Frequent Miler on the Air - 10 Tips for Rocking IHG One Rewards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep250 | 4-12-24

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

We don't talk about IHG One Rewards program much, but it may be a more valuable program than you think, especially if you keep our 10 tips in mind. Listen for more!  You can find Greg's interview on the All the Hacks podcast here: https://www.allthehacks.com/greg-frequent-miler-flight-award-tools/ (03:42) - Reader Jeff (featured on last week's giant mailbag) answered questions about how he booked Delta One to Tokyo for 85K and how he visited Delta lounges in Atlanta and Denver...(Mail Bag) (10:42) - IHG One Rewards Traveler Credit Card (Card Talk) You can listen to our discussion about IHG premier cards on Ep193 of the Frequent Miler on the Air Podcast here: https://frequentmiler.com/which-is-the-most-rewarding-hotel-loyalty-program/ (14:23) - Bilt sent emails to cardholders with membership shut-down alerts...but then quickly reversed it with an apology. (Crazy Thing) (19:32) - Book Hawaiian Airlines w/ JetBlue points: updated award chart (Award Talk) Read our JetBlue guide here: https://frequentmiler.com/jetblue-trueblue-guide/ (25:19) - Planning for Wynn status match for free Holland America cruise (Award Talk) Read our post on getting free cruises from status matches: https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-get-free-cruises-by-gaming-casino-status-matches/ (32:05) - MaxMyPoint to help find a standard room (Award Talk) Read more about tools like MaxMyPoint here: https://frequentmiler.com/tools-for-finding-impossible-hotel-awards/ Main Event: 10 Tips for Rocking IHG One Rewards (34:51) - IHG One Rewards Overview (41:13) - IHG Credit cards You can listen to our discussion about IHG premier cards on Ep193 of the Frequent Miler on the Air Podcast here: https://frequentmiler.com/which-is-the-most-rewarding-hotel-loyalty-program/ (42:05) - 10 Tips for rocking IHG One Rewards (01:12:18) - How can I do Disney effectively with credit cards? (Question of the Week)

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, 10 tips for rocking IHG1 rewards. We're going to show you how to make the most of IHG's rewards program. This is going

to be a great show today. I'm really looking forward to it. Unlike our usual drivel. So get ready. If you saw me bopping my head, I was rocking the IHG tips over here. So if you're watching on YouTube, that's what that was all about. Yeah. And our video editor is going to put in some background rocking music. I was hoping. Yeah. Hopefully without infringing on any copyrights. Right, right, right. That's important. Well, speaking of all that, if you, no, really this has nothing to do with that, but it was,

I thought I was transitioning here to, don't forget that if you'd like to skip ahead to something or skip back, if you don't want to have to listen to us talk about the rock and roll music that may or may not be there, you can always look in the show notes for the timestamps because we always have timestamps. It'll take you directly to wherever it is you want to go and wherever you're listening to the show or watching. Don't forget to like it. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us a little bit of feedback. We always appreciate all of those things. And so that out of the way, let's drag out this week's. No, wait, wait, wait. Before the mailbag this week, we have a special announcement, don't we? We do.

We do. So another podcast called All the Hacks had Nick and I as guests separately on there. If you want to hear me, Greg, then go to episode 166 of All the Hacks. It's called Best Tools for Booking Flights and Hotels with Points and Miles. And coming soon, not yet released at the time that we're recording this show, but coming soon, Nick will be on All the Hacks discussing tips for redeeming points and miles. So again, the first one with me is all about tools for finding the awards. And the one with Nick is tips for booking the awards. Yeah, yeah. And both good

conversations. My tips for booking was leaning more towards why you want to transfer to partners in the first place, and then some tips for how to find good awards. And Greg's is, of course, obviously delving more into the actual tools that we use. But also I should just say that I've listened to several episodes now of All the Hacks and I'm really enjoying it. So it's a good show to check out anyway. And it was enjoyable to be on. Chris was great to talk to for a while. So worth checking out Greg's episode. Again, that was episode 166 of all the hacks. Totally. So you said Chris was great to talk to for a while. Does that mean like after a while, it suddenly became not so great? No, Chris was excellent to talk.

No, for a long while, because I think our episode went really long. I'm sure that he's had to put a lot on the cutting room floor and it's still probably an hour plus, but we had a very good conversation. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I picked up a couple of good tips. My conversation with Chris was so good that we recorded it twice. After our first recording, a bunch of things changed about the award tools that were available. And so we just decided, why don't we just rerecord this whole thing? And so we did. And I think it was much better. But no one will ever know because the first one is not published in any form. So we'll have to take Greg's word for it on that.

Take my word for it. The one that's released is better. I'm sure of it. Good. Very good. All right. So now I think it's time to drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yeah.

Today's giant mail comes from Jeff once again. Last week, Jeff wrote in with his giant mail about how he's new to points and miles, but for his first award redemption, used his points and miles to fly to Japan and back in business class and entered lounges along the way. And I turned that email into a pop quiz for Nick because there were some confusing things about the email if you dove into it carefully. So I asked Jeff to write in, let us know were we right or wrong. And so he did. And now I'm going to read the questions that came up in the pop quiz and we'll say what Nick answered, what I answered, because I didn't usually know the answers either, and then what the correct answer is.

We'll score it. We'll score it and see who did well here. There you go. All right. So first question, how in the world did he book Delta one to, to Japan for only 85,000 Delta sky miles? As a regular listeners know, Delta sky miles are not usually very valuable for booking Delta awards. I mean, you're certainly not going to get a Delta one to Japan most of the time for anywhere near that price normally be like 400,000 points. So, so Nick's answer was, I don't know. I don't know. How do you do that? I want to know, right? Exactly. Now my answer, I had the ability to Google it before the show started. So I knew that Thrifty Traveler had reported that award sale in November of 2023. And so I figured that was what he did. And Jeff says, yes, we did see the

deal on Thrifty Traveler's email blast. I'm glad to hear it was a good redemption since we almost let it pass at the thought of planning a trip in just three months, but it all worked out. So that's a good tip actually in general. We've talked about that before that when you see smoking hot deals like that, if you can make it work, just jump on it and ask questions later. And it sounds like Jeff did, and that was a great, great choice. All right, next question. How did Jeff visit Delta lounges in Atlanta and Denver? So that was confusing in two ways, because first, he didn't in his email say that he flew through Atlanta. And second, the only part in the email about Denver was that he returned on United Airlines to Denver. And so he wouldn't have access to the Delta lounge because of flying.

You normally would have access to Delta lounges when flying Delta one international. Um, but since he wasn't flying Delta one, how did he get access in Denver? All right. So both of us in independently, uh, decided he must live in or near Atlanta. Um, so that would, that would explain how he got into the lounge at Atlanta because he was flying a Delta one international ticket from Atlanta to Detroit to Tokyo. And, um, for Denver, we, I think we both, um, believed that he must've flown Delta from Denver to Atlanta because you can't get into Delta sky clubs no matter what, unless you're flying Delta same day. So we figured he must have been doing that. And Nick said further, he must have had an Amex Platinum card because we knew he wasn't flying international business class that day. So that didn't get him in. And I thought he probably had

a Delta Reserve card. Either one of those can get you into Delta clubs when flying Delta same day. All right, here's Jeff's answer. I realized I misspoke in my original email on the lounge portion. The Delta lounges were in Atlanta and Detroit, not Denver. We flew Delta from Atlanta home base to Detroit and then Detroit to Haneda on the same day. So that's how we got access to Delta lounges in Atlanta and Detroit. We flew back from Narita to Denver, the Denver to Atlanta, then Denver to Atlanta using the Southwest Companion Pass. All right.

