Frequent Miler on the Air - 4th Night Free and the great Marriott card debate. FM on the Air 2/21/20

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

Are the Marriott credit cards back on the chopping block after Greg's research this week, or are the 35K and 50K free night certs worth the fees? Watch us debate that, discuss a true 4th night free benefit you may be missing, and more. Timestamps courtesy of audience member Screaming Lincolns: 3:01 FM to go (meet ups) 8:50 Confession time (Greg's Delta Cancellation Fees) 14:16 Greg's Marriott free night certificate analysis 16:48 Nick's retort 19:14 Greg's 50K free night certificate analysis 21:18 Greg's methodology issue 25:07 50K certs' decline for aspirational properties 33:36 How much would you pay for 50K cert? 47:20 Sapphire Reserve's 4th night free w/SBE properties 53:47 Possible points accrual with Sapp Res 4th night benefit? 56:44 Pay 3 get 4 Hyatt nights possible? 1:01:11 (NO-GO) Piggyback Free Night Cert w/Marriott's 5th night free (NO-GO) 1:04:36 Reader Question (FM's Reasonable Redemption Values Page updates)

Hey, Nick. Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. Hi there, Greg. Great to be here. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you. It's been like almost four days. Right. Not often that I see you twice in the same week. Right, right. We actually presented at the Wharton Business School on Monday. And we had about 90 minutes scheduled to present. And thanks to a little time mismanagement on my part, you had about 15 minutes. But you did a fantastic job. Well, thank you.

No, it was fun. It was a good time. It's an honor to be invited by a place like that. So and to be able to have a chance to talk miles and points with some people who are somewhat familiar, but very curious and at a point in their lives where that'll really come in handy to do some travel. So a lot of fun to be able to talk there. And, you know, just like I said, nice to be invited. So great that they found us and reached out to us to ask if we would like to come and talk about miles and points and credit cards with them. Absolutely. That was great. And so was the FM2Go that we did in Philadelphia. That was a lot of

fun meeting up with the Philly folks. Yeah, definitely. Philly's got a great crowd of people. We had a great time talking at the presentation and a nice time before and after meeting some of the readers and grabbing a bite to eat. So that was great too. I think it really worked out very well. And I'm kind of excited about going back to Philadelphia again at some point in the future. Me too. Me too. We didn't have any time to do any sightseeing and it seems like there's a lot, there's a lot there and a lot of people very knowledgeable and, and interested in showing us around. And so we should take advantage of that next time. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I wish we could have this time. Just, you know, one of these, one of those things, sometimes time just

doesn't allow as much as you'd like it to, but up at next time, hopefully, and hopefully, you know, during the summertime, cause Philadelphia in February, i'm sure it's wonderful and all for those who live there i live in upstate new york so it's even colder here but you know february is not my ideal time to go visit philadelphia you know i don't want to run up the steps of the museum you know in the middle of the winter so i want to go in the summertime when i can like walk and hang out and enjoy some sightseeing yeah next time let's plan that it got up to like 50 degrees which was great compared to here you're right you're right that that that much is true it was like negative four this morning here so negative negative eight saturday morning i think when i got up at home so um so yeah it's been it's been chilly it's

warming up the sun's coming out so i can't complain now but i definitely have warmer things on my mind. And so I'd like to be able to put my points to use for that. I'm still working on trying to get that midwinter trip in and haven't quite been able to plan it yet. Yeah. Well, today we're going to be talking about a couple of things that might help you with that. So the resurgence or revival or reappearance of true Fortnite free benefit. We'll talk about that later. And we're also going to cover the Marriott certificates.

We brought that up last week, I think it was. And we now have some data to look at and say, are the credit cards any good given the latest evaluations? But first, a couple of things. First, we mentioned FM2Go without really explaining what it is. And I think it's worth talking about that briefly. viewers and listeners that if you live somewhere where you'd like us to come visit, get together with some friends and just reach out to us with a proposal. Say, we have 30 people that are excited to see you and here's what we can do to host you. We're definitely not looking for money or lodging or really anything but

some sort of plan for how we can get together, interact. In the past ones, we've all done presentations. And it just happens, almost all of them have been at libraries because public libraries, usually there are meeting rooms that are for free. And so it makes it a real easy way to have a big enough venue to get 50 or 70 or however many people together to do some presentations. And we don't need our travel expenses covered or anything like that. We just want to come speak. Really what it boils down to is we want somebody local on the ground who knows where there's a library with a free meeting room and can reserve that and take care of the phone calls to make that happen and figure out a good place to eat that people want to eat at and kind of connect with the local people. Because obviously we don't have that local network in each place. So we're just looking for you to get your network together and plan that out. And then we're happy to come and hang out and talk miles

and points and meet some folks. Right, right. So anyway, keep that in mind. If you're out there and have a group of people that might be interested, let us know. So first, this is the point in the show where normally we'd be doing feedback time. Your favorite. One of my favorites. Yeah. Favorite segment. My favorite segment. I love to get reader feedback and hear about what people think about the site and the podcast and everything else. But that's not what we're doing this week,

Craig? That's not what we're doing this week. We're going to do confession time. I have a confession to make. I like confession time almost as much. First, before we get to confession time, I want to recap last week's feedback and where we are with that. So last week, we talked about feedback that where we were asked, can we put notes in the podcast and video showing the times that each different segment starts so that people can jump right to the thing they're interested in. As if there are people out there who don't want to listen to all of our babbling. I don't know who that is.

Right. But apparently there are a few. Okay. All right. A few that don't want to listen to all the babbling. Come on. Yeah. I don't get it either. Isn't't want to listen to all the babbling. Come on. Right. Yeah. I don't, I don't get it.

Isn't that what makes it fun? The babbling? So there, there we talked about in that episode that, well, we're not getting any revenue from this, so we can't afford to hire someone to do, to do that. And we, we mentioned, well, maybe we could get Huggies ads. Right. So, so the good news is. You got Huggies on the phone this week, huh? So Huggies Huggies ads. Right. So the good news is... But you got Huggies on the phone this week, huh? So Huggies gave me a call.

Okay, all right. And... I'm glad to hear they were listening. They should be. Yeah. So Huggies gave me a call and they said they would pay us if we promised never to mention Huggies again and to delete that part of last week's episode. And they would pay us enough to hire a free employee.

Is that what it is? Yeah, exactly. Free intern. They'd sponsor a free intern. So obviously I said no to that because, you know, given the topics of our normal conversations, Huggies is going to come up. It may. And we can't be all worried about whether or not we're going to talk about Huggies and

having to edit the videos because we're not paying this person, this fictional person enough to do things like that. Exactly. So instead we have two things happening. One on the YouTube videos, someone who goes by screaming Lincoln's has started putting the timestamps as a comment and I've been pinning those to the top. So yeah, so the last two videos, you can go there, you can see that comment with

the timestamps, and you can actually click on the timestamp. It'll jump right to that part of the video. So that's great. Thank you very much, Screaming Lincolns. Yeah, thank you, Screaming Lincolns. Now the pressure is on, the heat is on to get that on for the podcast now too right it is so the other development there we don't know yet if this will work but a someone reached out to us telling us about some software or web app or something that will do this for us basically with an mp3 so you're going to give that a try yeah we're gonna give that a shot for tomorrow so well for today's space, the one you're listening to right now, hopefully you saw in the notes that there were timestamps. And even if that doesn't work, and I'm going to commit to putting those timestamps in there for you one way

or another, I'll find the way to get that in there. Okay, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, if you see the timestamps, then you know it worked. But that's not true. No, that's not true. Anyway, I'm gonna get this time. I know people want the timestamps. I get it. Okay. And people are listening and we appreciate that. We enjoy the fact that people are listening and the people have spoken. So we need to respond to make that happen. So this week's timestamp or this week's podcast has the timestamps.

