Frequent Miler on the Air - 2022 Bonvoyed Awards | Ep182 | 12-24-22

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

This week, we throw regular segments out the window and cover your end of year checklist before diving into the 2022 Bonvoyed Awards, where we discuss which program has Bonvoyed us the worst in 2022. 01:37 Elite status https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-titanium-achieved-heres-how-i-sprinted-to-the-finish/ 06:34 Expiring free night certs https://frequentmiler.com/gift-hotel-points-free-night-certificates-and-award-nights-booked-with-points-rules-by-program/ 13:41 Airline fee credits https://frequentmiler.com/amex-airline-fee-reimbursements-still-works/ 18:36 Now is the time to apply for Amex Platinum cards 20:14 Saks credit https://frequentmiler.com/platinum-card-saks-credit-what-can-you-get-at-saks-with-50/ 24:34 Fine Hotels & Resorts or The Hotel Collection https://frequentmiler.com/find-your-own-fine-hotels-resorts-deals/ 29:12 Dell credits 35:50 2022 Bonvoyed Awards 37:00 Radisson International 38:35 Hilton's war on breakfast 43:17 Emirates 45:17 Delta's Triple Threat 51:39 Capital One Venture X 54:08 American & United 57:18 Chase Pay Yourself Back 1:05:20 Question of the Week: Where is Aalborg? Music credit: Annie Yoder

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 Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the 2022 Bonvoyed Awards. Yeah, you excited out there to get Bonvoyed?

We're going to discuss which loyalty programs credit cards etc bonvoid us the worst in 2022 and we're so we'll we'll pick uh two winners so to speak uh well up to two nick and i will each pick a winner If it happens to be the same one, then there'll be only one winner this year. We'll see. Today's show is kind of going to be a main event doubleheader, though, because instead of our usual segments, we are going to discuss also, in addition to the main event of the Bon Void Awards, we're also going to discuss the end of your checklist. So we're recording this near the end of 2022. And there's a bunch of stuff that if you're into rewards, you need to be taken care of before the year completely ends. We're going to be discussing what we've done or are still in the process of doing to fill out our checklists. And hopefully that'll help you finish your checklist as well. So we're going to start there. Let's get into the end of your checklist. And we'll start with elite status. A bunch of elite programs have requirements that you have to meet by the end of the calendar

year in order to get elite status for the next year. What have you been doing, Nick, to meet your elite requirements? Dragging my feet mostly. So I need a few more nights. So I actually I take that back. I realized I was going to be short of Marriott platinum status. And we got word that Marriott is not going to do a soft landing anymore. So even though I have titanium status right now, since I haven't requalified for platinum, I would have requalified for gold, I guess. I would drop to gold next year. And nobody wants that because good as gold is not very good when it comes to Marriott.

So that's a true story. So I only had 33 nights. I didn't have the Marriott business card. I have had it before, but I didn't have it now. So I applied for it, even though I wouldn't get a bonus. I applied for the Marriott Bonvoy business card. I used my wife's referral link so that she'll get 25,000 membership rewards points. She did already get her 25,000 membership rewards points. So I got the business card that brought me up to 47 nights. So I am still three nights short for Marriott. And there's a relatively cheap Marriott near where I'll be spending the Christmas New Year week. And so every day I say, you know, I got to get around to booking three nights at that place. And I haven't yet. So I need those three more nights. They're going to be, like I

said, relatively inexpensive to book. So I just need to make sure I do it. Really, in my defense, I've been hoping that we might see a portal payout increase for Marriott or that I could trick the Capital One Shopping app into giving me a good portal rate for Marriott, but neither has really happened. And especially since I could book a refundable or cancelable rate anyway, I should have already done it and I haven't. What about you? Right, right. Well, Marriott's also been on my mind. So a couple months ago, I realized that I was eight nights short of titanium elite status, which is the 75 night status, which I've actually had for quite a few years now.

But mostly I've had it because during the pandemic, they kept re-upping our status. This year I found, wow, I stayed at Marriott's enough. And the Bonvoy Brilliant card added 10 more Elite Nights to my collection, plus I have the business card. So all of that stuff, you know, blended together to me and I was only eight knights away and even better, I could pick and I did the 50 knight choice benefit, which gives me five elite knights. So I was really only three knights away from titanium status. What I ended up doing was actually a suggestion that you had, Nick, which was why not spend my way to those three nights with the Bonvoy Boundless card? That's the Chase Marriott card, one of many Chase Marriott cards. And that one allows you to get a elite night

credit for every $5,000 spend. So I had some big spend I could do at the end of the year. I did that. I got the three elite knights plus 30,000 Marriott points. And you can see my post on that if you want details, but it was easily worth it for all the benefits I get for that. To be clear, titanium elite status doesn't offer a lot over platinum, but it does give you United silver status, which is something that I value having. And so I'm really glad to have that plus miscellaneous other small perks you get as well. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be curious now to see how soon my United silver status drops down to United nothing status because I won't have requalified, i'm hopeful yeah the marriott elite year operates like on a different schedule maybe maybe i'll still get silver next year because i'll have it in january i guess

right i don't know we'll see yeah i doubt it i can help i hope so for you i can hope so for your sake were there any other elite programs that you were pushing for this year? No, that's it. I think for elite status. So that's my, that's my same for me. I,

I requalified for Hyatt globalists, uh, pretty early in the year. So, so that wasn't an issue for me. Um, and with Delta, I'm waiting till actually next year to,

I, I got silver status, the old fashioned way from flying. And, um, so I'm going to live with that. And then next year I'm going to, I, I got silver status, the old fashioned way from flying. And, um, so I'm going to live with that. And then next year I'm going to, uh, spend to get the, uh, MQD waiver, which, which, uh, with $25,000 spent on a Delta credit card, uh, that'll let me all my MQMs that have rolled over that'll give me platinum status right away. So that's my delta strategy for this year and next. Okay. So another thing that we're dealing with is lots of free night certificates are expiring

at or near the end of this year. Many of them because they had been renewed during the pandemic and renewed until the end of this year. And so a lot of us are sitting on free night certificates that are about to expire. What have you been? Are you in that situation? What have you been doing? So sort of. I have one, at least one, hopefully it's one, Hilton free night certificate expiring December 31st. And we don't yet have plans to use it. My plan has been to call in and ask for an extension, because if you saw the post we wrote a couple of months ago, my wife went to call in and book one for a friend and she wanted to ask for an extension. And I was trying to wave her off and tell her, no, no, no, don't ask. And

cause they're not going to extend it. And sure enough, you know, lo and behold, they extended it. So my plan has been for her to call and extend that because we have a stay in April where it would be useful. So we're going to try for that. Although I don't know if they'll stretch it all the way to April, because most of the success reports we've had have been like six weeks, eight weeks. So three months or four months is a little probably too far, but we're going to try that. If that doesn't work, I don't know what we're going to do with that extra Hilton free night

certificate yet. So we'll offer it up to friends and family if that doesn't work, but we got to get that going. Otherwise, I think that's the only one I have left that's expiring at the end of the year. I've used the rest of the ones that expire. The other thing I did do was I take that back.

