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February 5, 2025: Delta is currently running a promotion on Delta Stays bookings that awards Medallion® Qualification Dollars on stays booked through Delta Stays making February and March 2025 the ideal time to use your Delta Stays credits. We’ve got details on this promotion below.
Delta Stays is Delta’s branded hotel and vacation rental booking portal, powered by Expedia. And if you hold a Delta credit card that charges an annual fee, you can get a credit for bookings with Delta Stays each year.
This benefit can get you an effective $100-$250 discount off of the stays you book with Delta Stays, depending on the card you have—an easy win that you should take advantage of if you hold a Delta credit card.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to use the Delta Stays credit.
What is the Delta Stays credit?
The Delta Stays credit is a benefit offered on most Delta Air Lines credit cards. When you book a prepaid hotel or vacation rental with Delta Stays, you’ll receive a statement credit, up to a certain total amount each year based on which credit card you have.
How does the Delta Stays credit work?
All you need to do to use the Delta Stays credit is to make a prepaid hotel reservation through Delta Stays. The Delta Stays credit is only for prepaid hotel reservations. “Reserve now, pay later” bookings will not trigger the credit.
Once you’ve made an eligible booking, you’ll receive a statement credit back the Delta SkyMiles credit card you used, up to the amount of the credit. If your booking total is less than the amount of the Delta Stays credit offered on your card, you can book another stay to get your remaining credit. In practice, Delta Stays credits post within a few days of the charge hitting your credit card.
Credits reset with the calendar year and are based on the date that the Delta Stays prepaid hotel charge is processed to your card.
Which cards offer a Delta Stays credit?
All of the Delta credit cards that carry an annual fee offer a credit for Delta Stays, but in different amounts. Here’s what’s offered on the Delta personal credit cards:
- The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card offers up to a $100 Delta Stays credit.
- The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card offers up to a $150 Delta Stays credit.
- The Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card offers up to a $200 Delta Stays credit.
The Delta business credit cards also offer Delta Stays credits, and each credit is $50 larger than you’ll get on the personal version of each card:
- The Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card offers up to a $150 Delta Stays credit.
- The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card offers up to a $200 Delta Stays credit.
- The Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card offers up to a $250 Delta Stays credit.
If you hold multiple Delta SkyMiles credit cards, you’ll can earn a Delta Stays credit on each credit card.
Delta Stays promotion in February and March 2025
Normally, bookings with Delta Stays will earn you a small number of SkyMiles for your booking and you won’t earn any Medallion® Qualification Dollars.
But in February and March 2025, Delta is running a promotion that awards Medallion® Qualification Dollars for Delta Stays. Bookings in February and March for stays through the end of April will earn Medallion Qualification Dollars—a rare opportunity to earn MQDs for Delta Stays bookings.
Here are the details:
For a limited time, earn Medallion® Qualification Dollars and miles on car rentals, hotels, and vacation rentals booked through Delta by 3/31 and completed by 4/30. Please allow up to 8 weeks after the completion of travel to receive MQDs and miles in the SkyMiles account. Terms apply.
Delta Stays promotion terms
In our opinion, this promotion presents an opportunity to get more value out of your Delta Stays credits, since you’ll earn MQDs on top of the miles you’d normally earn.
How to use the Delta Stays credit
Getting your Delta Stays credit is relatively simple. You must make a prepaid hotel or vacation rental booking through Delta Stays (delta.com/stays) and pay with your eligible Delta credit card. Here’s how to use the Delta Stays credit, step by step.
Booking with Delta Stays: Step by step
Delta Stays is powered by Expedia and booking with them is a relatively simple process. Here’s how it works.
First, go to delta.com/stays. You’ll see a search box like the one below. Enter the city or airport you’re visiting, the number of travelers and your dates:
Once you’ve performed your initial search, you’ll get a list of hotels that are available. From here, you can refine your search by selecting filters at the left of the page. You can also filter by price, guest rating, star rating, locations, amenities, and more. You can also click “View in a map” to pull up a map where you can browse prices of hotel stays by hotel location.
