Hotel reward points for Rome/Florence

We have been to Rome and Florence twice and didn't see the typical US chains there. We are planning to visit Rome and Umbria in May and my research found Hilton has two hotels near the Rome airport. However, when picking a place in Rome (we are staying near the Pantheon), there were no US chains in the area.

Do your research. Go into your your rewards website and look for hotels in those cities. I do that with Holiday Inn and Hilton.

I think you're limiting yourself by looking only for chain hotels, and for budget versions of those on top of it. Most of us who've stayed in these two cities haven't chosen the chains, maybe for the rates you're experiencing or other reasons. If budget/value is the top priority, explore both prior recommendations offered up of this forum - for example, Hotel Aberdeen has come up a lot for price/location - plus what comes up in your price range/location on booking.com, my personal go-to for reviews and often for reservations.

As far as asking for recommendations, you should state what your per-night preference is as "budget" or "economical" can mean different things to different travelers, OK? :O)

To do a search for hotels recommended by forum posters who've been guests, use the search box at the very top of this page, choose forum results, and then drill down to posts 2 years or newer.

There are some of the common US chains in both Rome and Florence, the groups to look for would be Marriott, Hilton, and IHG, keeping in mind each has a variety of brands under that name. So under each Group, get a list of their brands, many you have never heard of or did not realize they were part of that brand. However, in my experience, the best "deals" you will find will be way outside the city center, the hotels located more central, do tend to be the top tier brands, and require lots of points.

I have a ton of IHG points from my business days, and rarely use them in Europe, however under that group, I have stayed in Indigo Hotels in Madrid, and Holiday Inn hotels in Paris and Amsterdam.

My husband has lots of Hilton points but the ones in Rome and Florence are not conveniently located so we don't use points there. There is a hotel associated with Florence where we stayed in 2019 but it is very high end and I would not recommend it.

Marriot, Hyatt, and IHG, the hotels in the Chase program, all have centralized booking engines on their corporate sites that should allow search by point cost/category.

I used IHG points to book a Mr. and Mrs. Smith property in Florence last year and am staying at a different Mr. and Mrs. Smith property in Florence with points in a couple weeks. IHG almost always offers good bonus point promotions for new Chase IHG cardholders and they frequently sell points at a pretty cheap rate. The disadvantage is they use variable points pricing and sometimes the points required to reserve a room just don't make sense. Unfortunately, IHG doesn't offer great options in Rome, but there is an InterContinental opening there in 2023 (I'm not sure exactly where it's going). At any rate, I've used points to stay at many Holiday Inns in the U.S., the InterContinental in Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Smith in Florence, and the Hotel Indigo in Venice and had great experiences at all of them.