The Delta Stays Credit is a benefit of many of Delta Air Lines American Express Cards that awards statement credits for qualifying purchases through Delta Stays, a Delta-branded travel booking portal.
Depending on which card you hold, you can earn between $100 and $250 in statement credits each calendar year.
Earning the statement credits is a relatively simple way to get a significant amount of value out of your Delta Air Lines credit cards. But getting the most value from the credit means understanding the best ways to use it and the downsides of booking through Delta Stays.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to use the Delta Stays credit.
Delta Stays credit essentials
All you need to do to use the Delta Stays credit is to make a prepaid hotel reservation or vacation rental through Delta Stays using your American Express card with this benefit.
Your booking must be prepaid. Some hotels on the Delta Stays platform will give you the option to “pay when you stay.” If you do this and pay at the hotel, you will not receive your Delta Stays credit. (But you will still receive SkyMiles for the stays.)
You don’t have to use your entire credit in one stay. As an example, if you hold the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card and have a $150 Delta Stays credit available and you make a prepaid reservation through Delta Stays that costs $110, you will receive a $110 credit. You can then earn your remaining $40 of credits on a subsequent reservation.
Credits reset with the calendar year and are awarded based on when the charge posts to your account. If you make and pay for a booking in November 2026, for a stay that you plan in March 2027, your 2026 credit will apply to the booking.
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.
Earning Delta SkyMiles with Delta Stays
You’ll earn Delta SkyMiles with your Delta Stays booking if you are a SkyMiles member and you provide your SkyMiles number during the booking process. (You can do this by entering your number at checkout or logging into Delta.com before making your booking.)
Currently, Delta Stays awards 2 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent on hotels, based on the base rate (before taxes and fees.)
In addition, if you use your Delta SkyMiles American Express card to pay for your Delta Stays booking, you’ll earn additional SkyMiles, since a Delta Stays purchase counts as a “Delta” purchase.
For example, if you made a Delta Stays purchase with the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card, you’d earn the following on a booking with a $200 base rate and $50 in taxes/fees:
- 400 SkyMiles from Delta Stays, based on the hotel base rate ($200 x 2)
- 750 SkyMiles from your Amex card, based on the 3x Delta purchase multiplier on your card. ($250 total charged to your card x 3)
Additional savings: Up to 20% off
When you’re browsing hotels on the Delta Stays portal, you may see some hotels flagged as offering an additional savings.
You must be logged in to see these discounts. Delta doesn’t say whether these discounts are targeted. I’d expect that these discounts are simply available to SkyMiles members who are logged in when browsing for hotels. However, there’s really nothing stopping Delta from varying these discounts based on Medallion status, browsing history, or other factors.
Delta will show you different discounts based on whether you are browsing on the mobile or desktop site. In several instances, I have seen discounts of 10% on the desktop site and 20% on the mobile site, so it’s worth it to check both.
Medallion Qualification Dollar promotions
In most cases you won’t earn any Medallion® Qualification Dollars for booking with Delta Stays. However, Delta does run periodic promotions that award Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs) in addition to the redeemable miles you’ll usually earn from your stay.
These promotions typically offer one MQD per dollar of a hotel’s base rate (before taxes and fees). And they apply to both prepaid and pay-at-hotel bookings.
When Delta runs this promotion, you’ll typically see a banner like the following on the front page of the Delta stays portal:
In our view, the best time to book through Delta Stays and use your Delta Stays credit is when Delta is running its periodic MQD promotion.
Downsides of using Delta Stays
There are a few (but relatively large) downsides to using the Delta Stays portal to book hotels:
You’ll miss out on hotel loyalty program benefits. Most hotel loyalty programs don’t honor elite benefits or award points for bookings through third-party sites like Delta Stays. This makes sense, as the hotels end up paying a hefty commission (sometimes greater than 30%!) to these booking sites. If you book through Delta stays, expect to get the room promised and nothing more.
The rewards for booking with Delta Stays aren’t great. If you book a hotel through Delta Stays using your SkyMiles number and your Platinum- or Reserve-level Delta Amex card, you’ll end up earning a total of 5 SkyMiles per dollar. Many premium credit cards will offer 8x to 12x points for booking a stay through a bank portal and you can get even greater rewards through a hotel’s loyalty program when you book directly.
