Frequent Miler on the Air - Bright spots in the latest award. devaluations | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep245

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Award program changes often sting, but remember that those storm clouds often have a silver lining. On this week's episode, we discuss the bright spots in the most recent hotel and airline program devaluations (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:45) Giant Mailbag triple-header!  See episode 244 for more details about Platinum cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDh7EUEsf2Y (00:01:50) Schwab bonus with $10mil (00:02:56) Schwab mortgage counts toward assets (00:05:50) Don't forget Amex corporate cardholders get statement credits (00:07:22) Card Talk: Wells Fargo is launching their transferable points program https://frequentmiler.com/wells-fargo-launching-autograph-journey-visa-card-transferable-points-up-to-5x-earnings-more/ (00:19:33) What crazy thing . . . did Turkish Miles & Smiles do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-offers-an-award-sale-thats-very-turkish-miles-smiles-of-them/ (00:23:46) Award Talk (00:23:47) American Airlines Award Sale: Seats for 5K each way https://frequentmiler.com/american-airlines-award-sale-500k-seats-for-5k-miles-with-great-availability/ (00:27:59) Rio Las Vegas joins World of Hyatt https://frequentmiler.com/world-of-hyatt-benefits-at-rio-las-vegas-your-questions-answered/ (00:30:20) Main Event: Bright spots in the latest award devaluations (00:30:48) Hyatt devaluation https://frequentmiler.com/ouch-hyatts-2024-devaluation-has-been-announced-its-not-pretty/ (00:41:07) Wyndham Vacasa devaluation https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/ (00:47:14) Etihad devaluation (00:53:46) ANA devaluation https://frequentmiler.com/the-ana-devaluation-its-not-all-doom-and-gloom/ (01:02:10) Turkish devaluation https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-might-be-demolishing-its-award-chart/ (01:10:09) Question of the Week: If you book a hotel through the AAdvantage shopping portal, will the miles be dated based on the booking date or the checkout date? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, bright spots in the latest award devaluations. We've seen award devaluations lately in a host of programs ranging from Hyatt to Turkish to Vicasa, well, Wyndham, Vicasa to ANA. And the good news here, we're going to be talking not so much about those devaluations. We'll explain what they are, but we're going to be talking about the bright spots. There's actually a lot of good news buried in there. And overall, I think we have a lot of good news in this overall show as well. You'll see in Card Talk and elsewhere. So I'm actually looking forward to the show despite it being about

devaluations. Anytime there's devaluation news, I know I can count on Greg's glass half full analysis of what is there still to be happy about in this devaluation? I'm glad you appreciate that. That is definitely my orientation. And yeah, and but I'm not making stuff up. There's there's some good stuff here. Anyway, we'll get to that in a second. But in the meantime, if you're listening to this or watching this, don't forget that there are timestamps in the show notes. So you can go down to the show notes and jump around to wherever it is you want to see if

you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or go back and return to one later on. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Give it a thumbs up. Subscribe. Enable notifications. We appreciate all those things. So thank you for that. But right now, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yeah, the mailbag is huge today. We've got three pieces of giant mail.

They're all in response to our last show about which is the best American Express Platinum card. In that show, we talked about features of the Schwab Platinum Card and the Morgan Stanley Platinum Card. But I think all of these are about the Schwab Platinum Card. And so here goes. First up is Josh, who says, no mention of the bonus with $10 million at Schwab. And yeah, I looked that up because I wasn't aware of this. But if you have $10 million in assets with Schwab, you get and you have the Schwab Platinum card, you get $1,000. You know, good customer bonus every year. And so yeah, that's a nice, easy requirement there. Just deposit $10 million

and you're done. That's all. That's all you have to do. Simple, simple. Right. It's a nice, simple one. So I love those simple bonuses. Okay. Next up is NK3, who tells us actually it's not as hard as we thought to get $10 million because he's actually talking about a million dollars. But so NK3, I referred to as he, but let's say they. It says it is important to note that for the million in assets with Schwab, both negative and positive balances count. And as a reminder, with a million dollars in assets with Schwab, you get $200 back from Schwab each year, if you have the Schwab Platinum card. NK3 says, we used to have a mortgage with them. And as an investment customer, they gave the best rates. Overall, even when we

had a negative total balance with them, so they had a $700,000 mortgage and 400,000 investments and checking. So minus, you know, negative 300,000, basically overall, they still counted that as 1.1 million in assets and gave them the $200 Schwab platinum rebate each year. And NK3 goes on to say, joint accounts count for full value for each person. So both NK3's player two, NK3's significant other, and NK3 got $200 off each year, or $200 back really,

from their Schwab Platinum card each year. So that's really interesting. And I think that means, I don't know, I could be wrong, but I think that means if you jointly have 10 million, so only 5 million each, but you have them joint in a joint account and you each have your own Schwab Platinum, I think that means you'd get $1,000 each. Right. And if like 8 million of that was a mortgage on your mansion, then you only need another 2 million. That's it.

Yeah. That's it. So, but no, I thought that was fascinating that the mortgage counted towards the asset total. I mean, that's amazing because that does make it, I think, much more feasible for a much wider range of people to hit that million dollars. Right, right. Absolutely. And, you know, if you live in California and you're a homeowner, you probably are like, I've got that in spades. You're right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. In some locations, a million dollars is not much money anymore for a house. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I think that could easily get you into that range. And then $200

back a year on top of all of the credits on the platinum card suddenly makes the platinum card look like a really pretty good deal, right? It does. Because it has so many benefits and rebates and everything that you're pretty easily coming out ahead with those. So that's really cool stuff. But we're not done. Chris Wright wrote in saying something almost never mentioned, but probably applies to way more people. If you have the $150, if you have the corporate personal card, in addition to the platinum card apparently you get 150 credit each year uh by having a

platinum card and a corporate amex card um so i'm not too familiar with that benefit but um yeah i imagine a lot of people who work in big corporations probably have a corporate amex card and yeah 150 each year i've read about this before yeah if you if you have a corporate Amex in your name, yeah, you get $150 off of the platinum, $150 statement credit for having a consumer platinum and $100 for consumer gold, which is an even better deal because the gold card only costs $250 a year as is.

So if you've got a corporate Amex, then yeah, you can save yourself $100 on that annual fee. That's an excellent deal also. That's a really good point. You're right. Nobody ever writes about that. I imagine because most bloggers are not working for a large corporation. Most of us are working in a very small business, so we don't have a corporate Amex. But I've definitely seen people mention that before on social media. I've seen reels about it and this and that from folks that do. So we should probably mention that more often or include that information. That's a great point for anybody in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. So

Amex, if you're watching it, let us know what we need for the Frequent Miler team to get corporate. Where's my corporate Amex, Greg? Where's my corporate Amex? Yeah. All right. So that wraps up this week's Giant Mailbag and brings us to Card Talk. And for this week's Card Talk, Wells Fargo has joined the chat. Yeah. So Wells Fargo is out with some really big news. We've known that they were going to be introducing transferable points, but we finally have some details. Transferable points are coming.