You're welcome. Thank you very much for the feedback. And hopefully it's because of that automated program. And if not, then, you know, whatever, we'll invest the time to make it happen. All right. Good. Good, good, good. So it's confession time.

Confession time. Like I said, a close second favorite behind feedback time. Maybe I even enjoy confession time more. So this is an example. This is something I definitely knew better. And it's probably something normally I wouldn't tell people because I'm a little embarrassed that I did this. But, you know, last week we talked about how I had to cancel my Singapore trip. Right. waived the fees and that I was waiting for Cathay to call and make it. That happened two nights ago. I was actually at dinner with John from No Mask Coach and he was in town. And all of a sudden I see my phone ringing and I said to him,

hold on a second, Cathay Pacific's calling. Luckily, you're at dinner with the one person who will kind of get that, right? So he was impressed until I told him why they were calling. But so that was actually very easy. I just said, you know, they were trying to reschedule me, but I just said, no, just cancel it all. So that's done. The one part I didn't mention last week is the flight from the U.S. to Asia was actually a Delta flight that I booked with Virgin Atlantic Miles. And so, that was to the Seoul Incheon Airport. And so, I had called them about maybe

four weeks ago to cancel that. I'm not sure how long ago it was. But anyway, they said they weren't waiving fees. So they only charge $50 per person. They took my credit card number over the phone. And I thought, well, that's not that bad. And the reason I was kind of okay with it was we weren't flying to China or Singapore or Hong Kong, you know, anywhere that the coronavirus had shown up yet. But do you know what I'm going to say? Well, I obviously, it was dumb of me, like there's no penalty to wait to cancel later and things can always happen. And so I see in the news this morning, there's an penalty to wait to cancel later and things can always happen. And so I see in the news this morning, there's an outbreak in South Korea, which is terrible. But, you know, that means that there's they're going to waive the fees, whether they've done it already or not.

So I shouldn't have done that when I did. And and it's not a big deal. Hundred bucks. I actually haven't even seen it hit my credit card, so I don't know if they- Well, that was going to be my next piece. How much were the taxes originally? The-

Was it just the $5.60? Yeah, but they returned that. Right, and they in fact do. They waive the fee. Yeah, so you may have read on this blog And they, in fact, do. They waive the fee. Yeah. You may have read on this blog called Frequent Miler a couple of months ago. You may have read this post. I'm about to have another confession.

That I may have emailed you about before I wrote. And told you that when the fees are less than, when the taxes, the original taxes on the award are less than 50 bucks, Virgin doesn't charge that $50 change fees or their cancellation fee. Now, I did have an agent that took my credit card number and I paid for it over the phone and they did in fact charge me. But when I went to cancel another booking later than that, after that, that maybe we've even talked about on this podcast before. When I went to cancel another one, the agent explained to me that the fee was waived because the taxes were less than the $50. So in that case, they don't charge the fee. And they did even refund the taxes on that, even

though I thought that they would keep the $5.60, but they did give me that back also. Long story short, that agent demanded that I email customer service to ask for the money back that I was charged for the cancellation fees, because I shouldn't have been charged those fees. I was very skeptical as to whether or not the agent was right. But I emailed Virgin Atlantic customer service. And wouldn't you know it about a month later, I got the $150 back, I had paid $50 per passenger times three passengers. And I got that $150 back. So you shouldn't have to pay that fee. It doesn't matter. Right. Coronavirus. It's so funny that I forgot that

I've been so busy with all the other stuff that I just didn't even have it in my mind. What I forgot was how cheap the fees were. I mean, originally. And so I had in my mind that they're bigger because I had paid more for the Cathay award fees. Anyway. Yeah. So, okay. So two confessions. Double confession confession double confession but the good news the good news is the final outcome should be that it doesn't cost you anything so that's right that's right that's right so so all of the cancellations should be free and will be even if i got charged i'll i'll fix that that shouldn't be that shouldn't be a big problem be fixable yep yep exactly so there's the good news but i confessed it was a great

confession time right there a little lighter i'll lend you the bill for the session later on i don't know if i'll pay it i was hoping you would waive those fees well you know i mean it'll be at least less than the 50 you were willing to pay might have to find a different confessional in the future. So this week's confession time out of the way, we got to talk about the big topic of the week, right? I mean, you wrote a couple of really interesting posts this week about the value of Marriott

free night certificates, at least in part inspired by last week's podcast, which we've been finding this to be a recurring theme where each week's podcast kind of inspires a little something for the next week. And sure enough, last week, by arguing that I thought that the 35 K certificates were barely, if at all more valuable than the annual fee on the cards that grant the 35 K annual free night certificates at Marriott Properties. Greg, of course, went into the tank, did some research to find out why I was wrong. Right.

You were very skeptical when I said, oh, I think they're still worth about $200. And you're like- Highly skeptical. Really? I was. Almost exactly in that dump. I have to admit it.

If that's not incentive to write several posts, I don't know what is. So, yeah. So, I did some what I thought was an unbiased research into how much are they really worth. I picked some different locations to look at awards that were bookable with the certs. And in each location, I sorted by guest rating so that I'd bring theoretically the best ones available to the top. And then I would go down the list looking for ones that were really bookable with the certificate. So for example, when I was looking at the value of 35K certificates, I filtered to category five hotels, but what would show up are ones that are both in standard peak and off peak. And so any ones that were peak pricing,

which is 40K night, were not bookable with the certificate. So I would ignore those and keep going down until I found ones that worked. And then I would record the cash price and the point price. And I was able to then look at, on average, what was the value of the certificate? And I found whether you use median or mean, the average of the 35 case certificates was a little over $200. So in your face, I'm only going to half accept that. Oh, really? Why are you, are you skeptical of my results?

I don't want to classify it that way. I want to say, first of all, I was very surprised. And I have to admit that I appear to be wrong because they appear to be worth $200. And okay, I'll give you that. That was actually some great research. And it was pretty interesting to read and see that that's the way that it turned out. And I'm glad for that. I'm happy for that for folks

who are able to take advantage of it. So that's good. And at the end of the day, I have enough flexibility that I'll probably be able to get reasonable value out of those certificates. But for folks who don't have the kind of flexibility to travel at any time of the year,

I still think they're a little difficult to use despite Greg's good research. However, I also think that it's worth keeping in mind too with Marriott that you also pay those silly destination fees that are going to be on top of that. Obviously, we talked about how when you book an awards day that cancels kind of cancels out because you don't earn points, but you also don't pay tax, but you have to pay the destination fees with Marriott, which makes that free night feel a little bit less free. So, you know, here you're getting $200 in value, but it costs you 25 bucks to use it.

