Frequent Miler on the Air - Loyalty Point Changing Fortunes | Coffee Break Ep49 | 3-18-25

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

(00:10) - In this episode we talk about the airline rewards programs and hotel rewards programs that seem to be changing in value. Some of them are going up in value and some are going down.  (00:42) - Alaska Mileage Plan miles are going up in value (02:08) - Southwest points are going down Listen to our episode about these Southwest changes here. (02:45) - Avianca Lifemiles are going down (04:43) - Hilton points are going up (06:12) - Hyatt points are going down (10:36) - Which transferable points are going up or down? Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. In today's Coffee Break, we're going to talk about how points and miles change in value and we're going to look specifically at which airline programs, which hotel programs, which transferable points have recently gone up in value or down in value and sometimes it's not their own fault, but often it is. Anyway, the point is these things change all the time and we're going to just have a glimpse into right now which programs we think are going up or down.

Yeah, so let's kick it off with airline programs. So the first airline program I'll start with is the airline program we see on the way up. And that for sure is Alaska Mileage Plan, because Alaska miles have just become more and more valuable, especially when you consider a lot of their award charts sort of sweet spots as compared to other competitors. Now that's gonna depend a little bit on where you live.

And sure, the award chart changed some from the past, but the ability to get a free stop over on one-way awards, especially once they finally integrate, fully integrate mixed partner awards is going to be huge. And I've been getting great value out of my Alaska miles lately. 55K business class from Frankfurt to New York on Condor I booked recently. Recently booked La Tom for 35K business class from Frankfurt to New York on Condor I booked recently.

Recently booked La Tom for 35k business class from Cancun to Santiago. And then of course you've got all the flights within the United States. If you're able to fly on, often you can book American Airlines flights for as few as 4500 miles one way. And so that's all pretty exciting and it's more exciting right now because currently you can still transfer MX membershiphip Rewards points to Hawaiian miles and Hawaiian miles, of course, since Hawaiian is now owned by Alaska, Hawaiian miles transfer to Alaska one to one.

So you can indirectly transfer your MX Membership Rewards points to Alaska, which makes it a lot easier to accumulate enough points for all of those types of things that I just mentioned and a lot more. Those are just a few examples of things that I've personally booked lately. So Alaska is certainly on the way up. On the way down, I mean, Southwest Airlines is in a league of its own. So, you know, that goes without saying that Southwest just totally destroyed everything we knew and loved about Southwest last week. In fact, it was so bad that we had to release an unscheduled coffee break

in the middle of the week that we just spontaneously got together and recorded because it was so bad we needed to get something out there. So if you want to hear more about that, you can listen to last week's coffee break, Southwest Takes the Love Out of Flying. So you can check that one out in our podcast list. But apart from Southwest, let's talk about everybody else now. Out of the everybody else in the world other than Southwest, which airline loyalty program is sort of on the way down and i'd say avianca

life miles because avianca life miles number one has recently devalued a lot of awards awards to europe for the most part became more expensive awards within the united states and united became more expensive in some cases doubling in price for domestic routes so that was a big bummer and often we're having trouble finding the flights we want. Very often I'm looking at life miles for flights and life miles has always been quirky. The website's a

little hard to use so you kind of need to know some tips and tricks for navigating around and finding the stuff you want. But in the past I've been able to find most of what I wanted. Now I'm only finding a smaller percentage of what I want. So I'm finding it harder to find the awards I want and they've become more expensive. So I've been on life miles for those reasons has been on the way down. Yeah.

And I agree with both of those picks Alaska. Just one little anecdote is, you know, I was looking to book flights for some of my family members, a short domestic flight, and the flights, if we had paid for them, would have been $500, $600 one way. But we were seeing Alaska able to book those same flights for 4,500 miles one way. And that's just unbelievable value for your miles. And for all the reasons Nick said about life miles, I agree going down.

I already like was sort of hesitant to move miles into life, move points into life miles too often because it had some quirks I didn't like, but lately things have just gotten worse. So I will, you know, when it comes to transferable points, if it costs more, for example, to book something with Air Canada Aero plan, if it's not that much more,

I'm still likely to just say, I'm gonna go with the program that I feel a little more comfortable with because of the reasons that LifeMiles just keeps sort of going downhill, which is really sad. All right, moving on to hotel programs. Number one program going up in value is unquestionably Hilton.

And that's because they made a partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, and they knocked it out of the park how well they implemented that partnership. They made it so that you can use your Hilton free night certificates at any of these properties. And some of these are hotels that sell for $2,000, $3,000 a night. And so the ability to use our free night certificates at these places is incredible. They made it so that if you're paying with points and you have any kind of elite stats with Hilton at all, you can get fifth night free awards with Hilton when booking SLH.