If I remember right, April 4th, I think, is something like that, when the points become transferable points are coming uh if i remember right april 4th i think is when the when the something like that when the points become transferable uh and if you currently have the autograph card then your points are going to magically become transferable in april if i'm remembering right and uh just as a reminder the autograph autograph card, the Wells Fargo autograph card has no annual fee. It gives you three points per dollar for travel and transit, gas and phone plans and streaming services. So some decent category bonuses there. And there's also the active cash card, which is a fee-free card that earns cash back. But they say that if you have the autograph card or if you have any autograph card, you'd be able to move that cash back into points.

And so the active cash card, which is 2% cash back everywhere, becomes a 2x everywhere transferable points card. So that's pretty cool. So, all right. So let's talk about their transfer partners. They're out with a very small list, but they say they're going to be adding them, adding more throughout the year. So their current transfer partner list is Air France Kaline Flying Blue, which is a very solid entry, and Avios, which means British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus Avios. And of course, you can move those points also to Qatar Avios and soon to Finnair, right? And soon to Finnair. So you've got the whole Avios system covered there. And third one, third airline transfer is

Avianca Life Miles. So those are all one-to-one transfers. And those are some solid transfer partners. I mean, you've got all three alliances covered. You've got SkyTeam covered with the Air France Flying Blue. You've got OneWorld with the Avios and you've got Star Alliance well covered with Avianca LifeMiles. So that's pretty nice. And then a pretty big surprise is they threw in a hotel transfer and it's choice one to two. So just like City Premier can transfer City Points one to two to choice, now Wells Fargo can do the same thing.

So that's pretty bold coming out of the gate with that, I think. Yeah, it sure is. I think I'm really excited, to be honest, because this shows me that Wells Fargo knows what's up. They surely they could have had deals with Virgin Atlantic and with Singapore, for instance, almost shortly. I mean, those those programs partner with everybody and they could have then had themselves, you know, Virgin Atlantic that they think they could market to the American consumer probably, and they could say they had a Star Alliance partner with Singapore just for instance. But they didn't pick those. They picked the programs that are actually pretty good for each of those scenarios. And so I think that was smart.

And surely they have other agreements lined up, but smart of them to get a continuing marketing boost every month or whatever it is that they're going to do this by announcing another transfer partner. I think this was a really smart move that shows that they had some foresight and put some thought into how they're going to do this. Yeah, I totally agree. What's your bet of what the next transfer partner will announce? Oh, I don't know.

That's a good question. I didn't even really consider it that much. I mean, I think that Virgin Atlantic has to be, you know, they partner with everybody. And so they have to be one that's on the docket. But I'm not really sure after that. What do you think? Yeah, Virgin Atlantic is my bet. You know, there's some others like Emirates that that partner with everybody.

So that seems somewhat likely. Although, as you said, they do seem to be focusing on the programs that people in the, you know, loyalty space care about. And it's probably pretty deliberate from the point of view of they know what bloggers are writing about. And so they're going to go after those things. So I think that gives a double boost to Virgin Atlantic because they, even though they don't have a lot of sweet spots, they have some that are really nice. And so I can see that being an option. I think so too, but I'm so smart of them not to start with. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Air Canada is a great point because I assume they're going to have Air Canada. The fact that they picked LifeMiles, I think, was to launch with. And I'm making a lot of assumptions here.

I don't know that they have all this lined up, but I'm guessing that they must have the other partnerships lined up. And if they did and they still picked Avianca LifeMiles, I find that interesting because I would think Air Canada would seem more familiar to more Americans, probably than Avianca. I'm not sure that many Americans could tell you where Avianca is, because it's not named with a country name, right? So I'm not sure they could even tell you where it's from. But yeah, it shows me they're paying attention. And that's cool. Yeah, yeah. For our audience, where is Avianca from? Columbia. Based in Columbia. And again, I know that their hub is Bogota, but does the average person?

I don't know. So I think that that was a smart play, though, because it is a program that offers a lot of good sweet spots for people based in North America. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they probably know from the show how much you like Avianca LifeMiles. And so they were targeting me. Even though I don't have any Wells Fargo cards myself. Well, they're hoping that'll change soon. And part of their way of trying to change that is the other big news from Wells Fargo is that they are introducing a new card called the Autograph Journey card. This is a $95 card, has no foreign transaction fees. And each year, it'll automatically give you $50 back on airfare spend.

And since it gives you 4x rewards on airfare, that's kind of an easy, no-brainer way of getting $50 back each year. And so in a way, it's a $45 per year card, has transferable points. It earns 5X at hotels, 4X airfare, 3X all other travel, 3X dining, and then 1X everywhere else. It has travel protections, and it's going to come out with initial welcome bonus of 60,000 points after 4k spend in three months.

So what do you think about that new card? I mean, also very interesting to me. You know, it's not, I'm not sure I'm going to rush out and get it, but it's a competitor out of the gate. It's something that I think is worth considering for someone, especially if they're willing to get at least two cards. Now we've got a decent combo out of Wells Fargo with at least the active cash, I guess, and that new autograph card. So between those two, I think you've got a pretty good two card combination that if they expand the partnerships, and I have to imagine that they're going to expand it pretty significantly, then you've got something that's very highly

competitive with Citibank at the very least, and could end up being competitive with everybody else because obviously Wells Fargo issues the built card. So I've said before, and I'll maintain that I have to think that part of the reason that they were interested in issuing that card was the partnerships because obviously built, I would assume gave them access to partnerships that maybe they didn't have established already because they didn't have a transferable currency card. So I assume it gave them some knowledge and insight and communication with programs. So I have to imagine that this is going to expand pretty significantly. They seem to be focused on, like you said, what's going to appeal, and not just to bloggers. If they just wanted to appeal to bloggers, they could have picked, like Turkish is a bad example because

they devalued, but they could have picked something like that. They picked something that's actually pretty useful in each of the three cases for, I think, the average award traveler. So to start out with, now, if they only had these three partners, we wouldn't be particularly excited in the long run, but I assume they're going to be quite a few more. So I think this card is going to be something for someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of money on an annual fee. Like if you were going to get the premier card, cause you only wanted to pay $95 a year or a capital one venture card, cause you only wanted to pay $95 a year. Well, the autograph card might be a better pick for you because with that $50 credit, it's a little bit better. And then you're also going to potentially be able to combo with a couple of other cards for good category bonuses. I'll be curious to see

what happens moving forward. And I don't know if they announced, but I know other Wells Fargo cards have very good cell phone insurance. I don't know if it got announced whether this card was going to carry that also. I think so. I didn't mention that, but I think all of the ones we mentioned have cell phone insurance with only $25 deductible, which is very good because I think most are what, $50 minimum, right? Or it's more. Yeah. And some of them are like chases are a hundred. So yeah. I mean, 25 is great. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really nice to see, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't pick this combination ahead of any of the other transferable point programs right now, as things stand right now, like I wouldn't say, oh, instead of going for

chase or city or Cap one or amex go for this but it it is a strong enough thing to be a combination to be talked about in the same you know uh context as those other ones and it'll be very interesting to see what comes next and see if they one of the one of the downsides of like cities program that they have even stronger stronger like category bonuses and things that are available throughout their slew of cards. But one downside with Citi is they don't have a lot of ways to earn a lot of points outside of credit card spend. So it'll be interesting to see whether Wells introduces like referral, refer a friend bonuses, for example. Will there be any kind of shopping portal where we can earn points? Things like that, that Amex and Chase have ahead of, you know, like Citi, for example, for earning lots of points.

