head over to the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal.

   

2. Look at the top-right corner of the screen and click the Travel button.

   

3. Select the Hotels button at the center of the screen and enter the name of your hotel (or destination), check-in and check-out date, and all other requested info. Then, click the green Search button at the bottom-right corner of the window.

   

4. You’ll be presented with all of your hotel options at the center of the screen. You can view the price of your hotel in both cash and points by looking at the right of the hotel’s name. To view more info, view room types, and actually book a hotel room, click on its name and you’ll be redirected to an info page.

   

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the room type you’d like to stay in. You’ll then be redirected to the checkout screen where you can choose if you’d like to pay in cash or points (or both). Follow the on-screen steps to book your room, and you’re all set.

Booking through the Chase Travel Portal is one of the easiest ways for U.S.-based travelers to book Fairmont properties for free or cheap. This is because there are a ton of different ways to earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, so you can earn the points needed relatively quickly. However, this method isn’t without its downsides.

The first downside is that you’ll generally get less value for your points when you redeem at 1.0 to 1.50 cents per point through the travel portal. You’ll almost always get a better value by transferring your Chase points to a transfer partner and booking a high-end business class airline ticket or a Hyatt hotel suite.

Further, you won’t earn Accor Live Limitless points when you book through the Chase Travel Portal. This is because bookings are processed by Expedia; generally, you can only earn hotel points and use hotel elite status benefits if you book direct.
Bottom Line:  The Chase Travel Portal is still one of the most convenient ways to book Fairmont hotel stays using points and miles. If you decide that the pros outweigh the cons of booking through the portal, it might be worth your time and points.

Earning Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

You can earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points with select Chase-branded credit cards. We’ve put together a whole list of ways to earn points, including signing up for new credit cards, using the Chase shopping portal, and more.

Here’s a look at some of the best Chase card offers:

Book Stays With the Citi ThankYou Travel Center

Like Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi operates a travel booking portal for its ThankYou points currency. This travel portal is called the Citi ThankYou Travel Center and you can use it to redeem Citi ThankYou points for paid hotel stays and flights.

However, the Citi ThankYou Travel Center actually a worse deal than the Chase Travel Portal.

Citi Premier℠ Card, Citi Prestige™ Card, and other Citi cardholders can redeem points for hotels at 1.0 cents per point. This is 0.25 cents per point lower than redeeming for airfare with a Citi Premier, and a significantly lower value the value you’d get from transferring points to a transfer partner.

However, this can still be an easy way to cover Fairmont hotel stays with points. So if you don’t mind sacrificing value for convenience, here’s how to book with the Citi ThankYou Travel Center:

1. Log into your Citi account and head to the Citi ThankYou dashboard by clicking on the Redeem button next to your points balance on the right-hand side of the screen.

   

2. Look at the top of the screen and hover your cursor over the Travel button. Then, click the Hotels button from the drop-down menu.

   

3. Enter your search criteria in the search box at the center of the screen and click the Search Hotels button. You can also add Fairmont as a preferred hotel at the bottom of the search form.

   

4. Now, look for the Fairmont hotel of your choice on the list of available hotels. You can see the cheapest available room rate to the right of the hotel’s name. The quote will be displayed in points so long as you have enough ThankYou points in your account to cover the stay.
5. You can now select the type of room you’d like to book and proceed through the booking process. You can select how many points you’d like to use towards your booking on the payment screen — you can either pay fully with points, partially with points, or book with cash.

Remember, booking through this portal will make your hotel stay ineligible for earning Accor Live Limitless points or using elite status benefits. So unless you’re covering the whole stay with ThankYou points, we’d recommend booking directly through Fairmont.

Also, make sure to check out this list of awesome ThankYou point redemptions before you use your ThankYou points for hotel stays. Using your ThankYou points for one of these redemptions will give you a significantly better value for your points than if you redeemed for a Fairmont hotel stay at 1.0 cents per point.

