Frequent Miler on the Air - Loyalty Battle: Marriott vs IHG | Ep146 | 4-16-22

Episode Date: April 16, 2022

Is the new IHG One Rewards set to top Marriott Rewards? While it won't dethrone Hyatt atop the loyalty rewards mantle, IHG One is looking surprisingly strong. 1:38 Giant Mailbag: Is the Apple card a better beginner card? 6:15 What crazy thing . . . did Caesars Rewards do this week? The un-matched get rematched. https://frequentmiler.com/hail-caesars-revoked-caesars-rewards-diamond-statuses-are-being-reinstated/ 8:24 Mattress Running the Numbers: Hyatt status fast-track https://frequentmiler.com/get-hyatt-explorist-status-free-shortcut-to-globalist-status-targeted/ 16:48 Maint Event: Marriott vs IHG https://frequentmiler.com/ihg-one-rewards-new/ https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-earn-2-years-of-ihg-club-lounge-membership/ 1:12:35 Question of the Week: Is there a trick to finding Qatar availability? https://frequentmiler.com/avios-sweet-spots-for-award-tickets-british-airways-iberia/ Join 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, Loyalty Battle. Marriott versus IHG.

Ding, ding, ding. Gloves are coming off. IHG announced their brand new IHG One Re, ding, ding. Gloves are coming off. IHG announced their brand new IHG One Rewards program this week. And for the first time ever, we can legitimately talk about their loyalty program and compare it to the other big chains and say which is better because they brought out some really nice features. So I think- Which is a big surprise, right? We'll talk more about it. It is a big surprise. I mean, I go on vacation for a week and the biggest news ever comes out here, right? I mean, you're talking about IHG and I'm like, wait, who? We're talking about the same

group here? Nick, you've been on vacation and totally unplugged, right? You just don't know what's going on. So that'll make for a fun discussion. It'll be like, you'll be going, they did what? Right. You can relive it all again. Everyone who saw the news this week can relive that feeling through me today. All right. Well, you know, when we get to the main event, we're also going to talk about why are we not comparing them to Hyatt and Hilton? And the short answer is because those are both much better in certain ways. But I think the Marriott versus IHG is the interesting comparison and we'll get into why and how and who's better when we get to that part. First, of course, we've got the giant mailbag. Giant mail comes from David. David says, I recently listened to your podcast

episode about the best starter card. I was surprised to see that the Apple card wasn't part of the discussion since it has a variety of relatively unique features that are very friendly to people starting out. Daily cash back, encouraging the use of Apple Pay for better card security, better UI to understand how payments work, soft pull if declined, no foreign transaction fees, easy sign up bonus, e.g. spend $75, get $75, good family features, instant card issuance, path to Apple card, et cetera. He says, I don't have the card because it came up too late in my credit card career to care about it. It's not worth a 524 slot to me, but it seems tailor-made to be a great starter card in the grand scheme of things. So I think it should at least be in the discussion. Thanks for all you guys do. So there you go. That's from David. What do you think? You know, truth be told, all right, I'm not an Apple person. So I know that Apple has a card.

I know that it functions in Apple Pay. And now I know that the signup bonus is 75 back on 75. And I'm not really sold based on that. Is there something else about this guy? Because a lot of those things like no foreign transaction fees or soft pull if you're declined or just not that big of a deal, probably for somebody just starting out. No foreign transaction fees is nice, but lots of cards have that. And soft pull versus hard pull. I mean, importance of that for somebody who's probably not going to be over 524 anytime soon, even if they were that one pull probably isn't gonna make a big difference.

So like those types of things don't really sell me on it, but I don't know, you, you have an iPhone, Greg, is there some other reason why I should be interested in the Apple card? Well, I mean, I don't know if there's some other reason. I think he laid out the reasons pretty decently. Um, you know, I, yeah, I, um, yeah, I probably, we probably didn't include it because it's just not on either of our minds. It's not a card that plays in the loyalty landscape. There's no way to get outsized value from the rewards. I think it only earns 1% unless you... Well, no, I think it earns 2% as long as you're paying with Apple Pay.

It's the thing. Something like that. So 2% as long as you're paying with Apple Pay. It's the thing, something like that. So, so decent rewards as long as you pay with Apple Pay, but otherwise not so much. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you know, for someone who, who, who doesn't want some of the hassles that go, go with credit cards, like it's very easy as, as my understanding, you know, you get it right away. It's right there on your phone. You, you can see your rewards right away and everything. Um, uh, so I, I wouldn't dissuade someone who was interested in it, but it's also doesn't excite me. It doesn't excite me in the same way that like, you know, we talked a lot about the built card

and I look at that and that's also, I think instant or near instant rewards on, on spend. So, you know, it has that feature. And so there's and we can do that all day long with a lot of the other features and say, OK, well, this card has that and this card is that. But I think you're right. I think the majority of the reason we didn't talk about it probably is just because it's not on our radars, because it's not the type of card that we're thinking about regularly. But, you know, OK, you make a decent argument for some reasons why it might be good. I don't necessarily know that the younger generation needs encouragement to use mobile payments. It's probably just part of life for young people, I would guess.

But I don't know. I mean, I don't know. What do I know about? But from that point of view, then the rewards are decent because you're getting 2% back on the Apple Pay. And if that's what you're doing anyway, then you you know, you don't have to think about it. So. Right. So that's nice. But, you know, somebody else wrote in with, I thought, an interesting suggestion. Now, we talked about one card for somebody new. We didn't talk about two, which is why this wouldn't have been a good option. But somebody else wrote in and said, you know, for somebody starting out, why not the Capital One Venture One and Saver One?

No annual fee. You'd get a bonus on both dining and on entertainment and on grocery with the Saver One. And of course, you'd be able to transfer to partners without paying an annual fee with the Venture One. And that also is a sound option, a combination of cards. We could probably come up with a number for combinations, but there are a lot of different ways to play the game.

I think that's part of the fun. So if the Apple card is the right one, it'll be it lot of different ways to play the game. I think that's part of the fun. Yeah. So if the apple cart, anyway, one, yeah, yeah, yeah,

exactly. Anyway, thank you, David, for writing in. I thought that was a good comment and obviously worth discussing. All right. So what crazy thing did window?

No, I'm sorry. Caesar's rewards. Caesar. What crazy thing did Caesar's do? So the crazy thing they did last week or two weeks ago or so was they was they um unmatched people who had matched their status from you know from windham or or wherever right and uh so all these people who were caesar's diamond were all upset because they were no longer diamond because they got unmatched. Well, this week, Caesar sent out emails to at least most of the, you know, vast unmatched and rematched.

So so the unmatched have been rematched for the year. Now they say, so they basically said, you know, sorry, we, you know, maybe it was a bit rash of us to downgrade your upgrade so quickly. So we're going to wait a year and we're going to enforce the new rules next year. So which, you know, it's great. It's great. I'm happy for all the people who got unmatched and rematched. And I got that email too. And I was less excited than some. It burned me a little bit because as you know, if you listened, I don't know, a week or two ago, I talked about how I

sort of redeemed my mistake in that I accidentally paid for Founders Card. And so I was kind of burned that I had wasted a bunch of money on Founders Card. Then I was like, well, at least I got Caesar's Diamond out of that because after I got unmatched, I rem money on Founders Card. Then I was like, well, at least I got Caesars Diamond out of that. Because after I got unmatched, I rematched from Founders Card. And I thought, okay, well, great. At least I got some value out of the Founders Card. Which not to say the Founders Card isn't worth anything. Just I haven't used the benefits of it. So I didn't intend to keep it.