Yeah, I actually also thought that the initial welcome offer is weak considering the fact that they only have a few partners right now. I thought $60,000 after $4,000 spend, which is what they're launching with, isn't enough to get people very excited about the card. I think they would have had to go at least $80,000, if not $100,000 at this point to really make a splash. But maybe they knew that they're going to add more along the way and didn't want to go out of the gate with something so high. So, you know, we'll see. I think if you're somebody who travels for work and you get your travel expenses reimbursed, 5X airfare and 4X hotels that can, or is for the other way around 5X hotels and 4X airfare

that, you know, you can book directly. And then if you're getting reimbursed i mean this that that's the crowd that may want to jump on this card soon you know yeah yeah i can't think of any other card off the top of my head that'll give you 5x hotels uh without having to go through a portal or anything like that right right and and i mean maybe you'd want the hotel specific card if you're staying a lot at marriott for for instance, or a lot of, you know, IHG or whatever. So it's not necessarily going to be your best option. But I think there's certainly a crowd card. You're basically earning 10 X choice points, but even better, you can use those points for other things that'll be often more valuable. Even if it's just the one-to-one transfer. Yeah.

Very good. Okay. So that's card talk for today. What crazy thing is next? So we got to ask ourselves what crazy thing did Turkish airlines do this week? So Turkish, they're like,

ah, they recently destroyed their award chart I mean they really we'll talk about that in a minute uh in the devaluations and so uh they came out now after they've done that with a discount so they have an award uh this well not a discount a rebate an award rebate so you have to book I don know, between now and sometime in the future. And you'll get a 20% rebate on a Turkish Miles and Smiles award ticket for travel on Turkish. Let's be clear. But that 20% rebate is a rebate. So you won't get the miles back until after the flight.

So you need to have enough miles to pay for the entire cost up front. And again, this is only valid for awards on Turkish metal. You'll get the 20% back after you take the flight, a week after or something like that. And those rebated miles that you get back will expire on December 31st of 2025. Now, actually, I do know the booking and travel period goes to August 31st of this year. So if you book now for an award for travel this summer in July, then you'll get your rebated miles about a week after you take that flight in July. And then you'll only have about a year and a half to use those rebated miles before they expire. Ordinarily, when you transfer miles, Turkish miles and smiles, they have a three-year expiration policy. So three years from

when you transfer them, they expire and you can pay to extend them one time, I think, but it's not probably worth it in most cases, or maybe it is depending on your situation, but it costs quite a bit in order to do. So these rebated miles, though, I don't think they'll be able to be extended at all. You're just going to have a year and a half to use them. So use them or lose them. And that's not all of the restrictions. It gets worse. It gets even worse than that. So it's a rebate instead of a discount. So you have to, to use them so use them or lose them and that's not all of the restrictions it gets worse it gets even worse than that so it's a rebate instead of a discount so you have to you know have it up front

you get the rebate back you don't get the miles back until after you the flight is completed the miles only have a short expiration period and to add a cherry on top turkish miles and smiles only the member booking the award gets the rebate you don't get a rebate for tickets you book for other passengers so if i book a flight on turkish for my family of four i'm only going to get the rebate for my ticket i won't get up for any of the rest of my family members this is just the most absurd promotion ever like you know when you listen to each any one of these like downsides to it is enough to turn me away. Any one of them.

But taken together, it's more like a punishment than a reward. I wouldn't even consider looking into this unless I was about to book a Turkish flight anyway. Then I'd be like, oh, okay, I'll get some miles back that I may or may not use before they expire. But otherwise, I don't even. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's crazy. And, you know, so now, as we'll mention a little bit,

North America to Turkey is 65,000 miles in business class. So if you booked that and you got your 20% back, you get 13,000 miles back. Now that's more than enough for a domestic one way economy class ticket on United. So, you know, you could look at it and say, well, I'm going to get a domestic one way back and go to Hawaii, you know, you could look at it and say, well, I'm going to get a domestic one-way bag and go to Hawaii, you know, as a rebate on the flight. And that's not

necessarily a bad deal if you can find the availability and you, you know, if you're well attuned to Turkish's limitations anyway, then that's not necessarily a bad deal, but you got to make sure you can use that within a year and a half. And again, don't be looking for anybody else because you're not going to get that rebate for any of the other passengers. So, you know, if my, my family wanted to maximize this, I can't do it for my kids because I have no way to transfer to their loyalty programs. So, so my wife at most, my wife and I could each get the rebate if we split our booking, you know, and had separate PNRs, which it doesn't sound like a good idea. It's a hassle. It's a big hassle. with. Yeah, it is. It's a hassle.

It's a big hassle. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I wouldn't even bother doing that either. Nope. Okay. So anyway, so yeah, Nick pointed out there's a case where it's at least not a punishment to get those miles back.

That's true. Because you probably could use the miles for a domestic flight. So it's a little... Oh, that may still be a punishment. I don't know. But anyway, that aside, let's talk about award talk. And for this week's award talk, we've got one of the many reasons why you must love American Airlines miles, right? Because American Airlines has a pretty big sale going on.

Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, American Airlines, I wrote a post a while back about why I've been loving them so much lately. And that's despite the fact that often you'll do an award search and see like huge, huge numbers for what an American Airlines flight might cost. But there's lots of reasons to like them. And one of them is they sometimes have these amazing award sales. And this one is really worth paying attention to. It's 5,000 miles one way. You need to book by March 15th, so depending on when you're listening to this, well it's either too late or it's coming up quick. And it's for travel between April 2nd and May 29th. So pretty decent travel window there.

There are only 500,000 one-way seats available at this 5,000 point rate. So we have no idea how long this, whether the promo will still be in effect on March 15th when it is the last day to book. It's only good for travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, but still. And it's for flights originating in the contiguous 48 U.S. states and to select destinations in those states, Mexico, Caribbean, and Central America. I looked at this and right off the bat, I just looked at a few routes from Detroit, which is my home airport. I looked at, could I fly to Aruba for 5,000 points? And yeah, I see lots of availability going to Aruba and back, by the way. So I could both book round trip from Detroit for 10,000 points or starting in Aruba to Detroit for 5,000 points.