Question. How did Jeff get into the Centurion Lounge in Denver? Oh, wait, let me just back up. I forgot to say. So we both got credit for guessing the Atlanta thing. I mean, that was pretty good because he didn't mention. We found you, Jeff. Can't hide.

And at this point, it's still an open question about what credit card he has. All right. And the next question, how did Jeff get into the Centurion Lounge in Denver? Nick said he must have used his Amex Platinum card. And Greg at first agreed, but then changed his mind and said, nope, I bet he has the Delta Reserve card, which also gets you into Centurion Lounges. And I said that because, one, I believed he lived in Atlanta, and Atlanta is a big Delta hub, so it's natural for Delta hubbions to have Delta credit cards. And also there was a clue when he got that 85,000 point award on Delta to Japan,

it would have cost 100,000 points, but having a Delta card gives you a 15% discount. So that's why he was able to get it for 85,000. So there was a clue that he definitely has a delta card and so i figured delta reserve would have um both given him that discount and access to the centurion lounge the answer is we have the mx platinum card which got us into the centurion lounge so nick wins that round um he does go on to say we do happen to have the delta platinum card uh which got us the

reduced 85 000 point deal instead of 100 000 so maybe i get partial credit there because i knew we had a delta card okay all right because you googled and knew the thrifty traveler had the the award sale so uh yeah all right we'll give we'll give full credit to nick and nothing for me for that one so so who won have you been keeping score i actually wasn't keeping score but uh everybody's a winner that's uh everybody's a winner i think nick won that one maybe well i don't know yeah who knows who knows but jeff it sounds like jeff won because jeff went to tokyo delta won and enjoyed some nice lounges. So well done, Jeff. And, you know, it's fun kind of putting together the puzzle like that, sort of like an all play. Right.

So. So good. Thank you very much for that, Jeff. And thanks. We appreciate the update. That was that was kind of fun. All right. Let's talk about this week's card talk. So for this week's card talk, since we have a show about IHG points today for this week's card talk. So for this week's card talk, since we have a show about IHG points today, for this week's card talk, we're going to talk about the IHG One Rewards Traveler credit card. This is not the card that you might initially associate with IHG because this is not the biggest, flashiest bonus. This is the card that has no annual fee. So this is a different IHG card than the one that perhaps you've seen elsewhere, the IHG Premier card. And we talked about the Premier cards on episode 193. That was on March 11th of 23.

So you can go check out when we talk about the IHG Premier and I think the Premier business probably also on that same day. But this is the IHG Rewards Traveler card, which, again, has no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee. It earns 5X at IHG properties, 3X dining, gas station, utilities, cable, internet, phone, and select streaming services. 2X everywhere else. So, I don't know. Bonus categories. I mean, 5X IHG, 3X dining, gas. And I say that because those IHG points aren't incredibly valuable to me

because IHG does frequently sell their points for half a cent each. So I could have a cash back card and buy points at half a cent each and probably do better in all of those types of purchases. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Since they regularly have those half cent sales, you know, a 2% cash back card gives you sort of the equivalent of four IHE points per dollar everywhere. There's plenty of no fee cash back cards. So if you're interested in earning points from spend,

this is not the card to do it. But we should talk about the perks. And that's where things get interesting. Now, it comes with silver status, which is not interesting. But it comes with the ability to do fourth night free award stays. So you book a four night stay with points. The fourth night is free. And we'll be talking a lot more about that benefit in the main event of today's show.

That's really the highlight. That's the big one, but I'll finish off other major benefits. You get 10K bonus points after $10,000 in purchases and you get gold status after $20,000 in purchases within a calendar year. Neither of those, in my opinion, are really worth pursuing. So the short answer here is the point of this card for us, for people who care about maximizing awards and everything, is really because you don't want to pay an annual fee on one of the premier cards, the premier or the business card, but you do want that fourth night free benefit. Yeah. And so when Greg mentions that, the thing to keep in mind is that if you open an IHG Premier or Premier, well, not a Premier, rather an IHG Premier card, because it has a good welcome bonus, let's say, then after a year, if you decide, you know what, I don't really want to have to pay the

annual fee ongoing on that card, then you could potentially call in and downgrade, product change to this card and have no annual fee, but maintain the fourth night free benefit, which as we'll discuss later in this show, can be really valuable. I mean, that can save you a lot of points, money, both. And I say money because maybe you're buying ihg points and so you don't have to buy as many if you can get the fourth night free so this i think is a an unsung hero so to speak because i think you can do pretty well with with that card if you don't want to pay the annual fee essentially for a free night certificate on the premiere card absolutely yep all right that's that let's talk about what crazy thing this week.

What crazy thing did built rewards do, Craig? Yeah. Before I get into the details, I want to say that we generally usually record our show on Thursday mornings. So if you really, really want to get into the crazy thing segment of our show, the best thing to do is do something big, crazy on a Wednesday, on a Wednesday that'll get our attention and we'll remember it on Thursday morning for our show. So, so built was obviously motivated, uh, to get on the show, to get on the segment, uh, timed it perfectly. Well done. Stuck the landing on that though. They totally stuck the landing. So what they did, they sent out emails to a lot of cardholders, including our very own Steven Pepper. And the emails said,

we have reason to believe that behavior on your account demonstrates an intent to engage in sustained misconduct and wrongdoing in connection to the program then there's a bunch of like legal stuff and then this letter serves as formal notice of the closure of your built rewards membership and effective immediately the forfeiture of any remaining built points oh except i know this is ongoing so i'm hearing more of like the law and order music the waiting for it to come back from the commercial break or something here because i i know that's not the end of the story but it probably felt like the end of the story for people who got that email. Yeah, seriously. So what happened not long after that, people who got that first email got a second email from Bill that I'm going to summarize. The second email said, just kidding.

It's a pretty effective summary. That's actually what it was right yeah uh specifically the email said please disregard the previous email you you received regarding loyalty program misconduct this was sent in error and your account is currently in good standing we apologize for any confusion this may have caused and have added 250 points to your account as a courtesy. Okay. All right. Thanks for that. Yeah, I mean, this is too bad. I think 250 points.

Come on. You couldn't give 1,000. You couldn't give 1,000 points for that? Come on. Too petty? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that really stinks. And so like, I know if this was me, I see my emails usually pretty quickly. And so if I had seen that initial email, of course, first thing I probably would have done is go to my built app and take a look and see, are my points still there? And holy moly, if they're

going to close it, let me see if I can transfer them out now before it gets closed. I say that that would have been my instinct, though, because I live in New York State and they passed a law that you have 90 days to use your rewards when your account gets shut down here. Maybe I would have been less trigger happy to move the points than I would have in the past. But I imagine a lot of people probably immediately were like, whoa, whoa, transfer out before this gets zeroed out. So what's going on there? Yeah, so Bilt says that people who did that, they'll be able to reverse that transaction for them.

I don't know if that's happening automatically somehow or if you have to contact Bilt for help with that. But if I was in that situation, I'd recommend that you check to see what happened. If they've already been reversed, then you're fine. And if not, and you want them reversed, then obviously contact Bilt and ask him to do so. So you should be okay eventually there. Pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. And I say I'm on my email pretty quickly, but I imagine there are probably a lot of people who didn't see the email right away. And I think that the just kidding email came relatively quickly here. So probably there were a number of people who saw both at the same time, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And

I was actually just, I mean, 250 points isn't very much at all, as you pointed out, but I was a little bit disappointed that I wasn't one of the ones who got the email. Well, for sure. Definitely double checked to see if I had that email going attack over thinking that I lost all, if I had a significant number of bill points and thinking that they were all about to evaporate, then 250 might feel like a weak apology to me. But yeah, in my case, I was just disappointed I didn't get the 250 free points that other folks got. Exactly. So goes it. So goes it. Crazy thing. All right. Hopefully they don't do that again. That was, you know, mistakes happen at the same time. So as long as they fix it there, hopefully all will be well. We're going to skip over mattress running the numbers here this week and get into this week's award talk. So for award talk, you have a bit of a find on booking Hawaiian Airlines with JetBlue points, right?

