Frequent Miler on the Air - Elite Treats: the best elite benefits in the business | Ep184 | 1-7-23

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

Airline, hotel, and rental car programs treat their best customers to the highest level of recognition. Are the perks worth your loyalty? Which elite benefits are the best in the business? This week, we talk about our favorite elite benefits in each of several categories. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 00:42 Giant Mailbag 2:43 What crazy thing . . .fourple header! 3:10 What crazy thing . . . did Southwest Airlines do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/southwest-compensating-passengers-25k-points-each-as-a-goodwill-gesture-check-your-email/ 7:28 What crazy things . . . has Marriott done this week? https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-gives-55-elite-night-credits-to-those-with-the-right-card-combination/ 9:47 40K choice benefit free night certificate valid for two years? 10:51 Greg's invisible 40K free night cert https://frequentmiler.com/like-a-thief-in-the-night-watch-out-for-marriotts-latest-naughtiness/ 12:33 Main Event: Elite treats. The best elite benefits int he business. 12:43 Best airline elite benefit https://frequentmiler.com/complete-guide-southwest-companion-pass/ 16:45 Honorable mention via Delta 17:30 Best Hotel elite benefits in the business 17:39 Best on-property benefits 19:58 Best milestone awards 21:42 Best return on spend for top-tier elites 25:11 Best Rental car elite benefit: National free nights https://frequentmiler.com/using-national-free-days-for-one-way-car-rentals-sweet-spot-spotlight/ 27:53 Best casino elite benefits https://frequentmiler.com/caesars-diamond-celebration-dinner/ https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-cruise-for-next-to-nothing/ https://frequentmiler.com/why-you-might-want-to-book-atlantis-while-you-can-via-caesars-diamond-status/ 31:30 Question of the Week 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 Lila on the air starts now. Today's main event, Elite Treats the Best Elite Benefits in the Business. We're going to talk, you know, it's the beginning of the year and it's

time to start earning our way to elite status with whatever programs we care about. And so we figured this is a good time to talk about where will you find some of the best elite benefits around? And that's what we'll get into for our main event. First, Nick is ready with the giant mailbag. What do you have, Nick? I'm ready-ish. You know, I said that and I realized I didn't have it right in front of me. Giant mailbag this week was a message that came in from a reader. And it came in actually just before Christmas, but we had a different giant mailbag last week.

So I'm just getting to this one. But this message came in from Whitney. And Whitney said, the message was longer, but I'm just going to read the key part. Said, we're very lucky in more ways than one points and miles allow us a better life than we could reasonably have expected. Otherwise, the work you, Greg, and the whole team at FM do is in no or is no small part of that. Thank you.

It's very much appreciated. Merry Christmas. And I thought that that was just a nice message to get just in the days before Christmas, you know, a nice moment to reflect and say, you know, this stuff is a lot of fun. And I really liked the way she said it, that it's afforded them a lifestyle that they couldn't have reasonably expected otherwise. Cause my goodness, I feel the same way about points and miles. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that message. And I absolutely feel that way. A hundred percent, um, living a life right now in New Zealand and, you know, what I have, would I have come here

without points and miles? Yeah, probably. I probably would have flown economy instead of business class. And I certainly wouldn't have stayed at the Park Hyatt or what I'm going to be doing next week and staying at the Eichert Hotel, which is something like $2,000 a night if you pay cash.

So, you know, there's just no way I would be doing those things. And, you know, there's just no way I would be doing those things. And, you know, so thank you, Whitney. And of course, thanks Points and Miles World for giving us all these great treats. It's awesome. It's amazing. It's amazing.

The stuff you can do with this game is so much fun. And that's, you know, I think that a big part of the fun for me is doing these things that, like you said, maybe I would have traveled to some of these places because I traveled on a budget of four points and miles. But it was totally different than the way I travel now. And so, yeah, it is. It's just an amazing, fun thing. And it's fun to reflect on that every now and then and how much fun it is.

So thank you very much for the message, Whitney. Appreciate it. All right. So let's talk about what crazy thing. But this week, there's a lot of crazy going on. So it's not what crazy thing, but what crazy things. You know, we'll start with a thing. What crazy thing did Southwest Airlines do this week?

Start there. We'll start with Southwest. Because we got a, what is it? A fumble header? It's not a double header. It's not a triple header. We've got a fourple header today. A fourple header.