And then I was like, oh, okay, well, I got a small win out of that. And it turns out I didn't even get that small win because Caesars would have rematched me anyway. Right, right. Maybe you're a double diamond. Maybe you should check your account. I should log in right after this, but that's super valuable. Nicely done for all of you who were unmatched and rematched without having to do anything. Well done. Good on you. All right. So that out of the way, let's talk about mattress running the numbers. And this week, I think for mattress running the numbers, we're talking about Hyatt, or at least you're talking about Hyatt. Cause I don't know much about what's going on with Hyatt. Cause you don't know what's going on. Yeah. We're going to talk about actual mattress running this week. So yeah. So Hyatt, they did this in the past where they offer status match

to employees of certain large businesses. So if you work for an IBM or Accenture or just a big business, try it out, see if it'll let you register. And what it'll do is it'll give you 90 days of Explora status. And if in those 90 days of, of explore a status. And if in those 90 days you spend 10 nights, 10 qualifying nights, which are paid or award nights. If you spend 10 nights, you get to keep explore a status for until February, until end of February, 2024. So quite a ways. So it's, so it's almost two years, right? And if you do 20 nights, so you get diamond status for that same amount of time up till end of

February, 2024, which happens to be a leap year. So you have until February 29th. So you get an extra day out of this match. Excellent. That's, I mean, that's eking a little extra value out of things. So, so I mean, that's, that sounds pretty interesting so far. And I mean, I know FrequentMiler's done some big business, Greg. Do I have an in here?

I mean, is this, you know, you're out of luck, but I think you probably currently have global status. And if you do, you're out of luck too but if you have explorer status you can if you have explorer status and you work for a big company you can do it they let people sign up for this and and um you know try to get diamond so a globalist sorry um so the weird here's the weird thing there's's a weird rule in there. The 90 days does not start on the day you sign up. So you have to register. 90 days does not start then. So, so, so yeah, so this is kind of cool. Let's say you had a long stay. Let's say you had a, I don't know, just make something up a seven night stay and you register for this promotion, you know, late in that stay.

Theoretically then when you check out, you'll already be seven days towards the required 10 or 20, depending on what you're going for to get there. The downside is if you don't have any status going in that first day, you're not going to have even explore a status for that first day. Right. Right. Okay.

So that's the downside of that. But I mean, the nice thing is that it gives you much more than 90 days, essentially, or maybe not much more is the right way to think about it, but it gives you more than 90 days because, you know, it gives you, you have to do the 20 nights within 90 days of each other and you get to pick when that window is. So that's nice. You sort of get to pick, I mean, cause you gotta be careful. Like, let's say you have one stay next week and then a whole bunch of stays three months from then. Well,

then you have to make sure not to register until after your stay next week. Or not stay at a Hyatt next week. One or the other. One or the other. Right. Not sure that's what they're hoping for, but yeah, you could do that. So, um, all right. So the question for you then, now that you understand how this works is, is it worth mattress running? We know that Explorys isn't worth that much. So let's not even talk about that. Is it worth mattress running to get to 20 nights so that you have, let's call it a that come with hyatt globalist status but not any milestone rewards so you wouldn't have earned any sweet upgrades or uh you know free category one through six one through seven night or anything like that yeah that's tricky that's tricky i don't know i, part of me says yes. I mean, we said it

was worth Mattress running 30 nights for globalist status when they ran the double elite night promotion. Uh-oh, my connection's unstable here. So I think I froze up there, but hopefully I'm back now. I'll edit that out. I mean, we said that it was worth mattress running 30 nights back when they did the double elite night promo. So, I mean, 20 nights, there's part of me that says, yes, global status is worth it. But then there's the other part of me that says, well, let's say you did a category one, 20 nights at 5,000 points a night is 100,000 points. Now, that seems high to me for global status.

Free breakfast is nice. Free parking on awards days is nice. How much are you going to use it? If you're going to use it a lot, it might be worth that. If you can find an off-peak Category 1 at 3,500 points per night, then we start feeling like, okay, that could be worth it. I mean, that's 1,500, 920, 930. So it costs you 70,000 points.

Now we're getting closer to the point where I'm like, maybe. Now, if you're going to do any nights naturally out of that, then I'm thinking probably, I don't know. What do you think, Greg? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. I'm thinking that most people probably in a 90 day span could rearrange their, whatever their existing travel plans are to stay at Hyatt's instead of Marriott or IHT or whatever, and, and probably make it so that they'd get, you know, close enough that where they'd be talking about matches running something considerably less than 20 nights and maybe booking, you know, seven, you know, five to seven nights, something like that, that are just throw away in order to complete the, um, the requirements. Yeah. I, I, I think,

you know, as long as you then make an effort to, you know, make sure you actually get good use out of your global S stay in really nice places that'll have like great breakfast and you'll get like nice upgrades and all that kind of stuff then yeah i do think it's worth doing so yeah you know i i like i love hi globalist i think um i'm a little conflicted in the sense that i'm i'm at a point now where i really need a suite so i'm hesitant to count on hopefully getting an upgrade. And so I'm more inclined to either use one of the milestone reward suite upgrade awards that I have, which you're going to need to stay 50 or 60 nights in order to get, or use points to book the suite

in the first place, in which case, you know, kind of taking away one of the potential globalist benefits of getting an upgrade. That said, the free parking and free breakfast or lounge access can certainly be worth it if you're going to make a bunch of stays at places where those things would be expensive. I mean, it's already saved me a bunch of money in New York City this year, and I have more stays coming up in New York City where it's going to save me more money. So just the parking alone is going to save me a bundle. So it just depends on what your travel plans will it's going to save me a bundle. So, you know, it just depends on what your travel plans will be. But I think we all agree. I think you ask anybody in the miles

and points game, and they're going to say that if there are Hyatt's where you're looking to go, it's worth going after Hyatt Globalist if that's even like close to on your radar, right? Right. And if the question isn't even mattress, right. If the question is just like, Oh, I have a bunch of stays coming up. They're not currently at Hyatt's, but I could change them to Hyatt's do it. You could register for this promo and you could, and you could change your stays to Hyatt's. I, and especially if you haven't experienced top tier Hyatt status before, I mean, I, I totally think it's worth it. And you know, if you're used to Marriott platinum or whatever, I think you're going to be surprised pleasantly surprised how much better, how much

better the Hyatt experiences at most places. There are places that with Marriott gives you great, um, experiences, but, uh, Hyatt is on average considerably better in my opinion. Okay. All right. So then that I think brings us to the main event event. Yes. Main event, loyalty battle Marriott versus IHG, which, I mean, talk about a battle. You're going to have to, you got an uphill battle here to fight, right? Because like IHG isn't even on my radar. So when you say Marriott versus IHG, I'm like, what? What? Right. Before Nick went on vacation, IHG's elite program got you bonus points.

There's a few other potential perks here and there, but for the most part, that was the only thing you really were guaranteed at all is you earn more points per dollar than you would if you weren't elite, right? Right. So we didn't talk about IHG when we talked about elite programs before, but they came on strong this week and introduced all kinds of new things. And before we get into details, I do want to say, so I posted a comparison of the elite programs across IHG, Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton. And let me just say, as far as the quality of the elite perks, Hyatt just wins by such a landslide. It's ridiculous. Go head to head on all the different categories that I listed from how free breakfast is done, how lounge acts is done, how late checkout

is done, all these things. Hyatt wins. If you look at how easy is it to get meaningful elite status. Hilton wins with, I mean, by such a far margin, it's not even worth digging into because you could just get the Hilton Aspire card, which is worth getting anyway, gives you Hilton Diamond status. That's their top tier and you're done and you get a lounge access. If there's a lounge, you get, you know, whatever, but they don't have as many guaranteed benefits, but you do get what they, what they have. So with those two kind of out of the way, I still, I think that now IHG's program is very competitive with Marriott. And I do think that there's an argument either way still, but we're going to dig into the details. And this is kind of fun because, you know, Nick doesn't really know the details very

well. He's seen a little bit while he's been on vacation, but he doesn't get a lot of attention. So I'm going to be kind of interested to see by the end of this discussion, what you think, Nick, is the better program between the two. And as I said, I don't think it's going to be clear and obvious either way, but let's start digging in. Okay. First, some general loyalty program features where the programs are virtually dead heat. Okay. There's really no way to distinguish between the two. The quality of their award charts.

