How I earned 29,000 Loyalty Points and 23,000 AAdvantage miles on a single $800 hotel stay

I’ll be honest; when American Airlines overhauled the American Airlines AAdvantage program a few years back so that you earn elite status primarily based on spending with the airline, its cobranded credit cards and other partners, I figured I’d rarely make it past AAdvantage Gold or AAdvantage Platinum status. And that’s largely been true.

I tend to fly with a lot of different airlines, and I put spending on a variety of rewards credit cards at any given time, depending on what welcome bonuses and other benefits are available to me.

This year, however, I was within spitting distance of AAdvantage Platinum Pro status and its perks by the time October rolled around, so I started thinking about ways to get past that threshold, and I turned to one of my secret weapons for earning a lot of Loyalty Points quickly during a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina: AAdvantage Hotels bookings.

AAdvantage Hotels: My secret weapon for earning elite status

You see, you can earn thousands of bonus miles and Loyalty Points on AAdvantage Hotels reservations — even on short stays.

For example, booking a two-night stay at the Dream Downtown in New York City last year helped me nab a cool 15,000 Loyalty Points, and that got me over the line to AAdvantage Platinum status after a year of flying and spending on my Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® (see rates and fees).

The information for the Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Loyalty Points are what count toward elite status, and AAdvantage bonus miles are frequent flyer miles you can redeem for award tickets with American Airlines and its partners.

You tend to earn more Loyalty Points and AAdvantage miles on AAdvantage Hotels stays if you have AAdvantage elite status and also hold an AAdvantage cobranded card. As luck would have it, I have both.

In October, I was thinking of taking a quick jaunt down to Buenos Aires, so in addition to looking for decent award rates at old TPG favorites like the Palacio Duhau — Park Hyatt Buenos Aires, I decided to see what AAdvantage Hotels bookings were available.

Earning 29,000 Loyalty Points and 23,000 AAdvantage miles with just 1 hotel stay

That’s how I came across a two-night stay at the Park Tower, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Buenos Aires for $790, including taxes and fees, on which I would earn 15,000 Loyalty Points as an AAdvantage Platinum member with multiple AAdvantage cobranded cards. I paid for my reservation with my Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® (see rates and fees), which I had recently applied for and earns 10 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on AAdvantage Hotels bookings. The stay was refundable up until a few days before check-in, making it extra flexible.

The thing about airline cobranded cards and airline elite status is that each tends to let you compound your earnings in interesting ways, and my AAdvantage Hotels stay at the Park Tower crystallized that for me.

First, I earned 15,000 bonus American Airlines AAdvantage miles for my stay, plus 10 miles per dollar spent with my Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card, which netted me an additional 7,100 miles on top of the 790 extra miles I earned from the $790 charge for the stay. So, I ended up with 22,890 bonus AAdvantage miles for my stay. Thanks to a couple of charges at the hotel, that rounded up to 23,000 miles.

I also earned 15,000 Loyalty Points toward elite status thanks to the booking conditions, plus 790 more Loyalty Points for putting the charge for the stay on my AAdvantage card (1 Loyalty Point per dollar that I spent).

Here’s where things got interesting, though. Because I had already earned 60,000 Loyalty Points, I had unlocked a few Loyalty Point Rewards. Those included a 20% bonus on qualifying activity with partners, including AAdvantage Hotels bookings, within six months of earning those 60,000 Loyalty Points. That meant that instead of earning 15,000 Loyalty Points, I earned 18,000 of them during this stay.

What’s more, this hotel stay put me over 90,000 Loyalty Points earned for the year so far. That triggered an additional 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points as a benefit of my Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card.

So, when the final numbers were in, I had earned just over 29,000 Loyalty Points (thanks to some charges at the hotel) by the time I checked out.

The downsides to booking AAdvantage Hotels

I don’t often book AAdvantage Hotels throughout the year for a variety of reasons.

First, to earn the most miles and Loyalty Points, you tend to have to stay at expensive hotels with high nightly rates — sometimes well over $1,000.

Second, if you book a hotel within a chain, such as Hyatt or Hilton, you cannot expect to earn hotel points or enjoy your elite status benefits. I was lucky that the Park Tower honored some of my Marriott Bonvoy elite benefits like free breakfast and late checkout, but that tends to be very hit or miss based on TPG staffers’ experiences.

Still, it can be worth forgoing the hotel points and elite perks for big Loyalty Points and AAdvantage miles paydays like I enjoyed on this recent trip, especially when you can unlock certain benefits like the Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite card’s Loyalty Points boost and Loyalty Point Rewards to compound your earnings even further.

Bottom line

My stay at the Park Tower in Buenos Aires got me even closer to AAdvantage Platinum Pro status than I anticipated. Now, I’m thinking I might just be able to shoot for AAdvantage Executive Platinum status with a few well-timed AAdvantage Hotels bookings before Feb. 28, 2026, the end of the elite status period.

Since I have earned over 100,000 Loyalty Points, I have already unlocked another Loyalty Point Reward to earn 30% with partners within the next six months, meaning my next AAdvantage Hotels booking could be even more lucrative. I have three months to strategize each and every hotel stay until the elite status year resets with American Airlines, but a few work and leisure trips may be just the ticket to AAdvantage Executive Platinum status for me in 2026.