Bilt goes 4:3 to Hyatt. Now what? | Coffee Break Ep124 | 10-7-26
00:00 This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. This podcast episode is sponsored by Sayley. Sayley is an e-Sim service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saly gives you flexible prepaid data plans and over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave. your data activates automatically when you touch down.
00:36 Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saly actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saly keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saly from your app store and use our code Frequent Miler at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. On today's coffee break, Billet goes four to three to Hyatt. Now what? Welcome to Frequent
01:12 Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Built has announced that they are no longer going to support one-to-one transfers to Hyatt as of January 1st of next year. And this follows right on the heels of chasing. doing the same thing with most of their cards, although the Sapphire Reserve is exempt from that. So, Safari Reserve, personal and business cardholders can still transfer one-to-one to Hyatt. But now most things, most options for getting Hyatt points from transferable points are four to three, which is not a great transfer rate.
01:58 So we're going to discuss what do we do now? What's the best way to get Hyatt points? and should we get high at points? What do you think? Well, that's a great question. But don't forget, wherever you're watching or listening, please give this a thumbs up or a like and leave us your comments
02:13 and let us know how you're earning high at points in the comments. All right. So, I mean, we have a few different options in terms of getting high at points, right? So the first one is to continue earning built points because with the built palladium card, that card earns a base rate of two points per dollar, but with points accelerators that you can buy
02:30 with built cash or earning points on house. payments, you can earn three points per dollar or more on a reasonable amount of money. You know, if you do the points accelerators, that's up to $25,000 per year. If you have an authorized user, it could be another 25K. So if you could be earning 3x unbuilt, I guess we should talk about the math and what that means. How many Hyatt points is that per dollar? So to run the quick math, if you spent four bucks, you'd earn 12 points, 12 built points
03:00 with the new four to three transfer ratio will be. become nine Hyatt points. So effectively, you're earning nine Hyatt points for every $4 spent. That's 2.25 Hyatt points per dollar spent. 2.25. I mean, that's better than earning one or one and a half, right? I mean, it's even better than two points per dollar spent. Two point two point two five high points per dollar spent sounds pretty good. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, if you just look at it that way in a vacuum, I mean, that's a really good earning rate for Hyatt points. The problem is, for me, when I look at it, I don't think that's a great use of built points anymore. I'd rather take my built points and transfer them to like airline programs or even Amtrak when there is a big transfer bonus.
03:51 And, you know, I think the net value is going to be much higher by using your built points in those ways rather than this kind of lower. So yes, if your whole goal is just Hyatt, it's not a bad way to earn high at points. But, you know, if you have a broader look at things, if you care about airline awards and stuff, I don't know. I would have a tough time using my bill points for that. Well, you know, it's interesting because, yes, you know, on the one hand, you say, okay, 2.25 Hyatt points per dollar spent versus three airline miles, basically, right? because if you're earning 3x on the built card, those could become at least three airline miles. And then, you know, to your point, obviously with a transfer bonus, it could be even more than three airline miles per dollar spent. So when you look at it that way and say, okay, so for every dollar I spend, I could have a little over two high at points or somewhere between three and six airline miles, depending on whether I get a transfer bonus or not, then yeah, the airline miles certainly seem more valuable.
04:54 And I can't dispute that. the math doesn't work out to argue that point. However, if high points are still worth about one and a half cents per point, which is around where they are now and where we expect they will likely be, at least in the foreseeable future, obviously may change. But if they stay around one and a half cents per point, then you're talking about that being, I don't know, quick math here, around three and a half or so, three point four cents per dollar spent. So about, let's call it, three and a half percent back towards high it stays, that's not bad per dollar spent. I mean, that's in terms of lodging, earning points for lodging, I totally agree that it may not be
05:35 the best use of built points, but it may be possibly the best lodging earn on everywhere else spending. You're not going to earn better in terms of Marriott points or Hilton points or IHG points probably on your otherwise on bonus spend, or at least that's my first impression. So I look at say it's not an unreasonable way to earn high at points, but you're not wrong. It's also a questionable use of built points, considering they have more value. Don't forget, a core is another transfer partner of built as well that might offer a good value. Okay, so that's all true. I think another option for earning Hyatt points, of course, is to get or keep your Sapphire Reserve card. And that way you can maintain the one-to-one transfer ratio. You know, the Sapphire reserve card
06:23 earns 8x for travel book through the Chase Portal, which is pretty phenomenal, and 4X for flights and hotels book directly, and 3X for dining. So those earning rates are very, very good. The downside is, you know, we're looking at 1x for base spend. But you can pump up your earning rate by like doing things like adding on a no-fee Chase Inc. business cash card, which earns 5x in some categories, or a no-fee Chase Freedom Flex card. which earns 5x in rotating categories, or a freedom unlimited or business unlimited that earns 1.5x as a base earning rate
07:01 plus a few 3x categories. So, you know, with those kind of add-ons, you can pump up your earning rate, but still, unlike the built situation, your base earning rate for non-bonus spend, at best you're going to be earning 1.5. Yeah, so it's obviously a little bit less. I mean, you're right.