Yeah. So I updated our JetBlue guide. We have a guide to using JetBlue rewards and everything. And the original guide, which I think, Nick, I think you wrote our original guide to this. You had an award chart in there for how much it costs to use JetBlue points to fly Hawaiian, which is one of JetBlue's partners. And a couple of things have changed since Nick wrote that guide. One is that you can now also book Qatar Airways flights online with JetBlue Points. So even though JetBlue has more than two partners, there's the only two that you can currently use points on besides JetBlue itself. But Nick had also put in an award chart.

And I don't know where you got it, whether it was published or if you just sort of figured it out from looking at flights. But I started looking at actual flights awards, and I put together my own Hawaiian award chart for using JetBlue points on Hawaiian, and it had changed for the worse from when Nick had written it. So I pulled out here, there are some awards that are good. I wouldn't call them, there are none that are wow. None of them are wow, but there's a number that are good enough to consider using your JetBlue points for. And so I'm just going to list them. West Coast, 20,000 points economy, 50,000, 50,000 points first class. So decent. Again, there's other programs where you could do better, but it's not bad. Not horrible. Yeah. Now here's one that might be more interesting. I didn't explore other programs to see what they would charge for this, but between Hawaii and Tahiti or between Hawaii and the Cook Islands, 20,000 points economy, 50,000 points business class. That seems good.

That seems pretty good. That's what I thought too. Now it's everywhere else that's a problem. For almost everywhere else, you're looking at 45,000 points economy, which is a lot, or 99,900 points business class. So at least it's not 100, thousand. Get a little discount there. You're transferring built points over. You might be OK with your 250, I was thinking, but no, the bill doesn't transfer to JetBlue, I don't think. Right. So, yeah, I mean, OK, like I think the Hawaii to Tahiti Cook Islands, particularly interesting there. I think 50K business on that is not bad at all. Hawaiian does fly flatbed business class.

So that could be interesting. I flew to Tahiti on Hawaiian from Honolulu, and it was comfortable. A lot of people, I flew the older business class. The newer one looks quite nice. Their older business class, a lot of people don't like as much. It's kind of open. There's very little privacy. But I found it to be comfortable. I actually liked it. So for a daytime flight, I thought it was particularly nice. I don't need as much privacy. I'm not

sleeping during the day. So I kind of liked that. And yeah, I think these other ones are mostly like you said, they're fine. They're not like crazy, but they could be okay. So if you're rich in JetBlue points, that's another thing you can do with your points, which is always good. Having more things is good. Also in that same JetBlue guide, you'll also find a new award chart for flying Qatar with JetBlue points,

which also is not a great value, but they have better award availability than American or Alaska, which are some other partners with Qatar. Not as good as Qatar itself, but they have better cancellation fees and taxes than Qatar itself. So it can make sense to pay a little bit more in points with JetBlue. Yeah, it can. You're absolutely right. And actually, I think that connecting other regions in other parts of the world, their pricing is actually competitive. So I was recently looking at, and it depends, obviously.

I've only been looking at a couple of different options for very specific redemptions. But as a specific example, from Johannesburg to Doha, JetBlue charges 59,000 JetBlue points one way in business class on Qatar. And Qatar itself, if I remember correctly anyway, I'm pretty sure was a 70,000 one way for the same route. I don't think so. I think it's, I think it's quite a bit less than that. Well, I'll tell you for sure in a second, but it was far more in fees than what JetBlue is charging. So that much makes it, you know, certainly I think attractive anyway. So, so worth checking. I'll double check on that. I'll, I'll fact check myself and come back to that later on. Uh, cause I, I've been looking at a

couple of different flight options there and said, Oh, the jet blue actually looks like it might not be a terrible option. Some of those flights, but you know what? We'll fact check me later on and I'll move forward to a different piece of award talk for this week that I'm more confident on the facts on, and that is the wind status match. And so those who are into the free cruise via status match game, we got a new, a new one for you, a new, a new option, new, new, new kid on the block here for a match. So if you can get to Las Vegas by the end of May, there's a new match going on at wind, which of course wind casino next to encore across the street from my beloved Conrad Las Vegas at Resorts World.

And so Wynn does not often offer status matches. They did a while back, and here they are back again. And what makes it interesting this time around is that if you have Caesars Diamond status, which longtime listeners will know, if you get the Wyndham Business Earner credit card, that gives you Wyndham Diamond status, which long-time listeners will know, if you get the Wyndham Business Earner credit card, that gives you Wyndham Diamond status. And then you can match your Wyndham Diamond status to Caesar's Diamond. And that's all online. It takes a couple of weeks by the time all that's done. But then you can take your Caesar's Diamond status and go to win and match to win Platinum status. And the benefits of win Platinum status are kind of interesting. First of all, you get $100 spa credit and $150 dining credit birthday dining credit, I think the dining credit might

only be during your birthday month is the way it works. Spa credit, though, I think you can use right away. But more interestingly, for purposes of this show, one of the benefits of platinum status is a complimentary cruise on Holland America in an ocean view cabin. And it includes itineraries in the U S Alaska, Caribbean, you know, the ones that go up to Canada. So a bunch of different options on Holland America. I think it's up to seven nights if I remember correctly. And so a good deal there. Now I've done the Holland America one before with a different match and Holland America does come out to be a little pricey if you want to upgrade to a balcony or something. And the port taxes can be expensive depending on the itinerary you look

at. But you won't pay anything for the cruise fare anyway, which is nice. It does save you quite a bit of money. And so that's a nice benefit, but there is a gotcha. And the gotcha is that in order to use the cruise benefit, you need two non-consecutive stays at Wynn over the past year, either last year or this year, actually. I think so. I think all of 2023 would count or all of 2024 so far. And the non-consecutive stay bit is the one piece that I'm the least clear on so far. I know they can't be consecutive nights, even if you check out and you check back in. I've seen a couple of people mention a even if you check out and you check back in. I've seen a couple of people mention a 72-hour requirement, and I've been waiting to get some more detail on whether you actually need to wait 72 hours between checkout and check-in again,

or they just have to be non-consecutive. Because when I read the terms, it just says non-consecutive nights. So I'm planning to do this. We only have until the end of May in order to do it. And I've got a family member who has the Wyndham earner business card, but has not yet matched to Caesars this year. So we got to get that match rolling because that match takes a little bit. I have another family member who's already gotten the ball rolling on that and it didn't work. And so I sent her my post, which will include in the show notes about what to do if you have trouble with the match from Wyndham to Caesars, because sometimes it doesn't go through right away and you have to

email someone. So I sent her that post just yesterday. And so she sent off the email to Wyndham to try and expedite that. Cause we're going to try to get all this together over the next month, because again, this match is only running until May 31st. So I didn't want to wait until after we'd done it all. Cause by the time we get all this done, it will be over, basically. It won't be enough time for you to replicate it yourself. Now, another piece that I don't yet know the answer to, and this is why I haven't written a post about it yet, but I will look for one in the coming days, is that I don't know if you have to book directly with Wynn to get credit for your non-consecutive Wynn stays, or if a booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts will count. stays, or if a booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts

