$1,500 Hotel Nights for $0 in the North Georgia Mountains

Exhausted from a busy work schedule, in April of this year (2025), my wife and I decided to celebrate her birthday weekend in the North Georgia mountains.

More specifically, we spent 2 nights in the beautiful Cloudland McLemore Resort nestled in the majestic North Georgia Mountains. It has the nickname of "island in the sky".

As usual, instead of paying $1,500 cash, we paid for the stay with points and free night certificates. Keep reading if you want to know how you can do the same.

Not only were the hotel nights free, but we also got the following benefits:

$50 credit from the Hilton Surpass credit card

$30 daily food and beverage credit

Complimentary room upgrade from having Hilton Gold status

Altogether this trip was one of the best examples of how hotel statuses can elevate any ordinary experience.

If you want to know more about the hotel, check out their website. Instead of focusing on hotel amenities, in this blog post, I will focus on sharing some photos as well as our redemption story.

That said, let's get started.

One Free Night Certificate AND 60K Membership Reward Points

Without points and free night certificates, the hotel stay would have cost me $1,477.

Instead, for the upgraded room (more on this later), we paid through:

1 Free Night Certificate (valued at $738)

60K American Express Membership Reward Points

That's the beauty of Hilton Free Night Certificates (FNCs). You can use them at any Hilton hotels anywhere in the world. I redeemed it for a $738 hotel room. However, you can also use it for a $2,000 night room in Los Angeles or a $4,000 room in the Maldives.

So, that was the first night.

To pay for the second night with Hilton Honors points, I transferred 30K American Express Membership Reward (MR) points during a 40% transfer bonus. So, 30K MR points translated to 84,000 points. That was enough for the 85,000 per night hotel room. I topped it off with 1K Hilton points I already had in my account.

If you care about CPP, I redeemed the 30K MR points at 2.46 cents-per-point (CPP).

Hilton Gold Status

Now, let's talk about hotel status.

My Hilton Surpass credit card gives me Hilton Gold. Although it's not the top status level, it still gives me complimentary room upgrades (when available) and $30 daily food and beverage credit for 2 people.

Even before we checked in online, I received 2 consecutive emails from the hotel letting us know TWICE that we were upgraded from a standard room to a mountain view room to a mountain view room w/ balcony.

The upgraded room was $300 more per night. I would have never booked that with cash. The room was beautiful! We had direct views of the infinity pool and the North Georgia mountains.

As for the daily breakfast credit, it was enough to pay for our lunches every day. The onsite cafe had some of the best Salmon Sandwiches we have ever had, each costing around $12. So, for the $30 credit we got 2 sandwiches and 1 coffee every day. Pretty crazy!

The Strategy

If you want to experience a similar stay, here's the strategy you can follow.

Apply for the Hilton Honors American Express Card ($0 annual fee)

Apply for the Hilton Surpass ($150 annual fee)

Hit the sign-up-bonuses for both

If you time your application well (mostly during the summer), your sign-up bonus will be the following:

1 FNC and 100K Hilton Honors Points

1 FNC and 175K Hilton Honors Points (Hilton Surpass)

That's enough for 5 nights in this hotel!

In a different hotel, the same points and FNCs can last you 8-10 nights.

Another strategy you could follow is by getting American Express's MR points earning cards, instead of Hilton cards. For instance, you can get the American Express Gold card with 100K sign-up bonus, then transfer your MR points to Hilton at 1:2 ratio, giving you 200K Hilton Honors points.

If you transfer during a transfer bonus, the same 100K MR points become 280K Hilton Honors points.

So, whichever strategy you pick, you can experience the same thing I did for as close to $0 as possible.