Once you’ve found a hotel that you want to book, click on the listing to see which types of rooms are available. On the next screen, you can select your room type, whether you want a refundable rate, and any available extras like breakfast. Not all options will be available for all hotels. You’ll also be able to scroll through pictures of each room type.
The Delta Stays credit only applies to prepaid rates. When selecting your rate, be sure that you select a prepaid rate. Anything that says “Pay later” or “Pay at property” won’t earn a Delta Stays credit.
Once you click on “Reserve,” you will go to the payment screen. On this screen, you’ll also add the name and phone number of the person checking in and your email address. To earn Delta SkyMiles for your stay, you must enter your Delta SkyMiles number on the screen that follows.
Be sure to pay with your eligible Delta SkyMiles credit card in order to receive the statement credit. You won’t receive a statement credit if you pay for the hotel with a different card.
After you’ve completed your booking, you will receive a confirmation via email.
When do you get the Delta Stays statement credit?
Although the terms and conditions of the Delta Stays statement credit state that the credit can take up to 90 days, in practice, the statement credits are issued much sooner.
Within a few days of making your eligible charge, you should receive an email confirming that you are eligible for the Delta Stays statement credit. I received the email pictured on the right two days after making a booking with Delta Stays. A credit posted to my account the same day.
In my case, I received the full $150 from my Delta Stays booking. The credit posted as “AMEX DELTA STAYS CREDIT”.
What to do if you don’t get a statement credit
Amex and Delta mention in the terms that it can take up to 90 days for your Delta Stays statement credit to post. If it has been more than 90 days and your statement credit hasn’t posted, here’s what to do:
- Check our caveats and gotchas in this article to make sure that your charge qualifies for a credit.
- Call the number on the back of your card for Amex customer service.
- Only Amex customer service can help you—Delta SkyMiles customer service won’t be able to help you with getting your credit.
Caveats and gotchas of the Delta Stays credit
Like many credit card benefits, there are a few things you should be aware of before you try to use your Delta Stays. Here’s what you need to be aware of to be sure that your Delta Stays booking qualifies for a statement credit:
- Your booking must be pre-paid. The benefit terms specify that your booking must be prepaid and explicitly exclude “any charges by a property to you (whether for your booking, your stay or otherwise)”. If you don’t pay for your reservation at the time of booking, don’t expect to get a Delta Stays credit.
- Only prepaid hotels and vacation rentals qualify. Anything else booked through the Delta Stays platform will not qualify for a statement credit.
- Delta Vacations do not qualify. Confusingly, Delta also offers hotel stays through Delta Vacations. Bookings through Delta Vacations do not qualify for a credit.
- The credit resets on the calendar year and is based on the charge processing date. Every January 1st, you will be eligible for a new credit and if you didn’t use your credit from the previous year, you’ll lose it. If you make a Delta Stays booking on December 31, 2025 and the charge gets processed on January 1st, 2026, the charge will be processed against your 2026 Delta Stays credit. Don’t wait until the last week in December to use your Delta Stays credit.
You won’t get hotel elite benefits or hotel points through Delta Stays
When you book through a third-party site like Delta Stays, you don’t receive points or elite benefits in most hotel programs. You’ll most likely receive similar treatment to someone with no status at most hotels.
Additionally, since you must pay for your hotel booking with your eligible American Express card, you will earn substantially fewer points for your hotel stay than you would with most hotel credit cards.
Ultimately, it only makes sense to book with Delta Stays if you’re trying to maximize your Delta Stays credits.
How the credits reset annually
The Delta Stays credit resets annually, based on the calendar year. On January 1st of each year, the full amount of your statement credits become available to use again. If you have not used your Delta stays credits by the end of the year, you will lose them. There is no way to roll the credits over from year to year.