So really more like a net 175 in many places. Of course, that's not everywhere, but New York. But hold on, hold on. Don't forget, don't forget, you'll be paying that resort destination fee anyway. Only if you stay in Marriott, yeah. Well, I know, but yeah, okay. And this locks you into having to pay $25 or $30

versus redeeming points somewhere else. I got you, I got you. It's not really free, right? So it's gonna cost you 25. It's like if they charge a $25 phone feeder to redeem it, then you can't say it's worth 200 bucks. It's really worth 175, right? Only if you're gonna book one of those hotels, obviously,

and not every place has a destination fee. But when you look at a city like New York, I think your results were skewed because all of those properties, I think, charge 25 or 30 bucks for destination fees. It could be, although most of the properties that actually showed up were in New Jersey. And I don't know if those have. They may not. Let's hope not. Welcome to New York. Just kidding, Jersey.

I love you too, Jersey. Just kidding. I love you too, Jersey. In fact, actually, I was just looking at booking one of those Jersey properties. But at any rate, so I feel like that adds an element of question to it, depending on where you're going to use it, because you're going to get stuck having to use it at a Marriott where you may well get charged those fees. So I feel like that kind of adds to some questionableness of the value. Though, overall, I will admit to you that it does seem like the 35k certs

are more valuable than I thought. However, the 50k certs is where I think things get kind of interesting. So tell us about what you found with the 50k certs. Okay. So the 50k certs. Yeah. So the 50kk certs so 50k certs can be used to book the the the top categories that can be booked with 50k certs are category 5 peak season or peak pricing so 40k properties category 6 um off peak which is 40k or standard, which is 50K, or category seven off-peak, which is 50K per night. So it can be used to book any of those three categories under the right circumstances. And so I included all three categories in the filter. And then, you know, again, I did the same procedure of, of just scrolling down the list

until I found ones that were 50 K or less that were that top rated. And the, the end result was that the, the, the value, the average value was, was about $300. So whether you looked at, if you looked at mean, it was, I don't know, maybe a little bit less than 300. And if you looked at median, it was a little more or swap it around. I can't remember which was which, but anyway, around $300, which is arguably good enough to make the ultra premium Marriott cards worthwhile because they also come with $300 in statement credits. So you have, you can argue you get about $600 of travel from the $450 fee on those ultra premium cards. Okay. Telling that you have to make an argument about it. Well, so, so let me say something else about all this is that that research led me to realize a big problem with the methodology I did. And so I continued with it because I wanted it to be apples to apples to what I did with the 35k certificates. But overall, I was really

disappointed that the vast majority of the qualifying properties were category five, first of all, category five peak. So what I was seeing over and over again was that the properties that I'd really want to stay in were priced out of the range of the certificate. So the best category sixes were all peak when I wanted them. And so I wouldn't be able to book them with a certificate. So I was very unhappy with that. And that I think also was true of my 35K research as well. It's just that for whatever reason, it wasn't as obvious to me what was happening. And so what I really think I should have done is I think I should have put a minimum cap on the user ratings. So, you know, to say anything that is, I mean, ideally I'd like to say

anything that's not above a 4.0, I don't count. Because that's how I do it personally if i right at those at what marriott chooses to publish as the guest reviews right and it's not like it's just a great point to make yeah it's what they choose to publish right right because if you if you go to trip advisor it's usually a little bit less like whatever the score is on marriott it's a little bit less on tripAdvisor. And so, you know, so I usually at first glance look for 4.5 or better. And so, you know, I would like to do a similar analysis where I restrict to 4.5s. I also, in ideal circumstances, I would have more specific destinations in mind and rule out any properties that are far from that, you know? So, because when I did the research, I just said, like, I'm looking through all of Florida and anything in Florida counts, but that's not how real people do this most of the time,

except for when you're trying to get out of Michigan or upstate New York in the wintertime, then you might do that. But, you know But you know what I'm saying? You know you're going to Miami or Tampa or whatever. And so you look there and if something's far away from there, you're not going to book it. And so future research, I want to do that because I think it's going to look much worse, the results, when I start limiting to those factors. I think so too. And an interesting piece is, you know, I like, there's a few interesting pieces, but I like that you brought up the rating that Marriott chooses to publish because it's worth noting for anybody who hasn't actually paid attention to that before. You can't just go on Marriott and leave a review for a hotel.

You have to have stayed there. And then not only do you have to have stayed there, you have to fill out the review within like a week afterwards. They sent you an email afterwards. And oddly, I don't always get the email. So I can't always review the property. So I don't know if that's random or how that works. But I just noticed that recently because I wanted to leave a positive review for a property

like two weeks after I'd stayed there. And I couldn't find an email from that stay. I found an email from a different stay, but that one wouldn't work anymore. So I couldn't leave a review. So it's also interesting to note that basically it's going to be the people who pounce on the survey afterwards that leave a review, which I would tell you generally means the people who are really happy or really unhappy are most likely to leave reviews. Anybody in the middle probably isn't going to pounce on it right away if they ever think to go back. I mean, that's typically true of reviews in general, but I think it's even more true there with Marriott that you can't go back to a property

you stayed at weeks ago and leave a review. That's interesting. I had no idea that that was the case. I didn't either because I hadn't been leaving reviews on Marriott. And then I, like I said, I went to specifically because there was a property I've been visiting quite a bit and I wanted to be able to leave a review, but at any rate, so I think that's an interesting piece of this. I think that one of the things that fatigues me about this is I look at it and say, okay, yes, it's possible to get a room that may have cost you $200 for the 35K certificates or $300 for the 50K certificates. But here's the thing. First, you brought up a great point in that it might not actually be the place you want to stay because the reviews may not be top reviews. And then it may also not be the category that you were hoping for. If you're using your 50k certificate

on a 35k property, kind of a thing that happens to be at peak pricing at 40k, then I think mentally it feels like it loses some of the value. You're like, oh, I'm staying at a lesser property than I could potentially stay at. Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at with this is that, you know, first of all, when the merger first happened, the Category 6 hotels, so the 50K hotels, were some of the best Marriotts around because the old Category 9 was their top category for Marriott itself, not for Ritz and some other things, but for Marriott. And that translated, if I remember right, to the new Category 6. Like those that ran C category nine were pushed. And so at that time, the Bonvoy card, sorry, the Bonvoy Brilliant card and the Ritz card that had offered the 50K certificates, those look pretty amazing. It's like, wow, you know, we could pay the annual fee, get $300 in credits for other stuff and then get a free night at one of these top properties, which was fantastic. Then there's been several category adjustments since then. And then this new one, which is devastating to where all the good properties have been

moving up and the introduction of the peak and off-peak pricing has been brutal. So, you know, when I remember when I first wrote about the category certificates saying, we'll have to wait and see what happens with when peak pricing is introduced, how, whether we're able to actually find properties in standard when we want them. And, you know, I think probably at the time, well, I was just giving Mary at the benefit of doubt, like maybe we would, but, you know, my experience here, I didn't pick particularly high traffic times to places I was looking at. It's just some places like, you know, in Florida and California particularly, everything seems to be peak all the time or almost all the time. And so, yeah, I think that we have to be thinking about the 50K certificates as like, yay, we a use it at a category 5 property anytime we want and and that wouldn't have even been that bad of a statement a year and a half ago before they started doing category adjustments but now it's kind of depressing to think of that well it is

because a lot of those category 5 properties are like your residence in and courtyard and spring hill type properties that just happen to be in high demand places. And so it doesn't feel exciting to pay a $450 annual fee to stay at a Spring Hill Suites. I mean, I like Spring Hill Suites and all. It's great for what it is when I want a cheap night on a road trip or that sort of thing, especially traveling with a family. It's great, but I don't want to have an ultra premium credit card with a $450 annual fee or more if it eventually increases to stay at a property like that with the certificate. So I feel like it feels like it loses a lot of value, even if it mathematically retains its value.

