Frequent Miler on the Air - Bucket list awards | Ep133 | 1-15-22

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

What is the domestic US destination that Greg thinks should be on your bucket list and what else do he and Nick have in mind "someday"? Listen to this week's show to find out. 1:13 What crazy thing....did Plaid do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/plaid-class-action-settlement-submit-claim-by-4-28-22/ 7:13 Mattress Running the Numbers: Which Hilton Surpass offer is the best? https://frequentmiler.com/which-hilton-offer-truly-surpasses/ 21:31 Main Event: Bucket list awards 51:44 Question of the Week: The Capital One Travel portal doesn't have the booking options I want. What am I going to do with these points? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-travel-looking-a-lot-better-than-expected/ Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, bucket list awards. That's right.

What's on the bucket list? Yeah, we're going to talk about the awards that we're most anxious to do. Like, where do we want to go? What, what are the things where, you know, we could use points to go and we've never done it before. We want to do it and we're going to probably get you kind of excited about those things too. If you haven't already as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to hearing what, what you have in mind. And, and of course I'll share what I do. I'm looking forward to finding that out too. Yeah. So for today's giant mailbag, I am on vacation and I brought the giant mailbag.

Oh, well, that's good. But you haven't picked up the mail yet today? I didn't bring any giant mail. No mail collection on vacation? No mail today. Sorry. All right. all right now you have those days you have those days that's okay we don't we we can just pass it right by and go right into what crazy thing did plaid do this week plaid who is plaid well that's a great question yeah

so plaid i mean but you know who plaid is We all know who, maybe we don't all know. But, you know, when you open a new bank account and you want to be able to transfer money from one bank account to another often, or if you use something like the Dosh app or Flues or lots of these little cashback apps and you want to withdraw your money, a very common tool that financial apps use these days to connect your accounts is this system called Plaid, where you click to withdraw your money. And then Plaid has you log in to your outside bank account, your external bank account, and they verify that, yes, this is owned by the same person and verify whatever information they need so that you can connect the accounts and transfer money back and forth. I mean, I use this all the time.

You've used Plaid before, I assume. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And obviously, banks wouldn't contract with Plaid if they didn't believe that this was completely secure and perfectly run, correct? Well, you would think. You would think that, especially because it's not one or two banks that partner with Plat.

It's like Chase and Wells Fargo and Capital One and whatever, all the big banks, all the major banks. I'm sure there's plenty that say if Capital One and Chase are doing this, then of course we should too. Of course we should too. Right? Exactly. Everybody except my small little local bank anyway, seems to agree with that. So it turns out my small little local bank is good, not just for the great customer service, but also for not linking up to Plaid. Well, maybe, I don't know. The crazy thing is Plaid is getting sued right now. There's a class

action settlement. We've got a post about it. So you can see that post that'll pop up here somewhere when I'm talking, if you're watching this on YouTube, if not check the show notes or description, if you're listening. So there's a class action settlement or suit going on anyway. You can join the settlement if you're looking to get a piece of the action, so to speak, because it has been alleged that Plaid was improperly collecting more financial information than they needed to as you were connecting accounts. And if you've connected accounts with Plaid in the last few days or the last week or so, maybe two weeks, something like that, you've probably noticed, as I did just yesterday, that they give you a lot more options in terms of

which information to share now. When you're connecting an account, there's a bunch of checkboxes to uncheck. Of course, they're checked by default. Right, right, right. Now, I don't know all the details of the settlement, but my guess from the checkboxes that they have now is that Plaid was collecting and sharing not just the fact that you own the account, but now those checkboxes you have to uncheck are share all of your past statements and information, share all of your transaction data. And so there's a bunch of those check marks like that that you have to uncheck now in terms of what you want to share with. What about if you have multiple accounts with one bank? Are they all like listed as like you can uncheck this? Yeah, you can uncheck the individual ones. By default, it checks to share all of your accounts. So for example, I was connecting a Wells Fargo account yesterday and I don't have any Wells Fargo credit cards, but if I did, by default, it would have chosen to share all of the credit card accounts, mortgage,

investment accounts, et cetera. And it would have shared all that information. And so there's a class action settlement over the fact that they were collecting lots of this information that wasn't proper for them to collect. And so if you've used Plaid at all, basically like almost ever up through November of last this past year, I think then you can join the class action settlement. So if you're interested in that, check the post out. But what I think is, you know, kind of interesting here is that this kind of fits in with some of the weird shutdown stories we were hearing about the X1 card earlier. I was going to ask about that. Yes, this brings up the X1 story, right?

So with X1, a bunch of people were getting shut down. So X1 is a brand new credit card where you can earn 3X on all purchases just by having $15,000 to spend per year. You can earn 4X if you refer someone, and then you get 4X for about a month after referring them. It all seems like too good to be true because there's no fees and all that. But early adopters have been getting, not all of them,

but some of them have been getting shut down before they've had a chance to really do anything. And there are all these rumors swirling, which we've mentioned on the show, that they were somehow looking at, X1 was somehow looking at not just your bank account that they use. They look at that to approve you or not for your card. Supposedly, they were looking at not just that, but also all your credit card transactions and things to see whether you've been doing activities that they don't like, like manufactured spend activities, for example. And it sounds like they would have had the ability to do this. It does sound that way.

