Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt comes out swinging | Ep 63 | 9/11/20

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Greg and Nick analyze Hyatt's latest COVID inspired promotions. They're sweet! How will the others respond? We put down our bets. 00:37 Mailbag (HSBC $600 deal) 3:56 Crazy Citi thing: (not crazy but noteworthy) 5:23 Mattress Running the Numbers (Wyndham) https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/book-2-night-stay-at-wyndham-vacation-clubs-resort-for-7500-points-total-timeshare-presentation-required/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/wyndham-timeshare-presentation-survival-guide-get-your-no-face-on/ 10:49 Nick's Labor Day Weekend Surprise 14:20 Main Event - Hyatt comes out swinging https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-launching-excellent-new-promo-3x-4x-points-plus-double-elite-nights-but-in-an-unexpected-way/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-offering-up-to-25-points-rebate-on-award-nights-free-parking-dining-bonus-points/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hacking-hyatt-prive-for-the-win-in-new-york-city/ 32:22 What will the others do? Marriott? Hilton? IHG? 34:25 Post Roast - "Chase Sapphire: What's Next?" 40:17 Question of the Week (or not)

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event hyatt they came out swinging with three overlapping promotions what are the other guys gonna do marriott hilton ihg we'll talk about that soon let's get into first the giant mailbag all right i'm gonna drag going to drag it out. There you go. All right. Today's mail comes from Dodd. This was too good. This just came in recently.

I had to throw away the previous piece of mail that I had queued up because this is great. Oh, and I have not looked at any. If it was something that I was copying, I haven't looked at anything the last few days. Yeah. Yeah. I would have thought you would have seen this one because this was a comment on one of your posts. This was your post about the HSBC $600 bank account bonus. Okay, yes.

Which I have to admit, I saw a couple of the first few comments come in on that, but I actually haven't been able to keep up the last few days, so we'll talk about why not. This is just the most recent. And from Dodd. Dodd says, I just called today. Here's how it went. HSBC. How did you hear of the offer? Me. Your website. HSBC. You didn't see it in a blog post? Me, yes, I did. HSBC, was the blog written by Nick Reyes? Me, ha-ha, yes. HSBC, okay, we've been getting a lot of activity because of it.

Me, is that good or bad? HSBC, it's great. We're just hoping a lot of these new customers stick around. So there you go. Well, there we go. That's hilarious. Your post is having some effect on at least one company. Oh my goodness, that is so funny.

And people all the time, we talk about whether or not the banks are reading what we say and blah, blah, blah. And HSBC is like the last bank in the world that I would expect has been reading Frequent Miler, right? I mean, like, when have we ever written anything about HSBC before? But apparently, apparently, some people decide, I mean, it's an awesome deal if it works. But you know, the thing is, I haven't ever dealt with it before. And it does seem like people have run into some complication with it. Although that is an encouraging sign.

If that's the conversation and the way it went down today, then okay, at least they've seen the post and they understand, you know, that people are signing up, looking to take advantage of it and they get their chance to keep them as customers or not. Yeah. You know, it's free advertising for them. Right. Right. So, you know, so they're happy. And, and I think it's a good point as long as they stick around.

Cause if they read enough on our site, they probably gathered that maybe a lot of our readers are just going to hit it and run. But they have a chance to prove that they're a good bank to bank with. And so some people probably will stick around. Yeah, I mean, when I you know, I, when I opened the account, I didn't expect to stick around with HSBC, I just expected, I mean, it was a great bonus, you know, for when I signed up, it was a $700 bonus, but paid over six months,

and you had to have direct deposit each month, blah, blah, blah. And so I figured, all right, well, it was $700 for me 700 for my wife $1,400 and kind of free money that seemed like a great deal to me. So I was happy to sign up for it, but I had no intention of keeping it long-term. However, it's actually worked out to be pretty good. So I've been pretty happy with it. I might keep them. So I'm pleasantly surprised.

And, you know, maybe some people, hopefully some readers will end up feeling the same way because it is a great deal they're offering. So, right. But that's funny. That's hilarious. I love it. Yeah, I love it.

I love that he spelled it out like a dialogue. That's great. Yeah. So thanks Dodd for that contribution. Thank you. Yes. All right. So you, can you queue up our next segment? All right. So the next segment then should be what crazy thing did city do this week? That's right. So this week, not a crazy thing at all, but noteworthy. Noteworthy thing.