A fourple header. Fourple header. Woo. Okay a triple header. We've got a four-pole header today. A four-pole header. A four-pole header. Woo! Okay. All right. See, I told you there's a lot of craziness going on. So what crazy thing did Southwest do? Well, Southwest Airlines, as you know, melted down during the holidays. I'm sure, you know, unless you're living under a rock, you know that Southwest canceled like the vast majority of their flights for almost an entire week for whatever software staffing meltdown they had. And so now they're, of course, facing a lot of pressure to do right by customers in some way. And to their credit, they've done a couple of things right-ish so far. They've said that

they'll reimburse reasonable expenses that people incurred as a result of the meltdown, and they're accepting submissions of receipts. We haven't actually seen any reimbursements yet, but at least I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. They seem to be working towards that. And then this week out of the blue, they came out with an email awarding people 25,000 points per passenger who were affected, whose travel was disrupted by the meltdown. And so, for example, we received an email from Southwest. We had a flight canceled on Christmas Eve by their meltdown. And so there were four codes because we had four passengers on our itinerary, each good for 25,000 Southwest rapid rewards points. So 100,000 rapid rewards points, just as an apology, a goodwill gesture. That's not in place of reimbursing costs. That's just a goodwill gesture on top of it. So, I mean, that's a nice apology, I would say. I mean, a good $1,300, $1,400 apology. So now, obviously, some people were inconvenienced far more than $1,300 or $1,400 worth. But for me, I was not inconvenienced more than that. So that was a particularly good apology in terms of satisfying me. However, I am more satisfied than some because

I actually received these codes. And we've received a lot of reports from readers this week who had travel disrupted, who either A, haven't yet received codes or B, didn't receive codes for everybody on their itinerary. Maybe the primary traveler did, but the companion didn't or the companion did, but the primary traveler didn't. or maybe it had something to do with elite status, except nobody on my itinerary had elite status and we all got the codes. So I really don't know what's going on. It definitely seems like they're having trouble. And it's been a course of a couple of days now. And people have still just been reporting only now receiving the emails as we go to record this, not the first day that they started going out. So it seems like they've just like slowly rolling go to record this, not the first day that they started going out. So

it seems like they just like are slowly rolling it out and not, not rolling it out. Well, well, I think, I think that makes a lot of sense because you know, if they can't figure out how to fly airplanes, how are they going to figure out how to give out points? I mean, it just, you know, right, right, right. If they didn't have the software to be able to, you know, put the crew to the plane when the crew is at the airport, I guess it does seem like our expectations are unreasonable to actually give everybody points. She had used her Southwest points to position to San Francisco for a paid flight on Air New Zealand to get here to New Zealand. And two days later, she made it to San Francisco. She had to pay Air New Zealand quite a lot. She didn't tell me how much, but through the teeth, however much that is, to move her flight to two days later.

So hopefully Southwest will make her whole. I don't know. Right. We'll see. Right. Right. And we have no idea what they're going to consider reasonable or not reasonable. And so, you know, it's kind of up in the air.

I, like I said, I, I kind of tend to give Southwest the benefit of the doubt because I feel like they try to do the right thing more often than not. Uh, obviously that week, but yeah. not. Obviously, they didn't that week. But yeah, yeah. So, well, they might have tried. They might have tried. They didn't succeed miserably. Failed miserably.

So so we'll see. I mean, they're talking the talk. Hopefully they walk the walk because people in situations like that. I mean, what a nightmare. And yeah, so we don't know what's going to happen yet. And we'll see. But right now, be on the lookout anyway. If you missed the post this week, check out the link in the show notes, because I hope

you didn't delete the email. It just said something like a note from our CEO, Bob Jordan, or something to that effect. It wasn't clear by the subject line that it had codes for points in it. So I hope you didn't delete it. And if you are like, you know, doing your weekly deletes right now, as I speak, stop and make sure you haven't deleted that one. All right. But okay. That's Southwest. That's not the only crazy thing this week. What crazy things has Marriott done this week? Yeah. Yeah. We've got a Marriott triple header this week. So the week started off with a nice surprise. I found I logged into my Marriott account and saw 55 elite knights for 2023.