If you’re making booking near the end of the year, be aware that the credit will post based on when your hotel stay charge posts to the card, which may be a few days after you make your reservation. For example, a booking made on December 31st, 2025 for a stay to be completed in May 2026 might not get charged to your credit card until January 1, 2026. If this is the case, your 2026 Delta Stays credit will apply to the booking.
What is Delta Stays?
Delta Stays is a Delta-branded booking platform created in partnership with Expedia. Currently, Delta Stays offers hotel stays, vacation rentals, and car rentals. Delta Stays bookings can be eligible to earn SkyMiles. Hotel and vacation rental bookings through Delta Stays can earn you a statement credit when you book with an eligible American Express card.
Is the Delta Stays credit a good deal?
You’ll get value out of the Delta Stays credit if you use it but the value of the credit is much less than the face value of the credit. We don’t think of a $100 Delta Stays credit as $100 cash. Here’s why.
The prices on the Delta Stays portal are competitive…usually. We’ve found that the prices in the Delta Stays portal are usually similar to what you’d find on Expedia or a site like Hotels.com. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll always get the best price for a similar room with Delta Stays, so it can be pay to at least price out any stay you’re thinking of booking on another site.
Many banks offer 10x rewards on portal bookings. Would you rather get 10 transferable points per dollar or two Delta SkyMiles per dollar? That’s the tradeoff you’re making when you book with Delta Stays. Unless Delta is running a promotion that awards additional SkyMiles or Medallion Qualifying Miles when booking through the Delta Stays platform, there is little advantage to using Delta Stays to book your hotel.
You’ll give up hotel points and elite benefits. When you book through a third-party portal like Delta Stays, you give up the opportunity to receive points and benefits from a hotel’s loyalty program.
Ultimately, statement credits like the Delta Stays credit can help you get value out of your Delta Air Lines credit card. If you’re traveling at least once a year, you probably have at least one hotel booking to make, so you should be able to get relatively decent value out of the Delta Stays credit. But statement credits represent an annoying hoop to jump through.
Personally, I use my Delta Stays credits early in the year when I’m traveling to a place where I don’t stay in a chain hotel. Once I’ve used my Delta Stays credits on my Delta credit cards, I don’t book any more hotels through Delta Stays for the rest of the year.
Best practices and recommendations
Here are some specific recommendations we have about using the Delta Stays credit:
- Use the credit as early in the year as you can. Delta and Amex are offering this credit knowing that many (most) cardmembers will forget to use it. Be the person getting value from your SkyMiles card, not
- Split up a multi-night stay into separate bookings to use the credits from multiple cards. For example, if you have both the business and personal Delta SkyMiles Platinum cards and need to book a three-night stay at a hotel that costs $150/night, you could book one night on your personal SkyMiles Platinum card and two nights on your Business SkyMiles platinum card.
- If you travel frequently, use the credits for your off-brand stays. Maybe you’re loyal to Hyatt hotels, but you occasionally have the need to stay at another brand of hotel because a Hyatt property isn’t convenient. Book the off-brand stay through Delta Stays and you’ll reduce your opportunity cost of making that booking.
- Only use Delta Stays when you’re trying to get your Delta Stays credit. Since the Delta Stays portal offers no elite status and no hotel points, and doesn’t appear to offer any exclusive pricing, you’ll likely maximize your rewards by booking directly with the hotel chain on your own.
Bottom line: The Delta Stays credit is easy to get, but don’t use Delta Stays for most of your hotel stays
If you hold a Delta credit card, you probably travel somewhat often, meaning you’ll probably have an opportunity to use your Delta Stays credit at some point during the year. Using this credit is an easy way to get between $100 and $250 of extra value out of your Delta credit card, depending on the actual card you hold.
While you want to make at least one reservation with Delta Stays each year to cash out your credit, you’ll want to book elsewhere for most of your stays—you can earn much more valuable rewards by booking through a bank portal or booking directly with the hotels.
Rates and fees for Delta Air Lines credit cards
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
- For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
Advertiser disclosure: Cards and Points has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Cards and Points and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers. Compensation may affect how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies or all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card benefits.