Noteworthy. What noteworthy thing did Citi do this week? There we go. Citi has tapped a woman named Jane Frazier to be the first ever CEO of a major US bank. First ever CEO. Out with the old and in with the new. And yeah, so my main concern about that, I think that's great. My main concern is, does this mean they're going to stop doing crazy things and we're going to have to look for a different segment? So, too good to determine there. Let me flash a little bit of ignorance here.

So if there was no CEO of any of the major banks, like, how is the leadership set up? Who's in charge? It's the first female CEO. I heard first CEO, and I was like, the first CEO. I left out an important piece of that, didn't I? That's a key piece. That really makes a total difference. I was like, what do you mean the first CEO?

All right. So everybody just back up in your minds and insert female into that. First female CEO. Okay, very good. Very good. Well, I mean, yeah, that's exciting, except if she stops the crazy things. So if you're listening, if you're listening, which we know you are from past experience and we know HSBC listens in closely. So City, if you're listening, don't stop doing the crazy stuff. We love it. No. Yes. Okay. All right.

So time for the next segment mattress running the numbers right this one now i would have we would have done hyatt except that hyatt's the main event so pick something else kind of interesting uh windham so what what windham's doing is there they have this vacation club which is like a timeshare thing. So they've got their vacation club properties all over. A bunch of them during a set period of time, you can book two nights. So this is like, you know, probably like a condo like thing, you know, washroom, dryer, kitchen, all that kind of stuff. You book two nights for only 7,500 points total. Wow. So what's the catch? Pretty good deal, right? Yeah. Wow. So what's the catch?

Pretty good deal, right? Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a great deal. Yeah, the only catch is you gotta sit through one of those timeshare presentations. And yeah, so the fear for anyone, you know, a little worried about COVID is that they might not be holding these things outdoors. They might be in cramped little rooms

with a lot of people. Sit at a little table across from some person who talks to people all day long. Right, right. So there's that. But aside from that, I mean, that is a really nice deal. And also if you're looking to – it's kind of funny because if you're worried about COVID, I mean, having a condo-like thing is probably what you want because if you're worried about covet i mean having a condo like thing is probably what you want because then you could have meals there you know you you don't you can enjoy the resort without really going out to restaurants and other things that you might be worried about

but um but there is a timeshare presentation so so when when do you have to stay by uh i don't i don't know off the top of my head but i but i think it was like uh it was it was early like i think it was like maybe early november or something like that so very soon yeah yeah okay so what do you think is i mean is this a good deal is this worth going after i mean you mentioned some of the positives there yeah i mean i think if you have points and you're looking for a vacation in one of the areas that are included, which they have a whole list. So, you know, I don't know off the top of my head what they are, but they tended to be more in warmer weather areas. So there were a bunch in Florida and Texas.

I think there was South Carolina. You know, so anyway, if you want to go on vacation to one of those places, I think it's a great deal. I mean, yes, you've got to sit through a timeshare presentation. But if you think about often those timeshare deals are like you have to pay $200, you know, in addition to sitting through the thing. This is only 7,500 points. So that's a good, you know, if you think about that trade-off, that's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, Wyndham points, if you're generous, you're going to value him at about a penny

each, so it's about $75 worth of points. It's Capital One Transfer Partners, so it costs you 10,000 Capital One points, so $100 worth of Capital One points, a little bit more maybe than that for two nights. I mean, that doesn't sound like a terrible deal, but I'm going to go on the opposite side and say, not a great deal. Not a great deal, because I mean, come on now sound like a terrible deal, but I'm going to go on the opposite side and say, all right, not a great deal. No, not a great deal. Cause I mean, come on now, Stephen,

our own Stephen Pepper wrote the Wyndham timeshare survival guide, right? So if you remember back to that post, wildly popular frequent miler posts, I'm not even being facetious about that. Like it has continued to be wildly popular year after year. People are looking at this post. And if you remember the details, yes, this post. And if you remember the details. Yes, it is. So if you remember the details of the Wyndham Timeshare Survival Guide post, get your no face on, right?

He was offered one of two options initially. So his two options were either 45,000 Wyndham points or a free seven night stay certificate with a bunch of restrictions. Right, right. And so he'd get either of those for attending the presentation. He said he wanted both. And they said, essentially, if you want both,

it's going to cost you $100 or $150 maybe, something like that. So I think he ended up paying $100 or $150 to get both 45,000 Wyndham points and a seven-night stay. Now, he probably, again, he could have had the 45,000 points for free. So he could have had enough points for like three mid-tier Wyndham stay, three nights for free. So they could have paid him to go to the presentation. Why are you going to pay them?