That part surprised me, actually, because the terms say for flights originating in the contiguous 48 states. That wouldn't be, but it still works. And I also looked at Detroit to LAX, and that was also widely available for 5,000 points, just as a couple of examples. And I should mention that I was really pleased to see that I was able to find one-stop, you know, decent timing routes for each of these examples that I talked about. So, you know, I say I was surprised to find that because Detroit is not even close to an American Airlines hub. I mean, we have like three or maybe four non-stop American flights out of Detroit. And so it's surprising to find any one-stop flights

to just about anywhere on American. And so I thought that was great. Yeah, so if you have an opportunity to use this and you have American Airlines miles, go for it. Yeah, yeah. I think the Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday thing might be somewhat of a limiting factor for some people anyway, if you can't just book a weekend trip, for instance. But otherwise,

I mean, it seems like a very good deal. I actually didn't even look at this because I don't have any need or really flexibility to travel during that window. So I just ignored this one altogether. But it seems like it would be a great deal for those who are in position to take advantage. I mean, especially some of those flights to the Caribbean, I feel like could be a particularly good deal. And I mean, domestically, too, especially if you're traveling from one of these small airports, like or I shouldn't even say small, a non-American Airlines hub like both Greg and I. So I think there's some strength there. And, you know, you can do a week long Saturday to Saturday vacation. And so that's pretty surprising and pretty awesome. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Very good. All right.

That I think is no, there's one more piece of award talk, right? So last piece of award talk is that Rio Las Vegas has now joined world of Hyatt. So World of Hyatt is back in Las Vegas with Rio. And they have, well, I mean, this is, I think overall, some pretty good news, right? Because Rio now is bookable with Hyatt points, although I think it's not always a good deal on points. But Rio can be very cheap sometimes. So that can make it a really cheap way to pick up Hyatt Elite nights. And so far, so good. It sounds like globalist treatment has been quite good. Yeah. You know, I believe they're amidst a

big renovation too. So, you know, it might not be such a horrible place to actually stay, but even if you're not interested in staying, if you're mostly interested in earning a high top tier status through cheap stays, it's nice to see that the Vegas crowd gets a new option there to check into the Rio when prices are really low. So great news there. Yeah. And you might be able to use this American Airlines sale to get yourself to Las Vegas and get a really cheap stay at Rio. I understand globalists get breakfast at Hash House at Go-Go, which is famed for their massive portions. Whether or not you like that is obviously going to vary from person to person, but I like the massive portions at Hash House at Go-Go. So that would be a draw for me.

So anyway, yeah, I think that's nice to see another reasonable option to pick up Hyatt Elite Knights in Las Vegas, or at least to see an option return. Yeah. And I think it's especially good for Hyatt top tier globalists who are trying to renew their global status because unlike when Hyatt had the partnership with MGM, this is actually a Hyatt. It's branded as a Hyatt so that you get full globalist treatment, including on paid stays, you get no, well, on both paid and award stays, you get no resort fees. So when the prices are real cheap, having no resort fees can make a big difference in the overall cost of that stay. I mean, it could be because if you had to pay resort fees, it'd be like double. If you're less than globalist, you won't pay resort fees if you pay with points for the stay.

But if you pay with cash, you will have to pay resort fees. Yep. Okay, very good. Great point. All right. That brings us my friends to our main event. Main event time. Bright spots in the latest award devaluations. We're going to introduce devaluations that have been announced or occurred with Hyatt, Wyndham, Vacasa, ANA, Etihad, and Turkish. But we're not going to be really that focused on what the devaluation is as much as where the bright spots in all of these and let's let's start with with hyatt um so bad news first so uh annually they do their category changes they sort of rebalance their portfolio so to speak, and reassign what categories various hotels are in. And we have 137 hotels that are increasing their category, meaning they'll be more expensive to book with

points, and only 46 that are decreasing. So that's why we're calling it a devaluation. But there is a lot of good news here. And I think the number one good news item I just want to stress is that Hyatt still has award charts they and that's something that most of the big chains have have jettisoned and so when we complain that there's this Hyatt devaluation, that's really kind of unfair to Hyatt because Marriott and Hilton and IHG might be having way worse devaluations, but we don't know because they don't have a word chart. So there's just no good way to be even able to tell that prices have increased in those programs. Whereas we know with Hyatt and we know that the percentage of increase is actually very small. Hyatt's got over 1300 properties in their portfolio. The number going down represents only about 10%.

Actually, it's going up, right? The 137 properties going up a category. Number going up, yeah. Represent only about 10%. And so the vast majority are staying the same. And so actually, I think right there, like you can almost just stop the conversation and say, well, you know, that's actually good news.

I mean, yes. 90% aren't changing in a world where the price of almost everything has gone up over the last few years. 90% not changing is that's pretty good news, I guess. Exactly, exactly. And some surprising thing is that there's specific good news in California. So Hyatt hotels in California have been sort of notoriously high categories. And so there's some interesting things happening there. First of all, California gets a Category 1 hotel. The Wild Palms Hotel, which is in Sunnyvale, is about to go down to category one. So that means that it'll only be standard 5,000 points per night to book that hotel. It might be when it's off peak, it would be as low as 3,500 points per night. So for those who are looking for cheap stays to, you know, again, to get your

Hyatt elite status, that could be a really good option. And it's just really notable because California is not the place in the past you would have gone for cheap Hyatt hotels. The other notable thing is that for many of us have category one through four free night certificates that are available through Hyatt's credit card as an annual free night or as a free night you get with $15,000 spend. It's also available through other ways with Hyatt, like as milestone benefits and as, I can't even remember what it's called, the brand explorer benefit. Every time you get to five different brands, you get one.

So there's category one through four certificates. So it's notable when there's new category four hotels. California has three new ones or ones that have dropped or about to drop to category four. You've got one in Oakland, the Kissel Uptown. You've got the Hyatt Centric Fisherman's Wharf. And you've got the Hyatt Place in Santa Cruz. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's good news. Very good news for California. And I think it's worth mentioning too with Hyatt here. I think they deserve the credit for having an award chart. They also deserve credit for announcing all this stuff in advance because you know as we mentioned

these these things you'll know that the you can see which properties are going up in price and if you book them now then you'll lock in the price now and so even if you book one that is going to cost more points later on if you book it now you the now rate. So that's nice because not all chains do that. Like Greg said, most chains now have gotten rid of an award chart altogether, but even the few competitors that do still have an award chart don't provide a list of the places that are going to change in price. So I think this gives you a heads up and gives you a chance a few weeks to make some plans and book places that are going to go up. But yeah, obviously, these are some great options going down.

But there's some other good category four options too, right? Yeah. So there's a new one in France. I don't know how it's pronounced in French, but it looks to me like first name. I'm sure that's not how the French pronounce it, which is in Bordeaux. And so, you know, I haven't looked at reviews, but I imagine it would be a really decent place

to stay in Bordeaux. And then I just wanted to point out that, so we have our best uses of Hyatt category one through four certs post. And some of the favorites from there, quite a few of the favorites are going to remain category four. So I'm just going to read them really quickly. But if Nick, if you want to say anything specific about any of these jump in, we've got the Thompson Washington, DC. So Thompson's a high-end brand within Hyatt's portfolio. And so it's great to see one of those remain in category four. The Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress. Nick and I both enjoy going there. The Ambassador Chicago,

Hyatt-centric French Quarter, New Orleans. The Hy hyatt regency jersey city i've stayed there in like that place uh the hyatt regency jfk airport at resorts world new york that's a handful but it remains category three and and i think nick has been there and enjoyed that one yeah um carolina inn in chapel hill north carolina that's it It's actually moving up a category from three to four, but still bookable with your category one through four certificates. That's right on campus in Chapel Hill, UNC North Carolina. So that would be, I've never stayed there, but I would love to. I graduated from UNC as an undergrad, by the way.

