Thoughts on Mattress Runs

I recently wrote my thoughts about Mileage Runs. Today, I will provide my thoughts on “mattress runs.” A mattress run is staying at a hotel for the main purpose of collecting hotel points, nights or stays to qualify for elite status.

Here’s my recent post with the List of Requirements for Attaining Hotel Elite Status. To qualify for elite status, you usually need a minimum night, stay, points or combination of requirement.

So if you are going for a mattress run, you will want to pick which one is the easier to help you achieve your status.

Nights

If you are going for hotel nights, then I would aim for the cheapest hotel room to get you there. Because you are going to need to dish out your cash, you don’t want to put yourself in a difficult financial situation. In some cases, even a reward night counts towards elite status.

Stays

Stays are trickier, because you can have 10 nights book on 1 stay, and it will still only count as one stay. So you may need to break up your 10 consecutive nights into multiple stays. Not the ideal way of qualifying for elite status by going through the mattress run route.

Points

This depends on qualifying points. Not all points that you earn will qualify towards attaining elite status. so you may end up needing to pay more to achieve this requirement.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, you have to do your personal calculations to determine whether the additional cash that you need to dish out is going to be worth the additional perks that you are going to receive with elite status.

What I would strongly recommend is that plan well ahead of time, so that you have more time to watch for deals. It may be too late to book a mattress run for 2016 at this point (unless you find some sweet last minute deals), but it’s not too late to start planning for 2017. Keep in mind that as soon as you hit your elite status in 2017, it will, with most programs, be good until the end of 2018.