If they're willing to pay you, why are you going to pay them? At a time when nobody, nobody, not many people are traveling. I got to imagine that they could do better than that. Right? Like, I mean, shouldn't they be encouraging you to come to that timeshare presentation and try to get you to spend your money? I think that having to pay anything right now to go to a timeshare presentation in a COVID market with people traveling as little as they are.

I think that seems like a bad deal. I think that's a great point. You've convinced me. All right. But if anyone does take it up, go find that post and read it before going so that you know how to get out of there, how to survive the timeshare presentation.

Please do because you don't, and especially if you're the kind of person that gets influenced easily at all, definitely read that post so that you understand the different levels that they're going to go through to try to reel you in after you say no the first eight times and then hopefully if you're the kind of person who's easily influenced you're going to read all that and say you know what maybe I shouldn't go to this because you don't want to get reeled into that. Right there you go Nick just double saved you 7,500 Wyndham points hopefully all right all right cool so that does that bring the main event the main

event Hyatt now I know that Hyatt has something big going on but I gotta admit I I really haven't read like anything about it I took a very very very quick glance at maybe like the email about it today or something like that and I say say something like that. And my, my excuse here, I should bring it up now. So, so let me just interrupt for a second. I've noticed that you haven't been posting this week. Right. And you've basically been slacking off all week.

Totally. What is going on? Totally slacking off. Just taking a break. I figured, you know what? You and Steven Pepper can pick up the slack for a week. See what it's like being Nick Reyes. We get mail from HSBC all the time. Glad I'm keeping you busy with that. So for anybody who hasn't noticed along the way that I've been talking about how I was expecting a baby, expecting a baby. Well, I was expecting a baby and sure enough, that baby came. So I'm out on paternity leave right now,

which is why you haven't seen anything from me this week. And I slept, like I told Greg before this, like in 20 to 40 minute increments last night. So I've been away from the game totally. I've been trying to adjust to life with a newborn and a two and a half year old, which I know many people do it. People do it all the time. So I know it can be done, but I haven't figured it out yet.

So it'll take me a few more days, I think, before I have a good handle on that. So we're making it through. And you know what? I mean, we're having a lot of fun. My goodness, we're lucky. We're fortunate. Fantastic. Beautiful child.

Healthy. Mom was good. Delivery was awesome. Everything was great. We're fortunate. Fantastic. Beautiful child. Healthy. Mom was good. Delivery was awesome. Everything was great. Totally in love, but definitely struggling with the day-to-day, like just A, B, C from sunup to sundown. So I have not looked at Frequent Miler at all this week. And that's the first time I haven't looked at Frequent Miler for this amount of time in probably as long as I've worked for Greg. Even when I've been on vacation, I'm usually checking and looking. This week, not so much. So. So you wouldn't say two and a half years ago there was a period of time when you stopped looking at Frequent Miler for a little while? Well, you know, no, because so yes, so Greg's alluding to the fact that my son

was born a couple of years ago and I was out on paternity leave then, right? My first son rather, we have two sons now. So my first son was born about two and a half years ago and I was out on paternity leave then, right? My first son rather, we have two sons now. So my first son was born about two and a half years ago and definitely, you know, took some paternity leave. I was out for a little bit, but you know, anybody who has had one child at the newborn stage, you know, they sleep like 17 hours a day, right? So the newborn stage is like, quote unquote, the easy time. And so there was a lot of downtime that first like two or three weeks. So I feel like I was still looking at frequent miler, maybe not, you know, as often of course as, as usual, but I was still looking at it cause he's asleep in my arms and looking at my phone flipping through. Right.

But when you got to pay attention to both now, one who's like a live alert, awake and enthusiastic, and one who you're just trying to keep alive and get to that awake and enthusiastic stage, then there's just less time for scrolling, it seems. That's understandable. And I love what you said about Labor Day weekend on Facebook. Yeah, I said that, you know, so we had the baby over the weekend, born on Labor Day weekend.