will count. I'm hopeful that a booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts will count because normally that counts as sort of a direct booking with most hotel programs. And the reason I bring that up is because Wynn is available for around $200 before the taxes and fees, which we'll come back to that in a second, but around $200 through FHR, which of course, if you have an Amex platinum card, you get an annual $200 credit for a prepaid fine hotels and resorts stay. So that looks pretty nice on paper though. Once you figure in all of the taxes and fees, it gets way more expensive. So the night that's like 200 bucks comes out to like 350 or 380 or something like that all in. So it's still not going to be free. You're going to pay something for your two non-consecutive win nights, no matter what. So whether that's worth it to you

or not, that's going to be kind of a personal decision as to whether it's worth investing that in getting the free Holland America cruise. In our case, since my wife and I will both go and we both have Caesars Diamond status, we can both match and each get a free cruise. And we'll use the spa credit if we can while we're there. My wife would be happy to go to the spa when I'm sure. And we'll try and use the Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts as my plan, though I'm looking at gathering data points on that because this match has been out for, I think, a little over a week now. And so I've just been waiting to hear from the people who have executed it to see who has booked through FHR and whether it worked or not so that we can share that. Because that's kind of a critical piece of information to me. Otherwise, the cost of staying at Wynn two non-consecutive nights might not work out for me because I can't go on like a Tuesday or Wednesday night. Now, if you can go midweek, you can get an even cheaper rate at Wynn depending on when you can go. So anyway, all that is to say there's a new match out. It's very short term, but it's a good opportunity.

And if you haven't been to Vegas to do the matching, you also have the opportunity to match at Fontainebleau, I believe, still. And you can get a spa credit and a dining credit there. And if you haven't done a match at Mirage yet, at Hard Rock, then I think you can take your win and or your Fontainebleau status, not your Caesars diamond anymore, but your win or your Fontainebleau status to Mirage and match to Hard Rock Unity there and also get a dining credit there. So you have quite a bit of upside, I think, if you have the chance to go to Vegas. And of course, we'll use our

Caesars diamond celebration dinner and each get $100 off of a meal at Caesars too. So it'll all work out to be a, I think a fun couple of days in Vegas. We had no plans to go to Vegas this spring. Uh, so this just popped out of nowhere, but we were like, I would like the free cruise deals. We got enough other stuff we could take advantage of. So it doesn't feel like an expensive trip to Las Vegas. And we got a few family members in it. So that's my piece of award talk for this week. So get out there. That's very good. So what crazy thing did Nick and Greg do this week?

They skipped mattress running the numbers in order to talk all about mattress running during the award talk segment. True. That might've been a mattress running the numbers segment in hindsight. All right. That's that. I've got a very short thing, which is that I have an upcoming Hyatt Awards Day where I really wanted just to book a base room, but the hotel didn't have any base rooms available. So I booked a suite. So I paid a lot more points for it. But then I used

max my point to set up an alert to say, let me know if this state becomes available for less. So I think I paid 40,000 points for the suite and a room is 25,000. So I said, let me know when a room becomes available for less than 40,000 points or less than 30,000, whatever. And just overnight, I got the alert. So this morning, I just jumped on and canceled my suite, booked the room, saved 15,000 points. So, yeah. There's a bunch of tools that will let you do that. But I do like max my point for

that purpose it was really useful excellent excellent yeah i mean i think that's a great great tip i try to do that when i make a similar booking but i often waste my time doing the search over and over again myself and so you know letting max my point lighten the load so to speak and yeah take care of the heavy lifting is smart so i've been doing this kind of thing a lot lately of of booking something that's suboptimal uh that'll be like good enough if i have to and then setting up alerts for when it gets better and those things usually do come through eventually but i do find it hard because like when i'm ready to like make all my bookings you know i just want to get it all done and this is a totally different this is like well get done something that'll work but then you just gotta wait and those first you know it can take weeks it could take months before

it comes through and so it's the waiting is the hardest part there's another song the waiting is the yeah yeah tom petty i think yeah there you go i heard it as soon as you said it it was like there was in my head uh all right well but a good tip and i think that's actually an adjustment that you have to make as you become an award travel booker right that whole like booking the suboptimal and just having faith that probably something better will come along and if not not, probably it won't be, you know, all terrible. So. Right. Right. And this is true for hotels and flights, by the way. Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But, and I think the gardening is kind of fun, you know, to some extent, right. Like, you know, because when you succeed and get it, you're like,

yeah, got you Hyatt. Exactly. And you're still going to give me the suite probably, because it's going to be available when I check in. Hopefully. Hopefully. All right. So that wraps up, I think, this week's award talk and brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. 10 tips for rocking IHG1 rewards.

All right. Let's first do an overview of the IHG Rewards Program before we get into the 10 tips. IHG is the program that includes brands like Holiday Inn, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Even, Hotel Indigo, Kempton, Intercontinental, Regent, Six Senses.

That's not all. That's a list of the ones that seem kind of familiar to me, so I listed them. IHG1 rewards, their points are dynamic award pricing. So what it costs to book a hotel night varies, and it varies a lot. And not just from night to night, but also for a specific night, the price can change regularly. So you got to keep checking. They have 40K free night certificates that are usable for hotels costing up to 40,000 points. But the ones you get from the new credit cards, the Premier and the Business credit card, are top-offable with no

limit. Meaning if a room costs 140,000 points, you could use your certificate for the first 40,000 points and use 100,000 IHG points for the rest and book that 140,000-point room. That's an extreme example, but it's probably true at the top end that there's probably six senses and things that cost that much or more. The elite program, there's two sort of types of eliteness you can get. There's elite tiers and then there's milestone rewards. So you have tiers like silver, gold, platinum, and diamond. That's very typical of elite programs. And the benefits are increasing point earnings on paid stays, depending on how high of eliteness you get, platinum status, you get upgrades, complimentary upgrades, including to suites. welcome gift drink or points and early check-in when available and occasional reward discounts. At Diamond Status, you get all of that as well, but also as a welcome choice, free breakfast for two for every day of your stay. So that's pretty competitive in the elite world.

And it's not restricted to continental breakfast or anything, so that's pretty nice. The next type of thing you get are milestone rewards. Those are rewards you get to choose from once you've reached a certain number of elite qualifying nights each year. And I'm just going to mention the ones that I think are interesting because there's little things like a food voucher or whatever, things that aren't going to move the needle on whether you're going to try to get to those levels. So at 20 nights, that's where things get interesting. You get one confirmable suite upgrade as a choice. And then if you use that, you could book your stay with points or cash and up to 14 days in advance of your stay, call IHG and upgrade, get confirmed upgrade to a suite. At 40 nights, one suite upgrade.

You get two choices. Choices that are most valuable are a suite upgrade and annual lounge membership, which gives you a full year of lounge access that's primarily relevant at intercontinental hotels that have those club lounges. But those can be extremely nice, so that can be very valuable. And it's any number of visits to those lounges while it's in effect. At 70 nights, you get two suite upgrades and the annual lounge membership if you didn't already pick that. So those are the milestone rewards. It's worth noting that you earn elite nights from both paid and awards days. So if you want to try to get to, for example, the 20 nights, your awards days will count towards that. Unlike some other programs, there is no way to earn elite nights from credit card spend, but you can earn diamond status. So from the $99 Premier and business cards't like that you can't earn them from credit card spend and like that you can't earn them from credit card spend. And so here's what I mean. I don't like it. I'm myst suite. And that's one of the things I love about Hyatt is

the ability to get suites. And so that would be a really valuable benefit to me. And, you know, the 20 or 40 nights or whatever are thresholds where you get, you know, similarly valuable stuff sort of at other places. I shouldn't say similarly valuable because 40 nights is what you would need to start getting anything comparable elsewhere probably. But anyway, so I would pursue those except I don't really want to spend 20 or 40 nights at IHG properties to get them. I would get a shortcut with a credit card in terms of like the elite nights required just from having a card or spending on the card. That would be nice.