I think we were kind of skeptical initially that there's no way they'd have access to all that information. Yeah. I mean, part of it though, part of the early rumors were that they were somehow looking across banks and I still don't believe that that would be possible, but I don't know what mysteries are going on in the world. Well, that's, that's the thing. So I, so now I was very careful of the last couple of accounts that I've linked up to uncheck all of the various check boxes and say, no, just, you know, okay. You can verify my name and address and that's it. Right. Yeah. I don't, I don't need them sending over all my old statements and, you know, like the fluze app, which, you know, I like fluze and I've used it a bunch,

but they don't need to see my bank statements. Right. So, so yeah. So be careful out there, kids kids and if you'd like to join that class action settlement have at it all right that's the crazy thing now we're gonna totally switch gears and go to mattress running the numbers and this week i'm throwing something at greg that he's totally unprepared for he doesn't really know what we're talking about for mattress running the numbers that's right i'm on vacation here so it's right so i don't know what's going on just live analysis so you're going to get to pick the brain of greg the frequent miler running the numbers. That's right. I'm on vacation here. So I don't know what's going on. Just live analysis. So you're going to get to pick the brain of Greg, the frequent miler.

You're going to get to see his thought process live and in action. Is that exciting or what? Let's do it. Okay. So for mattress running the numbers, we're not going to talk about a mattress, but we're going to talk about a mattress related credit card. And that card is the Amex Hilton surpass card. This like the mid-tier Hilton Amex card, $95 annual fee. And if you do 15K spend each year, you get a free night certificate, 6X at US supermarkets, 6X at restaurants, blah, blah, blah, gas stations, yada, yada, yada. So all right. So that card, there's a standard sort of public offer. I say standard.

It's the best offer is a referral offer. And that's the offer that we've had on our best offers page for a while now. So that offer is a little complicated. So I'm going to run this to you and you're going to have to keep this one in mind while we evaluate some other options. So the standard-ish offer right now is 130,000 points after $2,000 spend in the first three months. So 130 K after 2000, and then you can get an additional 50 K additional 50,000 points with 10,000 total spent. Okay. Okay. All together, you can get 180,000 points. Okay. Got it. 120 or 130 K after two K 50 50K after 10K. Now, this week I wrote a post about dummy booking offers and how sometimes when you go to make a dummy booking,

like if you pretend like you're making a reservation, you get through to the payment page, sometimes you'll be shown a totally different credit card offer from the one that's standard. And in fact, with Hilton, there's both a dummy booking offer. And if you happen to be on the Wi-Fi at a Hilton hotel, there are other versions of Hilton offers. So we've got a couple of others to compare to. I'll have you compare one at a time rather than try to remember all of them. So, so that was our

first offer. Our second offer is the dummy booking offer. So the dummy booking offer, all right, very close, but not quite the same is 125,000 points. All right. Not as good so far. All right. And a hundred dollars statement credit after your first purchase. Oh, all right. Okay. So a hundred dollars statement credit is, is like 20,000 points. Am I doing that? Because, because Hilton often sells points at half cent each. So that's like $145K

offer, which is better than $130K after the same amount of spend. But what about the extra $50K? There is no extra tier on the dummy booking offer. That's it. Ah, all right. Well, so- Which offer is better? All right. So let's, uh, so the, let's get the obvious part out of the way. If, if you just want to stop your spend at 2000, then the dummy booking offers better hands down. That's not even, not even close, but if you want to spend more, getting the extra... Wow, now I need to do some math here.

So if you do the 10K spend with the regular offer or the one we publish, that'll get you a total of, what was it, 180,000? So it gives you 50,000 more. 180,000, So it gives you 50,000 more 180,000, which is, um, 35, which is 35,000 more than the, um, than the, the point equivalent of the, of, ah, wow. Is like what an extra four X on that spend. Is that the math right? Yeah, that's about right. So, so you're, so you're getting an extra four X. So that's about an extra 2% rewards on your spend. Well, that's extra. That's not, you know, above what you'd normally be earning. Plus you'd be well on your way to a free night certificate,

which you get a $15,000 spend. So yeah, I think for most people, for anyone who thinks they're going to be spending 10K, the regular offers better with the caveat that if you have plenty of new cards to sign up for, and this is always true with things, you do better with that extra 8K of spend meeting another signup bonus. So you really have to look at your own thing. Like, are you likely to spend that much anyway with this Hilton card? Because maybe you're going for that free night. If so, then definitely the regular offer is better. If you're more likely to say, well, I'm just signing up. So I get the bonus and then I'm going to sign up for another one.

I'm going to go with the dummy one for that one. Okay. All right. All right. Interesting. Yeah. So there's, and it is like very close, right? I mean, you had to do all the math and I went through all that math myself and I was

like, ah, that's a tight squeeze there. But I guess if you're going to get the surpass card, you probably are interested in spending at six exit grocery stores at us supermarkets in order to get your 15 K, you know, your free night certificate for 15 K spend. So that seemed a little better. All right. Yep. Yeah. But, but you're right. Yeah. It's totally, totally dependent. Okay. Two more, two more dummy booking or not dummy booking offers, two more offers from the hotel wifi. So now hotel wifi, which

there are direct links to this. And in fact, you'll find one of these as an alternative offer on our Hilton, uh, surpass page, a direct link to it. But you typically see these on the Wi-Fi. So the first one of the two Wi-Fi offers is to get up to $500 in statement credits for purchases charged at Hilton properties in the first 12 months with the Surpass card. So you get the Surpass card, no spending requirement, $500 in statement credits over the first 12 months. Statement credits that are contingent on spending at Hilton? At Hilton. They have to be, yes, they have to be Hilton. So you have to charge them at hotels or resorts within the Hilton portfolio in your first 12 months. So you could spend it,

whatever Hilton property, no, you're out on that with no spending. Yeah. I mean, well, so I mean, you know, all right. So you, you spend a lot of time at Hilton's, I guess. And so you get the full, the, the full thing with no spending requirement. I mean, that's not bad, but, um, the point equivalent of it as a hundred K, uh, yeah, I'm not a fan. So I totally agree with you. And I dismissed this out of hand when I was writing about it, but I had forgotten the part where there was no spending requirement actually until I was just talking about it now. And so your first reaction was my first reaction, but right now when I'm thinking about it, I say, okay, so yes, the $500 is like a hundred thousand point equivalent, right? So that means if you're doing