And so I said, you know, Labor Day weekend will have an entirely different meaning for us from here on out. So it'll forever be changed. Labor Day weekend. I love entirely different meaning for us from here on out. So it'll forever be changed. Labor Day weekend. I love it. I love it. And I'm sure I'm channeling all our listeners by sending you a big congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. But enough of all that. Okay. It's time to get back to work. Back to Hyatt. Back to Hyatt here. Back to Hyatt anyway.

So my point in all of that was you need to tell me what's going on because I don't really know. Because you're not going to pull your weight in this conversation. Right. Well, I know. I mean, I'm definitely going to be happy to criticize or agree or disagree, but you've got to tell me what it is that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with first. Okay. And you get a fresh, live reaction out of me on this one.

All right. So there's two parts. So you remember the promotion where Hyatt is rebating award stays. So they're giving 15% back of the points for people without the Hyatt card or 25% back if you have the Hyatt card. And you have to stay back October 8th for that, right? They've extended it to January 4th. That's exciting. That's exciting by itself. And I'm going to tell you in a minute why I'm personally super excited by it. But then they also added a brand new promotion, which has two distinct parts to it.

But this brand new promotion goes October 1st to January 4th. So now there's a complete overlap between these two promotions starting October 1st. Okay. So the new promo first part is, um, either triple or quadruple points per dollar earned on paid stays. So, uh, what that works out like five,

you normally earn five. So, so a base level, a base member without any status would be getting 15 or 20. So there's the 20, So a base member without any status would be getting 15 or 20. So the quadruple comes only if you're a Hyatt card member and only for select resorts, but they haven't put out the list yet of what those are. So let's just hone in on, I guess, the triple is a definite,

and that's for everybody. Explorers with triple get 16 points per dollar. If you pay with your Hyatt card, you always get four points per dollar. So an Explorist gets 20 points per dollar. That's a nice rebate on paid Hyatt stays, huh? It's a really nice rebate. And then at the Forex level,

it goes up to 25 with that combination of using the Hyatt card um so at the at the top end these two the rebate at the top end and and this points per dollar at the top end are remarkably similar like so right with the 25 points rebate if you if you spend 100 points, you get 25 back. With the points, 25 points per dollar, you spend a dollar, you get 25 points back. And so it's almost equating spending higher points with spending pennies as far as those two promos go at the top end of each one.

So the other piece of this new promo is bonus elite nights. So real quick for anyone who might not know, what is an elite night? It's when you spend a night at a hotel, they record that and it gets you towards elite status so that you can get more perks on future stays. And with Hyatt, you also get, they have these, I'm blanking on what the name of it is, but, oh, milestone rewards where at like 20 nights and 30 nights and 40 nights earned,

these are elite nights earned, you get various perks. You get like free lounge access or a free night stay, things like that. So here's how the promo works. I'm surprised they went with this because you really have to understand this late night stuff to get it. However many nights you earn for your stay, whether it's a paid stay or an award stay,

during the promotion period, you'll get that many again in 2021. What? Okay. Okay. So you stay in a night this year, you're going to get credit for that night this year and credit for that night next year.

And next year. Right, right. So, I mean, to be extreme, no one would do this, but if you did 60 nights during the promotion period this year, you would start next year as globalist. As globalist for the following year. For the following year, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's essentially kind of like extending your globalist status beyond another year. It's very much like, well, it's sort of like rolling over elite knights, but not really because it's only rolling over the ones earned during this period. It's also not really because you might remember the promo goes into 2021 briefly up to January 4th. So any stays that credit to 2021, you're getting double elite knights

because you're getting the base ones plus the bonus ones. There's a play there. I've been chatting back and forth with a Hyatt rep because I'm trying to understand what happens on a long stay that ends January 4th. If you started

December 15th and ends January 4th, where do all those elite Knights go? So I will have either already written about this by the time people listen to it, or I'll post next week what the answer is. Interesting. Yeah. So yeah,

so you can imagine some some opportunities to try to get ahead on elite status there. So now I'm going to jump ahead of you and cut you off and probably totally derail your train of thought, but, but so those nights that are going to count again in 2021 are they going to count towards milestone rewards again so like you get your club lounge yeah yeah stuff at 20 you do so if you do 20 nights right now you get yourself a club cert i guess right and then you get you get it this year and again next year yep okay yep all right interesting uh yeah i verified with verified that with them.