Okay. Neither one has an award chart. They're equally bad. Easy. No, but you know what? I saw that. So Greg sent me a little outline. And so I saw the outline points he was going to talk about.

And I saw this in there and I said to myself, but wait a second, is it really equal? I mean, you're right. Neither one has award charts, but the Marriott points seem to be worth significantly more towards paid stays, no? Yeah. I mean, that's the value of the points, but not the award chart category. Yeah. So yes, the value of the points, our reasonable redemption value for Marriott now is point seven five cents per point. I actually I think is point six or is a point six five. I forget. But so it's they're different, but they're not like it's not an order of magnitude or anything like that.

OK. Resort fees on awards days. So we know that Hyatt and Hilton and even Wyndham do not doing it. I, I, I hate that. So, um, yeah, I'm not a fan of that tie both of the bottom there. Okay. So, so far they're both stink is what I'm gathering. So let's keep going. All right. Now I'm going to, I'm going to talk about somewhere where one or the other has a slight edge, but I don't think it's a big, big difference. Um, the ability to use points for higher level rooms, not just standard rooms. So IHG, there's just no way to do it. Like they don't have any mechanism to let you use more points for a higher level room.ott, it depends on the hotel. So some hotels let you pay the standard points rate and add a certain number of points to get into a higher level room.

So I feel like Marriott has a slight edge, but because it's so non-standardized and you don't see it at all that many Marriotts, that's why it's slight. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I, I think that, uh, you're right. It's slight at best. I personally, I recently, I ran into some situations where I did see higher level Marriott rooms available on stays where I wanted to book them. Uh, so really recently in mind that has been more interesting although i didn't end up booking them so i guess at the end of the day it's still pretty much a wash but well yeah well you know i mean a great example is is where we were la meridian maldives lets you do that right and so that's that's a great thing because even if they're out of all their standard rooms you could still use

points to book at a whatever the rate is these days. Right. Okay. So far, nothing has changed, right? So far, basically, they both aren't very good in a couple of areas. Marriott's a little bit better in one. Right. And I'm not done with the areas where they're still neck and neck, and it's still going to be like not much has changed. The earnings from hotel spend.

So how many points per dollar do you earn? They both give you base 10 points per dollar. As you get elite status, you get more points. But I'm going to give the edge to Marriott there, not because you get more points, but because the points are worth more. So you're getting a little more value from your hotel spend.

Now the calculus on that probably changes though, if you have an IHG credit card that gives the fourth night free, right? Because then the points are potentially worth a little bit more to you. Well, that's another category. Okay. All right. Another different category. All right. Earnings from credit card spend, I'm going to give the edge to IHG.

So IHG gives you three points per dollar now with your credit card, whereas Marriott gives you two. Yes, Marriott points are worth a little bit more. So you could argue it, but I still think there's an edge to IHG with the new structure. Free night certificates that come with the credit card. So Marriott gives you 40K free night, I mean, 35K free nights with the, you know, $100-ish cards and IHG gives you 40K free nights with $100-ish cards. I think that the point value is a wash because 40K IHG is equal to about 35K Marriott, I think. But IHG has an edge because they let you add a unlimited number of points to that 40K to book a higher level hotel. Marriott caps that adding to 15,000 points that you can add on to your short value. I've been on vacation this last week, so I'm kind of unplugged and cobwebs are still working their way out here.

Has Marriott launched that capability yet? No, at no not at least not at the time we're recording this right not at the time we're recording this but they did tell us uh last month they said they said late april so it it you know is arguably not yet later april as we're as we're recording this but it late april should come any day now. Right. Okay. So, so now that that's all of the ones I categorized as like, they're really, really close. So, so they might as well be a tie. All right. Now we get to the ability to, to book fourth night or fifth night free awards. I love that with an IHD credit card, you get fourth night free. Now Marriott, you get fifth night know, mean you're saving much less than the sort of expected 20% of your points. With IHG, it's the other way.

It literally is the fourth night that goes away. If that night happens to be much more expensive, then you're doing better than the 25% off and so on. But even if they were both like equal on that, I just like, you know, four day, four nights days are so much easier to manage when, when trying to book trips than five nights days. And so being able to take advantage of that fourth night instead of fifth night, I just find that a more easier thing to take advantage of in at least theoretically. I agree. Okay. So I give the edge to IHG there. I often end up in situations where I really need three nights. IHG wins that one. Well, if I'm going to pay for three nights, shouldn't I just pay for four and get five?

But then I'm like, but I don't actually need five nights. And so, yeah. So I agree. Fourth night is a better benefit. So with IHG though, the question will be, do you pay for three and get four nights so that you get four nights towards their milestone rewards, which is a new feature, which we'll talk about soon. The ability to share points with others.

Marriott wins hands down. They let you do that for free. IHG, you have to pay per point, I think. I think so too. It's worth mentioning that Marriott caps that at 100,000 points per year that you can share with somebody else, or I think up to 500,000 per year that you can receive.

But still, it's very easy to do. You call up, it doesn't cost anything. It used to be that if one of the members had gold status or higher, it was free. But I'm pretty sure now, based on the way it's worded, it's free for anybody. I think so, too. Yeah. So big advantage on Marriott's side.

Now, of course, the other programs, Hilton and I, have even better ability to transfer points to your friends. But, you know, still. All right. Now we get into elite features, rollover nights, Mary, I gave those up a couple of years ago. IHG still has them. Um, IHG rollover nights count towards elite status, but not towards milestone rewards. milestone rewards are are uh once you earn once you've completed 20 nights within a calendar year you you start collecting uh rewards that you could choose you could choose from like two or three or four selections each time you hit another 10 nights starting at 20 um and so the the rollover knights don't count towards that, but they do count towards you earning elite status.

So Marriott has nothing like that. So IHG wins there. And if you're going to end up significantly over whatever your status level is, I guess that's nice. It's good to have. It certainly beats not having it.

But if it doesn't count towards the milestone rewards, I'm slightly less excited about it. Sure. Reward night discount. This is something that IHG has that Marriott doesn't. With IHG, it's advertised as platinum and diamond status. Has this benefit. And everyone should have platinum status who is into IHG at all.

Cause you get that with their credit card, with their premier credit card. So judging how good this is, this is impossible because we haven't seen it yet. We don't know how much of a discount you can expect, but, but you know, any discount is better than no discount. So IHd wins this category okay and it's worth i mean i think that is a nice benefit even if it only ends up being a five or ten percent discount that still increases the value of the program by a little bit so i think it doesn't and and it should uh theoretically well we'll see but hopefully it'll stack with fourth night free

awards too. If so, then we can get some really nice discounts on awards days. 4 p.m. late checkout. Marriott Platinum Elites, get it guaranteed unless you're at a resort where it's based on availability. IHG, not so much. They don't have any, they have a 2 p.m. late checkout for all members based upon availability, which basically means you can't count on it at all.