Like other chains do offer that. IHG doesn't. So it's disappointing on the one hand. On the other hand, I imagine the competition for using these things is probably lighter than it would be if they were super easy to get. I mean, you have to be an IHG loyalist in order to get it.

So you can't complain, I guess, that you're not able to use your suite upgrades because everybody's got suite upgrades because everybody doesn't have suite upgrades. You got to spend the 20 or 40 nights at an IHG property or 60 or 70, whatever it is here, in order to have these. So I think it's a nice reward. It works out to be a nice reward for the people who really are loyal to IHG and stay in IHG enough nights to get these. It's a nice reward for loyalty. So I actually give IHG a pat on the back because it gives you a reason to stay there, not just a reason to kind of game it. Yep.

Yep. Absolutely. All right. And now one more thing before we get into the 10 tips is just a brief overview of the credit cards. Earlier in this show, we went into detail about the IHG Traveler card, which has no annual fee and fourth night free benefit. But there's also the IHG Premier and Business cards, which you can hear full details about from our episode 193, where we dove into them in detail. But the basics are $99 each, better point earning rate than the free card.

The annual 40K free night certificate alone should make it worth the $99, in my opinion. It also gives you the fourth night free, but it also gives you platinum status and diamond status with $40,000 spent. All right. There we go. You want to take turns now going through the 10 tips for rocking IHG rewards? Yeah. Yeah. So the first tip is a really good one. Check. You know what? No, you should do the first tip because I'll do the second tip because that's one that I actually have experience with. Go ahead. So check the IHG app. Apparently, sometimes the IHG app shows better award availability than the desktop. So,

you know, if you're struggling to find available rooms, make sure to check the app. Yeah, I think that's a good tip in general to check both the app and the website, not just for this, but probably for other programs too, because every now and then you get these weird glitchy things like that, where you might find something available in one that isn't in the other. And speaking of these weird glitchy things, it's not necessarily a glitch, but similarly to, you know, in terms of weird things you might find is that free night certificates can be more valuable in points. And what I mean by that is not necessarily what you hear on the face value there, but that's to say that you

sometimes can use your free night certificates even when a property doesn't show any availability using points. Now, if you're like me and you're kind of lazy, you probably just search for awards for like points days, right? To see what's available on points and how many points does it cost. And you assume that, okay, if I have a free night certificate that's valid up to 40,000 points, then if the property costs up to 40K, I can use my certificate. If you have one of those top offerable ones and you maybe mentally do the math from there. But if you see that a property doesn't have award availability, you might assume that it doesn't have availability to use your

certificate, but that's not always true. I wrote a post, I think last year, about how I used one of these at an IHG property in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. My wife was doing a spa day at Miraval because we've also written about the fact that you can book day spa access at Miraval for reasonable-ish prices. If you would consider a splurge on an expensive spa anyway, it's reasonable-ish. So without staying there, you do a day package and what we did was we stayed at this ihg in the berkshires it's pretty close to the mirror ball and it had no award availability online when i searched using points but when i chose to use a chase ihg

certificate boom the place was available we were able to get a two-bedroom and like a vacation club place with a free night certificate yeah i. I think that's such a valuable tip because it's not something like I would have ever thought to check. And so- Right. So out of that dropdown, you got to find like, you got to be logged into your account, I think online. And out of the dropdown, you have to pick like the free night certificate thing.

Or if you're in the app, I think within your account, there's someplace where it says to book with the free night certificate. certificate. And we probably should have mentioned, unlike most other major chains, I think this is the case that IHG does not guarantee standard room award availability. So I don't know how they decide which rooms are available for points, but yeah, it's not guaranteed. So having tips for finding award availability is clutch. I'm going to throw in one more. This is a bonus one. It doesn't count in your 10. 11 tips. You don't have to pay for this one. For the Baker's dozen, only not. one because there are some hotels, I'm sure it's not that many, but I encountered this exact situation where the Kempton in London had a one-person room available with points. I was able

to book that and contact the hotel directly to ask for an upgrade basically to a regular room to fit both of us. And they said they would, they would charge 50 pounds. They never did charge us anything. Good, good. As they should not. All right. So that was the bonus tip. So I guess the next one is you can share points for free.

If either of you has diamond status, or if you just sign up for an IHG business account, which anybody can do, right. And not like an IHG business credit card, IHG business, which is just like the business loyalty. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So when they first announced that the diamond status was free to share points, I was a little frustrated by this because I currently have diamond status with IHG. I probably won't have it after this year, but other family members have little bits of points.

And so I want to book everything under my name. So I want them to be able to transfer points to me, not the other way around. But the diamond benefit is the other way around. Luckily, it's darn easy. Log in as someone even without diamond status and just click a button saying you want to join the business rewards program. And sometime thereafter, it's not immediate, some number of weeks, they will gain the ability to share points for free. And so that's how within my family, been able to move those piddling numbers of points

over to my account for better use here. Very good. Very good. So IHG business it is again, not the business card, just like a check. You want to join business rewards. Exactly. Super easy. Good tip there. Maximizing the fourth night free, right? Go ahead. Yeah. Maximizing the fourth night free. So there's a few details here, but the key thing about it is that IHG's say the four nights of your stay, the first night is 10,000 points. The first three nights are 10,000 points each, but the fourth night is 100,000 points. If you have a IHG credit card that gives you the fourth night free, then you book that. You'll only pay for those first three nights. You'll only pay 30,000 points altogether for the four nights.

And that's really cool, but it can also work to your detriment in the other direction. So if it was 100,000 points, 100,000, 100,000, and then 10,000 for the fourth night, you're only saving 10,000, and that would be a shame. So some ways to maximize that. Let's say you have a longer stay. Let's say you have a six or seven night stay. It's a good idea to check what the point prices are for the fourth night, fifth night, and sixth night, and seventh night, however many nights you're going to be there. And then whichever of those is the most expensive night, make that the fourth night in a four-night booking and book the nights before that just separately so that you're kind of pushing your reservation off a few days in order to get the most expensive night for free. In order to do that, it can be hard to see what the point prices are if you're logged

in because it's going to automatically show you the fourth night free, so it's not going to show you the cost of the fourth night. Do your award search when not logged in in order to see how much every single night costs. And it's worth knowing for the few of you out there who have the old IHG Select card, that's the $49 card, one of the benefits of that card is it gives you 10% back on all award bookings, and it's good to know that that stacks. So if you have both one of these newer IHG cards and that old card, you get both the Fortnite free and 10% back for your stay. So great, great savings

there. Yeah. Yeah, it is. But also worth knowing if like me, you have that old $49 IHG select card and you did not apply for an IHG Premier card during the short window when you were eligible to do that, these days I can't get an IHG Premier, right? I mean- You can't get the Premier, but you could get the business, which is just as good. Yeah. Right. Good point. Okay. So good tips there for maximizing a fourth night free. The separate reservation thing, by the way, I guess you run some small risk that the hotel might make you switch rooms. So let's say in Greg's example, let's say you're going to stay for seven nights and you discover the seventh night is the most expensive. So what

you would do in that case is book one reservation for the first three nights and a separate reservation for the last four nights so that you get that seventh night for free. Right. Well, of course, in that case, you're probably better off looking at, can I make it an eight-night stay and do two fourth-night frees? But anyway, in that example, I guess there's some risk that the hotel will make you change rooms,

but I've done that sort of thing. I can't tell you how many times over time, and I can think of one time when I had to switch rooms, I think. So very, very unlikely that you would have to change rooms to just book those separately and reach out to the hotel in advance and say, hey, listen, I think. So very, very unlikely that you would have to change rooms to just book those separately and reach out to the hotel in advance and say,

hey, listen, I made both these reservations and probably they'll link it together so that you will have the same room the whole time. So tip there. Okay, number five, maximize annual lounge membership. So this is one of those benefits that you can choose, right? The milestone reward type of benefits. And so the trick here is to choose that benefit This is one of those benefits that you can choose, right? The milestone reward type of benefits. Right.