the standard offer, you're spending $2,000 for an extra 25,000 points or 30,000 points, 30,000 for an extra 30,000 over what you could get without any, right. Which isn't huge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's, you know, the difference is the $500 in statement credits has to be within a year. It's gotta be, you know, you can't run to it. I mean, it feels to me like something perfect for someone who, um, just want, you know, has that one Hilton vacation planned and, you know, maybe isn't all that into points and trying to maximize value from them. And so just wants to get the $500 with like virtually no work. I mean, from that point of

view, that's a good offer. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Finally, the last one, because I want to move this along here because I didn't like that offer either, but the last one I think is debatable here. So the last one is two free weekend nights with $3,000 spent. So it's a little bit more spend than the standard offer, but two free weekend nights that can be basically be used anywhere in the Hilton portfolio. So you could use them for properties that are 95,000 points per night, like the Conrad Bora Bora or the Conrad in the Maldives or the Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives, I think 120 or 150,000 points per night. And you can use those two free night certificates someplace like that.

Get a lot more point value out of them. What do you think? With $3,000 spend, you said? $3,000 spend. Yeah. And how long are these certificates good for? A year. A year.

A year from issue. They no longer are letting them work every day of the week like they did last year and the year before, right? Right. So. To my knowledge anyway, at this point, the, the nice thing about this would be if you have, you know, big sort of bucket list plans and you need that those weekend nights, you know, maybe you're going to Bora Bora, you're going to the Maldives, you're going somewhere that has these really high-end Hiltons, and there's award availability over the weekend, then you can use these for great value. Yeah. I think more realistic than spending Lomita for instead of 120,000 points, you'd be 95,000 as a, as a common top value for, um, high-end Hilton's. Um, so you're getting, you know, 190 K value under that circumstance, as long as it's not a five nights day, because if it's a five nights day, you would have paid less because of Hilton's fifth night free.

So yeah, I mean, there are situations where this would be a good offer, but that's rare. So I would not, I would definitely not without concrete plans and knowledge of award availability,

go for that one over the points. That would be easy. And you can't do that because it's going to take like eight to 12 weeks after you meet the that one over the points. That would be- Well, you see, and you can't do that because it's going to take like eight to 12 weeks after you meet the spend to get the certificates. So you can't know concrete that you've got award availability and all that. I think this was an appealing offer.

Because Hilton won't even, just remind me, Hilton won't even let you, I think, but tell me if I'm wrong, book with points and then change it to use the certificate after the fact. No, I think they need to have availability in order to be able to use the certificate. I think so too. I'm pretty sure. So people have written in with that before with having trouble trying to do that, being surprised.

Yeah. that this offer was interesting to me because I have the flexibility where I will plan a trip around when the free nights show up at the Conrad Bora Bora or whatever else. Most people don't have that flexibility, but I would have been confident that, okay, within the next year, whenever it is, we find the availability, we're just going to plan a trip and go. Now, definitely not anymore because I have no idea whether I'm going to be able to travel there in the next 12 months and then also happen to have found availability on the flights and the hotel. There's too many ifs and nobody knows right now, I think, to go after that. I do have a link to it as an alternative offer because like Greg said, if you're much more highly confident than I am that you can use them to full value, okay. I mean, if you're already planning a seven night trip

to the Maldives and you've got five nights of availability locked up and you know you're going to be able to get two more, I mean, I guess, great. You know, go ahead and get these. But yeah, tough for me to value that right now either. Yeah. All right.

Interesting. So you see like a bunch of different offers. Yeah. All right. Interesting. So you see like a bunch of different offers and yeah. And, and how are, how's the regular, you know, consumer who doesn't like live this stuff. Can I know which one to go for? That's really tough. They aren't. They aren't. Yeah. They're just testing, I guess, to see what it, what it is that draws people in. Cause they don't, they probably don't anticipate people thinking about it like you and I. So they're looking to see what makes people make that emotional decision. Right, right, right, right. So yeah, two free nights anywhere in the world sounds super exciting, probably more than points to a number of people, especially

a lot of people I think have grown to learn that points are like worthless because they don't, they don't know, you know, how to seek out the, the, the sweet spots that are available. And, and, you know, I hear that all the time about it with some programs that, you know, I can't ever do anything with my points or it's, you know, every word's too expensive. And, and that's true. If you just like, if you just browse Hilton's website, looking at a place like the Conrad Bora Bora, and you just look Hilton's website, looking at a place like the Conrad Bora Bora, and you just look at the points that it tells you it's going to cost, most likely a standard award's not available, but you won't necessarily know that all you're going to see is the point price they want to charge, which is going to be something like 657,000 points per

night. You're going to say, I don't have that many points. This is crazy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So fun times. All right. So a little, little analysis there, the offers, a little peek behind the curtain at what goes on when we've tried to decide which offers to display and why, and all those, we do put some thought into which one is the best offer. Right. So that's why we're, we're helping people, you know, at least pick an offer that we think is the best by making that the headline offer. And then when we think there's a particularly good alternative offer, we list that in smaller print, but underneath that's alternative offer. And we give usually a link to that or a link to a post that'll detail how to get to that alternate offer.

