There is a huge disadvantage. You don’t get loyalty points are status upgrades.

In the case of Hilton, that can be worth from 24% to 38% back in loyalty points per dollar spent.

When Hilton isn’t running a special, I get 34 points per dollar at around .7 cents per point:

- 10x base points

- 10x Diamond bonus (automatic for having the Amex Hilton Aspire)

- 14x Amex Hilton Aspire card

But Hilton ran a 3x special May through September (54x total) and now they are running a 2x special (44x) through March 2023.

The other advantage from booking directly is that it’s easier to change or modify a booking.

I guess I don't see the disadvantage with Marriott or United with my company booking agency. I do prefer to book directly in general but I'm not traveling a lot now and also prefer to generally adhere to travel policy when there's not a good reason not to.

I’m referring to this statement;

> There's no particular disadvantage to me booking Marriott through Amex

There is a big difference between booking through Concur and booking through the Amex portal.

We use Egencia which is owned by Amex. And it has all my loyalty program info.

Ahh. You’re not talking about the public AmexTravel portal.

Your company pays the booking fee instead of the hotel. On that case, you’re probably directly charged by the hotel and Egencia charges the company/end user the fee.

Right. Egencia charges us booking fees which we expense.