And, you know, I should have. Very nice surprise. I should have had 40. I have the Bonvoy Brilliant card, which would give 25, plus a business card, which gives 15, adds up to 40. I think they mistakenly added on 15 more from one of my personal Marriott cards, which shouldn't actually stack with the Bonvoy Brilliant, but did. Other people were mixed. There are plenty of other people also found 55 Knights, but other people who have combination of cards I do did not get the 55. So something strange is going on in Marriott World. I fully expect that those knights will get clawed back.

But in the meantime, it's nice to dream that I might already be close to earning titanium status for next year. That is crazy. I mean, starting with 55, you already have platinum status and presumably be eligible to select a 50 night benefit and then just be 20 nights short of titanium. website it's it's set up for people who qualified last year and for me it says you've already picked your elite benefits so wait it won't be until they've they don't expect most people could have could have 50 nights already this year they don't expect they weren't ready for that one what a surprise right oh yeah i guess they shouldn't be surprised okay so uh so yeah it's interesting maybe you'll be able to select it we don't know it's just not set up yet for that presumably you'll be able to if the Knights stick like you said they'll probably get clawed back but nice surprise if they don't so that's pretty crazy and a nice fortunate accident if you are in you know those shoes and it does stick so congrats

to anybody who's sitting in that position uh at least congrats for the time being, and we'll see whether or not that sticks. So that's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy. But that's not all. No, it's not all. Some people who earned titanium status last year, they picked the 40K free night as their 75-night choice benefit. I think this happened to people who waited till the very end of the year, or maybe January 1st, I'm not sure the exact parameters here, but

some people reported that the free night is showing up as being good for a year beyond what it should have been good for. And so that's a really nice surprise for them. And so cool. Hopefully that sticks. And then almost two years in some cases, right? For that. I mean, that's, that's pretty. Yeah, exactly. Two years. And you know, so I had picked the 40K free night. So of course I jumped into my account to see, did you know, did mine get set up like that. I had picked it though before the end of the year, so I don't know. And the third crazy thing for Marriott is

I don't even have a 40K free night in my account at all. The early bird does not get the worm this time. No, no. So now my question is, have you stayed at any Marriott's since you selected the 40K free night? Right. You're wondering if they applied it somehow to, yeah. No, I have not. So it's not that.

I haven't booked any Marriott's that it would have gotten applied to since picking it. So it's fine. I'm going to wait a few weeks. that it would have gotten applied to since picking it. So it's fine. I'll, you know, I'm going to wait a few weeks. If it doesn't appear, I'll give Marriott a call and I'm sure they'll figure it out or even better would be if they put 40,000 points in my account, then I'll be really happy. That'd be fantastic. Yeah. So anybody who didn't get the reference there in terms of what I was asking, Greg, he mentioned it, but if you just go to Frequent Miler and search for a post called like a thief in the night, you'll see Marriott does some funny business

because for a bit anyway, and I haven't heard reports about this in a long time, now more than a year, but for a while people were experiencing some weird phenomenon where they check into a hotel and in the middle of the night, they'd get a message that the reservation was canceled and then rebooked.

And somehow Marriott was switching it over to a free night certificate, which is the craziest thing ever and taking one of their free night certificates. I assume that that has been worked out because we stopped getting reports of that a long time ago. But that's why I asked Greg if he had stayed at a Marriott property. Curious if they had mistakenly applied his 40K free night certificate in the middle of the night like the thief in the night that they can be. It wouldn't surprise me.

Maybe they, yeah, maybe they did it even without a hotel stay. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? All right. So a lot of craziness going on this week. That's fun. Craziness out of the way. I think it's time for the main events. Main event time. Elite treats. What are the best elite benefits in the business? Let's talk airlines. What do you think? Who has the best elite airline benefit overall? You know, so the best benefit overall, I'm going to say, and I'm sure this will be a controversial opinion, but I'm going to say that the best benefit is not actually an elite benefit at all, but rather a benefit of earning enough points. And that, of course, is the Southwest