I had a Marriott free night certificate that was due to expire at the end of the year, not December 31st. This was an annual one that I had gotten last year with my Ritz card. And so I called and got that extended for another year. Very simple, quick, easy conversation these days to call Marriott and ask for an extension. Usually they're very easygoing about it and they'll extend it for a year from the day you call. So in my case, I called a little early because mine was actually scheduled to expire, I think January 3rd or something like that. So maybe I jumped the gun. I should have waited until January 2nd to get a year from then. But at the same time, I had a

use in mind and sure enough, I already put it to use for next year. So hopefully that'll work out and I'll get to make that stay. So that's worth making a call if you got any Marriott certs due to expire. Yeah, absolutely. I had some that were due to expire in October and I did that. I waited until it was close to that time, called and got them extended a year. They extend them literally a year from when you call so um that's why there's an advantage to waiting uh uh they'll only the new rule seems to be they'll only do it once meaning once per certificate if a certificate has already been renewed they say they they won't uh allow that to happen again we'll see next year i, whether they have good record keeping on that score. But I had a few, between my wife and I, a few IHD certificates expiring both at the end of

the year and mid-January and knew we weren't going to be able to use some of them. So my sister-in-law is traveling around the holiday time and could use a stop like halfway on her drive. And so we found a IHG property that we used my wife's free night certificates to book for her and her husband on the way on both directions for her road trips. So she definitely appreciates that. So that was like a nice little gift to a family member. And then one other that's in my name, we are doing a road trip for the holidays, a small road trip. And normally we would have driven right through, but it turned out it was convenient to stop halfway on the way out. And we were actually able to use both a IHD expiring free night certificate and a Hyatt free night certificate that's expiring because there's

three of us traveling. And so our son will be in one hotel and my wife and I will be in the other one, which is less than half a mile away from each other. And of course, yeah, yeah. And of course, with the globalist status, we're going to park at the Hyatt because you get free parking with Hyatt. And this is a place that would otherwise charge $42 a night. So that's a good benefit right there. Nice. You know, so two other things I want to mention on that note. One is the road trip angle and having the free night certificates.

My goodness, I'm kind of happy that I do have a couple because I'm scheduled to fly this Friday. And if you've paid attention to the weather at all, that may not happen because it looks like the Northeast is going to get a big snowstorm here. So if that doesn't happen, there's chatter of driving instead. And so those free night certificates may come in handy because we may not be the only people on the road two days before Christmas. And so I imagine that prices may be high. So a free night certificate could come in handy if there's any availability. Uh, so hopefully, you know, if we have to drive, that'll come in handy. But the other thing I wanted to mention more importantly was Greg mentioned gifting a free night certificate to someone. And we have a post about which ones are easily giftable and which ones are not easily giftable. Um, sometimes it's

really simply just add an additional name to the reservation and let them know that that person's going to check in ahead of you. And for a one night stay at a place along the highway somewhere, that'll usually be fine. this weird thing that where they vary based on whether they're issued by chase because of the credit card or issued by Hyatt because of it's a milestone reward or some other way that you got a free night from Hyatt. If it's from Hyatt and they expire, Hyatt can actually offer you some points in exchange. Uh, if you call and ask, uh, if they're from chase, I've been told by Hyatt that there's nothing they can do to compensate you for the certificate expiring. You know, it's interesting you say that because that's also been my understanding. But then just this week, we had somebody in Frequent Miler Insiders who reported getting points over the summer for a Chase-issued certificate.

And it double-checked, and they were absolutely sure that it was the Chase certificate that they got points for. So I don't know if they got lucky or if there's been a change. I thought it was just impossible based on everything that happened last year. So I guess if you've got one set to expire, it's not going to hurt you to call and ask. Expect to hear a no, but be pleasantly surprised if you hear anything else. That's great to know. We've got to keep an eye on that because that'll be definitely worth reporting if that's changed. And one annoying thing is that there's no obvious way to know, like you have to ask Hyatt, where did this certificate come from? Or keep, you know, very good records, I guess.

For sure. All right. So also we've got airline fee credits to use because between the two of us, I don't even want to venture a guess as to how many platinum cards we've got. But plenty to keep track of all those airline fee credits. And it's not just the platinum cards. There are other cards with fee credits, too. So what are you doing to use up all your airline fee credits before the end of the year? Because those are calendar year based on almost every card that offers them, I think. Yeah, on most of the cards.

That's right. And certainly all the Amex cards are that way. For the most part, I'm booking Delta awards that I may or may not fly in the future. So the award fees are credited as if they are airline incidental fees. And so that's a nice, easy way to get that. And if I do cancel those awards, Delta will give me my money back, even though Amex has also already given me my money back for those award fees. And of course, Delta will give me the miles back as well. So yesterday, actually, before we recorded this, I spent hours booking all kinds of different awards just in case I might take them. I had that a couple of nights ago.

Yeah. And you know what? I did that for my Ritz card airline fee. I had about $80 left over still to spend. So I did that for Ritz as well. Nice. Nice. I did a combination of things. So I actually, I did, I wanted to try several different things in part, just to be able to have current data points for our, what still works posts that we republished this week. So I did some United Travel Bank because that seems to work. And so I did some of that, but I didn't want to overdo it on that because I already have a fair amount in my United Travel Bank and I just don't fly United all that often. And that doesn't expire for five years, but it does expire.

So I didn't want to overload my travel bank too much more. So my other airline choice has always been Southwest. And so with Southwest, I did a combination. I booked some awards. I booked some very cheap flights, like less than $50 that were just regular want to get aways because we had a data point that turned out to be wrong about more expensive flights not working anymore. But like I said, it turned out that was wrong. So there was really no need for me to do the really inexpensive want to get away fares. But mostly I booked want to get away plus fares because those low fares around $100 or less, it seems like it'll work a little bit over 100.