There you go. All right. So speaking of bucket list redemptions and those far off places that you want to go to someday, let's transition right into the main event. The main event. So I am bucket listing right now and that's what made me think about this. So I'm phoning it in from the Miraval, Arizona, and having a great time. And this was very much on my bucket list of award redemptions. So I am going to write up a review sooner or later. Very much enjoying myself. I do want to come back. So that gives you an idea that I am liking this a lot, but I didn't want to talk about the Miraval right now because I haven't really, you know, I haven't finished the stay. I haven't thought through all my thoughts, pros and cons and everything. Instead, I thought it would be fun to revisit our bucket lists

and say, you know, what are these awards that like this one that I'm at now that we haven't done yet, but we're really excited. We're, we're, you know, anxious to, to give them a try. So, um, I'll, I'll go first with a few and then, uh, Nick might, uh, jump in with, with some of his own as, as we go. So, um, I'm kind of cherry picking here from a combination of things. I had written a post about my most anticipated awards days, and I had listed them from 10 down to number one. And I picked out some of those, not all of them to talk about here. And part of the reason that I don't have, I'm not going to talk about my top five, let's say from that post is that readers and or Nick have talked me out of some of them, believe it or not. So for example, the one I had number one was, it's called

Punta Islita. I don't know if I'm saying that right. It's an autograph collection in Costa Rica. And it sounds fantastic. But it sounds like as of a year or two ago, they stopped offering all the activities and things for free that they used to offer. And that was part of what attracted me to it, that there were so many things included, not unlike Miraval, where it just sounded terrific. And it's not that I don't want to go now. It's just it sort of moved down my list after hearing from some readers who have gone recently.

Interesting. So, yeah. So, okay. So, picking from my list, Tambo del Inca is a Marriott luxury collection resort in Peru. Um, it's in sacred Valley, Peru, and, uh, it has a train stop right there for a train that'll take you, um, to, uh, uh, help me. I'm forgetting the name. To go to Machu Picchu.

To go to Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. Thank you. Machu Picchu. Yeah. Yeah. I've got vacation on my brain here. So, you know, the resort looks really nice itself. It gets good reviews.

And the idea of having such a nice place as a, you know, kickoff to a Machu Picchu adventure sounds terrific. I've never been. I have. I have. I have. And I've often said that Machu Picchu is the site against which I compare everything that's impressive, I guess. Really? Yeah. It is breathtakingly gorgeous. And I've often said that I'm surprised you don't see more pictures of the scenery around it. Because when you're there and you're looking out from Machu Picchu, the scenery of these gigantic mountains

poking out from the ground out of nowhere, out of the clouds, it looks like is just breathtakingly gorgeous. So, and very impressive. You look around and you're like, how did somebody build something here and do it a long time ago? And I just have no idea.

I went up early in the morning. I took the first bus. It's like five o'clock in the morning from Aguas Calientes. I didn't do the hike because I didn't have no idea. I went up early in the morning. I took the first bus. It's like five o'clock in the morning from Formagos Calientes. I didn't do the hike because I didn't have enough time, but took the first bus up. And I think we took the last bus out at the end of the night. We were there all day long and it didn't get old. So I definitely recommend that. And that particular property you've highlighted once before too. And I said, oh, wow, that would be awesome. I mean, when I went to Machu Picchu, I think we stayed at a hostel that was $6 a night or something like that. So I would

love to have the other type of experience there, the slightly more comfortable experience, but definitely well worth the trip and in some place that I hope to get back to again one day. Oh man, I can't wait. That sounds great. Okay. Next on my list, Santorini, Greece. So I've never been, looks amazing. And small luxury hotels of the world, SLH, they must have like about 10 different amazing looking properties there that are bookable with Hyatt points. And they top out at 40,000 points per night, which is very high from Hyatt standpoint, but the room rates in the summer, you know, are often like $2,000 a night type of thing. So you're still getting great value for your Hyatt points. If you use your Hyatt points to book these, getting award availability

tough. They don't seem to, SLH doesn't seem to have the same rules as Hyatt of making all of their rooms available to book with points. So you won't necessarily find availability, but this is the type of thing I think it's worth, you know, booking way ahead of time and, you know, keep refreshing and looking for availability until you can book it. So I'm excited about that idea. Now, in my post, I'd written that based on other reviews I'd read that maybe I want to stay away from WIA. Am I saying that right? I think it's more like, yeah, but I think sounds like any in Greek. I think I could be wrong, but I think it's like, yeah. All right. Well, anyway, the touristy, um, but beautiful section, but, but Nick wrote a, uh, a piece saying, no, I'm crazy to

avoid that. Right. So I think you are too, you know, there, I understand the hesitation, right? I mean, when you travel a lot, you get used to those kinds of tourist trap type places where there's just all sorts of people mobbed there and you don't want to be in the middle of that anymore after you've done it enough times. And so I totally get that mentality of not wanting to be in the heart of the touristy part, but there are some places in the world that are like that for a good reason. And I feel like it is that place like that. The sunset there is just, again, breathtakingly gorgeous. And it's something that even though there's crowds of people and you may not like that part of it, it's so pretty that you don't want to miss that. And I can't imagine having the option to have that sunset view and not taking it now. Now I say that as

somebody who stayed in some cheap place, like farther away from there, because I was doing it on a budget. But if I were able to use points to book it, I would totally want to stay in the if I were going to do it again. But whether you do or you don't, totally worthwhile. There's a long hike. And I can't remember the name of the town you start from. It's eight or nine miles. It goes along the edge, uh, you know, of the Island. They're gorgeous, gorgeous views there too. So, uh, totally, I think you should do that. I want you to write about it. I want you to go before I spent 40,000 points per night so I can find out what these places are like. Uh, and so I look forward to the time when you get there. I mean, I think what, what I should do if I can pull it off is stay at least a few nights

there and then a few nights outside of town to get a little more away from there. That would be great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So that'd be fantastic. Okay.

So we started off with a Marriott property in Peru. Then we went to a, not really a Hyatt property, but a Hyatt bookable property, um, or properties in Greece. And now I'm back to Marriott with Al Maha, which is a, another luxury collection, um, resort in this one's in Dubai or in the desert near Dubai, I guess. It's listed as Dubai. So this one is, it's an all-inclusive, I believe. And, you know, the base room type is like a, it looks like a little like luxury, you know, like it's not like a private villa. It looks like a huge luxury villa. Yeah. and it just looks incredible um everything about it looks like super super high end luxury um and i mean you have your own little private pool i think in these and and it is it's like a little they they call these like bedouin villas that are just right and it looks right

out of control and john and ben from nomas coach just recently went to almaha and i saw their pictures on uh online and and i mean again it coach just recently went to Omaha and I saw their pictures on a online. And, and it, I mean, again, it looked incredible. They've stayed before. And I actually was talking with John about it just the other day. And, and he said, it's just absolutely amazing. Or maybe, you know what? I think they're, they've got a trip coming up at some point.