And so the trick here is to choose that benefit. If you're going to choose the lounge access benefit in early January, because you get lounge access for the rest of that year and all of the next year. Is that correct? That's right. Yep, exactly. And so when you complete the 40 nights or 70 nights, either one of which can give you that lounge choice, you will then get an email telling you you can pick your choice benefit. And then you have 90 days to make the choice. So what you want to do is try to make sure that you complete your 40 or 70 days

in the fourth quarter of the calendar year, and then wait the 90 days and pick it in early January. And like Nick said, you get that lounge access for the rest of that calendar year and all of the next. So two full years for what's described as a one-year benefit. Very good. All right. Diamond status with $40,000 spend. So that's one of the benefits of the IHG Premier card and the Premier business also, right? If you spend $40,000 on the card, you get diamond status.

So if you're going to try to maximize this, similar, you want to consider doing this once every two years to keep your diamond status by spending that money as early in the calendar year as you can. So, for example, if you spent $40,000 in January of 2025, you would end up having your diamond status for the rest of 2025. So basically all of 2025 and all of 2026 until December 31st of 2026. So you could basically get two years of status with $40,000 spent. So if you get, you know, spend 40K in January, 2025, have status in 2025 and 2026, and then you could repeat the same process and spend 40K in January of 2027 and have status for two more years and, and keep that going from there. You will lose your diamond status for a short period of time, depending on how long it is between when your status runs out in December

31st of 2026 and whenever you finish your $40,000 spend in 2027. Question on that, Craig. So if you do the $40,000 spend, when do you get your diamond status? Is it like shortly after spending the $40, thousand or is it not until your next statement cuts do you know i i don't know the answer to that one yeah okay so you might end up waiting until sometime in february depending on your statement cuts if if it's not until the statement cut date but at any rate so you may end up missing like one month every other year if you were to pursue that type of strategy i mean of course that assumes you can spend forty thousand dollars in one month every other year if you were to pursue that type of strategy. I mean, of course, that assumes you can spend $40,000 in one month and not everybody can do that. But if you're in position to do that, you could sort of maximize by doing that once every other year instead of having to

spend $40,000 every single year. Yep. Yep. All right. Next tip, number seven, watch for award price drops. So as we mentioned earlier, award prices change regularly. And there's a few reasons why you might want to watch for them to drop. I mean, obviously, you want to save points, but let's say you don't have enough points for a given booking, then you want to wait for it to get lower and hopefully book it then. Or if you have the old IHG Select card that has an annual 40,000-point free night certificate, that one does not allow you to add points to it. So you can watch for nights to get below 40,000 points, so you can book it. There are tools you could use, MaxMyPoint or Rooms.Aero, which is something that comes with a tool called Seats.Aero. Either one will let you watch for price drops. You could set what the price threshold you're looking for is.

I think the most common way I use this is when I've already booked a stay and I just want to see, hey, if the price goes down, let me know. I'll rebook it at the lower price. So that's a great time to use one of those tools. The other thing to do is when you get an email from IHG or you see on a blog or something that they're having an award sale. Some of those award sales are specific to credit card holders or specific to elite status. And so it's possible the tools would not recognize that the price is lower. So it's good when you see those kind of things,

then log in and check the stays to see if the price has dropped and then rebook or book your 40K certificate, whatever it is that you're watching for. Yeah, I mean, I think the one upside of dynamic pricing in general is that it benefits those of us who are kind of obsessive compulsive about this stuff and like willing to keep searching and, you know, or set those alerts and rebook and kind of get that little endorphin high every single time it drops a little bit. You're like, yeah, I just saved another thousand. So it's kind of fun in that way. Not fun in a lot of other ways, but that's the upside, I guess. Big rewards when you're booking stays. So, I mean, first of all, IHG offers a good return in terms of the number of points you're going to earn. That's, I think, one of the key benefits of the program really is that you earn lots of points on paid stays.

It's always been a focus for IHG. But beyond that, you can use a shopping portal and click through a shopping portal in order to get to the IHG website and still book directly with IHG. But having clicked through a shopping portal first, you learn portal rewards. And the best option could be to use Capital One Shopping. And so Capital One Shopping is a weird animal. They have these various, first of all, various ways to access

Capital One Shopping. There's an app and there's the website and there's a Chrome browser extension. And all of those things don't always line up in terms of the amount of cash back you can earn through them. So you sometimes have to search all of them. But a key tip or trick is to install the browser extension in your web browser and then browse around a little bit. I'll let Greg talk more about that. Yeah. browser, and we've talked about this many times on the show, but is that when you've been using it to shop with a specific merchant, they become very, very likely to send you an email later the same day or in the next few days, offering much better rewards than

they offer by default. And we've seen that over and over again with IHG that I've seen it just browsing IHG website, but some say they'd like to do sort of dummy bookings, like go most of the way through the booking process, but then exit out. Either way, you're likely to get an offer for like a big offer, like 20% back kind of thing for booking through IHG. And normally the email will show a specific hotel, like the one that you are browsing, but you can use it for anything on IHG's website. So if you're planning on staying at IHG, make sure you browse IHG with the portal installed, with the shopping portal plugin installed. And you get that email. And then when you go to book it, you get those big rewards. So let me say, this is not like booking through Expedia or a third-party service.

Because when you book through those, you don't earn IHG's own rewards. But this is different. When you go through a shopping portal to IHG itself, IHG still sees the stay as being booked directly with them. So you get all the benefits of your elite status. You earn all the points with IHG, but you also earn whatever the portal's offering. And so this is a way of getting really big portal rewards. Yeah, absolutely. And those emails, those targeted emails, you have to watch for them and watch in the body of the email. Sometimes you'll get a headline that's about something else, but within the body, some of those payouts, you may see an IHG payout that's not the headline,

but is included in the email. that's quite good sometimes. All right. Number nine, you can buy extra elite status for your stays at Intercontinental Hotels or at Six Senses Hotels. So they have, IHG has this program called Ambassador Status that you can just buy. And it gives you special perks at Intercontinental and Six Senses hotels. The price to buy initially is $200 for a year of status or 40,000 points. Now, since points are often for sale for half a cent each, I see those two as basically equivalent. I would be just as happy to do either one. Because I have the old IHE Select card, which gives you 10% back, I'd lean a little bit towards using my points because you do get the 10% back on that, but it's just not

very much. So it really kind of depends on whether I want to spend some money. Well, in my case, I actually, I bought points last year to do it and I bought a hundred and whatever it was, that 10% off the 200, what I paid $90 for the points, I guess for the 18 or no, I needed 180, whatever it is. I paid a little bit less for the points because I knew I was going to get that 10% rebate. So I shouldn't say I paid a little bit less because I still had to buy the 20,000 points or whatever the case may be with 40,000 points, whatever the number of points is here. I guess it was $200 worth of points, but I knew I would get a rebate. So it kind of net cost me 180. Yeah. Yeah. So you save a little bit that way. The cool thing is that at renewal, now this isn't guaranteed, but it seems to happen regularly, that when your year's almost up, you'll get an email from Intercontinental Ambassador Service saying you can renew now for 40,000 points, just like you paid new, or you can pay $200,

but you'll get 15,000 bonus points if you pay the $200. So to me, that becomes a no-brainer. If you want to renew, don't pay the 40,000 points, pay the $200, get 15,000 bonus points. If you're happy, like I am, to buy 15,000 points for $150, then you can think of it as like you're sort of only paying $50 for renewing your ambassador. So you're required to buy 15,000 points for $150. And then so you're only paying $50 more to renew your ambassador service. But why would you do that? Let's talk about the perks. So at Intercontinental Hotels, only Intercontinental, no other IHG hotels, here's the perks you get. Well, first let me say, you do get platinum status overall, which counts across all IHG hotels.