Delta Stays is run by Expedia. If anything goes wrong with your stay, you’ll end up dealing with customer service run by Expedia… and Expedia doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for customer service.
Given the significant downsides of using Delta Stays to book hotels, you probably want to avoid using the portal once you’ve earned your entire Delta Stays credits for the year.
Our take and expert tips: An easy way to get value from your Delta credit cards
Typically, I’m not a fan of the trend toward “couponization” of credit card benefits. Paying several hundreds of dollars a year in annual fees, only to have to jump through additional hoops to get the promised value out of my credit cards isn’t exactly a great experience.
However, I’m okay with the Delta Stays credits—they value that makes sense and are relatively easy to use.
The credit makes sense for a person who would hold a Delta credit card. If you choose to hold a Delta credit card, my assumption is that you’re traveling at least a few times a yea and have a need for hotel stays.
Second, the credit provides enough value to jump through the hoops to use it. There is a cost in terms of time and opportunity cost to make a booking through the Delta Stays portal, but earning a $100-$250 credit each year makes the hassle worth it.
In my case, I do consider the Delta Stays credit in my value calculation when I’m considering whether to keep, cancel, or convert my Delta credit cards when the cards come due each year. And for the past few years, my Delta credit cards have been cards I’ve kept around.
That said, I don’t use the Delta Stays portal to book any hotel stays once I’m done earning my Delta Stays credits—the 2 SkyMiles per dollar that the portal awards, frankly, isn’t competitive with what I’d earn from any bank portal or hotel loyalty program.
Expert tips: How to maximize your Delta Stays credits and bookings
I currently hold both the personal and business variants of the Delta Platinum card and my girlfriend has held various Delta credit cards in the last few years. That said, I’ve gotten plenty of experience using these cards’ credits. Here are my tips for maximizing this credit and the Delta Stays portal in general:
- Use your credits early in the year. You’ll only get value out of your Delta Stays credits if you actually use them. Generally, I recommend booking your stays early in the calendar year so you don’t have to scramble in late December to use your credits.
- Book when there is an MQD promotion. Delta runs periodic promotions that offer Medallion Qualification Dollars for bookings through Delta Stays. If you care about Delta Medallion status, you can get additional value from your Delta Stays bookings by booking during one of these promotions.
- Browse for hotels while logged into your SkyMiles account. Delta Stays offers additional discounts on some hotels to SkyMiles members who are logged into their accounts.
- Check prices on both the desktop site, mobile site, and on online travel portals. Delta Stays will sometimes offer a discount at certain hotels—and these discounts will sometimes be different on the mobile site and the desktop site. Checking both can save you a few additional dollars if Delta Stays is playing pricing games. Also, be sure to check the hotel you plan to book against other online travel portals. While the prices you’ll see on Delta Stays are usually competitive, they aren’t always. A few extra minutes of searching will ensure that you’re getting a reasonable deal.
- If you have multiple Delta credit cards with Delta Stays credits, and need to book a multi-night stay, you can usually split your stay into multiple bookings. That way, you can use a different card for each booking and earn your Delta Stays credits for multiple cards in one go. When I’ve done this in the past, hotels have typically been happy to keep me in the same room for my multi-night stay that I booked using two separate reservatuions.
- Book stays through Delta Stays when you don’t care about points. When you book a hotel through a third-party portal like Delta Stays, you typically won’t earn points or enjoy benefits of your hotel status on your stay. If you care about your Marriott status and points, it’s better to book an off-brand airport hotel through Delta Stays than to book your Marriott stays through the portal.
- Don’t use the Delta Stays portal once you’ve earned all of your credits. Getting only two SkyMiles per dollar is pretty poor value compared almost any other hotel booking option. Booking directly can get you an effective 10%-25% rebate in hotel points, plus you’ll enjoy your loyalty benefits. Many no-annual-fee credit cards can get you 5% cash back or 5x points when you book through a bank portal. And if you have a premium travel credit card like the Venture X, Sapphire Reserve, or Citi Strata Elite, you can get even more transferable points.
Walkthrough: 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.
YouTube: Guide to the Delta Stays credits
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.