I remember we were talking about, it doesn't matter. We're talking about Omaha and I took a look at their pictures from their, at least last trip there. And I looked fantastic. So I would love to do that too. But the problem is it's typically super expensive on points, right? Cause it's, I mean,

that's a category eight. That's top of the line. It's a category eight. So, so it's, it's typically going to be a hundred thousand points per night. And when it's peak priced, I don't know how often it's standard priced at what?

70,000 or no, no, 85, 80, 85,000. Sorry. 70 is the off peak. I don't know.

John, John told me basically it's always a hundred K except he said that. And then, and then I pulled up the app and I looked at September and the first five nights I tried were available at 85. So I sent him the screenshot as soon as the first five nights day, I tried and he said, well, yeah, I mean, that's the off season and he's right. September is the off season, but you know, if you're, if you want to go and not spend as many points, there's your

tip like September is, you know, we went in September, right. And, and it was hot in Dubai and, uh, but we still enjoyed ourselves. I would do that again. So would I. I would do that again, for sure. So would I. So there you go. There's your tip on Omaha.

So moving on then, Dubai is a nice stepping off point if you want to go to the Maldives. There's a sub-four-hour flight on Emirates to get to the Maldives. There's a sub four hour flight on Emirates to get to the Maldives from Dubai. And once there, I'm really excited to try out the Six Senses Lamu Resort, which is bookable with IHG points. So IHG bought Six Senses a few years back and have finally integrated them enough that a lot of the Six Senses luxury properties are bookable with points. And this one, they're kind of all over the map as far as how they price them with IHD points. So some that are not as expensive as others cost like multiple hundreds of thousands of points per night. This one is, at least so far, has been fixed at 100,000 points per night, which

may sound like a lot, but for what you're getting, again, this is one of those $2,000 a night type of properties. And if you have a IHG card, the Traveler or the Premier, you get the fourth night free on awards. So you get four nights for 300,000 points. Pretty good deal. I also happen to have the old, what is it called? The select card that gives you a 10% rebate on awards. So for 300,000 points, I can book four nights and I'll get, um, 30,000 points back. So I actually have this book. I it's unclear though, whether we'll be able to keep this, this reservation, but, um, recent reviews I've read amazing. Like people just absolutely love it. Uh, so yeah, I'm, I'm very excited for that one. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I was talking with Zach at Monkey Miles

about that one recently, and he talked about how incredible that Sixth Sense was. And the thing is, like, you know, when Greg's going through the prices there, so if you're paying, if you're getting the fourth night free, you're paying 300,000 points. Remember, IHG sells their points at like half a cent each,

like all the time. I mean, not all the time, literally, but they're frequently on sale for half a cent each. So that's like $1,500 worth of points you could purchase and get four nights there, which is terrific compared to paid rates. But then if you've got the stack like Greg does, and you're at 270K or what, 1,300 for the four nights stay and change. So a little over 400 bucks a night for a room that goes for 2,000 a night. Otherwise that's a pretty amazing deal. Oh, it is absolutely amazing. Okay. Now my last thing isn't really a single place as much as a destination kind of, which is African safari.

So there's a lot of different things you could do there as you know, Nick. Yeah, lots of different places. There are a couple like sort of bucket list places I'd like to do that offer safaris. There are two virgin limited edition properties that one is in South Africa. The other one, I actually don't remember off the top of my head, somewhere else in Africa. Kenya. Kenya. Okay, thank you. And they look incredible. My only hesitation has been that the value of using Virgin Atlantic points, or now they're called red points or something like that,

Virgin red points, the value hasn't been great. So, you know, I can't bring myself to spend these virgin points and get, you know, less than a penny per point value compared to the cash rate when I could get like one and a half cents per point value, just like booking through Chase Ultimate Rewards or, you know, various other ways. So, you know, so that stopped me then, then on the, on the extreme other end, um, is the Marriott properties that are, that are available. Do you want to talk about that? Well, yeah. So, I mean, I've written in the past. So first of all, I would say that, uh, there are a lot of different places to go on safaris. So that's, you know, that's something you have to consider in terms of what you want to see and what time of year, there's a lot of

different variables. I've been to Kruger national park twice now, and I would go to Kruger National Park in a heartbeat tomorrow if I could. I loved it. I would also be really interested in checking out some other parts of Africa for safaris too. So it kind of depends on what you want to begin with. But what I've written about of terrific value is the Protea Kruger Gate. So Protea is a South African chain that is owned by Marriott. So you can use your Marriott Bonvoy points to book an awards day. And that Protea at Kruger Gate is like a Category 2 now. So what is that? 10,000, 12,000 points per night?