The Bellevue Hotel, Philadelphia. I know a lot of people who have stayed there and enjoyed that one. Hyatt Regency, Seattle is a really good option in Seattle. Spirit Ridge, British Columbia remains category four. And the Hyatt Regency in Sydney, Australia remains category four. So a lot of good options. And that's not the whole list, but I just wanted to pull out some that struck me. Yeah, it's also worth mentioning, I didn't actually check.

So tell me if this is the case. Did you notice if SLH, if any SLH properties changed in category? They haven't. So Hyatt has, it's a good point. We need to talk about SLH. So Hyatt did not announce any changes to SLH categories. And that's surely because the partnership with SLH is going away soon. And we don't know the exact date, but I think it's definitely worth looking at your, the SLH options now,

like stop listening to the show and look now because it could happen any day. I would guess that we have most of March to, to, to look and book, but that's just a guess. And so if there's any that interest you, you could go ahead and book them now for the future. And those days should be honored.

But, you know, the only thing I'd be hesitant about is if you're worried about like you don't know your exact dates of stay. I wouldn't expect to be able to change the dates after the case. So worst case, you may have to cancel. But as long as you cancel outside of the no cancel window, you'll get your points back. So there's no risk there. Yeah, I wanted to bring that up because I know that there are some SLH properties that are also bookable with category one to four free night certificates. So obviously with points, there's a lot of them that are possible also, and that might be worth booking. But if you have a free night certificate, again, it could be another opportunity to

get very good value out of one of those category one to four free night certificates that we expect will go away at some point soon. I mean, like Greg said, my guess has been April 1st, but that's a guess. I don't have any inside info on that. And I could see maybe what if it comes, you know, when this category change happens, that these places disappear. That's not impossible. I don't have the exact date of the category change off the top of my head, but sometime late March. March 26th, I think.

Okay, thank you. And yeah, I would try to book before then just to be safe. And yeah, there are so many category three and four SLH properties abroad or outside of the United States. So many in Europe, it's ridiculous. And so many of them look really, really nice that if you have those certificates, might as well lock in some stays if you think you can make your way to Europe or wherever you see them. Absolutely. One downside, I guess, that we don't know is I don't know for sure you'll get Hyatt Elite Night credit for those stays after they've left Hyatt. Yeah, yeah, that's a bit of a risk there if you're worried about your Elite status.

Absolutely. All right. We're going to go on from Hyatt then to talk about Wyndham. We've mentioned on the show many times that one great use of Wyndham points is to book La Casa vacation rentals. And the price for using points to book La Casa vacation rentals has been 15,000 points per bedroom per night. So for example, if you have a two bedroom unit for one night, it would cost 30,000 points because that's two bedrooms. And if you have a two bedroom for two nights, it'd be twice that 60,000 points. Well, uh, in, for the last several months, uh, they've let you book,

uh, with points as long as the vacation rental after taxes and fees cost $350 or less per bedroom per night. So for example, a two bedroom for, uh, for one night, um, as long as it costs $700 or less, they would let you book it with points. $700 or less per night? Per night, yeah, for that two-bedroom. But that's changing now. And so here's the devaluation is that if the unit costs more than $250 per bedroom per night, it's going to go up to 30,000 points per bedroom per night. So it's doubling in point price if it's over $250. And the new cap is $500 per bedroom

per night is the cap. That's the most it can cost for you to be able to book with points at all. So in a way, some properties are doubling in price. The ones that average $250 to $350 per bedroom per night, those are doubling in point price. But the good news is that the properties that are between $350 and $500 per bedroom per night are now back in play. We can now book those again with points. I know it sounds awful when you look at it as like, oh, that's double what it was before. That's true. But at the same time, there are a lot of places that are really, really nice. Let's say in Hawaii, let's say you're looking at a one bedroom and saying, okay, so one bedroom would be 30,000 points per night

for this like luxury condo or whatever it is. And just because it's a one bedroom doesn't mean that you can only sleep two people in it. It probably has a full living room with a pullout sofa, for example. And so 30,000 points per night for a luxury place in that example is, you know, if you compare Hyatt goes up to 40,000 points per night on their award chart, Marriott goes well over a hundred thousand points per night on their award chart. I mean, it just paid 35,000 Hyatt

points per night to stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. and I didn't have a one-bedroom suite. I had a one-room. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So to put things in context, it sounds like a huge devaluation. In a way, it is, but it's also still potentially a great use for Wyndham points. If you think of it this way, it's kind of hard to get less than at least one cent per point with your Wyndham points with this redemption. You'd have to book a place that's less than $150 per bedroom per night

or less than between $250 and $300 would be the two places where you'd be getting less than one cent per Wyndham point. And so that's a very narrow range of places where you'd be getting less than one cent per Wyndham Point. And so, you know, that's a very narrow range of places that we'd be looking at. And, you know, I think one cent or better with Wyndham Points is good value. It is, especially if you get the Wyndham Owner Business Card and you're earning eight points per dollar at gas stations. I mean, getting one cent per point is like an 8%, you know% category bonus at gas stations. That's pretty darn good. And I say that facetiously. It's fantastic. And if you've got one of those earner business card or rather Wyndham earner cards, whether

consumer or business, you get a 10% discount. And so instead of the 30,000 points per bedroom per night, Greg was talking about a few minutes ago for a $500 a night, one bedroom in Hawaii, you'd only be paying 27,000 points per night for that because you get a 10% discount. Oh yeah. I forgot to even mention that. And if you look at what, what's the likely value of your points, we're saying one cent is the least you're, you know, probably going to get, but I think more likely is that, you vacation rental averages $200 per bedroom per night or $400 per bedroom per night, you're looking at 1.33 cents per point value. The cents per point value tops out.

The most you get is 1.67. This is not counting the fact that you might get a discount with the earner card, which would boost your cents per point value. But but that's pretty good. So anyway, so I think while it's again, it is a devaluation for for stays where the it previously would have cost between two hundred and $350, there's good news there still. Yeah, yeah. I think overall it's still good news

because like you said, still good value for Wyndham Points for vacation rentals. And there's not another good value way to get vacation rentals. And certainly when you consider the 10% discount, the sense per point you're getting here is quite good. It's better than what you would get anywhere else using points for a vacation rental. And outside of the Americas, Wyndham still has cottages.com too. And I think that's mostly in the UK, right? Yeah, it is entirely. Yeah.