Airlines Companion Pass. This is, I would say, the best benefit in the business of course, is the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass. This is, I would say, the best benefit in the business of potentially being loyal to an airline, whether you've earned those points through flying Southwest or you've earned them through two credit cards, and that's the extent of your loyalty to Southwest. It doesn't really matter either way. I think it's the best elite benefit in part because obviously there's intrinsic value of a companion for free, right? I mean, that's obviously something that's going to save you. If you fly with another person regularly, it's going to save you every single time you fly. And the companion passes we've talked about lots of times before will allow you to add your companion for free. They just pay the taxes,

which is $5 and 60 cents on most domestic flights and a little bit on the international routes that they serve. So you're just going to pay the taxes for your companion and they can come with you for free, whether your ticket was booked with points or your ticket was booked with cash or whether you booked your ticket six months ago and you book your companion's ticket 20 minutes before the flight takes off. You can add your companion for free as long as there's a seat to add anyway for just the taxes. And so that's pretty valuable right off the get go. And then I would say the reason that I, I find this to be my favorite, or what I would say, or argue is the

best elite benefit, so to speak in the business is a consistency, you know, you can count on it every single time. If there is another seat available on that flight, if there's two seats available, you can add a companion for free. No matter what. It's not like one of these benefits where you're going to have to see, well, I don't know, am I going to get upgraded 72 hours before 48 hours before 24 hours with it? They might have to wait until I get to the gate and get lucky or not get lucky. This is something you can consistently get value out of every single time you use it. So if you fly a lot, I think it's hard to beat this in terms of a great elite benefit. I totally agree. And I love that there's like, as you said, you can count it all the time. There's no like little terms and conditions that make it ineligible.

Like, you know, when they added Hawaii as a new route, they didn't say, you know, companion pass everywhere except for those flights to Hawaii. They allow that. And they have a number of international routes to Central America, for example, where, yeah, again, these would otherwise be often very expensive flights. And yet you can add a companion for free. It's pretty amazing. What I want to know is next time there's a operational meltdown, does the free companion get 25,000 points or is it just the primary pass? I did. I did. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. Well, you know, and of course that's a hard

question to answer. Cause like I said before, they've been inconsistent, you know, in my household, my wife has the companion pass. So I was her companion. So we were on three paid tickets, my wife and two sons, and then I was the companion. So my ticket was free, just $5 and 60 cents. And, uh, and we got 25,000 points for each of us, including me. So, uh, so we did get it, but there are other people whose companion didn't get it. Or we had some people who the companion got it and the primary, you know, person, the primary companion pass holder didn't get the 25,000 points. So I think everybody is supposed to get the 25,000 points. I think that's their intention. They just haven't necessarily rolled it out particularly well. So, you know, a little messy, but, but the, you know,

I should mention on that note that in the past, back when they used to overbook flights and I guess Southwest doesn't do that anymore, but in the past, when they used to overbook flights, there was a time when we got bumped from a flight and the companion also got the compensation. So what they did in that case was they gave a hundred dollars for the companion plus whatever the amount they were adding on the top of the cost of the ticket was. So, uh, so, so yeah, I mean, it counts like a regular person flying

most of the time. That's awesome. Awesome. And I'll just add as an honorable mention for airline elite benefits, um, a cool thing for Delta's top tier diamond status members. If you're flying into one of their major hubs like Atlanta or Minneapolis, and so you're connecting to another flight and it's a tight connection, you might be surprised by them meeting you at your plane, at your first plane, in a Porsche and driving you to the next plane. And so that's one of those sort of surprise and delight benefits that you can't count on, unfortunately. So I don't think it counts as a, you know, the best elite benefit because it's, it's not something I've ever experienced, but I don't often connect in those, those airports. But cool. Nevertheless, I mean, it's amazing for those who experience it. Yeah, it'd be really cool. I'd love to do that sometime.

So very cool. All right. So those are airlines. Now, hotels. Let's talk about the best elite benefits from hotels. And I think, you know, when we talk about these elite benefits, we kind of need to break it out into a couple of different categories. So the first thing I would say, we talk about hotel elite benefits, best hotel elite benefits.

We got to talk about on property benefits when you're actually staying, the benefits that you get during your stay. And I think you just can't touch Hyatt. I mean, nobody else really comes close to the benefits that Hyatt offers for their top tier elite members. And I should be clear that it's only for their top tier elite members that they do kind of surprise and delight and go above and beyond. That's right.