Also, free night certificates will work too to get you an elite night now and later. Nice. Yeah, so that's all awesome. And the nice thing is that part of the new promotion overlaps with the old promotion, with the extended rewards day promotion. So you book an awards day,

you're getting up to 25 points back plus you're getting these bonus elite nights that go into next year now that's the kind of promo i expected to see somebody come right that's what i was thinking when all this stuff came out i was like finally we're seeing the stuff we predicted earlier on in the in the covid mess right right so at least from a major player like we saw that choice promo which we thought that was like an early one but it was very very specific but right um yeah this is the first broad-based stay almost anywhere type of promo that um that's big numbers not just not just little like uh steven's post about this hyatt promo actually made fun of Marriott. He's like, we're all in the corner laughing at Marriott.

$2,500 per stay. It doesn't matter how many nights. Oh, right, right, right. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of puts that to shame, huh? It does. It does. So, yeah. So that's, I think, the smoking hot combination. And I'm going to throw in another one. Okay. The Miraval promo, the buy one, get one.

You stay one night, you get the next night free, or stay two nights, get two nights free kind of thing. That overlaps as well. So that goes until the end of December. So if you book a Miraval awards day, and you have a Hyatt credit card, you get, you know,

you get your four or six, whatever, even number of nights for half price. And then you get 25% of that back. And then all those nights are going to count for elite status, both this year and next year. All those things wrapping up together. That's a pretty crazy combination.

Yeah. So is it an actress run worthy? I mean, is that like, are you going to get out there and just all of a sudden book a bunch of stays? I mean, you're not going to book a bunch of Miraval stays that's dropped from the hat, right? I mean, that's something you wanted to do. Not a drop of hat, but I'm going to tell you a personal story,

which is that I already have booked four nights at Miraval Austin and four nights at Miraval Arizona. I booked this before. Greg was like, Nick's out on paternity leave. I'm going to need a break. You go to all the Miravals. That's right. But I booked them because of the the buy one get one offer that now the first one i i knew uh when the when the 25 rebate came out i was like i'm gonna get 25 back on that one but not the arizona one now I am because they extended the rebate.

And now all of a sudden, these two four-night stays become eight elite nights next year towards re-upping my status next year thanks to all these overlapping things. So yeah, I mean, it's- No, and that's required. That's, yeah. Right.

And just to give you an idea how much this is, like, so the second Miraval stay where I'm suddenly getting 25% back, 32,500 points are going to be coming back for nothing I did, but just because they extended the promo. It's really, really nice. That's a win.

Right. Now, this all assumes that I actually go through with both of those stays, but I expect I will. Yeah, yeah. So that's really interesting. I mean, first of all, just the number of points you can earn back in a paid stay, that's pretty terrific for Hyatt.

It is, it is. Hyatt points at least one and a half cents each. So you're looking at anywhere from 30 to 40% almost back in points on a paid stay. Right, right. So it really makes it hard to figure out which you should do, book a paid or a point stay, you know, because with the points rebate alone,

it really tipped the scales for like almost any stay towards book it with points, you know, and there's always going to be, and there is now, a fact that if the cash rate is very high, the point rates are fixed, so it's probably going to be better to do a points day. And conversely, if the cash rate's very low,

you're probably better off doing a cash day. And so that's still true. It's just that now it's like the stakes are higher as far as what the rebates are, depending which way you go. So either way, though, great news that you're getting all this stuff back. And I'm wondering, like, I don't think that Marriott, Hilton, IHG can just sit by and say, oh, we're okay with the promos we had planned. I mean, now they're much, much bigger than Hyatt, so maybe they could. But I'm thinking we're going to be seeing some rethinking going on.

There's got to be. I'm very surprised that none of them have thought in this type of direction yet because i'm like this is the kind of thing you have to do to incentivize people because i mean i just heard about this right and i'm already in my my head here doing the math and saying well if we do a 30-day stay the category one in december like how's that gonna add up for next year and right so, I'm certainly already thinking that kind of stuff that, you know, Marriott and IHC definitely don't have me thinking about a 30 night hotel stay in 2020. That's for sure. So, uh, right, right. Now I, I have to mention one other promo Hyatt's

has going on is, is their work from Hyatt, um, deals, right? So WFH instead of work from home or work from Hyatt. So they have a bunch of properties, special offers where you get property credit, free breakfast, various other things, free or discounted laundry. If you book seven night or longer stays, you know, so, and the reason I'm bringing that up is I could imagine people, so this is sort of a perfect combination, right, of like people now, a lot of people are in a situation where they can work from anywhere.