But if you keep it under 100, it's probably your best bet. The want to get away plus fares automatically reimbursed. And the reason I'm picking want to get away plus fares is because if we don't take those trips, as Greg said, we can turn that into a transferable Southwest credit that doesn't expire. So it's essentially very similar to buying a Southwest

gift card and being reimbursed. And I did that in part because then I'm not getting credited by both the airline and Amex thinking that there's probably less long-term risk of clawback that way. Although obviously none of us had an issue with that period on these for all the years they've been working. most straightforward way to use up those credits is you're basically buying future United money and getting paid back by Amex or whatever the card issuer is that has those airline fee credits. Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. That is the easiest if you're going to fly United on paid fares, but then you got to be aware that you can't use the travel buying credits. I don't think to book like, or to pay the taxes on awards and blah, blah, blah. So there's some, you know, a little bit of restriction there to know about if you're going to do that.

There was something, oh, well, and the other thing, the problem with the technique that Greg and I have taken up here is that then you have to remember which trips you have booked. So make sure you have a way to, you know, be organized about which trips you're scheduled to take. Absolutely. I, you know what, I put all my like travel planning into trip it. And that's how I, between my wife and I, we, we use that to figure out when and where we're going. I long used that. I haven't, I've been out of the habit for years, but I should probably start

again. The thing I actually, actually, I I should mention this to is that if you book Southwest Awards and if you've long been used to their policy of no show and you still get your points back, which is something that I actually I think I had known about and totally forgotten about for years, that if you no show a Southwest Award, they just refund your points. They're changing that in summer of 2023. So if you're just banking on booking Southwest Awards and not showing up at the gate and whatever, it'll all be fine. Be careful because that's going to change. Remember to cancel them. Yeah, obviously. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. That's good. Good safety tip. So we're about to talk about a number of other Amex-specific, Amex Platinum, actually actually specific credits. Before we do, I think it's worth mentioning that this is a great time of year if you do it before the last day of the year to actually sign up for MX Platinum cards or other cards that have calendar year credits like this. Do you want to explain briefly why that is? Because, for example, the airline fee credits that we've been talking about here, they're a calendar year based benefit, like Greg said, so you can use them once each calendar year. So if you get a platinum card right now, you've got $200 in airline incidental credit you can use before the end of 2022. And then January starts 2023. So you can use

$200 again in 2023. So that's $400 in airline fee credits. And then your annual fee isn't going to get billed until like December of next year. So it won't be due until sometime in January at the earliest, I guess, depending on exactly when you apply. So you're not going to have to pay that annual fee, the second annual fee until January of 2024, which should give you time if you get right on the horse early January to use that $200 airline andal credit a third time before you have to choose whether to keep or cancel. So that's $600 in airline incidentals before you ultimately decide whether you're going to cancel the card. So if you aren't going to keep

it, you can get $600 in credits. And all of these other credits we're talking about, you can also do what's called triple dip. That's what I'm discussing there, what I'm describing there. It's called a triple dip, getting the credit 2022, 2023, and 2024. Right, right. Okay. So first credit, we're going to talk about Amex Platinum's SACS credit only for the personal Platinum cards. So $50 every six months towards Saks. Right. So you can get that now. If you get the card now, you can get it in December. You get it again in January, between January and June, be another 50 bucks. Then between June and December, another 50, and then January of 2024, another 50. So $200 in total Saks credits. What are you doing with your Saks credits, Craig? Yeah. So we have several platinum cards in our family and I bought Christmas presents for people.

So go online to sax.com and it's easy to find their sale area. It's easy to filter to items that are around $50 and usually you could find some good stuff. So I think that's always fun to get essentially free things. Sometimes I go pay a little bit more. I'm willing to buy something for 70 bucks or 80 bucks or whatever, and it's almost free. But one thing I want to caution about the Capital One Shopping Portal, which we've been really excited about. It's offering all these great cash back rates and especially targeted cash back rates. I keep getting targeted for these great 28% back at Saks. And in the first half of 2022, when I used it, I got paid back for every one of those in in the second half i haven't most of my purchases

weren't apparently tracked at all the one that did get tracked got tracked at only three percent back so um most of the capital one shopping has been flawless for me but there's something weird happening with sax so i just wanted to caution people there yeah no it's the same for me actually i didn't all of mine have tracked but they they tracked it 3%, like Greg said, instead of the increased rate. So, so yeah, that's annoying, because I bought things that were in the 70s dollar wise thinking, oh, well, you know, between the rebate and the $50 credit, it's closer to free. Exactly. 3% makes it so free, not so free not a big deal but uh you know not as free as i was i was hoping for so anyway yeah i did the same i bought uh gifts i brought uh ray-ban

sunglasses for my my uh my son so they're both gonna have a pair of cool looking sunglasses that's like you know next to nothing so yeah yeah so yeah i thought that'd be fun a fun little surprise i didn't even tell my wife so she'll find out on Christmas Day. And I think it'll be cute. So anyway, yeah, there's lots of fun stuff to buy at Saks. And we've written, in fact, about how to find all the cheap stuff. So there's a post again, all the links. When I mention a post, I'm going to put that link in the show notes. So if you're like, oh, where's that post?

Go to the show notes because we have a post about how to find all the cheap stuff at Saks. So we did that. Now, I think also and I don't know the answer to this. So hopefully you do, but you may not. Do you know if the food ordered through Saks will trigger the credit? They have some steaks and things like that. There's a section of food you can order, but I've wondered whether that's going to charge properly to code as a Saks purchase or not. I haven't actually used those. Have you used any of those? Yeah. No, I haven't used them. I guess my assumption is if, you know,

unless something looks different when you're checking out about how you pay that I, my assumption is it would, it would show up the same in the, in the credit card bill and therefore would be credited. Um, and what I mean by that is sometimes like when you buy gift cards from a store, for example, you see that the URL changed to cashstar.com or something. And if it looks anything like that, then I'd be very wary. The one time I went to try to buy a food item, I stopped because the free shipping didn't apply for some reason to it. So it ended up costing a lot more than i uh wanted to take a chance on that that item with so no so no no food with your sax credit there's lots of other stuff to use anyway

all right i'm not saying that all food items have that problem but uh but there's other neat things like like uh there's there's plants you could get like these uh different types of you know uh boxed like plants that are actually kind of nice i've gotten those in the past so check those out as well yeah all right yeah well on the mx note we got fine hotels and resorts because if you've got a personal platinum card you also get a 200 annual rebate for prepaid fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection bookings so what have you booked greg yeah this was the hardest for me. I had three platinum cards without having used the fine hotels and resorts credit in 2022. And so again, yesterday I spent a long time figuring out how to

use these. I went through again, my trip at like upcoming trips and where have we not yet booked hotels. And I found, I found one good one, uh, in, in Denmark, uh, that hopefully will work out. So I, you know, I booked it. These are, even though they're prepaid, they're, they're fully refundable. So, you know, there's, there's no risk. Uh, the main thing is that in the past, at least when you've booked a fine hotel and resort, gotten the $200 credit, then later when you cancel that hotel, Amex has been quick to claw back the $200 credit. And of course, by then it'd be too late to get that credit for 2022 again. Anyway, but there's no risk in trying, right? So the potential upsides are maybe I'll actually stay in that hotel.

