Bilt Palladium Hotel Credit Pricing Issue
I have one major Bilt Palladium hotel credit issue, and no it isn’t that there is a two night minimum requirement. While I don’t love that, it is somewhat understandable. I have mostly been able to work around it at least. No, my Bilt hotel credit issue is a pricing problem. It isn’t even that the pricing is worse on the Bilt travel portal than elsewhere (although that can be a thing at times). No, it is that the true price is kind of hidden when I am searching hotels.
Heading Back To The Bahamas
My family decided they wanted to head back to the Bahamas next spring. Originally I had planned to book Grand Hyatt Baha Mar for some of the trip, but then I wanted to move the Comfort Suites. I know that seems like a weird choice, but it is because hotel guests of the Comfort Suites Paradise Island get access to the Atlantis. I figured it would be fun for the kids to compare the two water parks. Plus, I want to see if it is still a trainwreck like it was on Shawn’s last visit years ago.
Originally Booking With Choice Points
My natural play here was to book the stay at the Comfort Suites with Choice points. I had a little stash from moving over Citi ThankYou points before the transfer rate dropped from 1 ThankYou point to 2 Choice Hotels points. Luckily, I also had access to some Wells Fargo points to top off of our accounts for the stay. They still transfer at an amazing 1 to 2 rate over there.
The Bilt Palladium Hotel Credit Had Me Rethinking That
Once July rolled around, and my Bilt Palladium hotel credit reset, I decided to start checking hotels for some future trips. My original thought was to burn our credits in Japan. The prices are decent there and it shouldn’t really be a problem to use. Then I realized that I could do that after January first of 2027 though, when the credit resets again. That had my eyeing the Bahamas trip as a potential fit.
When I pulled up our dates for the Comfort Suites Paradise Island I was pretty excited. It seemed like the Bilt Palladium Hotel Credit should cover a large chunk of the hotel cost.
When I saw $279 per night for two beds I figured the total would be $558. Once I took off the $200 Bilt Palladium Hotel credit, and redeemed my Bilt Cash for another $100 off on the monthly hotel perk, that would be $228 out of pocket for two nights. That isn’t too shabby, especially considering the 45K award nights come with a resort fee of $65 per night. Here in lies the rub though…
The total cost was a whopping $862.10 when I went to the final checkout screen, or $431.05 per night. That is a massive difference from $279 per night it said on the search results. Like a hell of a lot different. That is the Bilt Palladium hotel credit pricing issue I am talking about right there in the flesh.
Comfort Suites Proves My Point
Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I went to the Comfort Suites site to search the same dates. Here is what I saw on the initial search page:
They were a little crafty with it, but they did show the total cost for the two nights including fees. You can see the $296 per night, which seems close to what Bilt was showing. If you look right below that it says $711 in total for the stay. To be fair, it is in much smaller font – but at least it is there.
The pricing was for the King room though, as it was the cheapest room available. To show apples to apples, here is the price for the 2 double beds on the Comfort Suites site. The all in price of $765 is still substantially cheaper than the Bilt price ($862.10) when everything is included. Not to mention the Bilt price is a no cancellation booking, where Choice isn’t. There goes that $100 Bilt Cash “perk” I guess…
Expedia Shows The Same
The Bilt Travel portal backend seems to be run by the Expedia Group. I decided to search the hotel on their site to see how they displayed it.
Yup, there it is. The total pricing for the entire stay is right there under the nightly rate. Expedia seems to have by far the worst rates, as that is for the King room. The double bed room jumps up over $900 for the two nights.
Is This Legal?
You may be wondering about that junk fees law change last year from the FTC. I am no law expert, and I haven’t dug into all of that in depth, but it does sound like they wanted all in pricing to be displayed on initial searches (outside of taxes required by the government). Showing it only on the final checkout page is toeing the line at best in my non expert opinion.
Bilt Palladium Hotel Credit Pricing Issue: Final Thoughts
This Bilt Palladium hotel credit pricing issue is likely a problem for some properties and not others. I think that the all in pricing for the trip should be showing on that initial search so people don’t waste their time clicking through four pages to be disappointed. At least the proper nightly rate with all fees included should be showing in that initial search. Hopefully this is something Bilt is considering / working on or that Expedia can quickly correct. It would make it better for their customers, and it would protect them on the legal side of things too.
Let me know if you have noticed the same issues with the Bilt travel portal down in the comments, or over in the MTM Facebook Group.
The right tool for the right job. It works best for certain bookings and not for others. Understand where it works for you and don’t waste your time on anything else. Path of least resistance.