So I don't consider that a perk. No, agreed. And surprisingly, I have to say, I, in the last couple of years and the times that I've stayed at Marriott, which have not been hugely plentiful, but more than just a little bit. I mean, I feel like I've had a fair number of Marriott stays and I haven't had pushback on a late checkout that I can recall with Marriott these last couple of years. Now, partly that's because there were fewer people in hotels for a long time, but these last few months I've stayed at Marriott's a bunch of times when places are packed and, and I'm still not having any pushback on late checkout, which is really nice. That's really nice. And it's worth mentioning that's notable because a lot of people complain about how poor Marriott hotels are at

adhering to the guaranteed benefits. And, and yeah, I, I haven't had a pushback that I can remember, but I also don't remember needing it in recent times. So I've used it a bunch of times in these last few months. And in fact, I've chosen Marriott properties because of it in places where there wasn't a Hyatt that was convenient and because I wanted the four o'clock checkout. And so that's been good. So I give Marriott credit there because I certainly will slam Marriott when appropriate and necessary, but I've been pretty happy lately. And like you said, notable because I know a lot of people have often said that it's hard to get Marriott hotels to honor benefits. And so I've been pleasantly surprised. Now, let me say, if you're an IHG fan and you are going to be staying in an intercontinental

hotel where you really need late checkout, you're an IHG fan and you are going to be staying in an intercontinental hotel where you really need late checkout, you could sign up for ambassador status and that would guarantee you 4 p.m. late checkout. But that, as far as I know, is the only way to guarantee late checkout with IHG and booking through their program. So the breakfast, elite breakfast benefit. Okay. IHG, when you have, you have to have diamond status, that's their top tier. Then you get free breakfast. Marriott, you only need platinum status, which is sort of their middle tier. Marriott is much easier to get if you're doing it just by night. So Marriott 50 nights versus IHG, I think it's

70 nights to get to diamond status. Um, on the other hand, you know, IHG will let you spend your way 40 K spend on the IHG credit card, get you diamond status. So it's not really that hard to get. Um, okay. So the, the, they are different in how hard they are to get. I think IHG's promise is so far superior than Marriott's that IHG easily wins this category. So let me explain. So Marriott, we've talked endless times about this. Marriott, you a um a giant scroll with all the rules and regulations regarding breakfast to figure out what am I going to get at this particular hotel like it ranges from nothing with at like you know Ritz-Carlton properties for example to ten dollars a day right um at a courtyard what yeah but to like full hot breakfast at places like

St. Regis. Yeah. You know, so it ranges from nothing to really great. And unfortunately, it's just all over the map. What I love about IHG's benefit, at least as it is on paper, is that there's very few exceptions. So, so they, they, exceptions are, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties, which aren't really IHG hotels. They just have a partnership, kind of like how Hyatt and SLH have a partnership. So you expect that, you know? And then there's like the, the, the, the, the low-end brands that provide free breakfast anyway. So there are exceptions. And then Candlewood Sweets, which I don't think has a restaurant that could provide breakfast. So, you know, so the exceptions are so minimal. That means that, you know, if you go to an intercontinental hotel, hot breakfast for two. You go to a Six Senses resort, hot breakfast for two.

So it's really pretty impressive. And really only Hyatt comes close to that. And you could argue that, and again, I keep saying on paper because we haven't actually experienced this yet, but you can argue that IHGs might be better for people who like eating in a restaurant because with Hyatt, if you have a high globalist status and there's a lounge open, they're going to send you to the lounge for your free breakfast as opposed to giving it to you in the restaurant. And that might not be as good of a breakfast. That's true. You know, this one really intrigues me because what we said when we talked about predictions for the year or your predictions for IHG, we discussed IHG at some point months and months ago when we talked about your wish list of things, I think. And I thought that this idea of free breakfast was so pie in the sky because there are so many properties and they aren't all owned by IHG.

The vast majority of them aren't owned by IHG, right? They're owned by some local hospitality group in each place. And so getting that to be enforced consistently across all of those various brands, all the holiday inns and crown plazas and all those middle tier IHGs. I mean, the intercontinental of the world probably will get on board with whatever they're supposed to get on board with. But I just, I feel very skeptical about all of those Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza type properties in the middle or Hotel Indigo or whatever it might be that, I mean, can they actually get them all to consistently deliver on this benefit? And what does hot breakfast mean in each of those places? I'm curious. I'm very curious. That's a good point.

My assumption going in was that it meant literally you could order off the menu a hot breakfast. But as Stephen pointed out in our group chat, it could mean they warmed up the toast for you. There you go. Toast is warm. Toast is hot. Get it while it's hot. Yeah. I mean, obviously that's going to have differing levels of satisfaction. And I have to imagine that it's going to vary somewhat by property as to whether this benefit really feels like it's worthwhile, but I'll be really curious to see how that all works out. So on paper,

certainly leaps and downs ahead of Marriott, where even I, who write about loyalty programs, we write about loyalty programs, we discuss this stuff, we live and breathe this stuff all the time. And I still have to consult our, we have that Marriott, which elite benefits apply page with like a sortable, searchable chart, or sort of table that you can look through. I have to consult that to figure out whether or not I'm going to get breakfast at Marriott properties often. So the fact that I have to do that just tells me the program is way too complicated for the average user. So I'm very happy to see IHG simplify that. So credit where credit is due IHG. Even though I have some

skepticism in my voice, I give you a lot of credit for at least putting this on paper. I hope that it's as good as you're promising. Yes, absolutely. And unfortunately, that's the way our answer is going to be about a lot of these things because the proof will be in the pudding once the pudding is available and warm and hot at your local Kempton. But I look forward to sampling some of that fine IHG pudding. IHG pudding. Okay. So the next thing is when you go to check in in the hotel and you get upgraded. So Platinum, Elite, and Higher in both programs say you can get upgraded to a standard suite just as a free upgrade without any kind of upgrade instrument being used. You can't. You can't. So we know from experience that it does happen at Marriott,

but you feel extremely lucky if that ever happens because it's so rare. And IHG, at least historically, they already had this upgrade ability, yet nobody really knew about it because it wasn't well enforced. It didn't happen. What ISG is telling us is that they're proactively going out to all the hotels, making sure they understand how this benefit is supposed to be applied. So what I predict is that there will be a temporary increase in upgrades, you know, maybe this summer because it'll be fresh in their minds about this, but I'll be surprised, you know, I still hope it happens, but I'll be surprised if it lasts.

All right. So I think we're equally skeptical about both programs about this benefit, but I still have to give the win to IHG because Marriott excludes certain properties. They exclude Ritz-Carlton and last year, titanium. I don't know all the exclusions off the top of my head, but I know they have various exclusions. IHG, again, has very few. The only one that they, oh no, that's later. That's on Confirm Suite Upgrades for this. So yes, I agree that the way that it's written, I would probably give the nod to IHG. One thing that I like about Marriott when it comes to this benefit is the ability to chat with the hotel a couple of days before arrival. So within the app, I think it's two days ahead of arrival. You can pull up a chat and you're actually chatting with somebody at the front desk. You're not chatting with some Marriott customer service person somewhere overseas.

You're actually chatting with somebody at the front desk of the hotel you're checking into. And I've had reasonable success at lower mid-tier Marriott brands and getting upgrades. Now, that's not the autograph collections of the world or the St. Regis's where I've had that success. So I can't speak to how well it's going to work at those types of properties, but I like at least having the ability to connect easily with somebody at the property to talk about it. Because like I said, my success rate has been decent just recently. I got a good upgrade that way by chatting and on my way to the hotel. So I like that. I wish if IHG made it an easy way to communicate with the hotel to talk about that, that'd be great.

Yeah. We'll see. So IHGs, they're very proud of a new app that's coming out that's going to replace the current app, but we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. But okay. That's a good argument in Marriott's favor regarding upgrades. Now let's talk about confirmed suite upgrades. Okay. I like those. New feature. Yeah. Yeah. So Marriott, as you know, when you hit 50 nights, which is also when you get to platinum status, you get a choice benefit. And one of the choices you can pick are five sweet night awards. So those are for individual nights. So you can upgrade single five nights day or a three nights day and a two nights day, you know, like that.