But other than that, at an continental hotels, you get a guaranteed room upgrade. So that can be huge because if you get to understand a particular hotel's room categories, you could book the one that is like right before, just below the massive suite you want and pay a lot less and then be guaranteed to upgrade to that suite as long as it's available. Obviously they can't upgrade you to it if it's not available. You get guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout.

Now that's really nice. Now platinum and diamond status with IHG just gives you actually all, yeah, it only gives you the chance of 2 p.m late late checkout um and actually I think all IHG members get that uh so this is guaranteed 4 p.m which is much better um you get a $20 food and beverage credit per stay and this is even on awards days with these intercontinental hotels so So it's a nice little perk there. And then the other thing is an annual buy one, get one weekend stay. So the way that works is you have to book like two nights at a intercontinental hotel on a weekend. And as long as you book when the BOGO rate, the buy one, get one rate is available,

then you get that second night for free. So that alone, as long as you have a good use for it, could easily make up for the annual cost of this program. So that's what you get at Intercontinental hotels. At Six Senses hotels, which are like really, really high-end resorts usually, you get free breakfast for two, you get a signature amenity of either a complimentary 50-minute spa massage for two, the massage for two, or a local experience once per stay. And you get a wellness platter welcome amenity on the day of arrival. You get a one category room upgrade. And you get early check-in and 4 p.m. checkout. Those are subject to availability,

but still pretty good perks at a six senses. And, and, you know, I, I've never stayed at six senses, but most of them are massively expensive, whether you're paying with points or cash. Um, so if I was going to be doing a stay there, I would seriously be considering like, you know, plunk down the $200 to, to get ambassador status beforehand because, uh, the massage alone could be worth more than that. Right, right. I mean, or the free breakfast for two if you're staying more than a couple of days, right?

I mean, so together, getting all of those things together. Yeah, I mean, I think that it would be a no-brainer if I were actually considering a stay at a Six Senses. At an Intercontinental even, it's not bad, but at Six Senses, I feel like it's a no-brainer if you're gonna stay at one of those. You definitely want to get this status. At an intercontinental even, it's not bad, but at six cents, I feel like it's a no-brainer. If you're going to stay at one of those, you definitely want to get this status. Now, I do need to call you out on one thing, because if I don't, somebody is going to ask me why I didn't roast you about this.

That's because you said that on renewal, you often get the chance to renew for $200 and 15,000 points. And so you said, so if like me, you'd be happy to pay one cent per point, you can look at it as the points being worth 150 bucks. You mean half a cent per point? No, that's what I would mean. Because I was about to tell you that I will sell you 15,000 points for $150 every day of the week. You're right. I got that totally wrong. All right. I wanted to make sure because I was like, wait a second. They sell the points for half a cent each. So 15,000 points I'd look at as being worth $75. So it's kind of like paying 125 for the renewal. Thank you. Thank you for that correction. That's a big, big difference. Yeah. So erase everything I just said about the cost of renewal. That's right. The 15,000 points is like getting $75 back when you pay with cash. I would still pay with cash for that renewal, but it's not as smoking of a deal as I was suggesting. Very good point. I'm really glad you brought that up now instead of having to retract it in our next show you didn't i i didn't want to have to do a wea culpa for next week so i figured i'd hop in there right now so all right i mean what's your what's your favorite of these various tips

just out of curiosity we still have number 10 oh my goodness that wasn't number 10 oh my goodness number 10 tell us number 10 greg all right number 10 is you can stack the ambassador free weekend night with portal rewards. And here's why, and here's, here's how it works is when you go to book your intercontinental weekend stay with that, buy one, get one free night.

The entire charge of the two nights shows up in your receipt for that booking, in your confirmation for that booking. And that's what is reported to the portal as the cost of that stay. So if you book a $500 room, it shows up as a $1,000 stay. And you actually do earn rewards based on the $1,000 stay, even though at checkout, you're only paying the $500. I've done that myself. And so by combining the tip we said earlier about using the Capital One Shopping Portal to get like 20% or sometimes even higher rewards for booking through ISG and this buy one, get one, you could get really big portal rewards for booking your buy one, get one weekend night.

It can certainly make that first night that you do have to pay for sting a lot less. So that's definitely a great tip and one that I didn't think I would use. But now when you're mentioning that, I have a use in mind because you're right. I forgot about that. I did it myself and kind of stumbled on it myself accidentally when I made a booking and got the confirmation based on the full cost, which made sense. So yeah, anyway, that's a very good tip to keep in mind. And one of the things that makes the Capital One Shopping particularly appealing. Now, keep in mind, if you go to Capital One Shopping, you're not going to see 20% back at IHG right now. We're talking about the targeted emails that you might get. So install that browser extension and click around at IHG for a bit.

Hopefully, you'll get one of those in your email at some point. Okay. That, I think, wraps it up. Favorite thing about IHG, real quick, favorite tip or feature? Oh, wow. I don't know. All of those. Those are our favorites. Well said. Well said. Yeah. What sort of pops out at me, this isn't my final answer, but I love that their breakfast benefit actually does seem to be really well served. There's a dad joke.

As we've talked about a million times, Marriott just blew it. They redid their rewards program a number of years ago when they incorporated SPG, and they had a chance then to make their breakfast benefit make sense. And instead what they did is made it make sense for 32% of their properties and make other types of sense at other properties. I mean, it's just a complete mess. IHT did it right. Hyatt, of course, is another one that does it right. Um, but it's just so rare for it to be just, you get what you expect to get, which is actual

full breakfast for two. Um, that is really nice. How about you? Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one. I think, uh, maximizing the fourth night free is something that I don't do because I don't have a card right now that offers the fourth night free. But I think that that offers the most potential upside. I was just helping a friend plan a trip

recently answering a question. And we were talking about a particular IHG property. And I said, well, if you get the IHG business card, even if you buy the points, this is going to save you, because it was a 70,000 point per night place, it was going to save you $350 if you get the card on top of the welcome bonus and everything else. So I think it's an unsung benefit that can be very valuable if you're staying in four-night increments. Now, I can't remember the last time I stayed four nights at an IHG myself, but I think that's one that can be really valuable for a lot of people. So it's a good reason to have one of those IHG credit cards. Yeah.

And my favorite tips are the ones that I haven't been doing, but I should be. And that's finding award availability by also checking the app and by trying to use a free night certificate. Because I usually just look for whether the word is available for less than 40,000 points. And I shouldn't do that. I should go in and see if it's bookable

with the certificate as well. Yeah, well, when I stumbled on that, I wondered how many times have I missed the fact that there was availability to use my certificate? I just didn't realize because I didn't bother to pick that out of the dropdown menu. I mean, it doesn't take that much longer to do.

Just a bit of laziness on my part. And I was like, oh, man, I might have missed a lot of good stays that way. But so, yeah, good one there. All right. There we have it for IHG. I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week comes in from a local friend of mine. So just this morning, I was dropping my son off at his 3K program,

and one of the other parents asked me a question. And I like this one because it feels like an all play to me. And what I mean by that is that the question seems a little simple on the surface, but I think there's some layers to it. And I think a lot of people listening might have an opinion about this. And so if you do, please leave a comment on YouTube, on the YouTube video for this podcast or on our podcast post about this podcast on our blog on frequentmiler.com. So check for links to all that stuff in the show notes so you can find that stuff and leave us your opinion. So one of the other parents asked me, Sammy asked me, all right, I'm interested in taking the family to Disney in a few years. So not like this year or next year in a few years. I have no credit cards because I was never interested in taking on debt for stuff.