07:21 With some of those cards that I've ever, no annual fee like the Inc Business Cash and the Freedom Flex. Obviously, you could do pretty well on earning points there. I'm going to challenge your assertation that 8X via the Chase portal is phenomenal. It's decent. But I mean, City offers 12x with the Strata Elite. And obviously, the prices might not be the same. But when they are, you can earn 50% more transferable points from City that can then transfer to airlines. So for hotels and cars, you mean not for airlines and other travel. That is true. You're absolutely right. Yeah. So yes, I think for booking flights through Chase, that's a pretty phenomenal return.
07:58 Or cruises or other things that you can get that are not bonus in other portals. Yeah. Fair, fair. But for flights or rather for hotels and rental cars, you can do better with Capital One and with cities. So I'm not as excited with that. But if I spend a lot on cruises or a lot on flights, then, yeah, those are obviously very good earning rates. being able to transfer one to one makes sense. All right. So the Sapphire Reserve is a good alternative, particularly for those who spend a lot in the bonus categories where you can earn multiple Chase points per dollar spent. I mean, we kind of glossed over the 3x categories too, but, you know, the 3X on dining
08:39 and potentially 3x on pharmacy, depending on which other cards you have, you could do pretty well with a lot of different things. So if you're earning at least three points per dollar, then Chase becomes, I think, much more interesting. Yeah. Yeah, totally true. Of course, you need to run the math. Well, with any of these cards, with the built pladium or the Saffir Reserve, you've got to look at those big annual fees and say, are the cards worth it to you?
09:05 Just a quick reminder, we like to be very conservative with that and say, for example, the Saffir Reserve has a $150 per six months stub hub credit, which, you know, I'm sure most people could find some use for, but we like to look at it as like, if someone, someone offered you a subscription to get a $150 coupon to Stubhubh every six months that expires after each six months, how much would you be willing to pay for that? And so, like, personally, I look at that and go, you know what, I'll probably use this feature, but I wouldn't pay for that. And but there's other ones where it's like, yeah,
09:42 I would pay a bit for that, or maybe I'd pay a lot for it. And it just depends. So I like to look at it in a conservative way. Personally, both of the cards, the palladium and the staff are, the coupons and everything like work out for me. But I don't think that's true for most people. So I really recommend that you look at all those things and be honest with yourself about how much are those credits and everything worth to you. And so does it make sense to keep paying that
10:10 annual fee? All right. Now that's all said, there is a third legitimate good way, potentially of earning Hyatt points, which is, surprise, get a Hyatt. credit card and put your spend on that. Now, the reason that's not top of mind to us is because the Hyatt card, at least the two that are available right now as we're recording this, supposedly there's going to be another one coming out this year, but we don't know any details about it. The two that are available right now don't have great earning rate. So the consumer card, you know, you have a base 1x earning rate and it gets 2x for a bunch of things, dining airlines, local transit fitness clubs and gym membership.