Earning Citi ThankYou Points

You’ll need a Citi ThankYou point earning credit card in order to earn Citi ThankYou points. Check out our full guide to earning Citi ThankYou points, and see some of the best Citi credit card offers below:

CREDIT CARD	CARD INFO
Citi Premier℠ Card Learn More (at our partner's secure site)	Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. Earn 3x at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, air travel, and hotels; plus, 1x on all other purchases. Annual Fee: $95
Citi Rewards+℠ Card Learn More (at our partner's secure site)	Earn 15,000 bonus points after you spend $1,000 in purchases with your card within 3 months of account opening; redeemable for $150 in gift cards at thankyou.com Earn 2X ThankYou® Points at Supermarkets and Gas Stations for the first $6,000 per year and then 1X Points thereafter. Plus, earn 1X Points on All Other Purchases. Annual Fee: $0
Citi® Double Cash Card Learn More (at our partner's secure site)	Earn 2% on every purchase with unlimited 1% cash back when you buy, plus an additional 1% as you pay for those purchases. Annual Fee: $0
Citi Prestige® Card Learn More (at Citi's secure site)	Earn 50,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 within 3 months of account opening. Redeemable for $500 in Airfare at ThankYou.com 5 ThankYou® Points per $1 spent on Airfare and Restaurants 3 points per $1 spent on Hotels and Cruise Lines Annual Fee: $495

Use Capital One Venture Points for Free Stays

Finally, you can use your points earned with your Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card towards any travel purchase using the card’s Purchase Eraser tool.

This tool lets you cover travel charges with the points you earn with your card at a value of 1 cent per point within 90 days of purchase. This means that a $250 booking at a Fairmont would cost 25,000 points, which — as you’d expect — isn’t a particularly good deal.

This is especially true when you consider that the card recently added transfer partners like Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Emirates, Qantas, and others. There are a lot of ways to effectively use these transfer partners – make sure to check out our guide to the best Capital One redemptions for more information.

There’s no doubt that these redemptions will give you a far better value than redeeming your points for Fairmont stays through the Purchase Eraser. You may want to consider using the money you’d save by booking flights with your Capital One points to book Fairmont hotel stays during your travels instead.

Earning Capital One Points

You can earn Capital One points with one of their Venture cards. Here’s a look at the card’s specifics, including the card’s welcome bonus:

Credit Card	Benefits & Info
Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card Learn More (at Capital One's secure site)	Earn 100,000 bonus miles when you spend $20,000 on purchases in the first 12 months from account opening, or still earn 50,000 miles if you spend $3000 on purchases in the first 3 months Annual Fee: $95 Must Reads: For more info on the Venture Card, see our thoughts on its benefits and our full review.

Use a Free Hotels.com Night

Hotels.com has its own loyalty program that’s dubbed Hotels.com Rewards.

This loyalty program gives you a free hotel night for every 10 nights you book through Hotels.com. The value of this ticket is the average of all of your last 10 paid hotel stays, effectively giving you a 10% discount on Hotels.com stays. This makes the Hotels.com Rewards program by far the simplest hotel loyalty program.

Fairmont properties are bookable through Hotels.com, so you may want to consider using your next free night at a Fairmont property. Just note that — like booking through any other travel portal — you won’t be able to earn hotel points or use elite status benefits when you book a stay through Hotels.com.

This is why we recommend booking all boutique and independent hotel stays through Hotels.com. These hotels wouldn’t otherwise earn loyalty points, so you might as well get a return through Hotels.com.

Plus, the Hotels.com Rewards program has its own elite status program with various benefits. These include things like room upgrades, free breakfast, and other benefits at select hotels.

Bottom Line: Use Hotels.com to book hotel stays at independent hotels, then use your free night certificates to book Fairmont stays.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we showed you all the ways you can redeem points for free Fairmont hotel stays.

As discussed, there aren’t a lot of good ways to redeem points for these stays. It’s hard to earn Accor Live Limitless points in the U.S. and using the Chase Travel Center, Citi ThankYou Travel Center, or Capital One Purchase Eraser isn’t a great deal.

However, if you do decide to use points to cover Fairmont stays and don’t have Accor Live Limitless points, we’d recommend going the Chase Travel Portal route.

Chase Sapphire Reserve card, Chase Sapphire Preferred card, or Ink Business Preferred cardmembers can redeem their Ultimate Rewards points at 1.25 to 1.5 cents per point on the Chase Travel Portal, giving them an edge over the Citi and Capital One options.

Alternatively, you may want to consider booking future hotel stays through Hotels.com and using your free night certificates to cover a Fairmont stay — just make sure you’re aware of the downsides of booking through the program.

Otherwise, you may want to consider shifting your focus to Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott hotels. Each of these chains has more lucrative loyalty programs with more ways to earn points. Plus, each hotel program has its own luxury brands that rival Fairmont.

Safe travels!

The information for the Citi Prestige® Card, Citi Premier℠ Card, and Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card was independently collected by by Upgraded Points and not provided nor reviewed by the issuer.