Amex Platinum May Require 2 Nights For Its $300 Hotel Credit—A Change 4 Years In The Making

American Express may soon require a two-night Fine Hotels & Resorts stay to use Platinum’s $300 semi-annual hotel credit, with a reported start date of January 1, 2027. USCardForum member 吹小号的鹅 reports finding language on Amex’s qwww test site, picked up by US Credit Card Guide: Effective January 1, 2027, Fine Hotels + Resorts® bookings will require a minimum two-night stay to be eligible for the $600 Lodging Credit. Platinum currently offers up to $300 back in each half of the year, for $600 total, on eligible prepaid bookings through Amex Travel. The Hotel Collection already requires two nights. Fine Hotels & Resorts qualifies with one. Presumably on average, because of room rates or higher commissions, Amex is earning more off of FHR bookings. To be clear, the reported language restricts eligibility for the statement credit. It doesn’t say that one-night Fine Hotels & Resorts bookings would lose breakfast, the property credit, or guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout. As it happens, I remember standing on the beach in front of the Kimpton Seafire Resort in October 2022, telling a couple of well-known bloggers that I’d heard Amex was bandying about this very idea – imposing a two-night minimum on Fine Hotels & Resorts stays to match The Hotel Collection. With all the time that had passed, I assumed the idea must have died. When Platinum was refreshed in September 2025, I specifically asked Amex whether a single-night Fine Hotels & Resorts stay would still qualify. They confirmed that the change was to the amount and timing of the credit. The one-night option survived that refresh. The person reporting this latest discovery has found real changes before. Their July 19, 2024 test site update flagged the Gold card’s refresh with $325 annual fee, $100 Resy credit, $84 Dunkin credit, and $50,000 cap on restaurant spending that earns 4 points per dollar. There’s also a separate report: Take it or leave it but I also heard last month from a friend who works for AMEX that FHR is going to a 2-night minimum 🙁 I’d have expected an October 1 announcement for a change like this, although I suppose November 1 is still possible. Test site copy can change before launch and doesn’t mean it has final approval (so might not happen, or could get delayed a year). But having heard about discussions of this idea in the past I know both that it’s long been possible but also that the schedule for anything actually changing has been unclear. A two-night minimum does improve the economics for American Express. They get hotel booking revenue to offset the cost of the statement credit, and a longer stay gives them more revenue against the same reimbursement. With a 20% hotel commission, A $400 stay for one night generates $80 in commission against a $300 statement credit. An $800 stay over two nights generates $160 in commission against that same $300 credit, covering more than half. Platinum’s refresh has been very successful at attracting customers and keeping them. As I covered after Amex’s second quarter earnings call, Platinum became their fastest-growing U.S. consumer card, with new accounts, upgrades from other products, and strong retention despite the higher annual fee. But strong uptake just shows you can give people a lot of money and they’ll take it. I’ve been enthusiastic about the refreshed card because the benefits deliver a lot more value to me than the annual fee costs. But I don’t want to actually spend money on it outside of charges earning statement credits and airfare. In my coverage of their first quarter call, I noted that spending through Fine Hotels & Resorts and The Hotel Collection had grown 50%, while U.S. Resy restaurant spending was up 20%. Amex had increased the hotel credit and added a $400 annual Resy credit to consumer Platinum. They’re paying customers to do the things they’re reporting more customers doing. The Resy credit is bribing people to spend at restaurants on a platform Amex owns. Steering diners to participating restaurants makes the platform more attractive to restaurants. Amex can sell them access to affluent customers and point to the premium spending they bring. Some of that spending originates with Amex itself. Their card business subsidizes activity for their restaurant platform, and that restaurant activity helps sell the card. Internally, that’s called “synergies.” They’ve got their own businesses cross-subsidizing each other, and the success gets counted twice as how popular Platinum is, and how much spending Resy drives. That can all work if people get Platinum for the benefits and then put a disproportionate amount of their spending on it. Amex says customers are doing more of that, with roughly a six percentage point acceleration in Platinum spending and much of the increase coming from existing cardmembers consolidating their purchases. Still, it doesn’t surprise me if Amex wants to be improving their spreadsheet metrics on the card. Cardmember services costs rose 50% in the second quarter at Amex, driven by the Platinum refresh and benefit usage. They’d love for that to be cheaper! The same test site report says the hotel credit will become a broader Lodging Credit that also covers Airbnb Luxe stays at private islands, castles and other higher-end accommodations. There’s reportedly a new $250 annual Airbnb Experiences credit coming as well, apparently requiring a Luxe booking first. That gives Amex something new to promote alongside a new restriction, selling it all as something better. For those already planning Airbnb luxury stays that’s great, but I expect it to be pretty niche. But I imagine Airbnb helps fund the benefit in exchange for reaching affluent cardmembers. Amex can add a benefit with someone else’s marketing dollars while improving the economics of its existing hotel credit. For most readers though I expect the package to be a reduction in value. At the $400 nightly rate the amount you’d need to spend on net to use the $300 credit jumps from $100 to $500. Topics on this page