How to Earn Hotel Loyalty Points Using Credit Cards

Besides earning cashback, airmiles, or redeeming items using your credit card points, another option to utilize your credit card reward points is by transferring them to your preferred hotel loyalty program. While this option is already common practice in North America and other Asian countries, it has only recently become available to Malaysian credit card holders. Currently, there are only four hotel loyalty programs available: Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless, IHG One Rewards, and Wyndham Rewards. In this article, we explore the credit cards that offer rewards with these loyalty programs.

Using the DuitHub credit card explorer, only CIMB rewards credit cards and HSBC Travel One credit cards offer point transfers to hotel loyalty partners. CIMB Travel World Elite, CIMB Travel World, CIMB Travel Platinum, and other CIMB reward cards provide point transfers to three hotel partners: Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless, and IHG One Rewards. HSBC Travel One supports all three of these partners plus Wyndham Rewards, making it the only credit card product that offers point transfers to Wyndham Rewards.

By doing conversion calculations from a few of the cards mentioned above, it's clear that the points per spending vary depending on the card tier. Note that the CIMB Travel Platinum credit card has a lower annual income requirement than the HSBC Travel One credit card and offers better conversion rates for spending to hotel loyalty points (although HSBC Travel One provides more benefits in other categories).