Yeah. The partnership's entirely in the UK and that one is a little bit different. So that's going to be 300, you can book up to $300 per bedroom per night. Right. And that price remains at 15K per night. Right. Per bedroom. Per bedroom, yes. All right. Let's move on to Etihad. Etihad has devalued their program by reducing award prices. That doesn't sound like a devaluation, does it?

That's only half the story, Greg. Yeah. Why are we calling this a devaluation if they've reduced award prices? Well, first of all, they've made miles expire 18 months after you've earned them or transferred them, presumably, unless you credit an actual flight. So the mileage expiration policy is not particularly customer friendly at 18 months. And having to credit a flight to Etihad means, I mean, you have to pay for a flight with Etihad or maybe one of their partners, I guess. I mean, that just, and credited to Etihad. That's not very nice, but forget about it. I don't even care so much about that. What I really care about is that they have instituted an award cancellation fee, whereby if you cancel, I think at least 21 days in advance, the cancellation fee is 25% of your

miles. That's huge. And if you cancel within seven days of departure, it's 75% of the miles used for the ticket. That's nuts. It is totally nuts. Why? I mean, I hate it when you have to pay $200 or so for award cancellation. But this is this is just so much worse. You're losing so much value by if you have to cancel an award. But there's some good news here. As I stated up front, they have reduced their award prices. So, for example, if you fly between New York and Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi is their hub, in first class, the award prices decreased from 220,000 miles to 160,000 miles. So that's a pretty significant decrease between Abu Dhabi and London where they run their,

and he had first apartments. The price has reduced from 140,000 miles one way to 120,000 miles. So that's nice flying, shorter distance one Abu Dhabi to Mali. So to the Maldives, it's gone down from 45,000 miles to 35,000 in business class. So that's good news that these have decreased. There's also currently as we're talking a 20% transfer bonus that's good news that these have decreased. There's also currently, as we're talking, a 20% transfer bonus that's targeted from Amex to Etihad.

So you could have even fewer Amex points to book these things now. Personally, though, it's hard to find good news in here despite those decreases. Thank you for saying it. It was the elephant in the room. I was like, yeah, but can you really call this bright? I mean, this, this one's the one that I feel like is one of these things. It's not like the others, the Etihad one is the one because, you know, so if you booked one of those first-class awards from New York to Abu Dhabi for 160,000 miles, if you have to cancel that even far in advance, it's going to cost you 40,000 miles. I mean, even if you only valued those at one cent each, which is low, then you're talking $400

for a cancellation fee. I mean, that's like talk about a return to the dark ages. That's I can't, I can't take that. That's too much risk. So I would look at this and say, okay, well, this is only really, this program is only really good to me to book last minute when I know I'm going to take the trip, right? So like if I'm booking a ticket for tomorrow or a couple of days from now, when I'm very confident I'm going to take the trip, that's the only time I would probably consider redeeming Etihad miles. And at that point, these flights are probably available via partners and American Airlines

charges far fewer miles than Etihad does for the same awards. My thoughts exactly, yeah. So it's kind of like only good news if you don't have partner miles that apply. And, you know, at least lately for quite a while, Air Canada, Aeroplane has not had access to their first class awards. So you've had to book with American and American recently hasn't had access to anything more than 30 days away. So, but yeah,

as Nick says, if you're booking last minute anyway, and you have American miles, that's where you should be looking to pay. So yeah, very little bright spot there, but maybe you don't have American miles and you have lots of Amex points and you're about to book last minute or looking for, I don't know, a wedding or something. And so you, you know, you're going to be flying it for sure. So the wedding doesn't get called off, Greg. All right. I don't know. Well, that's going to be last minute, Greg. You're not booking that in advance. Hopefully you're not booking that in advance.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, a reader commented and said that they feel like we overvalue the flexibility that most people don't cancel their trips. They don't book a lot of speculative trips. They take the trips. They book the trips, and they fly the trips that they booked. And I mean, I get that. But if you've heard anything in my voice today, you know that I probably am not feeling 100% because I've had this cough and lost my voice for days. And I don't know when that's going to happen. And you know, right now, the condition I'm in, I could fly. But who knows? Like things happen. So I just, I feel like that's

too much of a risk. I don't even like a $200 cancellation fee. There are situations where I'll accept that, but this is way more. So I'm, there's just, I don't know. I have no interest in the ITAD program at this point. This killed it for me. People have asked us in the past, and I don't know the answer to this. If you have travel insurance and you get sick, there's an event that's covered by your travel insurance what happens in a situation like this like yeah there are some that i know now do it specifically mention the reimbursement for the miles okay so yeah so maybe that maybe that would be covered in some interesting way who knows yeah but you'd have to value those miles at to reimburse you but um but then still then you're stuck with uh

a bunch of edihad miles that have to be spent in 18 months or you have to credit a flight to edihad to extend them so yeah it's yeah ugly ugly ugly at your head. Bye bye. All right. So next up, ANA, what's going on with ANA? ANA. So they they've announced a word chart changes and prices for mostly for business class and first class are going up. You've got things like ANA business class between the US and Japan, flying ANA, increasing in cost. Currently, you'd pay between 75,000, 85,000 miles. Round trip, right? Yes, correct. Round trip. But that's changing to 100,000 to 105,000. So that's going up. You've got first class awards between the U.S. and Japan going from 150,000 miles to now ranging from 150 to 170,000 miles.

Partner business class awards between the U.S. and Europe currently cost 88,000 miles round trip. That's moving to 100,000 miles. Partner business class awards between U.S. and japan going from 90 000 to 117 thousand miles and uh partner business class awards between the us and middle east increasing from 104 to 130 000 miles those are just a selection of of the changes um but we've got some good news here right nick yeah for sure uh so first of all, awards on ANA and economy class. So on ANA medal and economy class, not changing at all. So if you're an economy class traveler, that's good news for

you. Premium economy, for the most part, is staying the same. There's one or two spots, I think, that something changed, perhaps. But overall, still staying the same there. And on Star Alliance, no, I take that back. Both economy and premium economy for awards on ANA medal, that's staying the same. No changes at all for economy or premium economy on ANA medal. Some of the Star Alliance economy awards are experiencing a minor change, but it's really minor in most cases. And we're talking maybe 5,000 miles round trip on the ones that are increasing, which is like 2,500 miles each way. It's hardly a devaluation to speak of there, which by the way, is really kind of also the case on their Star Alliance

awards. So when you consider that their pricing is round trip, if you look at, for example, their partner business class awards to Europe are increasing from 88,000 miles round trip to 100,000 miles round trip. So you're talking about 12,000 miles more, 6,000 miles more each way. That still makes them very competitive at 50K each way. It's still one of the best sweet spots to Europe if you can find round trip availability on partners that don't add surcharges like United or Air Canada. Yeah, yeah. And there have been some big downsides in a all along that those haven't changed.