They're working remotely anyway, so why not work from a resort on the beach or something? And then you have all these overlapping promotions. So I think the idea of booking a hotel, like you were saying, for 20 nights or whatever, is not as crazy as normal. Unfortunately, I looked at a couple of the rates for these things and weren't that good yeah they were they were higher than the the member rate and so you'd have to really value all the stuff that comes with it to to pick that and and when and especially the

properties that i looked at are not cheap either so for a really long stay that would be crazy expensive but anyway um you know my point is like uh looking at long-term hiatus days i think is making a lot of sense and and um that you know why marriott and hilton and i actually wouldn't want to be incentivizing that kind of thing as well right right you absolutely would think they would so now i think you're already a globalist for this year, right? Yeah. So are you thinking about booking mattress runs to pick up easy elite nights for next year? Does that make sense? Does it make sense to book a mattress run night if you're already at globalist

status now, is there any reason to get involved in that? I mean, it could like, so if I would do it, it sort of depends what the answer is to if a stay starts in December and ends in January, how many nights would I end up with for next year's status, you know, next year towards status. Because basically, you're getting, then you'd be getting two elite knights for every one paid knight, whether paid means with points or with cash. With points, with the 25% rebate, if you could find a Category 1, it's, what, 3,700 points a knight, I think.

So it's pretty cheap, and you're getting two elite knights for that. It might make sense to do. Plus, don't forget forget you get milestone rewards so even though i'm already a globalist um oh well this would count for next year but um you so you would get uh different like a free night at 30 at 30 and and other things at different right you get a free category one to four at 30 nights and then a free category one to seven at 60 nights. So if you were able to. Sweet upgrades at 50.

Yeah. There's some good stuff in there. Right. Right. So that, I mean, that could make sense, especially when you consider the points rebate and what you're saying about how,

depending on how the Knights post, if Knights post that way and what you're able to kind of double up, then, then that certainly. Right. Right. Now, all that said, I don't think it's likely i'll match this right like i think i'd be much more likely to try to actually engineer vacation plans around it like say okay we know we want to go somewhere it's going to be hyatt and i mean cheers to Hyatt's marketing team, because that's exactly what they want, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's where Marriott and Hilton and IHG are just missing the boat right now. And I feel like their promos are all kind of just, they're giving some points away to those folks who are going to travel to them anyway. There's not really an incentive to pick them over anybody else. Right, not that we've seen yet.

Yeah, yeah. And I really expected we would see this. Double, triple elite night credit kind of things. Lots and lots of points. You know, Hilton's always giving you lots and lots of points. I think they probably have their double points promo going right now. But that's like what they always run. So it wasn't anything particularly special there.

And then, you know, they are rolling over nights too, I think, if you're over the threshold. Hilton is, but not the same way. So I think that this is a really interesting, exciting promotion. I am not anywhere near Hyatt Elite status for this year, and so I'm probably not going to get involved in this. But if I were, or if I anticipated being close to it next year, the other thing that I would take a close look at is the Hyatt Prevay rates because Hyatt Prevay I've written about before

and it's like Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts, but you book it through a Hyatt Prevay rep and so you get those very similar benefits and you're going to earn your points and Elite Night credits. You're still going to earn up to 25 points per dollar on that stay in addition to all those great perks. Yeah.

No, that's a great point. Thanks for reminding us about that. I mean, and so if anyone's listening, you got to dig up that post. We'll put it in the notes of the podcast. But Nick wrote all about Hype Reve, how to book it and everything. Well, and it makes sense

because the rate is usually about the same as whatever the member rate is. And you're getting, you know, the $100 kind of benefit, amenity benefit at most places are 75 and some of them, blah, blah, blah. You read all about it in the post. But the key is, I think right now is with paid rates really low and quite a surprising range of properties on the Hyatt Prevay list, you know, you're not going to get like Hyatt places and Hyatt houses, but you do get some places where paid rates aren't always crazy. And I booked one back before the pandemic at the Grand Hyatt in New York. And it was like, I don't know, 120 bucks a night or something, which, you know, not so bad for all of the benefits that I got.

And now with paid rates probably being even lower in a lot of places, you might find some spectacular deals in terms of the number of benefits or the benefits that you get and the number of points and the extra elite credit. So that's where I would be looking. Uh, you know, apart from awards days, obviously if you have awards days that it makes sense. Right, right, right, right. Um, so, uh, I'm going to give you, let's wrap this up with, um, we'll each do one prediction of what will another major chain do to retaliate.