Great. Another potential upside is maybe in the calendar year split, maybe Amex will kind of forget about it and not claw back the credits. It's possible. The other thing, sometimes Amex doesn't refund the credits like exactly correctly for some reason. And so like, or claw back the credits exactly correctly. So I had one where I booked and canceled. I got all my money back, of course, but also for some reason, they only clawed back like two thirds of the- Currency, currency fluctuation, maybe if it was a foreign property. Maybe, could be, could be. Could be. So that's a good point. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I think we had found last year, I'm going to have to go back through the records and publish about this at some point. I thought we had found last year that if you booked multiple

fine hotels and resort stays and you cancel the one that you got the credit for, I think you'll still be safe because you have other prepaid fine hotels and resorts bookings. If you have one, like you're describing now, then theoretically they're going to claw back that credit. But I think the moral of the story is you might want to make a few prepaid final hotels and resorts bookings. If you can afford to float, whatever it is, it's going to cost you to do that because they got to be prepaid to qualify for the credit. But that way, if you cancel the first one, so to speak, the one you really want to stay

at, book a couple more after it so that if you can't make that first day, maybe you can still use the credit. But I think that'd be my strategy if the float is not a problem. That's a great point. You know what? It took me so long just to find the three nights that I actually think I want. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. But I think that's a great idea if you do it, especially if you just have the one card

to deal with. But if you have a bunch. Did you do that? No, I haven't even, I haven't even used them yet. So I saw this and I was like, Oh man, that's right.

I got to do that. But what I will do is the Ritz Carlton Tyson's corner right outside of DC is, is like a convenient halfway point to where we drive to see family. Sometimes we usually fly these days, but, but it's like 200 bucks a night at that place usually. So I can book a few nights

back to back uh which you won't get the hundred dollar credit each day but because of the way the changes they've made but my wife and i could use our platinum cards and at least get a couple of nights with free breakfast and break up the drive a little bit and stay there we could use that as an excuse to either drive it's only four or five hours away uh and it could be a halfway point on driving down to see family. So, so I'll book that as a backup and be like, Oh, we'll just go take off and go that weekend. If, if we don't use the financials and resorts credits otherwise. So, you know, that, that's a great idea. You know, that particular property, it's not

like the most fantastic Ritz property, but for a highway stop type of thing, that's amazing. Right. How often do you get to stop at a Ritz along the highway, right? Yeah. And you're going to be getting food and beverage credits for at least the first night and a free breakfast. I mean, come on, that's terrific. Right. Right. So that'll be my backup anyway. So don't everybody go and book that place up on me. It makes it expensive now that I mentioned it because I haven't done this yet. And I don't know if I'll do it before this publishes. So keep that in mind.

All right. So that's our 500,000 resource credits. What's the next credit up, Greg? Then the last one we'll talk about today, I think, is the Dell credits that come with the Amex Business Platinum. You get $200 every six months of Dell credit, which is quite a lot, especially if you're doing that triple dip you're talking what uh eight hundred dollars of dell credits uh yeah with one one credit card sign up and then you can cancel the card um so anyway um i i managed to buy some more xbox gift cards so yeah they didn't get canceled huh you got them they didn't get, here's what happened. So I went through a long stretch where every order was getting canceled. Finally, a friend mentioned that there seems to be some limit where if you do more than some number, let's say five or four, I don't know, of gift card purchase transactions per year, uh, then they'll start canceling your, your orders. So, uh, enough time had gone by since I had previously bought them that, that

I seem to be outside of that window. And, and I bought some, this was, um, several months ago and it went through the order and the, the trick seems to be And the trick seems to be this. So they have a code to give you 10% off the Xbox gift card. And so what I used to do was buy every gift card individually, like checkout and fully and everything, because you can only apply one coupon code per order. And it'll only apply to one gift card so if you have like five gift cards in your cart you're only you're still only saving 10 off one of them and they they only go to a maximum hundred dollar denomination online and anyway so i used to be buying one at a time and and um what i've done is switch to putting as many in the card as can use up my Dell

credits. And Dell will let you split, I think, what, three ways, right? So you could do, if you have three business platinum cards, you could put $600 worth of gift cards in your cart and use up all $600 all at once. So that only counts as one transaction. And so it won't hurt you as much. This time, this was the second time this year I did it and used new credit cards. And I'm mentioning that specifically because I do think that when you use a new credit card with Dell, that's more likely to get sort of flagged as a potential issue. This time they emailed me, said, call to get the order verified. And so I called and it

was very easy. I just had to tell them my address and confirm I made the purchase and boom, it went through. So that's much better than having it automatically canceled and no way to get it through. Right. And no notification when they cancel. That's the worst. So annoying. Yeah. Yeah. I,

well, so I used up one business platinum credit buying a Google pixel watch. I wrote about that. So I kind of wanted a Google pixel watch. And, and so my wife was going to get me one and I said, well, you know,

we've got these business platinum credits and I noticed that Dell stocked them. So I said, let me keep an eye on it and see if they come back in stock because they had been out of stock. But they came back in stock. I mentioned it on the show last week. So that was one of the $200 credits. And it should have been two of them because you can split payment.

And so total with tax is like 323. So it should have been two. But I was buying it out of my wife's account. And I couldn't I didn't immediately have her business, her second business platinum card. Uh, and she didn't have it on her either. So rather than go and hunt for it, I just placed the order because it was late at night. So, uh, so I, I, I should have used two, but only use one credit for that. I tried to use one buying Adobe, uh, um, Oh, what is it? Uh, the, you know You know, the video editing software. I can't think of the name of it right now,

but I tried to buy that with one on my new business platinum card. And as Greg mentioned, I guess new cards might be a problem because they canceled my order. And I was like, this is for a software program. What? Why?

It's not, I wasn't buying gift cards or anything, but they still cancel it, though they did cancel gift card orders on that account earlier this year. The first step though though, backing up the truck here at like eight yards is that I had to log in to all of our accounts and go back and make sure I knew which cards we still had to use the credits on, which that in itself takes up some time if you've got a bunch of cards because you got to look through them all. And if you're, you know, when it's airline fee credits, there's a little counter up at the top, if you go to the benefits page.