And then you get that choice again at 75 nights. IHG gives you that choice. It has milestone benefits. So we talked about before, gives you the choice at 20 nights of, um, a single suite award, suite upgrade award, but that one can upgrade a stay of up to five nights. So, um, and you get that choice at both 20 nights, 40 nights and 70 nights. And let me, let me point out something important, um, with Marriott at 75 nights, you have to choose between that or a valuable, um, free night certificate. Um, with IHG,

you get two choices at both 40 and 70 nights and there's two valuable choices you can pick which you know there's um both a sweet night award and i mean sorry a sweet upgrade award and um lounge membership so i'll give you lounge membership for the rest of that year and all the next calendar year. So anyway, that's the way those two work. The Marriott Suite Night Awards, the way they work is you book a Marriott stay. And then if that particular Marriott happens to be one of the 14 or so that allow you to use these things. Right. Because that's about what it feels like there must be. Oh my goodness.

Well, I'll hammer that home in a second too. But yeah. So if you can even try to apply your script. If you can even try to use it, you then click through and tell it which of the available, which of the potentially available suites you want to use it to upgrade to. And then that sits in your account until five nights before your stay, when theoretically you could get upgrade five days in advance. And each day, supposedly, some computer algorithm runs to decide whether or not

you're going to be confirmed into that suite. And then you may or may not. So that's the way it works. What's your success rate with these Marriott Suite Night Awards, Greg? I mean, you've been

hitting some of these. My success rate on finding the ability to do it is, is very, my success rate of, of them actually working when I've used them as is very high. Oh, well that's, that's great. And because my mind is low in both regards. So I, I very nearly wrote a post recently. I didn't, I probably should have, about which properties in Manhattan actually allow you to use Marriott Suite Night Awards because I was checking one after another. And to my knowledge, the only way to check is to make a reservation and see whether or not you can

apply one. I don't know of a way with Marriott to know before you've made a reservation, whether that property even accepts Suite Night Awards. So I have to keep making these dummy reservations for like weeks from now to find out like, okay, let's see, can I apply it and what rooms are available to apply it to? Yeah. It's like the dumbest system ever. So I've got all these like, you know, confirmation and cancellation emails and it all shows up in the app and it's like, it's annoying. You know, why should I have to do that to figure out if I can even use it? And there were just so few properties. I was going one after another,

after another in Manhattan. There were so few where you could even try to apply one. I found one and I tried to apply it. And, you know, starting five days in advance. Oh, sorry, we tried. We couldn't find it, even though there were plenty of suites

available on the app. And day four, oh, sorry, we couldn't. Day three, no, sorry. And, you know, it gets to whatever, two days before check-in, I think, is when they stop looking and they're like, oh, sorry, we couldn't do it. We've returned it back to your account. I just canceled my stay at that point because I had already booked a Hyatt so I could confirm a suite, Marriott. So I didn't have to wait until two ahead of time to find out that I'm not going to get the suite that I needed on that stay. So yeah, these things are-

So you can tell we both love that feature. Yuck. Yuck. The way IHGs is going to work is you have that, as I said, single suite upgrade can be for a five-night stay, up to a five-night stay. But if you have a one-night stay and you use it, you lost the whole thing. So it's not, it's not as flexible as Marriott's in that way. But anyway, um, you make a reservation and it has to be for now, it has to be a paid reservation, unfortunately. So Marriott

doesn't require that. Right. It's not going to work anyway, so they don't care. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Apply that to a points reservation. Use your anyway, so they don't care. Right, right. Sure, use your points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apply that to a points reservation. Use your points. Use your free night certificates. Right. Whatever you want. Any kind of reservation you can make.

Yeah. So I actually told us that the limitation right now is a technical one, and they want to make it work for points reservations, so hopefully that'll happen. But for now, paid stay, you have to wait till 14 days before check-in to call IHG. So that's unfortunate. But it's still better than five. You have to call. But the good thing is, the way I understand it, during that call, you will get confirmed into what's available. So you'll be told like, okay, there's, you know, this one bedroom suite isn't available, but there is,

let's say a junior suite. Do you want that? And then you say, yes, confirm, boom, move on. So I think that's just so much better, at least in theory than Marriott. So, yeah. In theory it is, you know, like, I mean, have you had to call customer service lately, Greg, I mean, have you have you had to

call customer service lately, Greg? I mean, I haven't called IHG's customer service. So for all I know, you get right through to a human being. But just in general, your recent customer service experiences, Greg, how quick and easy have you got? Yeah, not not too good. So we we can hope for one of the features that I didn't plan on talking about, but of diamond status is a dedicated phone line with the HG. So it might be worth spending the 40K, not just for breakfast and spending the 40K on your credit card, not just for breakfast with diamond status, but also so that you could use your sweet upgrades. Yeah. With a dedicated phone line. Yeah.

Yeah. That part's not great. Yeah. We'll see. Well, I mean, maybe it'll be great, but I perhaps I'm a little bitter because I called Sesame place the other day and spent two hours on hold and then finally got a message saying, okay, you've been on hold long enough. Just give us your phone number and we'll call you back. And you know, of course didn't hear back from anybody. So, uh, so I'm still a little bitter on that Sesame place.

Uh, but anyway, yeah. So if it's easy to get through to somebody, and maybe it will be, because it is pretty easy to get through to Hyatt. So if it is, great. That'll be nice. And being able to confirm it is really good. So while I'm dinging IHG on the fact that you have to call, you can't just click a button online,

which seems like it ought to be what you should be able to do since that's what an agent is going to do. They're going to click a button on a computer IHG. So just put the button on my side, please. But in the absence of that, whatever. Okay, fine. I'll call in for my suite upgrade. Yeah. And I think you made a really good point about the call centers. That is a big negative, especially these days. If we're really unlucky, they're going to be using the same folks that choice uses to book preferred hotels and we're going to be in real trouble unless you find

marvelous Marvin or whoever it was that, uh, that finally helped you out. That's right. That's right. Okay. Uh, moving on, um, lounge access. All right. So Marriott, all you need is platinum status. Platinum status is not that hard to get because you can, if you have both a business credit card and a personal Marriott credit card, you have 30 nights towards elite status every year. And so you just need 20 more nights to get platinum status and platinum guarantees lounge access at a bunch of Marriott brands. I was going to say, all you need is platinum status and a property that'll let you in the lounge. And a property whose lounge is open and they don't have an... So it's supposed to be if the lounge is closed, they give you a restaurant breakfast, but a bunch of hotels have

exceptions to that. You know the story. So we don't have to rehash how Marriott has like all those terms and conditions that get you. But, you know, it's the way it works is elite status doesn't get you there at all. It's not going to get you the free lounge access. What, what you have to do is at 40 nights or at 70 nights, take one of your two, um, uh, milestone rewards, uh, as a, a, uh as a lounge membership. And that'll give you lounge membership for the rest of that calendar year and all of the next. So let me go real quickly say, the way to play it is if you know you're going to get to 40 nights this year or 70 nights, try to complete the 40th night or the 70th night in middish October or later, because once you reach that milestone, you have 90 days to select it. If you wait till January

1st to select it, you have the rest of that calendar year and all the next year you get two full years of, of that lounge membership. Um, then you don't have to do 40 nights the next year you get two full years of that lounge membership. Then you don't have to do 40 nights the next year. I'm torn between loving the gamery aspect of that and thinking that it's ridiculous that IHG is incentivizing you not to stay at an IHG property when you get really close to 40 nights, but you're like, ooh, but I got to wait until October. Right. I mean, right. Right. Although I bet you that they're going to be looking at the other side of it, which is the people who are getting near the end of the year with like 32 nights and are saying, Oh, should I try to cram in eight more nights so that I can get that 40

night selection of both lounge membership. And the other one you'd probably select is another suite upgrade. So maybe they'll pull in some mattress runners that way. I think they might. They might. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's pretty good. Readers have asked, well, where the heck are these lounges that you speak of? I don't know the answer to that. That's fair. I do believe that most intercontinental hotels have them. I think region hotels might have them. And there's certainly some crown plazas. I don't know how many that have them.