Okay. So you're going to go first. Okay. I think IHG will come back with their gamified promo. I can't remember what they call those things. Accelerate. Accelerate. Okay.

Yeah. Where they have a bunch of different challenges, like staying two different holiday inns or whatever, or two different brands, and you get 10,000 points, and staying in these two, whatever. They have a bunch of targeted challenges for different members. They've had that Accelerate promo, different versions of it. They brought up regularly.

We haven't seen it for a while, I think. We haven't, no. I think since they have that whole sort of template in their pocket like i'd expect to see that come back and hopefully more generous than the most recent couple have been there you go i think that's a decent prediction and i was bummed when you said ihg because i was thinking i was going to try to pick ihg and whatever they're going to do next and then the Accelerate promo is a great prediction. So I guess here's my prediction. I don't know how strongly I feel about it, but here's what I'm going to go ahead and predict anyway. We've seen Marriott tossing out a bunch of different targeted promos and some of them are really good and some of them are really not worth anything at all. I remember in the past,

Marriott used to now and then run a promo where you could stay two or three nights and get a free night certificate that was good for up to like some mid-tier category. I can see something like that, especially because the free night certificate will have a fixed expiration date. So there's going to be some built-in breakage. So it doesn't cost them as much as it might if the points just continue on in perpetuity and can get used to some very high-end place so i could see marriott doing something like that where you stay a certain number of nights and you get a free night certificate because that's a less expensive promotion for them to offer probably yet it still would incentivize people to stay at marriott uh so i think i see them doing something like that

that's my yeah that's a good one okay that's a good one. Okay. That's a good one. All right. So we normally move right into post-roast. Right. But I reviewed all of the posts you wrote this week, and I couldn't find anything bad to say about any of them. Nothing you could roast. Nothing you could roast. That's right.

That's right. It was a flawless week for me. They were all flawless. And, of course, the other way around, I already said that I haven't read anything. So I'm out of the loop. So I've got nothing to roast for Greg. It's been a terrific week for Greg too.

There was something that came to mind, actually. I'm trying to remember now, because there was something, I did read a quick deal and it got to the end and I was like, ooh, I wish there was an example of this, but I can't even remember what the quick deal was. So that's a terrible post-roast. All right, well, let me real quickly roast one of my own then.

So I wrote Chase Sapphire, what's next? So this was in response to the Freedom Cards coming out with the 3X categories. The Sapphire Preferred is old and worn out. It no longer has any attraction what are they going to do to to bring it back to life and i proposed a slew of 3x categories they should move to okay so what were your slow just in quick review um i think I said grocery, gas, travel, and dining. Okay.

And so part of the roast is that I think last week I told you, no, they're not going to do grocery. But then in my post, I went ahead and predicted grocery. And then I said, all right, well, and then if Sapphire is going to do that, Sapphire Preferred is going to do that, Sapphire Reserve has to go 4X for all those categories. So that's what I... 4X, wow.

All right. And so my roast to myself is like, it's just not, on the one hand, it's just not reasonable that Chase will go that big because it'll cost them too much. Like there's no way. On the other hand, I think if you read that post where I explain how I got there,

like the conditions of their competitors and the competitive situation plus the pressure from their own product line, it's hard not to get there. Now, I don't know about those particular categories necessarily, but anyway, so I'm just leaving you with that because I felt like we had to talk about that a little bit. So yeah, yeah. Well, I think that they have to do something. And I think we've said that before, and I'm excited to see what they do. I will be kind of surprised if that's the route

that they take, but not because I think it's a bad idea, just because I think they seem to have resisted going that route for quite a while. I think that another possibility is that the Sapphire Reserve will add more benefits instead of more points per dollar in a particular bonus category. And so that I think could be kind of interesting

to see if they come up with something creative to add to that, but that doesn't really help the Sapphire preferred because I mean, how many more benefits can you add on a card? That's only $95 a year that don't start to make the Sapphire reserve seem silly. So they're, they're really kind of,

they built themselves or they kind of dug themselves into a little bit of a hole there in terms of these new great fee free cards. And I say dug themselves into a hole. I'm glad I'm happy to sell them a say dug themselves into a hole. I'm glad. I'm happy to sell them a couple extra shovels real cheap. That's right. That's right. Keep up the good work, Chase.