That's right. That's right. Although one of those top tier elite benefits is ability to book guest of honor stays for your friends or relatives. And so they can experience those, those benefits too. And things like free parking, including free valet parking, can be just unbelievably valuable, especially at big city hotels. And the consistency with free breakfast, free lounge access, and all that kind of stuff, 4 p.m. late checkout, unless it's a resort. They really do a great job of consistently delivering those benefits at most Hyatt hotels. And, and they're just terrific. Like, like Nick said, no one else comes close. No, they don't. They don't. There's no monkeying around. Do I get breakfast here? Do I not get

breakfast? And is it going to be a muffin or, you know, what's it good. It's generally, you're going to, you almost always count on the fact you're gonna have a good breakfast. You're going to have free parking on an awards day. You're going to have all those other things that Greg talked about the late checkout, blah, blah, blah. And you're not going to have to fight for it for the most part. So in terms of on property recognition, I think Hyatt wins. Also, I think most globalists will tell you that you're not going to get a suite every time at check-in, but you probably have a much higher percentage of success with getting a suite on check-in as a Hyatt Globalist than you do a top tier elite with any other program. It's going to vary based on season and where you're going in the hotel.

There's so many different variables where you won't get a suite plenty of times. However, if there's one available on a case-by-case basis, we're just going percentages, you get a much better shot at Hyatt recognizing top tier elite status and giving you access to that suite, giving you a suite upgrade at check-in, even if you don't use an upgrade instrument in advance. It's happened to me plenty of times as a Hyatt globalist member. So I think that makes it very good too and enhances your stay. But all right, speaking of suites, let's talk about milestone awards because one of my favorite Hyatt milestone awards is their suite upgrades. If you say 50 nights a year, then you get two suite upgrades. If you say 60 nights a

year, you get two more. And those suite upgrades can be used on a paid or an award stay of up to seven nights. So you can have a booking that's up to seven nights long and upgrade it to a standard suite. And that works at like basically any Hyatt property that has a standard suite, as long as it's available, as long as that standard suite is available. And it doesn't have to be available as an award, by the way. It can be available just for sale. As long as there's a standard suite available for sale, you can upgrade to it. So that is one of the best milestone benefits in the business.

But I think it's hard to talk about only Hyatt milestone benefits because you do have to stay 50 or 60 nights. And that's a tall order. But IHG makes it a lot easier. They do. They do. At only 20 nights, you can get a suite upgrade certificate with IHG. So that's one of the, that's gotta be the best milestone benefit in the hotel business. I mean, yes, their suite upgrades are not as good as Hyatt's because Hyatt's you can apply at the time of booking, whereas IHG you have to wait till 14 days before your stay. But they do confirm them, unlike Marriott's suite upgrades. So if you call and the suite's available when you call, they should confirm it then.

Yeah, I mean, that's great. Being able to get that at just 20 nights, that's an awesome elite benefit that you don't even need top tier elite status access. So I, I think that's probably like Greg said, probably the best milestone reward suite upgrade at 20 nights with IHG. That's a very low bar for a suite upgrade. All right. Best return on spend.

If you're an elite member, you're a top tier elite member. If you're going to go after top tier elite status in one of the hotel programs, which one is the best for everyday hotel spend? And when I say everyday hotel spend, I mean, at most properties, most of these chains that have some limited service properties have a slightly different earn rate. And so rather than get into the weeds as to whether the town place suites is more than the embassy suites or whatever, let's just say generally at the majority of full service properties anyway, which is the best chain for return on spend? So there it turns out that Marriott has the edge. It's not by a large margin, but they do compared to other major chains, give you more for your buck. If you have elite status, with all the chains, with elite status, you get a bonus on the

point earnings. And Marriott's just like the others in that way, and their points are worth just enough that it gives you a good return on spend. And depending on your elite level, it's going to be somewhere in the, what is it like 13 to 18% range? I think at top tier, I think it's about 14%. And that's just a hair above Hyatt. So because our, our reasonable redemption value for Marriott points is 0.8 cents per point. And you'll earn 17 and a half Marriott points per dollar spent with a titanium

or ambassador status, which is exactly 14% return on spend. And with, uh, with Hyatt, we peg the world of Hyatt points at 2.1 cents per point, a top tier globalist learned six and a half points per dollar spent. And that's 13.65% back in terms of return on spends is very close. 13.65 for Hyatt, 14 for Marriott. And really the rest of them are pretty close too. They're all like 12 or 13% for top tier members. So we're talking about splitting hairs over a percentage point or two at most. But if you're looking for the best bang for your buck in terms of return on spend, Marriott is it. And of course with Marriott's footprint, it's very easy to find a Marriott property where you can earn that 14 ish percent back. So it's very simple to find that. Now, when you figure in promotions, that's where it starts to get tricky because Hilton runs so

many promotions and Hilton's promotions quickly make them a better return on spend. So when they run their double or triple points, then all bets are off. Hilton is probably going to be the best return on spend during most of their promos. Marriott's promos have been very weak and usually are not going to return enough to beat out Hilton's. Right, right. I think that's very important to talk about Hilton because Hilton is the easiest to get top tier status because you just sign up for the Aspire card and then you've got diamond status. It's the most consistent with those kind of big point bonuses on spend at their hotels. As Nick said, regularly get these like 100% or even 200% bonuses.