So if you click on benefits, you have to click on benefits a couple of times to get there, but you get to the benefits page and, uh, and it'll show you how much of the airline fee credit you've used, but it doesn't show you how much of the Dell credit you've used. So I had to go back through statements and, oh my goodness, that took an hour, at least, you know, just doing that part of it to figure out, okay, which ones do I have to use and how much do i have left so yeah are you sure it doesn't show i i'm not 100 sure about this but but what i noticed recently is that on that same screen where it shows you your airline fee credits that have been used there's a little thing to show more and it shows you more credits that you've been working on and i don't know why it doesn't default to showing them all.

Where were you the other day, Craig? I needed you when I was going through all those bad statements. All right. So that's a great tip. I'll look for that next time I log in. Okay. Again, I don't remember if the Dell specifically thing was there, but there were some ones that I was looking for.

So definitely good to know. And don't forget to enroll in those because you got to enroll in Dell and a wireless fee credit. So if you just open a brand new business platinum card, because you heard us talking about it and you're like, oh, wow, this is a great idea. Don't forget, you need to enroll in the business platinum credits and the wireless credits. If you open a personal platinum, you need to enroll in the SACS benefit. Those things are not automatic. So before you make a purchase, enroll. Right. And one last thing before people think that I have an insatiable need for Xbox games, I don't. Xbox gift cards can be used for anything at the Microsoft store.

So there's plenty of things you can buy there, including laptops and whatnot. Oh, you know, and I mentioned enrolling. And if you're choosing an airline, I would recommend doing that a day before you make the purchase because we've had some situations now and then where people have reported they chose their new airline. And then like 20 minutes later, they made a purchase with the airline and it didn't automatically credit. So I would wait now. Sometimes you could do it same day, but I would get on that now, choose an airline today and make your purchase tomorrow. Good tip. Very good tip. All right. I think it's time for our second main event for today. Let's get into the 2022 Bonvoyed Awards. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2022 Bonvoyed Awards. We're thinking this is going to be an annual thing uh unless all loyalty programs

stop bonvoying us and then we can retire this this segment right right right we can hope yeah it's better for entertainment value keep it up guys keep it up uh so so that of course the bonvoyed awards if you're not clear is not really an award you want to win. This is not the award everybody's clamoring to win. In fact, quite the opposite. You'd rather not be nominated for a Bonvoy Award. Right. Unless you just like being on our show, and then who knows.

But, all right. Good point. We're going to list the contenders, and then afterwards uh nick and i are each gonna pick which is our pick for the overall bond 2022 convoy award but these are not contenders they are the 2022 nominees nominees yes these are the nominees okay so first up nominee go ahead radisson international you remember what Radisson International did? Who? Oh, yeah.

Radisson. Yeah, they had, first, they split the program into Americas and International. And then the International program just, like, totally went full Bon Voyage on us, right? They, like, got rid of award charts or something. And, like, I don't even remember more detail. I remember it was bad. Just overnight, they destroyed the value of their points. Yeah, they took away the award charts.

They set all the points value to be just such a small, tiny value that we were actually, those of us with Radisson points were actually happy. I think the program split because we were able to move our points out of that forgotten program over to Radisson Americas. And you'll remember that Choice Hotels has bought Radisson Americas. So there's a chance that those points may become choice points, which are worth a lot more than, than Radisson, even America's points.

So there, yeah, the potential saving grace there, but, but to, to do for Radisson international, do this overnight, no warning,

just completely torpedo the value points. Not good. Not good at all. Not good for all 12 people who had Radisson points. Well, at least in the U.S. these days, because they had no credit card for the last hour. All right. Next up, next nominee, Hilton's War on Breakfast.

So... Yeah, so Hilton doesn't want you to eat for free anymore or they want you to eat breakfast. They just want you to pay an extra nine bucks for the buffet or whatever the case may be, because, of course, they got rid of elite breakfast and replaced it with a food and beverage credit. So you'll get up to twenty five dollars a person if you're a diamond member, I think up to 15 a person, if you're a Hilton gold member. And when I say up to, it depends on the market. Basically, if it's an expensive, fancy hotel, you'll probably get 25. If it's a mid-tier place, maybe you'll get 15. If you're staying at something like a Hilton garden in somewhere, you'll probably get 10.

And of course, everything on the menu will be priced a little bit higher than that. You only get the food and beverage credit for two people. And now the word is that that's probably just going to be extended and a permanent thing. Originally, it was more like an experiment, right? But I think it's like a long term thing. Yeah. So it started off, it was just 2021. Then they extended it through 2022. In both cases, it was just in the United States.

And you still, as an elite, got free breakfast elsewhere. But we haven't heard official word yet, at least as we're recording this, beyond 2022, what's going to happen. But what we have seen is that the terms and conditions have been changed to where no one necessarily has to provide free breakfast to elites anywhere in the world going forward uh we'll see what that actually turns out to be but uh it looks like something like this is probably here to stay and probably going to expand so yeah bummer bummer i used to like you hill i was the closest thing you'll find to a Hilton fanboy for years and uh and now they're just you're disappointing me at every turn Hilton I know some people some people

like the food and beverage credit so I gotta say I know some people like the food and beverage credit because you don't eat breakfast or you eat breakfast somewhere else more cheaply or you want to use it at the bar or whatever so for some people I guess this isn't a huge problem and if you're booking like Hilton and Pres rates where you're already got breakfast included, then I guess this is a win because you can get something else at some other time during the day. But but for most of us, that's certainly the definition of Bonvoy. Well, I've certainly with fine hotels and resorts. I'd like I like the idea of booking Hilton's because there you're getting free breakfast anyway, like the Presbyterian rate. And then you get the Hilton credit on top of whatever else or you're supposed to anyway.

Good point. Okay. So next nominee, Bonvoy, Marriott Bonvoy. So are they going to win this year's Bonvoy Award? So what did Marriott do? They eliminated award charts. I mean, you know, it wasn't that many years ago that they merged with SPG or bought SPG and merged the programs together and had all kinds of great things to say about their award charts and et cetera. But then they they said we've had enough of that we're going to get rid of the word charts and we're going to charge you whatever we want see now i'm going to make the argument against marriott winning this year's uh award because i think they're going to be the undisputed champion of 2023 uh and and And the reason I say that is because they did get rid of the award

charts, but for 2022, they kept the pricing for most hotels, the vast majority of hotels, within the same bands, the same price bands as before. So for 2022, it wasn't all that bad because most properties were still within the same bounds that they were before. 2023, I think, you know, when the gloves come off, that's when it's going to get really ugly with Marriott. This year, I actually felt like I still did pretty well because they kept those properties within the price bands, the historical price bands. It worked out well for most of us because hotel prices have gone so high over this last year that even though properties were able to charge more than the standard or

peak, well, not more than the peak, more than the standard rate, they still had to stay below their historical peak rate. And so that I think has worked out well in terms of getting good value for Marriott points. Next year, though, when they don't have those bounds anymore, I think the value of Marriott points is going to tank. So you could argue certainly that they deserve to win because they set that ball in motion this year. But so far, it hasn't been as painful as it will be. Good points. Very good points. All right. Next nominee, Emirates. Emirates did two things. They raised fuel surcharges on their own awards to very unpleasant amounts. And they blocked, I'm going to say all, and we can talk about an asterisk there, all of their partners from being able to use partner miles to book Emirates first class.