I asked IHG for a list. So hopefully we can get a list of those and publish that. That would be good. I can confirm that I once stayed at a crown pl Plaza where I got lounge access. So it does exist. Yeah. I once stayed in a holiday inn that had a lounge and I got lounge access, but the lounge was a room with a sofa and a fridge that had a couple of drinks in it. You sure it was a lounge? I'm not sure. Was it just somebody. It wasn't just somebody's room.

I was like, somebody's room. It was someone's room that was turned into what they were calling a lounge for sure. Oh boy. So yeah, I mean, that's not a place to hang out. I think that's a really good point that there just aren't very many IHG properties that would probably even have a lounge. And then, of course, these last couple of years, domestically, finding properties, any properties that have a lounge open has been quite a challenge. I recently stayed at a Marriott that had one and it was open, the Marriott at Newark Airport. And I was really surprised both A, that they had a lounge and B, that it was open. But if you saw the snack selection, both during the day and at night, you would have felt like maybe they should have just locked that door up still.

It wasn't very much, but yeah. So if we jump ahead to a day, hopefully where lounges are open again. And holiday ends all get them, then great. IHG will be. Then I, you know, I, I, I still have to say Marriott is so much easier to get that access that, that I have to give the wind to them. But, um, if you are a, if, if you only like to stay at Ritz or intercontinental properties, then a huge nod to IHG because IHG does not exclude intercontinental. Um, whereas Marriott excludes Ritz. Good point. Good point. Yeah.

All right. Yeah, so that one's iffy. That one's iffy because I would be tempted to give that to Marriott because A, it's easy to get the status to get there, and B, you know that most Marriott, JW Marriotts, are going to have a lounge and some of the autograph collections in a lot of St. Regis. So you can kind of predict the types of places that are likely to have a lounge and some of the autograph collections, a lot of St. Regis. So you can kind of predict

the types of places that are likely to have a lounge. Whereas with IHG, I feel like it's very hard to predict outside of Intercontinental. So I would be tempted to give it to Marriott, but you make some good arguments there as to why IHG may come out ahead, particularly for Intercontinental fans, as you said. Yeah. Okay and then last thing i i have to point out in marriott's favor um marriott when you get to titanium status you get free united silver elite status and itg at least at this point has nothing like that so even though they give you united credit um when you get their credit card you get get $50 per year, I guess, of United credit broken into $25 chunks.

They don't have like an elite type of benefit. So a nod to Marriott for giving an extra yummy perk there. And not a small nod for anybody who flies United once or twice a year because the free check bags, that's nice. So I i like that i think that's nice and you also get access to the expanded award availability so if you don't have a united credit card that can give you access to expanded award availability so i like that benefit on the marriott side now i don't necessarily think titanium is worth all that but uh but i think that IHG should look to do something to compete with that. Yeah.

And I mean, you also can get upgraded to first, you know, on a little regional flight I took recently. I got upgraded to first class with it. You know, I had silver status. So, yeah, that kind of stuff happens too. Okay. So yeah, that kind of stuff happens too. Okay. So that's it. So, all right. Now I've gone over all these perks with you.

What do you think? If you had to pick just one elite program or the other to say this one's better than the other, what do you think? You know, on paper, I feel like IHG sounds really good. And so, and even if, I where my hesitation is, is here, even if IHG turns out to be as good as it looks on paper, and I sure hope that they do, I'm still not sure I'll be as excited because I'm not as excited about IHG properties in general. And I just, I don't typically like them as much. So I'm at a point in my life right

now where, you know, it was funny. I was talking to somebody recently who said that, I don't know if it was someone they had heard from, but there was a quote from a miles and points person that said, we used to be a four seasons couple, and now we're an embassy suites family. And so, and I'm feeling that now because I am at that point where a residence in to me beats out a JW Marriott most of the time because I can get enough space for the family. Right. So I tend to highly prefer a residence in or a town place suites or a Spring Hill suites to the IHG equivalents. I just don't typically like those IHG equivalents as much. And then if I compare like Holiday Inn to Marriott, again, I've stayed at some Holiday Inns that I liked

just fine. But I typically tend to like the Marriott properties more, the amenities, the beds, the whole nine yards. So I have a hard time getting super excited about IHG, but I might need to rethink that because at three points per dollar on the card, 40K spend would get you diamond status. Those confirmed suite upgrades are really valuable to me because I am at that stage in life where I do value the suite and I would like to be able to get it at a stay at an intercontinental, you know, that, that would be great to me. So, so I'm, I'm, I could be convinced to go after IHG. My problem is that like I today, right now, as we record this, I'm at a Hampton Inn because they had a suite that was big enough for the family that was reasonably priced. And my other option was to book two rooms at a Marriott or to book a Candlewood Suites. And

the Candlewood Suites is that I've stayed at. I just, I didn't like as much. So that's where my hesitation is that I'm, I have a hard time getting all in and saying, okay, nights like tonight, am I going to pick an IHG property, even though I don't like it as much because I want those confirmed suite upgrades. That's hard for me. So, yeah. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm on the other side of that, whereas, you know, it's, it's usually now just my wife and I traveling, our son is, is grown and, uh, ready to, to fly the coop any day now. Um, you know, so, so we, we tend to like small boutique hotels. We often stay at B&Bs even, but, you know, now the idea more than ever before, more than the last 20 years or so before the ideas of staying at like Kempton hotels or hotel Indigo, the kind of more small boutique like

things or worldwide, I would love to try some of those Mr. And Mrs. Smith properties. They're not great values with, with IHG points and you don't earn IHG. You don't get IHG elite benefits when staying at them, but they have such high standard of, of service is my understanding that I don't think you'd be missing anything. Um, but I think those nights would count towards, like I would earn nights there if I booked through IHD. So it would count towards getting those suite upgrades, which, you know, and, and maybe even the lounge access and so on. So, um, yeah, so, so, you know, I see the, uh, I see the math changing about which it, if there are, um, Marriott's and IHGs in the same place I'm going, um, you know, I'd be less inclined to, to, you know, previously I'd be like, well, I'll just

stay at the Marriott cause I'm might get free breakfast. I might get 4 PM late checkout and so on. And, and, um, now I might not make that same decision, but, um, you know, it's like, I mean, so I look at it and I'm like, how many nights per year do you stay in hotels? Really? I mean, I don't know how many you stay. I know that for me, it's probably usually more in the 20 to 30 night range, whereas for a lot of business travelers, it's going to be far more. And so that's something I like about Marriott because that fits with, you know, you get the credit cards, you can get to platinum status really easily. Now with IHG, 20 nights, I could get one confirmed suite upgrade and then I could use the credit

card in order to manufacture diamond status. So maybe that's worth it, but am I going to concentrate all 20 nights on IHG properties? Because yeah, you're going to stay at that Kempton or the Intercontinental or Hotel Indigo a couple of times a year, but that's probably not going to make up all of those 20 nights for you, is it? Yeah, it's a good point. And especially since I mean, I'm staying in hotels a lot this year, but so much of it has been Hyatt. Yeah. I'm already close to requalifying for diamond status. Sorry, globalist status. Yeah, with Hyatt. And so it means not just, not just staying 20 nights, not just avoiding 20 Marriott nights to stay at IHG. It means,

you know, not staying at Hyatt's as well. And that's unlikely to happen. So that's my, that's a very good point. Cause I'm going to spend probably most of my high or many nights at Hyatt's because of the free parking. I'm definitely going to spend nights in New York city at Hyatt's for the most part. And because I can easily confirm a suite, whether with points or with an upgrade instrument, I'm likely to spend a lot of those 20 or 30 ish nights. I normally stay. I mean, they normally stay 40 or 50. It depends on the year, but I'm going to spend a chunk of those in Hyatt's for sure. So then the rest of them lately have been Marriott's for the most part so that I could

get status. So am I going to divert all of those, you know, like both together over towards IHG? I don't know. I wish there was a way to earn the milestone rewards with credit card spend or some way that doesn't involve having to pick the candlewood su sweets that I don't really want to stay at. You know, and I, that's not to generalize.