It doesn't kind of emotionally retain the value of the excitement that it brought in the beginning. And also then along with that, though, I think it's kind of interesting to look at this certificate a little bit differently then. And so I have a few different thoughts on it. First, I want to note that I think it's interesting that the 35 K certs you found were worth about 200 bucks and the 50 K certs, which are about 50% more valuable theoretically, right? 50% of 35 K would be 17.5. So you add that on, it's 52.5, right? Sure enough, 300 bucks, right? So it's like 50% more valuable. So it's interesting that those are fairly consistent in terms of the value they get, which kind of goes to show you how

Marriott is keeping their categories more closely tied to cash prices than perhaps in the past. So it's becoming more and more revenue focused, I think, more and more like a Hilton sort of a model, even though they still retain categories, they're obviously recategorizing to try to find, to kind of group those hotels together. So I think that's an interesting takeaway from your research that it did come out more or less exactly how I might have predicted if I were using the $200 number anyway for the 35K cert. So obviously there's a pretty standard value there. And I'll come back to that later when we do this week's question. But at any rate, so I think that's interesting. I think that if you want to still convince yourself that these cards are worth it, the way to convince yourself is to say, okay, well, the nice thing is I can go to a really mediocre property during a period of high demand. And so if you want to go, you know, you want to go be there at the Super Bowl, or you want to go like last year, I used my 50k cert in Milan during fashion week, when almost everything was totally sold out. And the rates at the Westin Milan Palace or whatever it was were like $900 a night.

And I was able to use a 50K cert. Now, it's not a $900 room. It was basically a regular Westin hotel room, a little bit fancier than normal because I happen to think that property is pretty. But at the end of the day, not a $900 room, but it definitely saved my butt in that situation because I had a flight. I had to stay in Milan, and I didn't realize I had booked it during fashion week. So it was very helpful to have. So I

think that these certificates are that kind of get out of jail free card when, you know, hotel rates are way beyond what's reasonable. You kind of have a get out of jail free card as long as you're willing to sacrifice and say, okay, I'll use it at a lesser category property when room rates are really high. Of course, then you look at it and say, well, but I could have manufactured those points or use points instead. And so then it still kind of stings a little bit in terms of dropping the value. It does. It does. It goes from, so the 50k certs were, you know, initially easily usable in an aspirational property that you're excited about staying at. And now, yeah, you can save real money by using it.

Absolutely. But it's just not exciting. And don't get me wrong. There are properties that are exciting. It's just that the majority that you're going to come across are not. You have to plan a trip around getting to one of those awesome properties. Or just get really lucky. Or get lucky, yeah, that it happens to fit into your plans.

You know, I also think that there's an argument to be made that those certificates are less valuable than the numbers if you're somebody who does any kind of manufactured spending, because, you know, we've talked about how the Marriott cards are not the ideal ones to be doing any kind of manufactured spending on. But let's say that you have the one of the Chase Marriott cards. And so you're going to go to Simon mall with it and buy Visa gift cards. So in order to manufacture enough points for a 50k night, you'd have to do $25,000 worth of spend because those cards give you two points per dollar. So $25,000 in Simon gift cards cost you $4 a piece to activate. So you're talking about $100 in activation fees. And then your liquidation cost probably varies depending on your methods, somewhere between 25 and 50 bucks to liquidate. So you're

talking about around 125 to $150 to MS 50,000 points. And so 50,000 points are much more flexible than a free night certificate that lasts for one year. So I'd value 50,000 points a lot more, a lot more, a lot more than a 50K certificate. So i look at it and i say well i could manufacture the points to achieve the same end goal for 125 to 150 dollars i have a hard time valuing that certificate at 300 bucks even if it'll get me a 300 dollar hell room i have a hard time valuing it that right well you know it's interesting because uh if you remember when we talk about the value of things there's there's two, there's two things, there's two important components. There's, there's, there's how much travel value can you get from this thing? But then there's another side, which is how much would you be willing to pay for this thing? And I think those are two, I think of those as two separate things. So I agree with you a hundred

percent. There is, well, not only is there no way I would pay $300 for one of these certificates, but anybody would be foolish to, because if you're expecting to get $300 of value from it, why would you lock in $300 of cash in exchange for something that may or may not give you $300 of value? There's literally no point in that. So, so then how much for a 50K certificate, how much would you pay for one? If you, if you had the ability to buy a 50K certificate, just one of them for a 50k certificate how much would you pay for one if you if you had the ability to buy a 50k certificate just one of them or two of them how much would you pay for a certificate yeah yeah that's and that's what we should be asking and i don't have an answer like right off the top of my head um you know would i pay 150 i guess is the question i mean that's probably the most i would pay but i have to think about that some more if I'd even do that because, you know.

So, you know, can you see where I'm going with this? You're going to say I'm going to have to. And you're totally right. You'd have to think about whether or not it's worth paying $150 for a $50 case cert. So a $35 case cert that's, you know, significantly less, you would have to pay significantly less than $150, right? So the $125 for the Marriott business card for a 35K cert seems totally unreasonable. And at $95 for the other cards that come with a 35K cert, boy, that starts to seem kind of unreasonable too pretty quickly,

doesn't it? So paying $95 for a good chance of getting $200 value. So you're asking, would I, should I, could I pay $95 for a 35K cert? I mean, that is what you're saying. You know, you're right. If someone, you're right. If the traveling salesman came to the door, that, you know, that guy with the door desk subscriptions. Knock, knock. He's also got in his other pocket.