So you can no longer use Alaska miles, for example, to emirates first class so you can no longer use alaska miles for example to book emirates first class um so the the asterisk there is that is that air canada aero plan has come out with announcement that the i mean they can now book emirates and they will soon be able to book emirates first class but it's going to be at very, very high award rates. So I doubt very much it'll be a good value. So in a way they're still keeping all awards. Practically, you've got to buck through Emirates and pay those high fuel surcharges. Yeah, I know. And I think this one's actually one of the more egregious ones because they could just have restricted availability and only allowed, you know, like one seat on some flights or whatever,

or increase the award rate on those awards rather than adding to the cash cost, increase the mileage rate. But clearly, I think the message they're sending here is they just want fewer people redeeming awards in those cabins. And so they're really trying to restrict that. I don't know why, you know, especially when it doesn't seem like Emirates first class is routinely sold out. I'm surprised that this is the route they're taking, but I guess that's the message that they're sending is Emirates doesn't really want you on their plane. So I guess I'll take the hint, Emirates, or I'll use my Air Canada miles right now, because right now you can book at the current award chart rates through Air Canada.

But that's going to change in early 2023. So if you want to book an Emirates award through Air Canada, do it sooner rather than later. All right. Next nominee, Delta. Delta actually got three nominations. Three different categories, Delta. Three different categories, Delta. What? You're just going for a sweep.

Three separate nominations, Delta. Delta really wants to win this. One of the things they did this year that earned them a nomination is they devalued their partner awards. while using Delta miles to book Delta itself has long been a, a, a, you know, they, they raise the prices to incredible heights for booking,

especially business class, Delta flights, partner awards while they had gone up. They, a lot of them were still sort of capped at, it's hard to even say reasonable rates, but more reasonable than Delta's prices. So we're talking about like, you know, booking Virgin Atlantic might've cost 120,000 points one way, whereas Delta might've been 300,000 points one way. Delta has systematically gone through all their

systems and said, no, we're going to make our partner pricing be just as bad as our own pricing, which at some level makes sense. Why would they want to encourage people to fly on their partners? But on the other level, it means they've eliminated almost all of the opportunities to get outsized value from Delta SkyMiles. They seem to want to say, you're going to get about 1.2 cents per point value, no matter what you book, which they can do that, but it takes away some of the dream of airline miles and hoping to get something extraordinary from them. It becomes more of a cash currency that you're left with. Yeah, for sure.

All right. That's not all Delta did for us this year. They devalued their upgrade certificates. So this happened early in the year where they changed the rules on the upgrade certificates. And this hurt the most for Delta Diamond elites who got global upgrade certificates as a benefit of diamond status. And I'm not going to get into details of what they did exactly. Just let me just say that they made them much less valuable. And at the same time, they failed to deliver on the promise of how they're supposed to work. So for most of the year, it was just an exercise in extreme, and I'm not exaggerating here, extreme, extreme frustration in trying to just check in for a darn flight that had an upgrade certificate attached to it,

let alone actually get upgraded. And so they really managed to piss off high-level elites. So that's their second nomination. Third. They're not done. And we're not done. They seem to have stopped opening up award space, business class award space to partners, at least as much as they used to. Now, they've always been kind of stingy about that, but at times there would be like big pockets of open awards based on certain routes. less and less of that to the point where you can now look at some routes and not find a single day with a single business class seat available for the whole year for that route. Yeah. Yeah. That's

a, that's a big bummer. And that's something we'll get back to because they're not alone in that. But what I fault Delta for the most is leading the way in these things because they really have led the way and that has encouraged other airlines, other United States-based airlines, it should be clear, to follow suit in these really poor value propositions in terms of the miles. Now, the flip side of that is I guess they can do it because people are willing to pay it. If nobody was willing to pay those numbers of miles, they would stop charging them. But I have to imagine that they saw, oh, you know, there's lots of people that just look at what the Delta price is

and they pay it because they're like, oh, I've got the miles to do it. It's a free trip. Let's go. And if they've realized that people have been willing to do that, I guess they might as well take advantage and continue to charge them more and more. But it stinks for those of us who enjoyed playing the game for those outsized value points, because, yeah, you're just not going to get them with Delta miles anymore. There's really very few ways. Basically. I saw somebody say this the other day, and this is what I've, I've been saying for a while too,

is that the Delta program is basically a domestic travel program for, you know, for redeeming your, your points on Delta domestically. Like that's where you're going to get reasonable value out of Delta points is on domestic flights and not all the time. But, you know, at least sometimes on domestic flights, you want to travel internationally. Delta miles just are not the way to do it. Right. Yeah, I mean, I have literally started looking at my Delta SkyMiles as as being like cash, you know, each mile is worth about 1.2 cents. And so if I want to pay cash for a domestic or international flight, using SkyMiles is an okay way to do it. I mean, especially now you earn

elite benefits, like you accumulate MQMs and MQDs, which are things you need for Delta Elite status, even when you're booking an award flight flying Delta. So it's not a terrible thing to do, but it's just, it's boring. I mean, like, as I said before, there's just not the opportunity anymore to get outsized value. before there's just not the opportunity anymore to get uh outsized value you're not going to be flying to you know new zealand for um you know less than in business class for less than i don't know 500 000 miles or something like that you know yeah something ridiculous yeah all right okay delta delta's done it uh Credit cards, right? We're going to talk about credit card

devaluations. Right. So our last two nominees, you can actually argue that these should hold off for next year's awards, but I'll get into what these are and then we could discuss that part. First one, Capital One, Venture X. We've learned that starting January 1st, I think it is, of 2023, the priority pass that you get with the VentureX is going to be only for priority pass airport lounges. No more restaurants, no more experiences. experiences and and what experiences means is things like um there are these things called be relaxed spas and airports that where you could get a free massage and and there's things other things like that uh that are experiences and and the the um you know we have all three of the detroit airport we have restaurant lounge and experiences and only the lounge will be accessible with your priority pass from Capital One going forward. pass that still enables you to use restaurants and experiences is the one from the Chase cards, right? The Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Chase Ritz-Carlton. Is there a priority pass on the