I'm sure there's some nice candlewood sweets out there. I mean, Steven peppers reviewed some of them that look great. So I am not, I'm not slamming that particular brand. That's just the one that comes to mind, whether it's that or stay bridge or whatever else. I don't particularly love their extended stay brands in general.

I prefer the Marriott ones. So I, you know, am I going to divert all those over to IHG? I don't know. I mean, I have to, I prefer the Marriott ones. So I, you know, am I going to divert all those over to IHG? I don't know. I mean, I have to, I definitely have to see the program shape up to be what it's promised to be. And if it does shape up to be what it's promised to be, then I'm going to have to think about it still. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and I was saying before how I'm on the other side of it too, because, um, suite upgrades aren't as important to me anymore as they used to be when I used to travel with

my son. And so for me, just getting diamond status and the free breakfast and, you know, some other minor perks might make this, this day actually, uh, you know, that much better that, that it would actually be worth it. It makes using my free night certificates more valuable because I'm getting those extra perks during this day. And, um, so I'm happy about it now, personally, I don't have to make the choice because I have lifetime platinum with Marriott. So, um, you don't need the Marriott nights, no matter what. So I don't, I mean, I would have to go all the way to 75 to get anything meaningful with Marriott. I'm not going to do that. No, I'm not going to do that for a 40 K free night certificate. So, uh, so then the question is, Greg, are you going mean, I don't actually have the, that card at this moment,

so I have to either upgrade, um, the traveler card and in order to do that and, um, or sign up for the business card, but I'm over five 24 with chase. So that, that'd be difficult. Um, I feel like that's going to be another good topic at some point. Is it worth spending your way to IHG elite status? But I kind of feel like I have to see how things shake out to decide that for myself. But I'm intrigued anyway. I'm intrigued. IHG, that's saying a lot. So if you're listening out there, don't be disappointed by my skepticism here, because the fact that you're in this conversation is a huge, huge improvement. And I think somewhat of an indictment of Marriott in the sense that Marriott has long sort of enjoyed this place near the top of the loyalty food chain because they have such a big footprint and they soaked up a lot of SPG properties that people loved. And I feel like they've really been getting chipped away at and chipped away at to the point where now we're talking third string. And then is a Wyndham or a Choice going to come out with something that makes them competitive

with you too, Marriott? Start sweating. Start sweating, Marriott. Right. Yeah. You've got to start competing. I hope people do divert their business for exactly that reason. Marriott has been really kind of letting us down, I think, since the initial.

When they initially merged with SPG, they did some really great things on the Marriott side. People who were SPG fans weren't as happy. But on the Marriott side, they pulled up a lot of things to closer to SPG standards. Since then, there've been quite a few letdowns. So I would love to see IHG cause them to, you know, feel like they need to compete again in these arenas. So let's hope for that. And let's hope that IHG fulfills some of these promises that they've made.

Because as we said, on paper, it's looking pretty darn good. So when is all this starting? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no. Yeah, no, that's a great question. Early June. They don't have an exact date yet. And I think what we're going to see most likely is that some hotels are going to start adhering to these benefits sooner. And so I think they're waiting to find out when will the last hotel have these benefits in place so that they can then say, okay, it's rolled out. So what you're saying is I should have booked that Candlewood Suites after all. Is that what I'm hearing here?

I should have gone for that. Do you have top tier status? No, I don't. But my platinum status would have gotten me potentially an upgrade, right? An upgrade, yes. But that was true before. Right, right, right. So we have to see about their training. Now, I checked into a Kempton a couple of years ago as a platinum and I get upgraded to a suite at that time. And they they said, you know, they said it was because of my platinum status. So it's not like, yeah, I mean, there were a lot of times I checked in and places that I got upgraded because of my status, but it was to a higher floor. So yeah, that happens a lot in all the, all the times that even happens even in Hyatt apps. I mean. Yeah. So true. Yeah. All right.

Well, we'll see. So IHG you're competing. You're getting a, like a sideways nod in this fight. I think where we're like, yeah, I, geez,

sounds pretty good, but it's like, we're still a little reluctant. So, so please serve up some delicious IHG pudding and we will be much happier to talk about how great it turned out. So anyway, you slice it. Yeah. Greg's predictions for the IHG program here, like those weren't your annual predictions at the beginning of the year, right?

I mean, that was something that… I know what you're talking about. It's when the credit card came out, I was like, wow, this is really good. So I'm sort of, I suddenly have higher expectations for the program changes because of how good the credit card changes were. And you came out and you were like a wishlist and that wishlist, keep wishing, Greg, forget about predicting, just wish. Yeah. I did revisit that wishlist. I wish I had that in front of me right now. I don't, but, but, um, they met some of the things on the wishlist surprisingly, but some of them, you know, they didn't even approach. And so, and I thought the 4.00 PM late checkout was like, give me two, you know, that they didn't do that is

kind of surprising. So hopefully it is, hopefully they're not done. Hopefully they're not. It isn't, it isn't though with housekeeping the way it is. I mean, anybody who's stayed at a hotel in the last few months, you know, that getting daily housekeeping is a big struggle. And I'm sure that there's been a huge cutback in housekeeping staff. Right. So the 4 p.m. Checkout, that's tough when you've got to turn over rooms quickly because people are

ready to check in. You need housekeeping staff. And I feel like a lot of places have cut a lot of housekeeping staff. So I was very pleasantly surprised, by the way, when we checked in to a Hampton Inn where I'm staying tonight and because of diamond status, they said, would you like daily housekeeping? At least that's how they framed it, that it was because of the diamond status. The choice for daily housekeeping, which did seem to be accurate because I did the check in in the app and it said something about that, too.

So so great. We got daily housekeeping. That was nice, though. We've talked a lot about how too. So, so great. We got daily housekeeping. That was nice though. You know, we've talked a lot about how Hyatt is so much better. And I also did an online check-in with Hyatt recently. And it also asked, would you like daily housekeeping? And it also asked what time of day between 8 AM and noon or noon to 4 PM. And I was like, yeah, I went into that. And if they actually adhere to that. Yeah. I love it when hotels provide some way to let, let them know what your housekeeping preference is or,

or, you know, indicate when you're out of the room. So this is okay. Besides like putting a card on the door and taking it off kind of thing. Yeah. That's really good. You know,

and some hotels just do it right. They somehow figure out how to make that work. They have cameras in your room or something. They know when you're out and they sneak in and do it. Always nice to get that done. So I'm not totally surprised. The moral of the story, not very surprised that they haven't guaranteed late checkout because across the large range of brands that they have, the housekeeping availability and turnover rate possibility is probably not consistent enough to guarantee that. So, right. But, but, but for the hot breakfast, they, they sent out toasters to every hotel.

Watch out, watch out. They have a toaster pusher too. They've all hired the toaster pusher to push it for you. So you can have your hot breakfast. Is that what the toaster pusher too. They've all hired the toaster pusher to push it for you. So you can have your hot breakfast. To push the lever down? Yes, that's right. Is that what the toaster pusher does? Toaster pusher pushes the lever for you and you get your hot breakfast. So let's hope not. Let's hope for better. Yeah. I'm kind of intrigued enough to think, you know, I need to make it a mission. I don't know when I'm going to find time to do this, but to go to like different like

Hotel Indigo's and Kempton's and so on around the country and, and just try them out and see what the experience is like. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have the time for it, I'd be happy to be sent on a location on a mission for you. We'll see. We'll find out soon. I hope. All right. So IHG well done hats off to you for competing here and giving us a good topic to talk about. For those who have been ignoring IHG for years, and I have to admit, I'm one of those people. Now, all of a sudden, you got to listen up and pay attention.