He's got his Marriott certs in the other pocket. And so he's asking me, he says, hey, I've got these certificates that are good for any Marriott hotel worldwide that cost 35K points or less. And it's good for a whole year and if you call you could even get it extended for a year then he says you know only 95 bucks am i gonna do it no i wouldn't do it i mean again unless i unless i I was getting ready to reserve a Marriott and I looked at it like, oh, wow, I'm going to save 35 or let's say I'm getting ready to book a two-night stay at a Category 5 or even a Category 4, either one, it might pay to buy those certificates and um and instead of paying out all those points right i think if you did the math you'd say yeah that's a good deal for those points for keeping

those points so hmm that's tough that's an interesting point yeah so so if so that sort of backs me into the idea like if you if you know you're going to use them without problem, then it probably is still a good deal. Yeah, I mean, yes, I can't argue with that. If you're very confident that you're going to use them and get $200 in value, you have a reasonable idea of where you'll go or about where you'll go to get that much value out of them, then yeah, I guess they're worth it, you know, I suppose. So I just think it's interesting when you look at it, particularly through the lens of the 50k certs, because like you said, you probably wouldn't pay any more than 150 for a 50k cert, probably, I don't think anyway, unless you knew you had a near term use for it, you probably wouldn't just speculatively to have one to use sometime in the next year, pay 200 or $250.

So at max, I think you got to value the 50K cert at 150. So then, you know, whether or not you choose to value the 35K cert any more than $100, I feel like is a questionable decision. And if it's going to save you real money, like Greg said, hey, by all means, of course, why would you pay 200 if you could pay 95? So, if you know it's going to save you real money, of course, do it. Keep the card, pay it every year if you know you're going to save the money. But I feel like if you're not positive, then it becomes a very difficult value to support. Right, right, right. So, let me first say that having one Marriott card, for anyone who seeks status with Marriott, it's essential to have one because you get the 15 nights

automatically each year. I think that's then a no-brainer to keep at least one. And if you have the Ritz as your one and you value the Priority Pass membership deal and the ability to add free authorized users and the great insurance, the great travel protections it has, then I think too, there, it makes sense to say, okay, the certificate and the $300 in airline fee incidentals are compensation, you know, to make it less painful to pay the 450, but to get all these things I want, I think that's still right. Legitimately good deal. Um, so I can agree with that. So given all that, so are you going to cancel all your Marriott cards besides your Ritz card or including your Ritz card? I, you know, I don't think I'm going to get rid of the Ritz card because it's, it's such an easy

value for me. I spend $300 a year on things that legitimately qualify for the $300 credit normally. So that's typically just cash back that I was going to pay out one way or another. And in my case, I'm still getting charged the old grandfather $395 annual fee on my Ritz card. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's a great deal. Decently low net cost, especially when you consider, like you said, all of the ancillary protections that come along with the card to travel protections and whatnot. I'll put award taxes and fees on that card when I'm traveling by myself. So there are other reasons why I keep it in the unlimited priority pass gas. So for me, it's worth it.

So I'll keep that one for sure. The others, though, it's getting questionable now. questionable. Now, one thing that I think is probably worth noting where if you know you're going to get value out of the certs eventually, Greg brought up a good point earlier in that Marriott has been very good about extending certificates by an additional year. Steven Pepper wrote a post this week or republished a post this week about extending his. And I did the same back in January, waited until the day before a certificate was set to expire, called in to see if they would extend it. And they did. And of course until the day before a certificate was set to expire, called in to see if they would extend it. And they did. And of course, the next year's certificate posted just

a few days later, or maybe a few days before that even. And so now I have two of those 35k certificates that I could use for a weekend away. So you know, by waiting, you know, perhaps give yourself a chance to make it more useful, maybe, possibly, though, again, if you're not sure you're going to get much more than $200 in value, then you got to really start thinking about the time cost because I spent $95 on that now well over a year ago in the hopes that someday here I may be going to be able to use them. And so, you know, that's, I can't really defend that very very well i'm i'm definitely leaning in the direction of canceling them especially if i'm able to generate marriott

points i've been doing some msing on on uh the writs card because i've been finding some decent values for the points the certificates though i feel like are almost more disappointing because because of the way that yeah yeah always use it where you want. And I know people would love to be able to add points to them to be able to use it at a peak time or mix it together with points and that kind of thing. And I mean, I think that's a great idea. I'd love to see Marriott implement that. I doubt they ever will. I mean, these things are designed so that some people will not use them or people will use them for less than ideal value.

I would like to see them return to the days of them being category-based and so be able to be used at peak or off peak up to that category. I think that's reasonable. I think adding points to make up the difference is not going to happen. That's going to require too much of a technology solution that isn't worth the investment. I agree that it's very unlikely. It would be an awesome change that would make their certs more valuable, I'd argue, than any other hotel certs that are out there. But yeah, there's no way they're going to do it. And sad thing is, it seems to me there's a good chance the reason

that they went to the point-based approach in the first place was so that people wouldn't cry about how they used to get Category 5 certificates. And now with that same credit card, that's the old credit card, now it's what is called Category 4. And just because they changed the names of the categories. And so I think they avoided the kind of controversy that would cause by saying, you know, before it was worth 25K, in the future it's worth 25K. And so they said, let's just, I don't know. That's my guess. Yeah, yeah. That might be part of the reason they did it.

I don't know if that's the reason, but it's really unfortunate. And it's weird that they did it with the credit card certificates and not the travel package certificates. They're still category based. So obviously they have an ability to make it category based. Yeah, yeah. I think that that is a reasonable thing to hope for, to ask for, to hope that Marriott will be willing to change someday, perhaps because they do do those category based. It's also interesting to me, I don't know, surprising would be the right word, but interesting to me that when you reach titanium

status, one of the choice benefits is a 40K certificate and the credit cards offer a 35K certificate. So the titanium certificate is arguably then much more valuable than the credit cards offer a 35K certificate. So the titanium certificate is arguably then much more valuable than the credit card certificate since it can be used at peak. Exactly. Yeah, that became really clear to me when I was doing my research. And I thought about doing a whole post on that. I don't know how many people, you know, how big of an audience there is for that little nugget of information but since the majority of my um 50k certificate uses in my in my experiment were for 40k properties the 40k certificate is worth almost as much as a 50k certificate yeah and so yeah and then all of the failed you know all the ones i couldn't include in my 35k research you

know would have worked every single one of them would have worked with a 40K. So it's a shame that the only way to get a 40K is with the getting titanium status. But I got to say, I'm glad, though, that you talked me into doing taking the 40K cert last year. I don't even know that you intentionally tried to, but asking about what to do at the end of the year and try to figure out whether or not to spend an extra 15,000 points to pick up the Knights to titanium status. And you're like, oh, well, essentially you're trading 15,000 points for a 40 K certificate. That sounds like it makes sense because in my situation, that's what I had to do to it. Right. Right. I remember that now.