12,000, I think. Yeah, 12 standard, 10 off-peak, I think, and 15 peak or something maybe. I'm making that up so I could be off on that. Somewhere in that range. Somewhere in that range. So 12,000 standard anyway. When I stayed, it was even less because it was a Category 1. But anyway, 12,000 points

per night. That Protea Hotel Kruger Gate is literally, I'm not making it up, I'm not just trying to make it sound good. It's literally about a hundred yards from the gate to Kruger national park. So, I mean, you can see the park from the hotel and, and so being able to drive right into the park in the morning and see the wildlife there is pretty terrific, especially when you're using so few points each night, you know, if you're getting the fifth night free or, you know,

and you were able to get your Marriott points easily and cheaply, that's a great deal to me. And it's located in a part of the park that is particularly good. If you want to see a lot of different types of wildlife. So Kruger national park is huge and you can spend two weeks there probably and not see the whole thing. So it's very, very big and you can't drive at full speed, obviously, because there's animals that could be crossing at any point. So it takes a long time to cross the park. So you're not going to see all parts of the park. You're gonna have to kind of pick and choose where you want to stay and what

parts you want to see. But that Protea Kruger gate is, is perfect because you drive into the park there and that's kind of like, sort of like the headquarters, the part of the park there. And that's kind of like sort of like the headquarters, the part of the park where most people kind of enter. And so you come in through there and from there across to a rest camp called Lorisabi, you can basically see all of the big five and you're going to see lots and lots of other wildlife, too. So it's an awesome spot to base that. Now, the other thing I often have talked about, though, is that you can rent cabins inside the national park. So they have these rest camps, they call them, that are fenced in. And you can rent these, they call them bungalows. But if you're picturing something very basic, you probably have the wrong idea in mind. Picture something you would imagine at a national park in the US. And that's essentially what you get. It's a pretty simple cabin, but it's a cabin with a bedroom and a kitchen that are separated by a door and, and you get your own bathroom and all the rest of that. And so those little cabins were something like a hundred

or $120 a night. The last time I went, they were even cheaper the time before that. So they're, they're pretty inexpensive. And the nice thing about that is then you're right in the middle of the park and the gates to those open earlier. And the earlier you get out in the morning, the better chance of seeing lions, big cats, things like that, because they've done hunting and eating whatever it is they've found before they go off and go to sleep somewhere. So, uh, so that's an awesome experience too. So I would split it. If you're going to do that, if that's a bucket list type of redemption for you, I always thought that I would have to stay at one of those luxury safari lodges that were really expensive that I'm sure are awesome, but they were out of my budget.

And so if you're in that same spot where you're like, I can't spend three or four or five or $6,000 on a luxury safari option. Well, you don't have to 12,000 points per night for that Marriott would be awesome. Spend a few nights there, spend a few nights at a hundred, 120 bucks a night inside the park. And you could see basically everything that you're hoping to see. So that's a great way to make that kind of a trip come together. Now that said, I would definitely consider that Virgin limited property in Kenya. I think that's something that I would love to go back and try out one of these days. We'll see. Yeah. I mean, it looks incredible. So, but, but they both do the one in South Africa looks incredible too. And I have no doubt it would be, you know, an experience of a lifetime to, to stay at either one of those.

Agreed. Agreed. I mean, cause Greg has his experience in Necker Island and then he and I were at Mosquito Island not that long ago, which, which has also Virgin limited staff. So I, just from those, your experience, the way you've described it in Necker Island and mine with you at Mosquito, I can imagine that it's probably a great experience. Yeah, I'm, I'm sure it is. So yeah.

Yeah. All right. So there, so how about you? Are there any bucket list things? There are. So, so now that I'm like an American Airlines mileage millionaire and there's a few of us out there, I'm, I'm definitely interested in putting some like an American Airlines mileage millionaire, and there's a few of us out there, I'm definitely interested in putting some of my American Airlines miles to use.

And one of the things is not a destination, but rather a type of transportation. I would love to take Etihad Apartments if and when they come back. And word on the street is that they are coming back, at least for a while. So I am particularly interested in, in crossing my fingers and hoping that that's something that comes back long term. Cause I think we had kind of lost all hope on Etihad apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's looking like there, there's a good chance anyway. Yeah. So, so that absolutely totally deserves your, your, uh,

a slot on your bucket list. And I, and you know, there are a number of different ways to book that. I, obviously you could book it using American miles going from the U S to Abu Dhabi or beyond if you're going to use American miles, depending on where you want to go. But you know, another route that people often forget is the one that you flew. You flew, what was it? Abu Dhabi to. I flew from the Seychelles to London through Abu Dhabi. So the first leg to Abu Dhabi was not apartments. It was, they didn't even have first class. It was business class and then apartments from Abu Dhabi to London.

And yeah, I mean, I think from what I remember reading about them coming back, I don't think it's very likely there's going to be a flight to the U.S. featuring the apartments. But flights like to London or to, you know, Frankfurt or Zurich, those might be the type of things to look for. Right. And that was an option that had always been on my mind because it's a pretty reasonable number of points to do that. If they fly any routes to Asia with the apartments, then that's something I'm going to take a close look at and have a lot of interest in because there's a great sweet spot on the American Airlines award chart. And that's from the Middle East region to Asia one, which is Japan and Korea is just 50,000 miles one way in first class. So it used to be 45. Now it's 50,000. So for instance, if you're in Europe, you could probably get a pretty cheap flight to Cairo and then fly from there all the way to Tokyo, for instance,

for 50,000 miles one way. So that's a pretty terrific value. Now you're not going to get apartments on the way to Abu Dhabi, but from Abu Dhabi to Tokyo, for instance, perhaps if they start running these routes again, maybe one day that we'll get the apartments again. And that would be something that I would, I would look to do. I say apartments again, I don't know as though they ever did have the apartment. So I guess we'd be hoping for that. Uh, but also Asia too was reasonably priced. I can't remember the exact cost on that, but that would be something I'd look to do. I think there'd be a lot of fun to do that. I've also never taken a trip like that

with anyone from my side of the family. So we've taken some of my wife's family to Hawaii flying flatbeds, but my side of the family, I haven't yet gotten a chance to go on a trip with like one of my parents or my sister. So I think that one of the bucket list things for me is going to be making a trip like that happen with family. My family's not particularly interested in points and miles,