And third, I forget what third is, but anyway. Good return on the card for spend on property, 14 points per dollar. That's exactly what it was. Yeah, 14 points per dollar. Yeah, yeah. All that adds up to huge return on spend at Hilton Properties.

So if you're saying a lot of Hilton Properties, you can do very, very well. Yep. All right. So let's talk about something else. Now we talked about airlines. We talked about hotels. Let's talk about elite treats in terms of rental car companies. So the best rental car company elite benefit, I'm going to say is the best path to free nights. And that is national rental car. Now, whereas Hertz has some complicated point system, and I can't even tell you how many points it takes for a free night, it gets complicated, and depends on how much you're spending and blah, blah, blah. With National, it's really simple. As a top tier elite member, if you have executive elite status with National, every five rental

credits, which means five rentals, unless you have really long rentals, you may get more than one rental credit. Every five rentals, you're going to earn a free night or free rental day rather. And they frequently run a promotion called one, two free that accelerates that. You earn a free night every two rental credits you earn that comes around just about every year for, gosh, it feels like about half of the year, you get a free rental day for every two rentals. And those free rental days we've talked about before are very valuable because A, they can be used, I think, for any car class, almost any car class. I think if they've got a Tesla or whatever, you're not going to get that. But you can get a big SUV or a minivan or something like that with your free

days. And of course, you don't pay one-way rental fees. If you do a one-way rental, it's a great use of a national free day because the one-way fee is just baked into the daily rate with national. So if the daily rate is free, then you're going to save on that big time. You'll pay some taxes when you pick up at an airport, drop off at an airport, but it's very low. We're talking a few bucks. And so that's totally worthwhile. And I think it has to be my favorite rental car elite perk. I like being able to select the car and the lot, but a lot of programs are kind of going to something like that. I like nationals where you get to pick kind of nicer cars, I feel like, off the lot when you rent a midsize car. But I think the free day path, being very simple to understand and easy to achieve is a great benefit. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Hertz will win this award next year when, when they start making it so that you can get out of jail free when they, uh, have you arrested for, for, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just, just Google, uh, Hertz, uh, arresting customers and you. See what I'm talking about. Yes, you will.

Hopefully that's the only way you'll see what he's talking about and not when the police knock on your door. So, yeah, Hertz is kind of crazy. It hurts. It hurts to rent with Hertz. So and, you know, as Tim will tell you, don't rent a Kia no matter who you rent from. Just don't rent a Kia right now. All right. So see what we're talking about there. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So the last one I want to talk about is casinos. And I am a little bit out of my element and talking about casino elite status because I'm not a big gambler, but that's why I had to include this one.

Because if you're not a big gambler, it doesn't matter. Your best option then, particularly if you're not a big gambler, is Caesar's Diamond status. And so if you're not a gambler, you might say, why do I care about casino elite status? And how am I going to get Caesar's Diamond? We've talked quite a bit lately about how you can get the Wyndham earner business card, for instance, and that gives you Wyndham Diamond status. And you can match your Wyndham Diamond status to Caesar's diamond status. So even if you've never gambled a penny in your life, you can sign up for Caesar's rewards. You can get the Wyndham business earner card, get Wyndham diamond match over and suddenly have this Caesar's diamond casino elite status.