I'm a frugal person. I just buy stuff I can afford to buy. And I thought I don't need a credit card because I've got the money in my checking account to pay for the stuff I need. But I see the stuff you guys do. And I'm thinking, well, maybe there's something to this and I should pay more attention to it. So how can I do Disney effectively with credit cards? And so that's a big question. But my question is, where would you start in terms of recommending credit cards? Now, keep in mind that this is somebody who has never had a credit card. So they're probably suggesting an Amex Platinum card that has a $695 annual fee is out, right? So we got to keep a strategy that keeps things relatively simple because we're starting it at base level at zero and probably can't come up with a four card strategy to start. So I mentioned that Disney is

tough to do on points that, you know, hotels and flights are things you can do easily with points. Disney tickets are expensive and staying on property at Disney is generally tough to do with points. There are obviously some ways we'll, maybe we'll talk about that, but, but where would you start in terms of credit cards? If you're like with a fresh canvas here, you're interested in that type of trip that probably requires some cash really in the long run, but maybe some point strategy. I said, well, what do you spend your money on? And Sammy told me, well, mostly groceries and gas, but they also have a business. They have a farm.

And so they have some business expenses. Now, I don't know how big the farm is or how small the farm is, but business credit cards may be possible also. Though, again, we're starting with somebody who's never had one before. So where would you recommend Sammy start? Yeah, that's interesting because normally when someone's just looking to start, I usually veer them towards something like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It has solid uh rewards it gets on the ultimate reward system and it's easy it's easy to use like it you don't have to transfer points to uh airline and hotel programs in order to get okay value because you could book

travel through the portal for 1.25 cents. And you can add on. You can get other cards like the Freedom Unlimited. So you get one and a half points per dollar on all spend where you're not getting two or three points per dollar with your Sapphire card. And then move the points together. Someone else has a business. They get one of the business cards and then combine their points together. That's normally where I would suggest people start. And then they'd be able to use those points to book through the Chase portal for a Disney hotel, for example. And in this case, you mentioned grocery and gas. And those are two areas where Chase is not strong. Very weak.

That's, yeah. Because my first reaction was Chase, start with the Freedom Unlimited because no annual fee. So it's not intimidating to start with if you've been no credit cards for however many years. Right. So I think I felt like that was a not intimidating strategy to start with. But then I was like, well, man, what a waste if most of your money is being spent on grocery

and gas. Right. Because Chase is weak in those categories. Yeah, it really is. So that's tough because you've got the city premier card that has like 3X in all popular categories, but it's not as easy to get good value for those who are beginning. I'm curious what you ended up with. Well, so I said, you know what? Let me think about it and get back to you so I can ask Greg during the podcast today and get a good answer from him. Because, yeah, I thought the same thing.

Sapphire Preferred and Freedom Unlimited, because it's easy, because it's simple. You don't have to, like you said, you don't have to learn complicated airline transfer partners and hotel transfer partners. And frankly, those aren't always useful for a domestic trip anyway. So that may be a good start in terms of building a pot of points. And you can use the points you have in the Sapphire Preferred at 1.25 cents each. But then I pictured this person going out and spending on the Sapphire Preferred and earning one point per dollar on a lot of their everyday spend. And I was like, I don't like that. I mean, that's not good advice. And the one and a half, okay, still, shouldn't I just probably

tell her to get a 2% card then maybe if I'm going to say one and a half? And so I started thinking City Premier also for the reasons you were. And I thought, well, you could still book flights and hotels through the thank you portal at 1.25 cents each, though we've talked before about how the... They don't have that anymore. No, that's long gone. That's right. I forgot what you have long gone. See, that's how much I like City Points right there. But the three points per dollar seemed valuable to me. And then I guess you can get one cent per point out of it. So it's like 3% back gas and grocery. So that may work out to be a better strategy for a beginner. I'm curious about

everybody else's because, I mean, we've talked lots of times before about the best credit card combinations. And so my first reaction was, you're probably going to want a combination of cards. But my second thought was, well, if you're starting with zero credit cards, starting with a three or four card combination, like you mentioned the Sapphire Preferred, Freedom Unlimited, and a Chase Inc. card, that's complicated for somebody who's new to this, right? We're at step four or five, probably, by the time we get to all that. So it's got to be a simpler strategy than that. I mean, the other strategy, I guess, would be going Capital One because somebody who's relatively new to this has a decent shot, I think, at Capital One cards. And so if you started with a Saver One card that gives 3% back on grocery and a Capital One Venture card for $95, Venture X would be a better value, I think we would agree. But for somebody who's never paid an annual fee on a credit card, I'd probably start with a venture instead at $95 since that's a more palatable amount of money. I really like that answer. Have them start with the saver one or saver if they think they spend a lot on dining, but it sounds like they don't. They'll get 3% back on those

categories. And yeah, I think that's a good strategy. And then you can have them do the venture for 2X everywhere else, which is good. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I've also advised some people who are not for their first ever card, but who are fairly new to it that spend a lot on grocery to get the Amex Gold card because that has a lot of perks that make up for the annual fee and gets four points per dollar for groceries up to what $25,000 spend per year. So most people don't max that out, I think. But Amex points are not as easy to use for great value if you're not really into the game. So that's the downside. Same thought progression. And $250 is

kind of a high bar to start with if you aren't into maximizing the game, like you said. If you don't see the angles to maximize the game yet, which at the beginning, I mean, I didn't. So at the beginning, I would have balked at a $250 annual fee probably. So that seemed like perhaps not a great strategy too. The other thing that I mentioned, and I mentioned here, is that with a trip like that, where I feel like cash is going to be a major component of it, look at other opportunities for earning easy cash, like checking account bonuses. There's lots of checking account bonuses. We write about a lot of them, and a lot of them are pretty easy to trigger.

And so you could earn a bunch of cash pretty easily just moving money around without any credit cards at all. And then look at that as the play money fund that can go towards filling out the vacation fund for a trip like that. So that's another piece of advice that I gave, but I felt like I could do a little bit better. And I think maybe the venture and saver one angle didn't come to mind initially, but that seems like perhaps the best answer for me. But I'm curious to hear from readers. What do you think? What would be your recommendation for somebody who's new? Keep in mind, you're not going to build out a five or six card strategy for somebody who's new to this, one or two cards. What would you recommend? So I'm curious to hear if anybody

has something different. And keep in mind, it's not just the earning rate that matters. It's also how they can use the points easily. And I you know, and I think Capital One has that advantage of like, you know, if they pay for travel with their venture card, then they could just erase that travel and you can't get much easier than that for using the points. You're not getting outsized value for your points, but at least they're because they're earning two points per dollar everywhere. They're not getting horrible value overall from their credit card. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The ease of use there probably is a good tip for somebody that is literally just getting into this and doesn't know much about it yet because the ease of free that Greg has written about before, then you start getting more and more into it and like, okay, well, maybe I need to learn some other parts and pieces of this because this is kind of fun, not having to pay for it. Actually venture card is where we started when I started years and years ago. So that was kind of my gateway drug to the game too. So, all right. Convinced myself. Very good. Thank you for your help in coming to that conclusion, Greg, I wouldn't have come to it on my own. So, all right,

that brings us to the end of this week's long episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list, follow us on all the various social media. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions just like this one and get answers from lots of other people. And wherever you're listening or watching, don't forget again to thumb up the episode for us. And if you have a question you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week

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