Yeah. And I'm glad that you did that because if you hadn't, and I still had hit 75 Knights, I probably would have taken the suite upgrades and, uh, and I already had hit 75 nights, I probably would have taken the suite upgrades. And I already had five suite upgrades from the 50 night choice benefit. I'm glad that I took the 40k cert at 75k choice benefit, because or 7975 night choice benefit, rather, I'm glad I took the 40k cert, because those are much easier to use. You know, I've been looking at New York City a bunch lately. And I'm looking during an off peak time, actually. But when I look at peak times and I've looked at some summertime dates and things, there's just so many things that are 40K, whether that's peak or off-peak, so many that are 40K that I feel like that's much easier to use. Good, good, good, good. Yeah. So I picked the

suite upgrades with, I really didn't want to, I really didn't want to. I thought, you know, the five from 50 nights would be plenty. But I still have the seven night stay certificate from my travel package that I really want to use somewhere good. And I want to apply suite upgrades to that stay. And you can't, if you only have five suite upgrades and you have seven nights stay, you can't use it at all. And so, if I only had five suite upgrade nights, I'd either have to book only five nights with my package or just not apply suite upgrades. So, that's why I did it. And I never felt good about doing it, but that's where I'm at this year. That makes sense. That makes much more sense. Yeah. You know, here's a question that maybe there is no answer to. Is there any way to know which rooms are eligible for suite upgrade certificates before you make a booking without making a booking? I've been running into

that where I've been looking at properties. I'm kind of curious as to which potential suites I could use my suite upgrade award for, because it seems to vary a little bit in terms of which suites are available for those suite upgrades and and just yesterday in fact i made reservations at two different places to see and one of them none of their suites were eligible for using the suite upgrade awards and the other one showed showed me which ones so yeah yeah yeah so i just wondered if there was an easier way that i was missing so that might be interesting then there's other restrictions like uh writs i don't think you could apply them and there might be other properties that where you can't i can't remember yeah yeah yeah well all right so i have

five of those and you have 10 but if you're looking to stay in a suite then this week we uncovered a way that you may be able to do it without needing any suite upgrade awards. Yeah, this is very interesting. A reader asked us about this. The reader saw a fourth night free benefit when logging into their Sapphire Reserve account. And then you dug into it. And why don't you give us an overview? What's there? Well, so this launched almost a year ago, and somehow it must have flown under the radar

because I didn't even realize it. Or if I saw it, I must have assumed that it was something that was short term or not very good. But I dug into it a little bit because Chase announced a partnership again almost a year ago with SBE Hotels, which is a hotel group that has a bunch of a core hotels under different brands like the SLS and Delano and a number of different brands that you may be familiar with if you know your core life or live limitless sort of properties. And so the benefit is, again, just a select set of properties in different cities, some international, mostly domestic. And the benefit works this way. So you book through their link, and it takes you directly to the hotel website with a promo loaded,

that when you pay with your Chase Sapphire reserve card, you get a reserve and pay with the Sapphire reserve card, you get a fourth night free, you get a $30 property credit towards food and beverage, free breakfast for two each day, and then hopefully a one category room upgrade. That's one of those things that's based on availability and late checkout based on availability. So the concrete benefits are a fourth night free on those bookings to make through that link. And then the $30 property credit and breakfast for two each day continental breakfast for two each day. So I dug into that a little bit because I was curious as to how useful that would be. And the fact of the matter is, it was fairly confusing, because not all properties displayed information the same way. There were some exceptions and blah, blah, blah. And if you're interested in knowing more about those, I guess we can get more into those or you can check out the post for the different problems that I found with the benefit. However, the takeaway that I thought was particularly interesting that was a little farther down in the post for those who are going to read that far and

get the nugget out of there, I guess, is that this fourth night free, first of all, applies to any room type. So it even applied to penthouse suites. I looked up a property in the UK where the penthouse suite was like $1,500, $2,000 a night. And the fourth night free, sure enough, applied to that room as well as it would to a standard room. And additionally, it's a true fourth night free. Now you may remember the city prestige card offers a fourth night free and years ago, it used to be the fourth night that was free, but then they switched at some point to 25% of the room rate, the average nightly rate you get back. So, so what that means is if your fourth night is a very expensive night, you're not going to get that full fourth night back. You're going to rather get the average nightly rate over four nights with the Sapphire or excuse me, with the city prestige fourth night free benefit.

However, with this Chase Sapphire benefit, you get the actual fourth night for free. So if that fourth night is an exorbitantly expensive night you could potentially save a lot of money like for example go ahead yeah i mean a ton of money and in fact if you earn points like acor points or whatever kind of points that a hotel offers you hopefully you'll earn well will you maybe you won't so so that was one of the cool things. The way the city prestige benefit worked back when was that you could book the four nights leading up to New Year's Eve, for example, in New York City or four nights leading up to any major big event where prices suddenly skyrocket on that fourth night. And you used to get rebated that last night.

So the hotel would see the full charge and you get points based on that full charge. And so can you imagine, like I know people who did this where they would stay at maybe a Hilton in New York City where first three nights were around 200. The last night was like 2000. And then they're getting

you know 15x hilton points plus plus uh you know whatever kind of promotions were going on at the time and things like that so uh it was an incredible deal which is also probably why they stopped doing that probably probably why they stopped doing it yes so it sounds like we don't have a way to game this really. Like, so you could get that standpoint if you really need that night. I mean, it's amazing to be able to get that night for free. Right. But you wouldn't go stay somewhere just because it's higher on that night.

I'm thinking. No, because this does not work like a rebate that it actually comes off the bill at checkout. And that's one of the areas of confusion. Some hotels display the total for all four nights and they say that at checkout, the fourth night will be taken off. And other hotels show that that fourth night is $0 when you do the search. And so I used New Year's Eve as an example in one of the searches and showed a property in New York City where New Year's Eve was much more expensive than the other three nights. But New Year's Eve was $0 when it was the fourth night. I did the same with the penthouse suite, penthouse

suite was around 1000 British pounds the other nights of the week, Saturday night by itself, it would have been almost 1500 British pounds, I think more than 2000 bucks, but that would be free under the the example that I gave for that one. So if you're somebody who likes to travel for special events and you want to be there for the World Cup game or the Super Bowl or the New Year's Eve or whatever it might be like that, when that one night is really expensive because of an event, then you could potentially plan that out for that to be your fourth night and get that night for free and save a bundle of money anyway. You're not going to game it for a bunch of points, but a nice savings. And also, if you're the type of person who likes to book those upgraded rooms, then obviously you get that

benefit. And one of the things I like about this over the city prestige is that today, if you have the city prestige card and you want to make a fourth night free booking, you have to do that through thankyou.com, which means that in the vast majority of cases, anyway, not going to earn any elite credit, not going to learn earn any hotel points. Whereas these bookings through Chase and SBE are done directly through the hotel website. So you at least theoretically will be able to earn points in that program, which we determine those points are not an amazing value, right in your guide about how much is the rebate worth? Did you figure, do you remember? Well, so they don't, the problem with Accor is they, the points are very valuable.

They transfer one-to-one to certain airline programs and they're worth two cents each or two euro cents each towards a hotel stay. So that's way better than most hotel chains, but the earnings are way less. So I think the net value of staying in an ACOR versus a Hilton or Marriott is actually less because of the rebate.