Altitude Reserve? There's one that allows a few visits. I have no idea how it works for experiences or restaurants or if it does. There are some other miscellaneous, less well-known, high-end cards from other banks that still have Priority Pass and still allow restaurants. But as far as the major issuers, the cards that we're used to, yeah, the Sapphire Reserve still, at least as we're recording this, still allows restaurants and experiences. And of course, the one from the Ritz card, which, which Nick and I both love that card also allows those things. And the awesome thing there, you can add unlimited free authorized users to your Ritz card and each of each authorized user can get their own

priority pass. That's not hobbled the way the VentureX priority pass will be in a few days. Yep. Very good. All right. So that's a good tip there. Now, I think those were our credit card contenders, but I realized that there's another one that should have been in the list. And when I originally, we went over the notes, I had this in mind and I thought that it was covered and then I just realized that it wasn't. So I was thinking, and I don't know how you do this. So I'm changing the rules of the game midway through. So bear with me as Greg makes a decision here on the rules.

When you mentioned airline partner access or airlines limiting partner access, I was picturing that as a bigger problem because that's not necessarily something that's limited to Delta. United and American Airlines are releasing almost no availability to their partners either. That's a pandemic of sorts that's spread to the other US-based airlines. If you want to book a United flight through Turkish Airlines, good luck. I mean, you might be able to book an economy class one, but even that has been difficult on popular routes, if not impossible. And then business class, forget about it. Only the flights to Europe.

The United flights to Europe I've seen in business class. I have not seen United flights to other parts of the world in business class available and not domestically. I haven't seen a domestic United business Class award available through Turkish or Air Canada. And as long as I can remember now, I'm not searching every route every day. So it's possible there are some out there, but I think there are far less at the very least than in the past. And the same thing has been true with Americans. It's been very difficult to find American flights that you can book with British Airways Avios, which used to be a popular thing, I would argue, is not something that's necessarily even all that big of a deal

anymore. Now that we've had all the changes to advantage over the last few years. But I think the inability to book awards on those US-based airlines with partner miles is something that's a bonvoying if there ever was one, because it takes away a lot of value. I totally agree. And to take United as a specific example, the way United awards work, if the award is priced at saver levels, then you can book it with a partner. And what we're seeing over and over, and this is not just United, but the others, is that their awards are being priced like 500 miles or a thousand miles over that saver level. And it seems to be like, it feels like it's like a deliberate way to prevent

booking with partners. You know, that's how it seems. Now the other airlines manage the award availability to partners separately from their own pricing. So it's not as obvious what's going on with like American or Delta, but, um, well, no, but it's almost arguably worse with American because what you just mentioned isn't even a thing with American because American will put something on sale and call it a web special that isn't available to partners, even though they're charging, you know, 5,000 miles or 6,000 miles for the flight, they'll make it a web special that you can't book through a partner. And you might not want to even book that five or 6,000 mile award through a partner. It's just kind of ridiculous that even the cheapest awards, you can't book through partners.

You have no idea what's going to be available and what's not. And I think that is a hit to the value of miles period for domestic travel. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. the value uh of of miles period for domestic travel i feel like yeah yeah so so um you know we can't we can't give the award to all the all three no we can't um so let's consider each of them nominees okay um one one that we um i mentioned mentioned earlier with credit cards was chase sapphire um reserve uh Back. Now, this is still developing, and that's why I was hesitant to bring it up at all, but I think it just deserves a mention here that they seem to be changing the Pay Yourself Back to where you're not going to be

getting 1.5 cents per point value for all pay yourself back categories or maybe any in the future. We don't really know yet what's happening. There's been no official word, at least at the time of recording. I'm going to argue here that this needs to wait until next year's Bonvoy awards before we put it in as a as a real nominee. I agree with you. I agree with you. But if you missed the post, then it's worth checking that post out anyway, because if you have grocery purchases on your Sapphire Reserve right now, you can redeem points to

pay yourself back on them only at one point to five cents per point. But it's worth knowing, I guess, if that is something that you find appealing for some reason. So, so, all right, that's all said and done it. Now we've got our list of nominees who should be the undisputed champion of the 2022 Bonvoy awards.

According to Greg, the frequent miler, according to Greg, the frequent miler, I'm going to really quickly read through the list. Is it Radisson international? Is it Hilton? Is it Marriott? Is it Emirates? Is it Delta? Is it Delta? Is it Delta? Is it American? Is it United? Is it Capital One? I can't give it to Capital One because the priority pass change doesn't happen until next year. So we're going to put them back on the nominee list next year unless they win Nick's vote. You know what?

Ah, boy. I'm going to go with Marriott. And I think you made a convincing case that they deserve it next year, but they set the ball in motion. And I just feel like, yes, others had already, Hilton and IHD had already moved away from award charts, but Marriott had made such a big deal about the launch of Bonvoy and Marriott and award charts were such a big part of it all. And we had aspirational properties that, yes, they cost a lot even under the award chart, but at least you could plan for them. And the value per point would be really good because these were incredibly expensive properties.

And now they've just said, all that excitement about Bonvoy, we didn't really mean it. We're walking it back. We're taking away your award charts and starting next year. Good luck, everybody. I mean, I think that's a good argument. I think the key piece of that argument that I find particularly convincing is how difficult they've made it to plan. Because in the past, you could at least plan for how many points you thought you were going to need for a vacation, a big vacation. You want to take an important anniversary trip or whatever it might be, something in the future, and you know you want to do that. And so you got to plan now and start collecting your miles. I mean, if you're not a big manufactured spender, that's what most people probably have to do. They probably have to plan a year or two or something in advance for trips like that, which points they're going to try

and collect and manage. And so I think that it's a shame that they've taken away the ability to plan like that because that takes away a lot of the value proposition of the program. So I think that's a really good argument. However, I can't quite give Marriott Bonvoy the 2022 Bonvoy Award for all the reasons I explained before. For me, I'm having a lot of difficulty here because I think the award belongs with one of these three major domestic airlines. And here's why. I think the entire purpose of collecting miles and points is so that you can use them for outsized value. That's the value proposition of the loyalty program. It's to be able to get those exciting redemptions.

And to me, I'm not excited at all about redeeming miles for one cent a point for domestic flights or something like that. That is not an exciting value proposition at all to me. And okay, you want to take that away and simplify the program for your own customers. I can almost, almost forgive that part of it. That maybe Delta says, you know what though? Most of our customers are redeeming for domestic awards. That's what

they're using their miles for. So we want to make it simple and give them a simple metric by which to measure it. I don't like that. And I have a hard time deciding whether to dislike Delta more for leading or to dislike American and United for being followers. Cause I mean, is it worse to lead or worse to follow along with a bad lead? I'm not sure who deserves more of the credit negatively in that case, who deserves more of the, the, the criticism.