Unfortunately. Um, I wish we could announce good news about that, but we can't, um, you know, Nick mentioned they, they pass along surcharges and that's big. So like, I would never look at flying like Lufthansa or Swiss, uh, business class with ANA miles because they impose such big surcharges, for example. But that's not all. Also, they require round trip award bookings. So that makes it really difficult to find your award space all at once. You know, we like to book one ways because sometimes you might book one way with one program and the other way with a totally different program that might not be Star Alliance in both ways, for example. Because you have to go where the word space is, but this forces you just in Star Alliance and preferably just Star Alliance carriers that have low fuel surcharges like United or... Type Air Portugal, Air Canada,

Lot Polish is pretty reasonable, SAS. Yeah, yeah. And okay, so, and another big downside, two more big downsides I'll mention of ANA haven't changed that their miles expire after three years, hard stop, there's nothing you can do about it. But book something with those miles before they expire, or induce a new global pandemic because they did. It did keep the miles alive during the pandemic. So that was nice. Those are your two options there. Then another big

problem is that the Amex is their only program that transfers to ANA and it can take like, you know, two to five days or something like it takes several days for that transfer to happen. So if you see award space available and you initiate the transfer, it might not be available by the time you get those points. So lots of downsides to ANA anyway. And so that's obviously not good news, but the point here is that you probably weren't looking to ANA anyway. And so prices go up. What does it matter? But I mean, I guess I, you know, I think that the people that were looking at ANA, these changes are relatively mild. In the overall scheme of things. I mean, they were charging 75 to 85,000 miles round trip on their own flights to Japan in business class, which was incredible. And now it's just going up to 100 to 105 at 50k each way. That's still a fantastic price to Asia.

The problem is that they add surcharges and their surcharges are really high right now. But if they increase because they have fluctuated quite a bit, then that could end up being, you know, not so bad. So yeah, I don't know. You're right. They still have the same shortcomings that they've always had. And so if you're somebody who was willing to look past those, then I think the increases here are actually relatively mild. And if you weren't already booking with ANA, then these prices are still good, but it's still probably not going to be a play for you because those restrictions do make it difficult. But the other piece of really good news is that the Round the World award chart is still untouched so far. They have not made any changes whatsoever to the Round the World award chart. So if you can book a bigger trip, you can still book business class around the world, up to 12 segments, stops in up to eight

cities. And it varies based on distance, but you can put together some pretty good itineraries in the, I don't know, 145,000 mile band per passenger. You might be able to get some shorter ones for like 115K per passenger, I think, or if you're willing to go up to 170,000 per passenger, you could build a pretty long round the world itinerary. And there's more distance spans than those. But those are all business class prices for stops in up to eight cities in business class. So that is still pretty exciting for people that are willing to do the effort, A, willing to first take a total chance on transferring to ANA that there's going to be award space when your miles get there, and and then be able to have the flexibility to take

advantage of that and make it work. Yeah. Yeah. It has long been one of the best deals and points and miles that are around the world ward chart, specifically for business class Star Alliance travel. And the fact that it's not changing so far, we don't know that they won't announce something in the future, but the fact that it's not changing so far is great news for anyone interested in doing that. It's not hard to put together a itinerary that would cost around 125,000 miles altogether for one person to fly around the world in business class. And so if you think about the business platinum card offer that's out right now that we talked about early in the show for 250,000 points, that means that like if one person signs

up for that card meets the minimum spend requirements, you'd end up with over 250,000 points because you earn points from that spend requirement as well. And you can book two people round the world in business class with that one welcome bonus, which is incredible. That is that is absolutely incredible. So it's nice that that's still there. It does take some effort. Greg's written a lot about the round the world chart and how to use it, how to book an A&A around the world award. Obviously, you've still got the challenge of surcharges, but you know, there are airlines you can fly where you won't get hit with them yeah yeah um all right okay we've got one more though we do our last one is turkish turkish so ouch ouch yeah ouchy wow they they really destroyed

their award chart so turkish announced a new award chart with like five days notice or something silly, like maybe it was a week. It was very little notice. And they really, really devalued the award chart pretty significantly for the most part. So for instance, business class awards from North America to Europe went up from 45,000 miles each way to 85,000 miles each way. And that's not nearly the worst increase. So business class to the Middle East went from forty seven K to ninety three thousand business class to Central Asia, like India, for instance, went from fifty two thousand five hundred to one hundred thousand miles each way. Business class to South America. I don't even know what that was before, but it's one hundred and forty thousand miles now, one way from North America to South America.

It's insane. It's insane. And it's not just North America based awards. I mean, there are some crazy ones. I looked up around the world. Europe to Oceania used to be 52,500 miles one way in business class with Turkish. And now it's 160,000. It's like tripled and then some.

So I mean, they reallyed uh all of the sweet spots on their award chart well not all of them for the most part they slaughtered those sweet spots so you're not gonna before you get into the good news that we listed i just want to i want to mention one one piece of good news there is that you know turkish miles do expire after three years uh with nothing you do about it and we talked talked early in the show about an award rebate where you get some miles that expire even sooner. So the good news I want to point out here is it's going to be a lot easier to spend a lot of miles just by booking any of these awards because they're going to cost so much more. Right, right, right. And I mentioned all business class examples there, but economy class experience the same sort of thing.

So whether you're booking an economy or business, same sort of thing. Most awards on their partners have just skyrocketed or on Turkish and awards are now additive in price. So, you know, when you have multiple segments, you're going to pay for multiple awards. And so it's just like, it's gotten way worse, even worse than it sounds. Because when you consider paying an additive sort of a price, it gets even worse. So that's the bad news. But, but, but the show is about the good news, right? So the good news in this devaluation, and I think that this is pretty strong good news, is that Domestic Star Alliance awards are still a great value. They went up to 10,000 miles each way in economy or 15,000 miles each way in business class. That's only an increase of 2,500 miles each way on those awards in both cases for economy and

business. So you can still fly from New York or Boston to Hawaii for 10,000 miles one way or to Alaska for 10,000 miles one way or to Alaska for 10,000 miles one way or New York to Los Angeles, if you can find United Polaris business class available to partners, which is a big if they don't release a lot of award availability to partners. But if you can, you're talking 15,000 miles to book that, which is far less than what United would charge you. Or most other programs. That's's good. Yeah. And I think this deserves a little more conversation, which when Nick discovered and wrote about first wrote about the incredible value in booking United with Turkish to fly to Hawaii or Alaska.

At the time, it was what 7500 way. Um, a lot of people thought, you know, Oh, this is a great find, but, uh, it's going to be dead in minutes because now that it's being blogged about, uh, you know, Turkish is definitely gonna kill this, this sweet spot. Um, you know, people not only thought it, they wrote it in the comments. A lot of people like to predict doom and gloom like this. And sometimes they're right in some situations, but not here. And obviously not here because they barely touched barely touched this one i mean it's still so much better of a deal than any other thing going uh that uh obviously obviously this was not their incentive to devalue they it was all their other uh routes that they um that they made significant um they significantly

punished us with. Yeah, yeah. So I think this is, I'm excited that that didn't really change. I just went to Hawaii a week ago or a week and a half or whatever it is now. And I flew on Turkish awards, booked my entire family, all four of us. And it was an economy class, long flights from New York to Honolulu, but the nonstop New York to Honolulu both ways, which cost us 15,000 miles round trip per passenger. And nowolulu both ways, which cost us 15,000 miles round trip per passenger.