10:53 and then you get 4X at Hyatt and also Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So, you know, that earning rate is lackluster, but it does have the annual Category 1 through 4 certificate that you get each year upon renewal, and it also gives you the ability to earn a second one of those with $15,000 spend. But where things get interesting with spending on the Hyatt card is that it gives you two elite qualifying nights
11:18 for every $5,000 you spend. The reason that's interesting is, because Hyatt, starting at 20 nights in a calendar year, starts offering what are called milestone rewards. And some of those can be pretty valuable. So let's say you're, you know, you've, you've, and also the consumer card gives you five elite nights right off the bat. So let's say with those five nights and with your actual Hyatt stays, you're, you're at, you know, 18 nights. Then it'll only cost you $5,000 spend on the card to, get to get another two nights to get to that first milestone and then whatever awards are there,
11:59 if they're worth anything to you, then that sort of ups the value of your spend, right? So I have a post about this. The post is pretty old at this point in time. I really need to redo it, but the ideas behind it are all still totally legitimate. The post is called Hyatt milestone spending. What's My X? And we'll have a link to that in the show notes. The idea is that I set up a spreadsheet, basically, where you could estimate how many nights are you actually going to spend at high-ed hotels and how much do you value each of the milestone rewards that you might actually take. And then you can kind of figure out, oh, if I spend this much money, it's worth this much. So it'll tell you what your X is. basically what the idea is it turns the value of all those perks that you get at milestone
12:55 rewards into point equivalence. So let's say at 20 nights, the value of the milestone you get is worth 5,000 points. I'll just keep it really simple. The math. And remember I just said, in the example before, you have to spend $5,000 to get to that next milestone. So that's like getting another 1x on your spend by doing that. And so, of course, what your X is when you do all this is going to depend heavily on how you value the milestone rewards, how many nights you're going to actually stay in high at hotels. And based on those two factors, you can earn anywhere from like a low of 1.4x on your unbonous spend to a high of around 5.7x. I mean, it really could go higher or lower depending on how much you value these things, but that's the range that was
13:50 in my spreadsheet. So for those, you know, this approach could be a good way if you're a heavy spender and if you're heavily in Hyatt and you like the idea of getting high at elite status. All those things kind of pile on top of each other and can give you a good earning rate on your high at spend. Yeah, I mean, I think that post is an excellent post that's well worth taking a look at because it can make sense to spend on that card depending on how you value all of those things. And that's so subjective. You know, when it comes to things like, you know, do the 29th milestone awards matter to you? How much are sweet upgrades worth to you and all of the different things along the way? It is very subjective, but truth be told, there are plenty of us
14:37 that do spend towards them on Hyatt cards. And certainly for the first $15,000 spent on the card, you're earning your way towards that additional category one to four free night certificate. So that's worth something on top of the one X. And then when you add in the ability to get towards milestone benefits, you know, really just depends where you're going to end up. But keep in mind that, you know, if you're going to end up with 22 nights, then the two elite nights you earn from $5,000 spend are not worth anything to you.
15:06 useless, yeah. Any good at all. So, you know, you have to kind of really take out the pencil and run the numbers. All right. We'll be right back after this with our own thoughts as to what we're going to do when Build goes four to three. All right. And we are back.
15:23 Before we talk about what we're going to do, I have a thought, question, idea. In the past, I've always asserted that Built will never have transfer bonuses to high it. We've known that transfers to Hyatt are very expensive for J.S. and built, and so it was just like a no-brainer. Obviously, they're not going to do transfer bonuses. But now, I kind of wonder, like, with this lower rate, will they every now and then say, you know, yeah, we can offer a small transfer bonus. And it occurs to me that it's possible. So I get, I need to back up a little bit. With Bill, the transfer bonus you get, depends. on your elite status with built. And so I can imagine a scenario where the top tier elites would get maybe at best one-to-one, but they also offer the ability to use built cash to increase your transfer ratio even more for a transfer bonus. And so I can imagine a scenario where maybe it would go to something like 1 to 1.2 or 1.25
16:30 or something like that to high end. So there might be a scenario where some people. can get better than one-to-one transfers with built. Yeah, I mean, that was my first thought also. When I saw the four to three, I thought, oh, well, now maybe they could do a transfer bonus to high it in the future. And again, like you said, they could limit the ability to get one-to-one or better to the people that they view as their best customers, the people that have the highest
16:55 elite status. And so that would kind of limit the cost to them. And so there are a lot of reasons why I think you're right. that my one of my first thoughts was we'll probably see something at some point now, particularly, you know, with the ability to buy up with built cash in order to clear some built cash off the books. I could see that being a thing that comes out. So yeah, maybe we will see a point transfer bonus. But, you know, even if we do, what do you think? I mean, first of all, I guess after we, we discussed that, the next thing we have to ask is,
17:28 does it even matter? Like, does any of this matter? Because Hyatt has devalued. They've, you know, introduce this new award chart with super high peak pricing. And of course, at the beginning, not very many properties were there, but we expect that more and more properties will move toward the higher end of whatever their award chart band is. So do Hyatt points even matter to you anymore? Yeah, I mean, it's really a, I think that's a really relevant question. It's even more so because those of us who are heavy into this game tend to have a lot of
18:00 cards that have hotel rebates and things, like the platinum cards that have the $300 every six months for various types of hotels and the Saffir Reserve has its, the edit credits, and all those things. Oh, also the Play-Dame card has its hotel credits. So all those things mean there are reasons for us to book hotels at the sort of cash rate equivalent rather than with points. And so as we're doing that more and more. And, you know, add on the fact that on average, Hyatt points aren't worth as much as they used to. They're still worth more than most other hotel points, but, but not as much, not as much of a no-brainer as it used to be. I do see my personal use of Hyatt points decreasing with all those combinations of factors. But that said,
18:54 there are still times when you come across a stay where the Hyatt, you know, the value you're going to get by booking with high at points is just so good. And it does also mix together with things like elite status. Like if you have global status or you get a guest of honor award to apply to your stay and you book with points, then things like parking is free. And, you know, that kind of stuff can be super valuable. So I think I think Hyatt points are still a very important piece of like my war chest for how to go about finding the best hotel deals. Yeah, same here. You know, the hotel credits and the various cards that offer hotel credits have varying appeal to me.
