Do Hotels and Resorts Donate Stays to Fundraisers?

Yes — luxury hotels and resorts are among the most generous donors a fundraising organizer can approach, and their donations usually take the form of stays: a complimentary night or a multi-night getaway certificate that the winning bidder redeems later. A donated stay is often the single highest-value item in a silent auction, which is why experienced organizers send hotel requests before almost anything else. Hospitality companies give for straightforward reasons: a donated stay costs them an empty room, builds goodwill in the communities they serve, and puts their property in front of a room full of future guests.

This guide is part of our library of fundraiser donation answers, built on a directory that tracks 4,000+ companies. Below is a summary of the hotel, resort, and travel companies with donor pages in our directory, followed by notes on each group. For a cross-category starting point, see our overview of which companies donate products to fundraisers.

Luxury hotels

Luxury hotels donate to fundraisers more often than many organizers expect, and the requests that succeed are usually aimed at a specific property rather than a brand's headquarters. Our directory tracks Ritz-Carlton giving at the individual property level, and five properties appear as active donors: The Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes in Orlando, The Ritz-Carlton Kapalua on Maui, The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel on the Southern California coast, The Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia, and The Ritz-Carlton St. Louis. Each property page describes what that location's program has historically offered and its current status — treat each one as its own donor, with its own decision-maker.

Two independent icons round out the list. The Breakers Palm Beach, a historic oceanfront resort in Florida, and Mandarin Oriental New York, a luxury hotel in the heart of Manhattan, both appear in our directory as donors. Properties like these are exactly what a gala crowd bids up: a recognizable name and a stay people genuinely want.

Hilton Worldwide is the different case in this group. As a global hospitality company, its giving is tracked at the corporate level in our directory rather than hotel by hotel — see Hilton Worldwide's donor page for how its program has historically worked before you decide whether to approach the company or a local hotel's management directly.

A donated stay is a strong anchor item for a gala. If you are building a full auction table around one, our guide to companies that donate silent auction items covers the experiences, memorabilia, and merchandise that fill out the rest of the catalog.

Mountain and ski resorts

Mountain resorts are reliable fundraiser donors because they have two things to give: stays and lift tickets. Vail Ski Resort, one of the largest ski destinations in Colorado, and Stowe Mountain, a classic Vermont ski resort, both appear in our directory as donors — see each donor page for what its program has historically offered and current status. Lift tickets make strong raffle prizes on their own, while a stay-and-ski combination belongs in a live or silent auction. Timing matters more here than with city hotels: a resort weighing a request thinks about its season, so ask well before the snow flies if you want a winter prize, and be open to an off-peak stay — bidders still love a mountain summer.

Great Wolf Lodge sits in this group for family audiences. Its indoor water park resorts make it a natural fit for school and youth-organization fundraisers, where a family getaway often outdraws a luxury stay. If your crowd leans toward families, pair a resort request with our roundup of theme parks and attractions that donate tickets.

Cruises and travel

Cruise lines and airlines donate to fundraisers too, though fewer of them have active programs than hotels do. Carnival Cruise Lines has a long-standing presence in our directory as a donor — a cruise for two is a headline auction item for almost any audience. Among airlines, Delta Air Lines is tracked in our directory as a corporate giver, and SkyWest, a regional U.S. airline, also appears as a donor. See each company's donor page for what its program has historically offered and current status.

Be selective about which travel companies you spend a request on. For JetBlue, Southwest, and Royal Caribbean, no active donation program was listed at our last check — see the JetBlue, Southwest, and Royal Caribbean pages for current status before writing to them.

Stays need the longest lead times

Donated stays typically require more advance notice than any other auction item, so hotel, resort, and cruise requests should be the first letters you send. There are practical reasons for this: stay donations often route through a property's sales or community-relations team, certificates carry blackout dates and redemption terms that take time to prepare, and high-profile properties receive a steady stream of requests to sort through. As a general benchmark from our directory data, programs in our directory most often listed lead times between two weeks and 60 days, with six weeks the single most common stated window — and stays tend to sit at the far end of that range.

Plan backward from your event date and send travel requests in your first batch. Our guide on how far in advance to request donations walks through lead times by donor type and shows how to backward-plan a fall auction or spring gala.

One last practical note: when a stay certificate arrives, read its terms before catalog night. Confirm the expiration date, blackout dates, and whether the certificate is transferable, and print those terms next to the item so bidders know exactly what they are bidding on. A well-documented stay earns more trust — and higher bids — than a vague one.