but one of these days I'd like to get one of them on one of these luxury flights so that they can see what it's like. I mean, you've, you've taken trips with your, your mother before, right? Yeah. I mean, we've never done that kind of luxury together. So I've done business class flights. I mean, that's a pretty nice luxury for somebody who doesn't do it often anyway, I suppose. And my parents would fit in that category of people that don't do that. So that would be a fun bucket list trip. The other thing for me in terms of redeeming miles that I have my fingers crossed on here is the chance to use Alaska miles at good value before they inevitably devalue with

a reward chart at some point, particularly so for first class and Japan Airlines, because I've never flown Japan Airlines first class and 70,000 miles one way from the U S to like most of Asia, I think 70,000 miles one way with Alaska miles to book Japan airlines just seems like such an incredible value. So that's another one I would like to be able to take advantage of. And then that's not an American airlines. When I said I was going to focus on American airlines, you can of course also use American airlines miles. I think it's like 110,000 one way then. So it's a few more miles that way. So that's something else in mind. And then finally, the last one that I'm going to talk about it again, I know Greg talked about hotels and I'm talking about flights. You know, I say, lastly, there's one and a half more, uh, one that popped

into mind today because I got an email today as we, as we record this, I got an email from straight to the points from Spencer Howard. It's straight to the points as a word alert availability newsletter about availability for three passengers flying on Royal air Maroc to Europe or the middle East or Africa. And specifically, I'm pointing that one out because the dates on some of that availability lined up nicely with the tentative cruises that I have planned in Europe that I have no idea whether I'm going to be able to take, but they do fly to London. And one of my cruises is out of London and availability for three was perfect for me because we'll have a lap infant still for that trip. So I was particularly interested when I got that award alert availability email, I said, Ooh, that's interesting. And

American has free cancellations. So I may have to see if I can lock up some seats on Royal Air Maroc because I've never flown them before. And so I think that would be kind of an interesting way to get to Europe. So. So you would you would presumably then be flying from New York or New York area to Cairo and then to London? No, Royal Air Maroc Royal Air Morocco flies to Casablanca. So I'd fly to Casablanca. Oh, sorry, sorry. Still. So instead of just flying direct to London. Yeah, you see, I don't value non-stops as much as Greg does

because I'm just not used to flying non-stops. So I don't, and maybe I'm wrong on that. And maybe I'll find out very quickly traveling with two kids. You know, I don't want to fly something, but I don't want to use a lot of points to fly a boring product. So I don't want to fly like typically, and I say a boring product. I mean, that sounds very snobby when it comes to award availability. And that's not really what I mean. It's like, if I'm going to spend a couple hundred

thousand points, I want to be excited about the redemption. And I don't get as excited about, for instance, flying and United, like my experiences on United haven't been as good as they have been on a lot of foreign carriers. So I'm not as excited about flying United to London if, and that's assuming I even found United availability. Uh, so I, you know, if I could get Delta, okay. I mean, if I could find the seats, that'd be great, but I'm not going to spend like a million Delta skyiles either. I mean, and the other problem here is that now I need at least three seats and not that long. I'm going to need four seats.

And you tell me what nonstop to London am I going to get with four seats, Craig? Yeah, it could be pretty tough. It could be tough. Well, you know, you could use your your uh delta diamond uh global suite upgrades so just book economy right right well that's that's my biggest problem if i could get three seats on a i'm united or on delta or american or whatever if i'm one of the major carriers if i get three seats on a non-stop to london great I'm not going to pay $800 a person in surcharges to fly British Airways or Virgin Atlantic. I'll connect in Casablanca. It'd be okay. Gotcha. So there's that. All right. And then the, finally the, the travel sort of

bucket list thing for me is I really want to get to Argentina. I've never been. And so I don't even have a hotel or a flight in mind. It's just a place that I want to get to. I really want to visit Argentina one of these days. It's been something I've been itching to do for more than a decade. So that is a place that will be on my mind. And eventually someday I look forward to writing the award booking adventures post on how I'm going to get to Argentina. It's one of those things. All right.

Now, real quick, an award that you have done that deserves to be on other people's bucket list. Just pick one. Okay, I'm going to say, give me two seconds here. I'm trying to filter through lots of different awards. I, you know, every time I try to answer this, I'm coming up with a new answer in my mind. So I think the thing that if you're going to make a bucket list and you're using miles and points, I feel like flying Emirates first class is one of those things you have to do once. So wherever it's going to be, I think flying Emirates first class one time. The reason I say that it's not necessarily the world's best first class product, whether it's from in terms of the seat or the food or the

service necessarily, it can be great in all of those areas, but not necessarily the best. But I think it gives you the giddy feeling when you get in there of, wow, I got something way beyond what I imagined I was going to do. I think the glitz and the glamour and the gold-plated everything is kind of that, it gives you that giddy sort of a feeling like, wow, this is over the top. This is too much, but it's also a lot of fun. So I feel like that's something that should be on the bucket list because if you're going to collect these miles and points

to do these outlandish things, that is like the hallmark outlandish thing, I think. And I know it's cliche because lots of people would pick that, but I did sit there and filter through in my mind, a lot of different redemptions. And I said to myself, if I knew somebody who was going to splurge one time to try something, that would be the thing. And I think that what's also fun about that is it then makes you want to find other things like that. And so, you know, it pushes you to continue playing the game, I think. So yeah, there's my answer. All right. I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it a bit easier for people, which is I'm going to pick one that's in the U S the Alila Ventana Big Sur.

That's a great, I just love that property. Albeit I stayed before the pandemic hit. So I don't really know what it's like firsthand yet during the pandemic since they've moved to all inclusive. But it's the area, Big Sur is absolutely stunning. And the hotel is just exudes luxury and comfort in so many ways. I just really love it. Get yourself some Hyatt points and book it. Don't bring your kids though. It's an adult only property, unfortunately, but do bring your dog. They love dogs there. There you go. There you go. More peaceful than

my kids. That's for sure. You can almost guarantee your dog is probably more peaceful. So I get it. Very good. Very good. All right. So that brings me, I think, to this week's post roast, except we're not going to roast because Greg has been on vacation. So I'm not going to roast him. And and he's loved everything I've written this week. I'm sure he's not going to roast me. Sure have loved everything I read. Everything is right. Right. Right. You can read it between the lines there. So so this week's question of the week is not a question, but rather a statement. And I'm interested in your reaction to the statement.

