Delta Stays Credit: How it works and how to use it.

Most Delta credit cards offer a Delta Stays credit, an annual statement credit for booking hotel stays through Delta Stays, Delta’s hotel booking platform powered by Expedia. The statement credits range from $100 to $250, depending on your card.

If you hold a Delta credit card and stay at a hotel a few times a year, there’s a good chance you can get the full value of the Delta Stays credit. 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.

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 an overview of the cards that offer credits for Delta Stays and the maximum amount of the credits:

	Delta Air Lines credit card	Total annual Delta Stays credits
	Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card	$100
	Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card	$150
	Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card	$200
	Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card	$150
	Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card	$200
	Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card	$250

If you hold multiple Delta SkyMiles credit cards, you’ll can earn a Delta Stays credit on each credit card.

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, 2024 and the charge gets processed on January 1st, 2025, the charge will be processed against your 2025 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, 2024 for a stay to be completed in May 2025 might not get charged to your credit card until January 1, 2025. If this is the case, your 2025 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?

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. 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. You are also unlikely to find better pricing on hotels through Delta Stays than other online travel agencies or the hotel’s own website.

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.

Our take on the Delta Stays credit

Concurrent with the launch of the Delta Stays credit, Delta simultaneously increased the annual fees of its co-branded credit cards. Personally, I’d rather have a lower annual fee than have to jump through the hoops of booking with Delta Stays just to get the value I had before the early-2024 SkyMiles credit card changes.

When Delta originally announced Delta Stays, the airline said it was going to offer Medallion Qualifying Dollars on hotel bookings through the portal. That was interesting and compelling because it represented a way to earn elite status with Delta through hotel stays and provided additional value to customers. Unfortunately, Delta backpedaled on this and only offered MQDs as a limited time promotion shortly after the launch of the stays.

Bookings through Delta Stays (and Delta Vacations) are highly profitable for Delta. Delta and Expedia likely pocket 20-30% of the total price you pay when you book through the site. With those kinds of margins, there’s certainly room for Delta to be more generous with the benefits they give for hotel bookings through Delta Stays. Medallion Qualifying Dollars or something like 10 SkyMiles per dollar (or both) would not be unreasonable. Earning 2 SkyMiles per dollar on bookings through Delta Stays feels almost insulting.

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.

Frequently asked questions