If you turn it into sort of like, if you think of it as like a percentage, how much value am I getting from this? I think you're actually getting less because the others are often, let's say the acorp points are on average worth double the other hotel chains are offering three times as many points it's somewhere in that well right but let me pull you out of the weeds if you're booking with the city prestige card you don't get anything so you're getting something absolutely no no no don't get me wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd be very happy to earn Acre points. And so that would be great. And that's the thing here. You will still

be eligible to earn points when you make these fourth night free bookings. So if you're an Acre person, then great. You can get yourself some points out of this, whatever those point earnings are, probably. And I say probably because one of the properties I looked up for an example, luckily, I looked on the hotel website and I saw during the booking process that it mentioned that it's a non-participating Accor property where you can't earn points. Even though I was on the Accor Live Limitless website, it was telling me, oh, this is a non-participating property. They just like to be listed on our website, but not participate in our program apparently. So, uh, so I don't know that you'll earn points at all hotels or even the majority. Cause I didn't check every single one separately on the Anchor site to

see. Also it's worth noting if you haven't read the post yet that while the vast majority of these properties do offer that continental breakfast for two that I mentioned earlier, it does say in the terms that if the property doesn't have continental breakfast, that instead they can substitute that with two free drinks at the bar. And I don't think that that is a very comparable substitution at all. Luckily, there's only two properties that that seems to apply to so far. But the only way to know which two properties is go to the terms and conditions page and read the very last bullet point all the way down at the bottom. You don't see it during the booking process when you're booking those properties. And I find that a little bit problematic. But as long as you can deal with

those oddities, then if again, if you're the type of person to travel during special events, or the type of person to pay for an upgraded room, this could certainly save you a bundle of cash. Yeah. So what about that? The one in Vegas that you highlighted, that's part of the MLife program, right? It is. Which is partners with Hyatt, right? It is. So can you earn Hyatt Elite Nights from this? So is this a way to basically to basically get a you know four hyatt nights for the price of three in vegas potentially yes it definitely should because you're booking directly through the delano website so it it's a link you click through chase their partnership with sb that

pre-fills whatever the promo is i tried to figure out a promo code that you could put in for your own searches i couldn't so i had to go through the booking site. But that booking site is essentially working like some sort of a portal and bringing you directly to the Delano site. So yeah, I would expect that you're going to be logging in during the process and booking. And in my case, I have my MLife account linked with my Hyatt account. So I automatically get Hyatt points and Hyatt state credit when I stay there. And I've stayed at Delano a number of times and booked directly through Delano and had no problem getting the credit. So yes, I believe it should work that way that you will get Hyatt credit. I think I feel like it's coming. Well, I think it's interesting because I didn't

know that that property was in a corridor. So I don't know how that works. Because can you earn points in both programs at the same time? I don't know. I don't know how that works. Because can you earn points in both programs at the same time? I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean, I only kind of doubt it. Only partially because well, let me let me say this, that those who stayed at MGM properties know that you can double dip and earn Hyatt points and stay credit and also earn Southwest points for your stay. So you can link both of those to your mlife profile you gotta do that at the desk you only earn i think it's 600 southwest points per stay but of course i've done a bunch of hotel hopping in vegas before i've stayed at three or four properties and three or four nights and picked up some so it's 600 per day or per day per day but if you if

is there are there multiple properties so you can bounce back and forth between them so yeah yeah i mean but then you couldn't do the fourth you couldn't do this fourth night free exactly so you wouldn't be able to stack just in that getting completely off topic here but how many how many nights if you did one night stays only how many nights would you have to stay to earn a companion i mean it's 600 points a night i mean 10 is like a hundred a couple thousand a couple hundred couple two hundred two hundred and a few two hundred and a few nights so you can you can you can earn it you could live in vegas as long as you change hotels every single night and the benefit would be you'll get enough points to get companion.

Wait, are these points companion? Companion pass eligible. I'll have to go back and check. I can't remember. I'll have to go back and check and see. All right. If anyone's listening, thinking, oh, that's a good idea. Change your mind.

I mean, you can bounce between Excalibur and Luxor. Really cheap. Anyway, anyway. So the other thing to note, though, about the fourth night free you asked about, is this a good way to pick up cheap Hyatt nights? The other thing to keep in mind, though, is that if you have Hyatt Explorer status or better, then you've matched that over to Hyatt M Life. Then you have M Life Gold. And so the rates that you see in your M Life Gold account may be better. You may have a better deal. I've had times where I've had a couple of free nights

at Delano or at Mandalay Bay, and they were able to move my reservation from Mandalay Bay to Delano anyway. So at the desk when I arrived there. So you may have a better deal. I just looked in my account in order to compare for this, and it would have been 50 or 60 bucks cheaper to book directly through Delano through my M Life offer

than the fourth night free booking. However, if I had booked directly through Delano through my M life offer. Oh, wow. Okay. Fourth night free booking. However, if I had booked directly through Hyatt on my own, I'm sorry, through M life on my own, I wouldn't have gotten breakfast for two each day in the $30 credit. So good point. So that, that certainly may balance out 60 bucks to pay $60 more and get free breakfast for two each day for a four night day or night for four nights. I mean, that that's probably worthwhile. I've, I've, if you're at Della's kitchen there, it's pretty good. And the credit that they give you for breakfast covers it. And if it works the same way as it has worked in the past, I believe you'd also be able to get room service breakfast, uh, alternatively rather than eating at Della's kitchen. I didn't put that in the post because

I don't know if it's still the way it was today that it was before. But in the past, you've been able to take that as room service breakfast instead. Yeah, yeah. All right. So that's cool. So the talking about fourth night free actually reminded me of something when we were talking about the Marriott certs are not as valuable as they appear is if you intend to use them on fifth night on five night stays along with points for some of the nights you uh if they're not as valuable because you don't get the fifth night free. You have to have the whole thing, at least five nights paid for with points in order to get that fifth night, really the cheapest point night free.

And so if you pick just one certificate of your five nights day to use, you don't get anything free. So you literally get zero value from that certificate if you do that. Right, right. That's a great point. And I don't know if maybe it was in part motivated by the fact that I had a reader emailing me with exactly that type of scenario earlier this week where they had one of those days booked and they were looking to replace one of the nights with a free night certificate and get the points back. And I explained a couple of times that you're not going to get any points, even if you use the free night certificate, you're not getting any points back. You're not, yeah, you'll pay the same number of points and just burn a free night certificate for nothing

because you can't match that up with points for, for a fifth night phrase. So yeah, no, I mean, this has come up with me for with both Marriott and Hilton, personally, where I've been looking at stays, and hoping to use free night certificates and realizing they literally had zero value in the situations I was looking at. Yeah, zero value. Zero. And so that devalues it too. It's a great point to bring up another reason why I'd much rather have the 50,000 points. They're potentially much more valuable. So again, when the MS cost on those points is 125 to 150 bucks, then I don't know, that

50K cert has to be worth less. So it definitely makes those things questionable. In my case, it's still, I think, worth enough when combined with the other benefits of the Ritz card to keep the Ritz card or certainly if it was the Brilliant card instead to keep that card. But although I think the Ritz card has better ancillary value to it. So I guess that's debatable. Interesting debate to have. At any rate, I think that it definitely makes that more questionable. It's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. It does. And so for me, I'm definitely keeping my Ritz card, but the other cards are probably on the chopping block, to be honest. I don't need the headache of trying to find a good excuse to

use them. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it is a headache. It's difficult. And there are other options. I mentioned MSing Marriott points, and I've talked a lot about those select few of us that have the Capital One Redemption that I do or I'm able to redeem for Marriott gift cards. And those are certainly even more flexible, and I can use those when going through a portal to book properties. So I'm becoming less and less interested in the free night certificates. So I think maybe you've convinced me to get rid of them.