And now it will cost us 20,000 miles round trip per passenger. I mean, that's not enough of an increase to stop me from booking that again. So I think that's- You're going to pay more than that one way with most programs. Right. Right. Exactly. United would charge at best, I think, $22,500.

I mean, I guess they have dynamic pricing now. So I guess potentially they could charge less, but generally speaking, you're going to pay 22,500 miles for something that's available to partners one way. With Turkish, you could pay less than that round trip. So that's still pretty amazing. And on Turkish metal, it's not horrible necessarily if you want to go to Istanbul anyway. It's 65,000 miles one way now from the United States to Istanbul. If you're going to connect anywhere beyond that, it's going to cost you more miles for more segments. But that's not a terrible award price, although Turkish had surcharges. So you're going

to pay, I think, about $300 in surcharges nowadays to fly from the US to Istanbul, maybe even a little bit more. So it's not a great award deal by any stretch. But if they have more availability to their own members than they release to partners, and or if you're in a situation where Avianca LifeMiles is not showing the availability that you want, which is conceivable, then 65,000 miles one way is not necessarily a terrible deal, particularly, I think, for people based on the West Coast. Those on the East Coast, in some cases, anyway, would be better off canada aeroplane uh for the fact that they won't pay any surcharges for starters and then on top of that for more friendly policies in general uh but i think for folks on the west coast maybe 65k to istanbul particularly if you can get availability for like multiple passengers

that may not be the worst yeah and even not on the west coast so so i'm i fly out of detroit the turkish recently introduced a flight between istanbul and detroit and i've been eager to try it out in business class i haven't had a chance yet um yeah if that award space is available with partners, I would do a little bit. I would prefer it would still cost more miles, I think, with Avianca or with Air Canada. No, with Avianca, it only costs you $63,000. Oh, $63,000. And you'd pay a tiny bit less and you'd pay no surcharges. But if, as Nick said, if it's possible that there will be award space booking with Turkish that won't be available to partners.

And in that case, I wouldn't mind paying the 65K depending on how much the surcharges are. I'd have to just make that decision. Is it worth it to get that flight? But yeah, Turkish has great onboard catering. So I'd love to do that. Almost especially I'd like to fly back because that's a day like coming back and really enjoy the food as opposed to spending most of the time sleeping. Yeah. Yeah.

And you also have access to their fantastic lounge in Istanbul if you're flying back. So that's the direction I'd rather be flying with them also. Okay. I think that brings us to the end of this week's main event, right? Yeah, that's it. Okay, so now we're on to this week's question of the week. And so for this week's question of the week, we had a question that came in on our American Airlines Advantage Complete Guide. And I thought this was a fantastic question. I didn't know the answer. I'll be curious to see if you know the answer. I did find the answer, but I'll be curious

to see if you know it. So here we go. Scott says, does anyone know how booking hotels through the American Airline shopping portal works as far as which loyalty points plan year the points will post in? For example, if I booked a hotel on February 15th of this year for a stay that happens in April of this year, when the loyalty points post to my account, will they post to the year ending on February 29th? In other words, will they post from when he booked the hotel or will they post to this new year that began on March 1st because he completed the stay after March 1st? What date will those miles get, Greg? That is such a good question. I would guess, and you're right that I don't know the answer. I would guess that the answer is the date you completed the stay, because that's when you've

sort of met the terms of the portal thing. That's what I would have guessed too, and both of us would have guessed wrong. So I'm glad I did a little bit of research because I thought the same. I assumed probably they're going to post with the checkout date was my thought, but that's not the case. Apparently I found a very clear data point on Flyer Talk. Now it was a little bit older. It was from a booking they made in 2022 for a stay in 2023, but they were expecting to get the miles for the 2023 year. And they didn't, they got backdated to when they booked it in 2022. So that's what I would expect would happen. So if you booked that stay in February, you're going to get the miles for last year, not for this year. Ouch. So yeah, depending on what's happening, that's either good or bad. It's probably more often that, well, I don't know. I guess it really depends. And so

it totally depends. So I recently wrote about how I was on a status challenge for American Airlines. And I wrote that I failed essentially, because I had to earn X number of miles before February 1, in my case for the status challenge, in order to get my status extended for a few months. And I did a bunch of things towards the end of the booking window, right? I like on January 29th or something like that. I went through the shopping portal for various things, T-Mobile Home Internet, Blue Apron, stuff like that. And the miles didn't show up right away. And I realized that made sense because those things had minimum time periods. You had to keep them like 45 days or 60 days or whatever. And so I thought, oh, I might not see those miles until I've met the terms in order to get them. And I thought they

might get backdated to the date when I clicked through the portal. But I also didn't think that they would trigger my my status challenge. So even though they would put me over the miles, the 42,000 miles I needed for the status challenge, I figured I'm going to have to like bark up the tree with American Airlines on this one. And it's going to take me more time than it's worth to get somebody to realize that I earned the points in the window. But much to my surprise, that's not what happened. Those items did credit to my account. And when they did, they backdated to the dates when I clicked through the American Airlines shopping portal. And a day after I earned the necessary miles, my American Airlines status automatically updated. It recognized that I met the terms of the status fast track.

So, you know, this could be good news for some people because if you're close at the end of, you know, of a membership year, at the end of February of any year, because the membership year ends on February 29th, and you're like, oh man, I'm a little bit short of the miles I need for a status level. Well, now we know, at least I'm fairly confident, that you're going to get the miles based on the date you've booked. So if you've got a stay coming up in a couple of months, you could book that in February, and those miles could count towards that previous membership year. Now, you're not going to get the miles until after you've completed the stay. And I think it takes about a week after you've completed the stay before the miles usually

post. So you do have to wait for a while to get them. But when they post, they're going to post apparently what the date you clicked through the American Airlines shopping portal. Now, if anybody has contrary data points on that, let us know in the comments, because I'd love to hear it. If you have a contrary one, like I said, the data point I found in Flyer Talk was detailed and seemed pretty precise. So I feel fairly confident.

Yeah. Also, for anyone listening, I don't understand what the heck you're talking about. This all has to do with earning elite status and keeping elite status. If you're not in the hunt for elite status, this doesn't matter to you at all. It doesn't matter then when the miles are shown to be accredited if you're not worried about elite status. Good point. Maybe I should have led with that for the people that are not interested in elite status. Well, that brings us to the end, I think, of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again,

that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can join our email list, follow us on all the various social media. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, which is a great place to ask questions like that question of the week, because surely there are lots of people in our group that have done that before and would be able to answer that type of a question. So it's a great group to join. And wherever you're watching or listening to the show, again, don't forget to like the show, subscribe and enable notifications. We appreciate all that stuff. And if you have got a question

that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or for a future giant mailbag segment, you can send that to. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody. Thank you.