And so what's that worth? Well, it could be kind of valuable because at Caesars properties, you get an annual a hundred dollars celebration dinner. Now that's not only in Las Vegas. There are other Caesars properties out there where you can use this a hundred dollars celebration credit and Caesars in a number of States now. So it's worth taking a look and seeing where there might be one where you can use it. So a hundred dollars celebration dinner, which, you know, if you do this in two player mode and mode and both partners have Caesar's Diamond status, you can get $200 off the check in one meal. We've done that before

in my household. So that can get you a pretty nice meal in Las Vegas or many of these other casinos. So that's a decent benefit off the top. Two free show tickets every month. I believe that's still a benefit anyway. We've written about it in the past. I haven't been to a Caesar's property in a while now, so I haven't used that one myself. No resort, I haven't used it myself in a while. No resort fees in Las Vegas, which no resort fees is really nice. Everybody likes to tack on resort fees these days. This way you can just look at the nightly rate of the hotel, which if you have Caesars diamond status might be free. You should log into your account and take a look at the upcoming rates because oftentimes

close in, you'll find some of the properties are totally free or like 10 or 15 or $20 a night and no resort fees. So no resort fee is nice. Free Atlantis stay. You can stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas for four nights. Now I say free with sort of quotation marks because you're still going to pay a resort fee that's kind of high there. So it doesn't really work out to be free, but deeply discounted anyway, if you're interested in going to Atlantis. And then if you live in a state with a Caesar sports book, you get a monthly $20 free bet. As long as you've placed, I can't remember if it's 10 or $20 worth of bets in the previous month on the

sports book app, then you get a free $20 bet each month. And so, you know, if you're not a gambler, maybe that doesn't matter, but if you're in a state with a Caesar sports book, it's kind of a fun little bonus. It is, it is. And you may be able to parlay that elite status into first, since I'm talking about sports books, elite status with other sports books, and that can be worth it. Believe it or not. I'm going to leave that there. And then of course, we've written about parlaying your Caesar's diamond status into free cruises. And so we've talked a lot about how you can get a, potentially get a free cruise with carnival with your Caesar's diamond status, and then parlay that carnival offer into potentially a free cruise

with Royal Caribbean and possibly others. So there are a number of different ancillary benefits when you have that elite status. One of the benefits of having elite status is trying to match it into other statuses. So that's certainly something you can give it a shot with, uh, with your Caesar's diamond status. So I think that's worth going after if you have access to it. So those are our elite treats, I think, right. That kind of wraps us up. That wraps it up. But, uh, I think you have a question of the week for me, do you?

I sure do have a question of the week for you. My question of the week, we talked about how Hyatt has the ability to book guest of honor stays. And so when we mentioned that very briefly, if you have Hyatt Globalist status, you can book a stay for somebody else and they get all of the high globalist benefits, the free breakfast, the parking, et cetera. So Megan writes in and asks, she says, I have high globalist status through February of 2024. So through February of next year, I was wondering, do guest of honor bookings work if you book while you have globalist status for a third party stay that occurs after your globalist status lapses. I don't expect to have globalist status past February 2024. So for example, at the end of 2023, could I book a stay in late 2024 for my husband as a guest of honor stay, for instance,

and they would get those benefits? Does that work, Greg? I love that question. That's a great way of thinking about things. Because if it did work, you'd be able to do things like get high global status once every few years and have your player two get it on the alternating years, and you book a guest of honor for your player two. And then when they have status, they book in the future for you. But I don't think it works that way at all. I think just like when you're booking your own awards, award stays, the status is what you have at the time of the stay. I think that should be the case here. Is that right? Yes, I believe it is. I

remember once years ago, I was booking an award stay right at the end when my elite status was expiring and it got messy because I was initially able to make the booking as a guest of honor booking, I should say Hyatt elite status ends at the end of February. And so I was booking a guest of honor stay and the guest was checking out first couple of days of March. And I was initially able to make the reservation. But then I remember there were a bunch of problems over. Are they going to get the benefits or not get the benefits? And I can't remember all of the details.

But I do remember that Hyatt caught on to the fact that my status was expiring during that stay. And that was an issue. So no, I don't think you'll be able to do this. But like Greg said, I loved the question because that was exactly where my mind went next. I was like, oh, wouldn't that be awesome? Then you can go after elite status every other year and book the guest of honor stays for the person who's going after status and get all the benefits even before they actually

earn the status. I mean, it would be awesome if it worked that way, but yeah, no, I believe it does not work that way either. So unfortunately, sadly, I wish it did. All right. That brings us, I think, to the end for this week. If you've been enjoying what you've been listening to, you want to go to frequentm us, I think, to the end for this week. If you've been enjoying what you've been listening to, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get

on our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, and wherever you're listening to this show or watching it, please like it, give us a thumbs up, leave us some feedback, share it with your friends. We always appreciate hearing from you. Don't forget to subscribe and enable notifications. Thank you very much. And we will see you again next week. Bye, everybody.