So that's exciting. We'll see what happens. Whatever, you know, however you feel about how they compare to the others, you have to admit they're at least a competitor now. Before they just weren't playing the game. Now they are. And it's worth paying attention.

Absolutely. All right. So I think that brings us to the post roast. And I have been on vacation this week. And so I have to admit, I have not read everything yet. So I don't have a roast for Greg. And I know, Greg, that you've enjoyed everything I published this week. I really did. Everything you published was so, I didn't find a single flaw.

Right, not a flaw. A flaw this week for me on vacation. So we're going to jump right into the question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in via email, and we've had a number of semi-related questions. So Joshua, and I'm looking down at the question here, Joshua writes in to ask about award availability with Qatar and British Airways. Says, I want to take advantage of the transfer bonds from Amex to Avios. Is there better availability when looking at dates via the Qatar website versus searching availability on British Airways? And in order to search on Qatar, do I need to move Avios in my Cutter account first? I've tried searching on BA mostly from Dallas to Doha. I haven't been able to

find much more than two seats in Q suites and even economy, not four seats very often. So we're a family of four looking to take advantage of the bonus, but struggling to find availability. Any tips or tricks appreciated? So my first question then is about finding cutter availability. Do you have an answer to that? Because I saw that and I didn't have an immediate answer. So I'm curious if you do. And then I have a secondary question I'm going to tag on after you answer this. Yeah, I think that's a great question because often programs do keep better availability for their own, you know, program that members then for others. Um, I don't, I'd never heard anyone say that, Oh, look, you know, cutter is better availability, but also before being able to transfer, uh, BA obvious to cutter, not that many people had the

points in their account to even check. So, um, which gets to that second question about, do you have to move them before you can check? And yes, ish, like by default, you have to have the points in your account in order to do the search. A reader wrote in that there's a work around that apparently you can, when logged in, do a paid flight search and then click a button on the search results to see the miles version of it. But I didn't try that. So I don't know if that actually works. But if you already have enough points, it can't hurt to just slide them over to the cutter side because you could always slide them back. And I would, I think is worth mentioning sometimes, um, I know this when booking from other programs, booking cutter, sometimes there's award availability, um, and cutter had a, I think they had a little fifth freedom

flight from Johannesburg to Durban or somewhere. And when I, so when I searched from my originating place to Johannesburg showed no availability, but to Durban, it had full award availability. So just a little tip there for finding availability. Good tip. Excellent tip. So there you go. So you can move them on over and take a look. Like Greg said, I've never heard that they have more availability to their own members, but they might. So it's worth like for the two seconds, it'll probably take you hopefully as long as everything works right to move them over. You might as well move them over and check. And so the tag-on question that I have to this relatively quick is a number of people have asked, how can I take advantage of this?

Like, basically, I've seen the question come up a number of times. I want to take advantage of this transfer bonus to Avios, but I search and there's really high surcharges on all of the flights. And so I've heard that type of question come in via email in the Frequent Miler Insiders group that say, I've looked, but there's like thousands of dollars in surcharges. Is this bonus totally not worth it? So what's your thoughts on that? So when you search through BA's website for awards, the most common awards to find are on British Airways itself. And yeah, if you're looking at premium cabin, you're looking at business class, you're going to see very, very high fuel surcharges on those.

And so I agree. It's rarely a great deal to do that. I mean, sometimes it could be, if you were thinking of like paying for a multi-thousand dollar flight to wherever it is, and you look at, you know, oh, well, instead of flying coach for thousands of dollars, I can fly business class for a thousand dollars plus, you know, 75,000 avios, that could be a really good deal, but it's not like getting it. It's nowhere close to getting it free, obviously. Whereas when you're booking something like Cutter, much, much lower fuel surcharges on those flights. So you need to first find availability on the airlines that don't charge high fuel surcharges. Cutter American Airlines doesn't charge. I don't know what they all are off the top of my head, but find that award availability and then see if British Airways can see that.

And if you book it that way, you're not going to see those high fuel surcharges. That's the thing. So each person has asked that question. I know immediately they're looking at flights on British Airways. And so my gut response each time has been, it's not worth, this transfer bonus isn't worthwhile if you're looking to fly to London on British Airways. And I say isn't worthwhile, probably isn't, because Greg makes a good point that depending on where you're originating, it may be about the same price you would have paid for economy.

So it might still be worth paying what you essentially would have paid an economy and using Avios to upgrade is what it kind of feels like. But generally speaking, your best uses of Avios are not to fly on British Airways. So, like you said, American Airlines, Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, for the most part, is going to be pretty reasonable or move them over to Iberia. And we've talked a lot before about how off-peak Iberia business class between New York or Boston and Madrid, or maybe DC too, is 34,000 obvious one way. So with a 40% transfer bonus, you're talking like 26,000 membership rewards points transferred over. Yeah, that's incredible. And the surcharges on Iberia are like 100 bucks going out to Europe and 150 coming back or so more or less. So it's totally like a world different than British Airways.

So there are situations like those that are well worthwhile. So what you got to do is go to the Frequent Miler page for this. And I'll link it in the description. There's a best uses of Avios for British Airways, Nibiru or for award tickets and premium cabins. Avios sweet spots, I think is what it's called. Avios sweet spots. If you go to frequent miler and you search that in the search box, you should find a whole bunch of sweet spots that are good uses of Avios.

And all of them are not flying on British Airways. So if you, what you really want to do is fly in British Airways, you're going to pay the surcharges basically no matter what. So, I mean, it's not necessarily any worse than booking with anybody else at that point. But look for other opportunities is what we're saying. Look for other opportunities. In general, I was tempted to say this at the outset, that the answer to that question of, is it worth it for me to transfer membership rewards points to British

Airways while there's this transfer bonus is no, because yeah, if you have to ask, because you, you don't, yeah, because you asked that question, you, you, you don't understand, like it's tricky, it's tricky stuff, knowing how to get the best value out of your obvious. And if you're a beginner at that, I would not transfer my points just because, oh, I get 40% more points. You might end up with much less value than you would transferring one-to-one to another program.

That's a great point. And that's a universal point, right? Because we've seen that before. Oh, I want to take advantage of the transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, right? A friend who knows nothing about miles and points and reached out to me and said, oh, I have an Amex card and I see there's this transfer bonus to Hawaiian airlines. So should I transfer all my points and take advantage of that now? And I was

like, no, definitely not. I mean, those points aren't worth it, but again, the answer is really based on the same logic. Like Greg said, if you don't know how you're going to use the points, then no, there's nothing to take advantage of until you know what it is you want to do with the points. And then you won't have to ask the question. So read that post about sweet spots for obvious or obvious sweet spots. And maybe you'll see one in there that you're like,

oh, that does fit my travel plans. I can use this. But unless you're in that situation, the answer is probably a blanket. No, you don't need to take advantage of the transfer bonus in almost all scenarios until you know how you're going to use the points. So editor, cut all that out and just say,

if you had to ask, the answer is no. Okay. All right. Well, that brings us to the end, I think. So I want to thank you guys for being out there listening with us. Wherever you're listening to this show, make sure you hit like, subscribe, enable notifications, ding that little bell there on YouTube or wherever you're watching or listening and get those notifications when we

post new content. Also, leave us a comment, leave us a question. Or if you have general questions, you want to be featured on the question of the week, or maybe on the giant mailbag segment, you want to email mailbag at frequent miler.com. If you want to get our posts in your inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on social media. We're on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all those places. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like the ones we've just been talking about here. Thank you guys for being there with us today and we will see you again next week. Thanks, everybody. Bye.