19:41 Because, you know, one of the things that I've enjoyed about this hobby from the beginning is the ability to use points to stay at places that I wouldn't really want to pay for if I were paying the cash rates. And so the hotel credits become a mixed bag for me because oftentimes, the places that I would really want to stay are not places where I really want to pay the cash rate. And so that leans me back toward Hyatt often, not all the time, and not as often, perhaps, as in the past. But there are lots of situations where those hotel credits just don't offer me the place that I want to stay. And so, or at least, they don't get me the place I want to stay, quote unquote,
20:19 for free, right? So there are still plenty of times where I'm finding Hyatt points to be very valuable but not all the time. And there are plenty of times now, too, just the other net. I stayed at one where the cash rate was, I don't know, $150, but it would have been $12,000 points. That would have been poor value for Hyatt points. And so, you know, I think it really does vary now. I still value pursuing Hyatt points until they, they prove to me that I shouldn't collect high at points. I'm not going to preemptively stop, but I obviously will continue to keep my eye on how much value I can get out of them. Yeah. So let's talk about, so what approach are we personally going to take? I'm going to start because things don't really change for me. I already had a approach of I earn Hyatt, top tier status through a combination of actual stays and spend on my Hyatt credit cards. And I'm going to keep doing that at least for now. We'll see what happens with Hyatt going forward. But at least for now, I'm, I'm happy with that. approach. And then to the extent that I don't have enough Hyatt points for what I need, you know, I mentioned earlier on the show that I intend to keep my Saffir reserve card. So I will just transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards. That was my plan before. It continues to be my plan at one-to-one. I never intended to transfer my built points to Hyatt. That hasn't changed. And it might change, I guess, if I get an opportunity to get better than one-to-one transfer to Hyatt, but for now,
21:54 that's not that's not changing yeah so that's you know that's interesting because my approach for years was to transfer ultimate rewards to hi it but i'm not earning nearly as many ultimate rewards points today as i was five or six or seven years ago i'm just not finding that ultimate rewards cards tend to offer the best value in the situations where i've been spending money now i haven't used my ink cash nearly as much or Inc. Plus as I did in years prior. And so and some of that is just a matter of opportunities kind of drying up to earn easy points there. And I don't, I don't book a lot of paid travel. So the travel bonuses on the Sapphire Reserve are less appealing to me that, or at least they're not going to earn me enough points based on my, my spend in those categories in any given year
22:42 to make a significant difference. So because of that, I've used up a lot of my ultimate rewards points. So I've been looking at my built points as my Hyatt reserve stash, though I haven't proactively transferred them to Hyatt because obviously, as, you know, right to your point, there are plenty of opportunities to get great transfer bonuses. And so I've been holding onto them as built points, looking for those transfer bonuses, taking advantage here and there where I could. I just transferred a chunk to Amtrak when they ran a rent day on October 1st. So it's tough. I do wonder now, should I transfer some proactively to Hyatt? The other ironic thing is that this year, I have had fewer Hyatt stays than in other recent years just by virtue of where I've gone.
23:31 There haven't been as many Hyatt options in the places I visited this year. So I'm not sure I'm going to re-qualify for Globalist. At this point, I'll probably make the 40-night milestone rewards. Whether or not I get beyond that is kind of a question mark still. And that'll have an effect going forward because without global status, then I lose those things that you mentioned, like free parking and some of the other elite benefits that come with it. And then Hyatt isn't always going to be the choice that I make, even in situations where it's a good choice. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do going forward. I might transfer at least a chunk of built points over to Hyatt before they reduce the transfer ratio, though I think you would question me.
24:18 on that saying, but those could become, you know, twice as many airline miles and you wouldn't be wrong to question that strategy because they could become a significant number more of transferable points. So I think it depends on how well I can build up ultimate rewards points over the next couple of months. I am going to keep a Sapphire reserve. We'll keep one in the household because I can make use of the coupons like, you know, just like a great mention. I think people like us can can find ways to use them, but it's not a good fit for most people. I'll see. have the one-to-one transfers, though, is the key. So I don't know what I'm going to do long-term, I guess. It was a kind of way to talk to myself in circles, but I'll keep the one-to-one from
24:57 Chase, and I'll consider transferring over an amount yet to be determined before the bill transfer ratio drops. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that to
25:35 send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.