So I had shared a post I wrote this week and frequent miler insiders was the post I wrote about, uh, booking via the capital one travel portal. And what I wrote was that the capital one travel portal was better than I expected because hotel cancellation policies were really good. They were typically like two days before check-in and the prices were more like advanced purchase type prices. So I was pretty surprised. They weren't necessarily going to beat what you can get anywhere else. You might be able to get a similar price elsewhere, but getting a similar price and a similar cancellation policy together wasn't always necessarily possible. So I was really impressed overall. And you can read more about that in the post

that I'll link in the description here. But in our Frequent Miler Insiders group, a reader said, what am I missing? I made my first attempts to use the Capital One Travel Portal last night. I looked up car rental in Frankfurt, zero results. I looked up hotels in London, only about a dozen options, almost all Western chains,

no filters for free cancellation, et cetera. Would love if you could add some more examples. I've started to worry I won't be able to use these points. What do you think about that, Greg? Well, I mean, use the point. You don't have to- That's the part I was looking for you to react you don't have to book through the portal to use your your capital one points at all in fact that's not even a like not even a good way necessarily to use them well right but I think it's worth addressing because I doubt that this one reader is the only person who would look at it that way

I think it's natural I think Chase has trained people that when you're looking to use your points, you go to the travel portal and you look to book something. Right. So I was, and they like that because they, they get some money from those bookings. Right. And my initial reaction was the same, like, what are you doing? Looking through the capital one travel portal, use your points. That doesn't make any sense. But then I thought to myself, well, of course it makes sense. Cause that's what you do with your points, right? You go to the credit card travel portal and you book travel, except you don't with capital one, but you only kind of touched on the surface. Why not?

Yeah. Well, because you can use your points to race any travel. because the card gives you two points per dollar, then just book travel directly with providers or with whatever way gives you the best value. I like to, as often as possible, book directly with providers because when things go wrong, it's much easier to deal with them than with portals. And so once you book that and you pay for it, you could just go into your Capital One account and use your points to erase those purchases. And so just do that if you want to use it straight up. But if you want to get even better value, you can learn how to transfer your Capital One miles to airline miles and or hotel points in some cases and get better value when there are high

value awards available. So need to know what you're doing when you're doing that. But that's that would be my preferred way of using your Capital One miles. Totally. That would be my preferred way, too. But yeah, I thought that was a point worth making that the Capital One travel portal. The reason why I wrote a post about it was not to highlight using your points to book travel through Capital One. And the post itself didn't even mention using points to book the properties because that wasn't even on my mind because the thought for me was, okay, the VentureX card comes with an annual $300 travel credit. And that travel credit has to be used on travel booked through Capital One Travel. So you're going to have to use the portal

to book that $300 worth of travel. So that's one piece of why I looked into it because I want to see, is it a good value? Can I book hotels and get an okay value out of the $300 that I have to spend through the travel portal? Or should I just focus on flights? Because flights are generally the same price basically everywhere, right? So that was piece number one, so to speak. And then piece number two is if you're a hotel free agent, then the Capital One Travel Portal might make sense because you can earn 10x on hotels booked through the Capital One Travel Portal. And that could be worthwhile, especially now that the rumor is out that Hilton is going to make the breakfast credit a permanent change rather than free breakfast. And so people who are unhappy with that change may find it worthwhile to instead book a Hilton through Capital One Travel and earn 10 miles per dollar doing it and not get their breakfast credit is the difference. And potentially, in some cases, as I showed in the post, get an even better price on the hotel.

So I think that it's worth it for those things. But yeah, I wouldn't even think to use points or Capital One Miles to book travel through their portal because just go to hyatt.com or go to Delta or go wherever it is. You know, you're having trouble finding rental cars, go to, you know, Priceline or go to Auto Slash and look up a car rental and book whatever car rental you want

and then use your points to erase it later on. It doesn't matter what is in the portal. The only reason the portal matters, I think, is for people who want to use their VentureX card to get 10 miles per dollar spent. That's the reason why it would matter what's available. And to get the $300 travel credit that you mentioned. And to get $300 credit. Now to get that, I assume you have to actually book paid stay as opposed to using your miles up front to purchase the stay through the portal. But I don't know for sure.

Yeah, off the top of my head, I'm not positive. For some reason, I had in mind that you could use miles and still get the credit. But I could be wrong. Maybe I'm confusing that because Amex allows that with the fine hotels and resorts credit. You can use your membership rewards points and still get your $200 credit. So maybe I just assumed that that was the same. And I don't know that that's true. So that'll be interesting because I think I need to book a hotel for tomorrow night. And I was going

to do it through the Capital One Travel Portal in order to get my $300 travel credit to use some of my $300 travel credit. But maybe I'll end up using a few miles. We'll see. I'll take a look. That way we can find out and know for sure. But I'll have to look into it. But anyway, that was this week's question of the week. Thank you, Greg, for pointing out the fact that yes, that was, that was the, the, the right idea in terms of using the portal. Okay. That brings us my friends to the end. If you enjoyed what we've been talking about today, you'd like to get our posts directly in your email inbox. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on social media, find us on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, join our frequentquent Miler Insiders Facebook group,

leave us a like and a thumbs up and a comment and Greg, take it away. I see you had something else to add that I skipped over. I did not. I thought you were going to hop in with one more thing. All right. So thank you guys very much for being out there with us. And we look forward to seeing you again soon bye everybody