Okay, good. Do we have any questions this week? We do. We do. We have a really good question that I almost fired off a quick answer to. And then I thought about it some more and I was like, you know what, this is a really good question for this week. So the question of the week comes from Lisa. And Lisa commented on our reasonable redemption values post. So we have a reasonable redemptions value or excuse me, reasonable redemption values resource page that lays out the value of all the various points, how much are United points worth or Hyatt points or this or that. And so we keep those to have as a frame

of reference. So you can look at it and see, okay, this is what you can reasonably expect to get out of American Airlines miles or what you can reasonably expect to get when you redeem Radisson points without too much effort. We try to keep those values really conservative to be a value of what you can expect to get without working too hard at finding the absolute perfect redemption. So Lisa asks about that. Would it be possible to regularly update RRVs, particularly in regard to recent devaluations from United, Hyatt, Marriott, et cetera? Would it be possible to regularly update those because of those types of devaluations? Yeah. Do we need to update them? Have recent devaluations significantly changed the value of points? Yeah. Well, I think the thing is because we haven't updated them, we don't really know. You know, I think that, yes, in an ideal world, we would actually keep them updated all the time. The way we've done it in the past, well, the airline ones were based on logic more than observation. So we looked at average airline round-trip cost for economy awards within the U.S. and said, well, most people redeem their miles in that way.

So let's sort of estimate, you know, most airlines charge 25,000 miles round-trip. And so how much are you saving by using your miles instead of your cash? And that's where we, that was the logic behind a lot of our airline, our RVs, okay? And so at the very least, we should be looking at, has the average cost of airfare changed since we last looked at it? Because if it's gone down, then the value of the miles has gone down. If it's000 miles, but sometimes they charge more. So that with United and Delta in particular. And also with American now. approach to the rv's where we basically scrape a lot of data and put it into a database and say all right you know ideally we'd have some kind of scraper that would that would run regularly and

use different multiple dates for travel to to mix things up you know look at both holiday travel and non-holiday travel business travel weekend travel and everything and um just you know look at both holiday travel and non-holiday travel, business travel, weekend travel and everything. And just, you know, look at the award prices, look at the paid prices and calculate. Right. So that would be ideal. You know, yes, I want to do that. We don't have any plans to do that. I thought it was a really interesting point, though, because my first reaction was, ah, we updated these last May and recent devaluations don't significantly impact.

The small devaluations when things change category or that sort of thing don't really impact the value that much overall. But then I thought about it specifically with regard to United and I was like, well, but actually the recentations do pretty significantly change it because that 25,000 mile round trip is really just almost not a thing anymore. I mean, of course you can find some that are that way, but in all three of the major airlines in the United States, I think that I might venture to guess that most of the time it's not going to be 25,000 round trip anymore. So it's really hard to know how much those are worth compared to, you know, economy class airfares. So I think that that's a, that was a, an interesting point that my first reaction was, and we don't need to update it. And then I thought, well, maybe we do. And then I thought about obviously Hyatt and Marriott. I

don't know. What do you think? Do we need to update those too? Now that we have yeah off-peak pricing we do we do and and the the rant this is directly related to what i was talking about before about wanting to change out the methodology i used for how i collected the data because the data i collected i mean so far was only for categories five six and seven but i could use the same process to collect data across all categories. And then I have in my spreadsheet what we need to know. I have the point price and I have the cash price. And so we can just say, okay, it's worth X and that's what it's worth. And that would be great.

So I actually think that's very doable, certainly with Marriott. I don't think, but tell me if I'm wrong, if you remember off the top of your head, I don't think Hyatt shows user reviews in the search results the way Marriott does. I'm not sure. And if I'm going to have in the criteria for Marriott only looking at the better reviewed ones, then I'd want to compare apples to apples and do the same for Marriott, only looking at the better reviewed ones, then I'd want to compare apples to apples and do the same for Hyatt. And so I'd have to think about that.

Maybe they do. I'm not sure. I honestly don't usually, I assume that a Hyatt's going to be nice. Or maybe we just say, we just include all the results, you know, instead of just picking the top three, just pick the thing.

Yeah. I mean, I guess you kind of have to, right, in order to determine what the value. It's a tall endeavor. It's difficult because especially with 2,000 properties and change, there's a lot of data. Well, yeah. Obviously, you're not going to do all of them. Well, you know, we could hire someone to web scrape it i i know that drew from travel is free has done things like that where he he uses that amazon turk or whatever it is a system like that to get people to bid on on jobs and and so he wasn't even paying that much to get them to scrape he he would put all

the parameters out there what uh city pairs to look at, what dates of travel, things like that. So we could do the same thing and get someone to scrape the data, put it all in a database or spreadsheet, and then we can update it. And so that's something we should do. I want to do, the question is when will we do it, I think. I'd love to do it. I'd love to get it done. Yeah, and I was thinking in my mind, we do kind i think is yeah i'd love to do it i'd love to get it done yeah yeah and i was thinking in my mind we do kind of regularly keep those up to date because we had updated them in november of 2017 i think and then we looked at it again last year and so it's just over a year and a half and generally i don't think points change value that significantly in

less time than about a year and a half, probably. So I would generally not think that we'd need to update necessarily already less than a year since our last update. But then I got thinking about it and I was like, well, that's a good question because I really do think there have been some more significant changes in the landscape. And well, yeah, plus the Marriott point values are still based on the observed point values from a web application that no longer exists from before the merger. Yeah. So it's definitely time.

I mean, that one is probably the most urgent, I think. But yeah, it'd be great to update them all. So Lisa, thank you for your question because it was a great question and probably a good motivator for us to put that in the crosshairs, even though Greg was already kind of on his way towards that solution, it seems. And, you know, if Lisa has programming skills and wants to scrape the data for us, we would

be delighted to take that data and update those RRVs. Actually, maybe, you know, whether it's Lisa or someone else, if someone reaches out and says, hey, you know, that sounds like a fun, uh, fun thing to do that. Let us know. Well, right. Right. We'll work with you and get it done. And we'll, we'll put your name if you want it on the, on the page as, as someone who

helped us get that done. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So, so, all right. That's, that's something for it to look out for, for our updated reasonable redemption values coming at some point in the future. We're always kind of working to increase the value of our resource pages and enhance them and make them more useful for readers.

So, that's the type of feedback and question. It's always great to get that so that we can take a look and say, okay, how can we make this better for readers and more useful? Yes, yes, exactly. All right, time for the goodbye song. It is time for the goodbye song, I think. So our newly abbreviated goodbye song, if you've missed it, is if you'd like to find out more about what we've been talking about today, go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

Again, that's thefrequentmiler, T-H-E, frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe. And then I'll give you all the different ways to find us on Facebook, Twitter, uh, podcast form and so on and so forth. Great. All right. We're going to say goodbye now. Thank you very much. Always great having you here, Greg, have a good week, redeem some points well, and, and, and make sure you don't overpay those cancellation fees. All right. No more future confessions. All right. Bye everyone. See you next time.