Hotels in Europe can be frustrating. Most hotel rooms in big European cities are for 2 people which is not very family friendly. London is no different so my work was cut out for me.

We had 9 days to fill and we wanted to stay in different places. I had just gotten the Citi Prestige card which had a benefit of getting a 4th night free. We also had lots of SPG/Marriott points from our own accounts as well as my dad’s account that we could utilize. Marriot and SPG points offer a 5th night free when staying on points. With the points we’d be able to stay in a nicer hotel so we wanted to do that for the last 5 nights. We always want to stay at the nice place last.

So first I focused on what to do with the first 4 nights. We wanted to find something that was cheaper. We knew we’d need to be getting 2 rooms (one for my dad and one for us). We looked at Marriott properties both for points and paid rates. We also looked at IHG properties as I had a fair number of points, at least enough for one of the rooms for the full four nights.

I first focused on properties that had our favorite amenity, free breakfast. There only a few when filtering for ones that allowed 4 people in a room, many were also were further out from the parts of the city we wanted to spend time. We weighed those options for weeks debating whether to save some money and spend more time commuting.

I then found a property that was more centrally located and very reasonably priced in both points and cash, though it didn’t have free breakfast. Normally we’d be less interested in that, but the location looked great and all the comments raved about the location. Given the attractive price, though, we decided that we’d figure out a way to get breakfast. We’d be in the heart of the city and we’d figure it out. Sometimes our hard and fast rules just had to be broken.

We decided at the Holiday Inn Mayfair. It was steps from the park and a tube station. There were bus stops also nearby if we chose to do that. We didn’t know the area that well, but it looked promising from what we could tell online.

Booking

I had the option to book on a paid rate for our room it my Citi Prestige card to get the 4th night free. While the room itself wasn’t that expensive, it wasn’t exactly cheap, because nothing you would actually want to stay at in London is cheap. The points rate was actually a pretty good deal.

When booking with points, though I could only book a room with a queen bed and not a room with two doubles. I emailed the hotel to ask why, since the rooms had the same cash price on the website. They said the room with two beds was a different category and they could upgrade the room we booked on points to one with two double beds for 20 pounds a night. While I would have liked to get the room for just the points, it was still a good deal with the 20 pound surcharge so I had them update the reservation I had.

I then needed to get some more points to book the second room with the queen bed for my data with points since I only had enough points to book one of the rooms for all four nights. I had enough points for 2 nights of the second room but not the full 4. I ended up buying the points for the remaining days using the IHG cash and points offer. Even having to pay the cash for the points and comparing against the possibility of getting the fourth night free with my new Citi Prestige card, it was cheaper to book with he purchased points.

In addition, after our stay, because I had the IHG credit card, I would get a 10% rebate on the points I spent on the stay to make it an even better deal on points.

For the booking I had made two separate reservations. Once the second one was made I emailed the hotel again to make sure they could link the reservations in hopes we could get a room on the same floor to make logistics easier. They replied that they had made the link and made a note about getting rooms on the same floor.

We were all set for our first 4 days in London, now to find a place for the last 5 nights.