But it's a tough situation. Yeah. So go ahead. So let me just end on, you know, what I wrote wasn't really so much predictions, even if I describe it that way before. It was really more telling Chase, here's what I think you should do. Let's hope we have some influence on Chase. We know we don't. Yeah. I mean, you know, HSBC is reading, maybe, maybe Chase is too.

Maybe Chase. So I remember what it was that I was going to, so this is a small roast, small roast, but then I'm going to, I'm going to roast it anyway. Cause you know what? I'm out on paternity leave and I can get away with this kind of you can do whatever you want yeah that's right so I saw that Greg you posted that United added some non-stops some extra non-stops they added non-stops to Hawaii so I think it was what Newark to Maui and Chicago to Kona something like that right that's right and then they also added some non-stops to India and South and Africa yeah that's Africa there were a couple African locations yeah and so you mentioned in, that's right. Africa, there were a couple African locations. That's right, yeah.

And so you mentioned in there that, you know, because United doesn't charge fuel surcharges, you know, you might be able to book great deals with other airlines. It might be a great time to consider the ANA round the world chart for the 115,000. You linked to that. But I was reading it and I said,

well, why didn't we include some of those content block sweet spots that show the best way to book these routes with miles since we've already got those content sweet spots to say, hey, here's the best way to get to, you know, whatever it is, Africa on miles or the best way to get to so-and-so on. So I think adding some of that in there would be good because I read it and I said, oh, those new non-stops to India. Great sweet spot for Turkish miles, 52,500 miles one way. If I remember correctly from the U S to India and business class,

that's pretty solid. And so on United, you wouldn't be paying any fuel start charges cost you 52, five and $5 and 60 cents with Turkish. That's a pretty good deal for quite a long flight and Polaris business class. And the South Africa one popped, one popped into my mind there. And now this, I was roasting you for not including the content blocks, but this we wouldn't have a content block for yet. But the new Aero plan, the new Aero plan,

because I mean, Africa is the same price as Europe and you get a stopover if you want. Hello. So you could book that one way to South Africa one way and then the other way, book it through Europe and get yourself a stop in Europe. Right, right. No, very legitimate point.

I accept that as a legitimate roast. There you go. Good job. Good job for not reading. There you go. All right, so. Do we have a question of the week? Well, we don't because my question of the week

was going to be about the HSBC deal because I had seen people asking about the HSBC deal, like before we went to the hospital. And so I thought maybe there was more to be said about that. But now that I know that people are calling and HSBC is saying, Oh, did you read about it? And Nick Reyes is post. I don't think you probably need any, it seemed in the beginning, people needed more information, like my name and state and that kind of thing.

Like a number of people messaged me saying, you wanted to know my name and my state. And I was going to say, you know, I'm from New York state. If you get asked that, and they were asking some people for email address, et cetera,

et cetera. But it doesn't sound like HSBC is asking for that anymore. So I don't think. No, these days when people call them, they're like, oh yeah, Nick,

he's out on paternity leave right now, but we know where he lives. It's all, it's all good what'll be hilarious is when we get an hsbc rep answering the questions on the blog because they're like i don't know what this guy is doing he hasn't answered questions in like a week here they start answering questions of the deal i hope they do we've had that happen before with some other companies but yeah so we'll see us there all right well then that my friends i think brings us to the

end this week. So thank you for being out there listening with us. If you'd like to hear more about what we've been talking about, you'd like to get all of the posts and email form, follow us on Facebook and Twitter and get into our Facebook group, et cetera, et cetera. Go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's the frequent miler.com slash subscribe to get on our list. Don't forget. Also, if you're listening in a podcast format, leave us a review, leave us a comment. Same thing goes on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube,

hit the subscribe button, give us a like, leave a comment, all that kind of stuff helps. So thank you very much for that. And oh, also we have been mentioning Card Talk. So if you're in need of a credit card intervention, we've been saying that we're taking volunteers for Card Talk at thefrequentmiler.com slash card talk. So I will say that since I'm out on paternity leave, we are way behind on that. So we do have some. Right.

So, so we're trying to get Nick's first son spun up so he can do a card talk with me. Once he's ready. Right. Pause there. Yeah. All right. All right.

Thank you guys all very much. And we'll be back again next week. Bye everybody.