So it's a little tough, a little tight, but I'm going to say I could forgive that component of it, but not releasing award space to partners, even on cheap flights that are going out not full and where you're charging very few miles. To me, that's egregious. That's just really trying to take away any opportunity that your customer is getting value or customers of your partners, the airline programs that you supposedly partner with getting any value out of their points.

And to me, that is more of a war on the loyalty program itself. Like, okay, forget about you getting rewards. You're just going to overpay for everything and you're going to have to do it through us. We're not going to let you do it through anybody else. So this whole concept of limiting awards to partners, that's really kind of getting me lately. And I find that that's the more customer unfriendly move. And so even though American Airlines has not been much of the conversation today, I think I'm going to give the 2022 Bonvoy Award to American because it's been very difficult to find American Airlines awards available through partners. And it's very difficult to have any idea as to when you can find those. And they keep running these web special

awards, which are nice if you've got American Airlines miles to use, but I think very customer unfriendly if they're not going to also make those awards available to partners. Now, I definitely sit on the fence there because I think Delta's not allowing partners access to their awards. So we can't use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta or Air France miles to fly Delta domestically and that sort of thing is also a contender. But I think I'm going to give it to American here. I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm sure everybody's surprised because United, of course, it was a close contender for me too, because I was the person who first wrote about the Turkish miles and smiles sweet spot and the

inability to easily use that sweet spot, even again on flights where they're charging less than they historically charged for Saver Awards, I find particularly annoying. But I'm going to give it to American because I got to pick one of them. So American is going to be the one because these web special awards that are 5,000 or 6,000 miles a person

should at least be available using partner miles. I don't understand why they're not. Wow. A dark horse winner. There you go. Appears out of nowhere. Wasn't even on the original list. Wasn't even on the list.

Nick gives it to American Airlines. I gave it to the headliner, Marriott Bonvoy. Delta, I can't believe it. They had three nominees and then squeaked out of here without a single win. So sorry, Delta. I know you're hoping for it. I'm sure you're going to come back and try really hard to win in 2023. I hope not. Best of luck to you, Delta. But yeah, the safe bet is on them trying. Right.

And, you know, sorry, American, if you weren't hoping to win. But, you know, you got a nice surprise there. There you go. Came from behind. Even though you revamped loyalty loyalty points you still made it into the uh the 2022 bonvoy awards so sorry about that american thanks for the elite status all right so uh so anyway that brings us i think uh or that ties things up for that right and so that brings us to the question of the week so this week's question of the week has been a question, a burning question on the minds of many in the loyalty space. I know many miles and points fans would like to know this. So I'm going to ask Greg this week's pop question

quiz that's been in everybody's mind. And that is where is all Bork? Where is what? Exactly. Where is all Bork? All. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? A-A-L-B-O-R-G. Allborg. That hasn't been on your mind? What is Allborg? So Greg missed the big announcement this week, and of course, it being a little facetious if you didn't catch the tone, that SAS, which is Scandinavian Airlines, is starting two new transatlantic routes from Europe to the United States. So they're going to fly from, is it Gothenburg? Is that how you pronounce it? I

should know how to pronounce these cities, but they're going to fly from there to Newark and also from Aalborg to Newark. Aalborg, as I would have thought you would have known since you mentioned Denmark earlier today, is the fourth largest town in Denmark. And so they're going to launch it nonstop. Of so interesting. All right. Non-stop. Of course, I'm joking. I wouldn't have thought you would have known that.

I had no idea. I'd never heard of Alborg until shortly before we recorded today. But I saw that they're going to have a non-stop between Newark and Alborg starting in summer of 2023. So both of those cities non-stop to Newark, rather,

starting in 2023, summer 2023. And the reason I mentioned that for the question of the week, I'm joking, Greg, a little bit, because I imagine that most other people who saw that announcement, most, I'm guessing, and of course, those who are Danish or who have a lot of affinity for Denmark, forgive me for not knowing, but I imagine that there are many of us who would not have known Allborg. And the reason I bring it up is because that gives you two more Star Alliance routes that are nonstop that are within the shorter distance span on Aeroplan. So if you're New York based, you're looking at 60,000 miles one way for business class with Aeroplan. Or if you're booking with Turkish miles and smiles, I believe that SAS does not have fuel

surcharges. So it should be 45,000 miles one way plus taxes. Or if you're booking via ANA, 88,000 round trip. And I bring all of that up because when I read One Mile at a Time's take on these new routes, they mentioned they're going to be using a 321 long range. And that the planes that they're using have 22 seats in business class, which he mentioned he thought he wondered how this was going to work out because that seemed kind of premium heavy for what is probably a leisure route. I mean, Allborg is 120,000 people in it or something. It's not probably going to be a big business draw on that route, I wouldn't imagine, which makes me hopeful that there will be decent award availability. Now, SAS isn't known for making lots of seats available, but if they got 22 going on this flight, however often, how many days a week they're flying it, I don't know that they're going to be selling 22 business class seats. So I would be on the lookout for award availability on that whenever they loaded in the schedule.

So yeah, that's a great tip. Plus, just in general, whenever there's a new route, it is really worth keeping your eye on award availability on that route. Sometimes the airline, for whatever reason, sort of floods that new route with open award space. And maybe they do that because they want to make sure they fill up those early days of that route. Maybe they do it because they just don't have any experience yet in how much man they'll be. Who knows why it but it's, it's not unusual at all. Of course the opposite also happens. Sometimes we just see nothing at all, which might be the case, but I mentioned it because I think it's worth looking for. It's going to be a two, one, two. So it'll be thrown seats, uh, in the, in business class too, for those people traveling

alone that, you know, want one of those rows with the ones in them. So, uh, so I think it's, I I'm intrigued anyway at, at seeing what this looks like and another Star Alliance route to get to and from Europe. And then of course, obviously connections onward within Europe, whether you're booking with miles or with money can often be had relatively inexpensively, or if you're booking a Star Alliance award, you can connect on from there on whichever Star Alliance airlines fly there, which I don't yet know the answer to, because who knew about Alborg before today? So, so not Greg.

No, of course not. I was banking on that. I was hoping you, if you came right out with it, you're like, Oh, it's in Denmark. I'd be like, come on, play along, play along. All right. So, so that's the end of this week's show. If you've enjoyed today's show and you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social medias out there. And if you haven't yet joined, you should join our

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