And they've incorporated tons of SLH properties into their program very, very quickly. They promised about a hundred within the first year, but within the first year, they got way more, hundreds of programs incorporated and hundreds of hotels incorporated. And not only that, they've incorporated more SLH properties than Hyatt ever did during the many years that Hyatt partnered with SLH. So that's all been good, causing Hilton value to go up. And then the obvious one going down because of what I just said is Hyatt. So Hyatt, they got rid of their SLH partnership

where they used to do a decent job. They shoved the SLH properties into their award charts so that we were able to get outsized value when the cash rates were very high at SLH properties, but there would be a fixed point price with Hyatt. acquired the booking channel Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And the worst part about that is they did not put the Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties onto their award chart instead. They said, we're just gonna dynamically price these and the value of your points is gonna range from around one to a high of around 1.4 cents each,

which is not good for Hyatt points. Hyatt points usually are worth 1.7 cents each or more. I frequently get two, three, sometimes four cents per point value with Hyatt points when booking Hyatt properties. But if you're going to book Mr. or Ms. Smith, you're just not going to get good value. And we're kind of seeing that going to get good value. And we're kind of seeing that happen more and more. So they incorporated a luxury camping thing under Canvas, I think it's called, and did the same thing. They kind of put it under the Mr. and Mrs. Smith umbrella

of that dynamic pricing model. And of course, there's fear. Are they going to someday do away with their award chart altogether, but regardless of that, the program has become less valuable than before because of that. Don't get me wrong, though, I still find Hyatt a very valuable program, very valuable when booking Hyatt's own properties, it's when booking partner properties, that it when booking partner properties

that it becomes less valuable. And there's just fewer properties now available worldwide that you can get good value from your Hyatt points. Yeah, that's definitely been the big hit for me that the footprint feels a lot smaller ever since they lost SLH because I'm not gonna consider using my points from Mr. and Mrs. Smith at fixed relatively poor values.

So that's been a bummer, but like Greg said, lots of great opportunities there. One other thing I wanted to add on Hilton is that I've been getting great targeted offers from Capital One Shopping for paid stays. So I just recently booked one with 33 1 1⁄2% cash back at a Hilton Garden Inn. The rates vary, and of course that's targeted.

We've written a lot about Capital One Shopping, but that's making Hilton appealing to me because I'm gonna earn Hilton points on my paid stay at the full rate that I'm paying and earn a significant chunk back from Capital One shopping. And of course with Hilton promotions, you're often earning lots of Hilton points per dollar spent too.

So whereas I didn't really think much about booking Hilton paid stays in the past, now that's kind of quickly becoming my go-to if I need a paid stay. Yeah. And then finally on the hotel program front, we intended to only do one program going up and one program going down in each category, but just like Nick couldn't help but mention Southwest going down as well, I can't help but mention Marriott. There's no like single, you know, big thing that I can point to and say, well, this has made such a big difference in the value, but they have just kicked us over and over and over over the last approximately seven

years, each time, like, lowering the value a bit, bit by bit. And, you know, recently they raised way, way up the top point price for certain properties to where it just becomes infeasible to be able, for most people to be able to book those with points at all. And so, you know, they have kind of a, just a long sloping downward trajectory, unfortunately. Yeah, you know, it's a trajectory that has them catering more and more to the owners of the hotels and less and less to the members of the program.

And that's the bummer, you know, there are hotels that are just opting out of providing the elite benefits that they're supposed to, and Marriott is just letting it happen. And you know, that's unfortunate because once two or three hotels do that, then it's going to be 10 or 12 and then it's going to be 20 or 30. And my goodness, there's already so many exceptions. So that was a good pick.

Good pick for another one dimension that's on the way down for us. All right. Transferable points. Let's talk about transferable points for me. I have to say Amex membership rewards points have been trending upward for me And that's largely influenced by the fact that I can transfer them indirectly to Alaska mileage plan I mentioned some of the things that I booked earlier and there's been several more beyond that I've just constantly been using them and wanting more and more Alaska miles So I really regret not taking advantage of a transfer bonus

They offered late last year because that would have yielded even more miles for me if I had taken advantage of that like Greg did. But in the meantime anyway, they're still trending upward for me because there's so many ways to earn MX Membership Rewards points, so it gives me lots of ways to earn miles that can be transferred to Alaska. Now we expect that to end sometime soon. And I say sometime soon, we don't know but we're thinking probably in the summer of this year which could be May could be June could be July could be August

could be next year we just don't really know when that's going to end but I'm anticipating sooner rather than later so I'm hoping to ramp up some more MX points to transfer over before that's done because that's certainly becoming a valuable use for me in the near term. On the way down, Chase Ultimate Rewards points have kind of been on a downward trajectory and that's largely influenced by Hyatt because Hyatt is the best transfer partner that Chase has and Hyatt points have become less exciting to me mostly because I just haven't been looking to book as many Hyatt properties now, of course when I'm booking Hyatt properties themselves They often offer a terrific value And so I have you know number of Hyatt reservations this year where I'm getting excellent value out of my Hyatt points

But I also have several SLH reservations this year through Hilton that I'm very excited about and so I have Fewer and fewer of those things going with Hyatt And so that's made me less excited about Hyatt and in turn that's made me less excited about Chase Ultimate Rewards points because that's the main way I use Chase points so they kind of feel like they're going down in value because there's nothing else I'm particularly excited about doing with my Chase points other than transferring to Hyatt and then also Chase points have become a little bit harder to earn in recent times there just are a lot of different rules that you have to kind of play by. Welcome bonuses are tougher. I have fewer ways to earn like five

points per dollar than I once did. And so I'm just, I'm losing some enthusiasm for my chase points comparatively, which is too bad. And again, that's not to say that I'm not going to continue to earn chase points and continue to transfer the vast majority or maybe all of them to Hyatt. I did today transfer over the rest of the ultimate rewards points I had today to Hyatt. So it's not that it's worth less. It's just worth less to me. So not worthless. Worth less.

I think that's important to point out. Yeah. Yeah. And so I totally agree. So now, you know, going forward, Nick is probably not gonna be transferring his chase points to Southwest instead of Hyatt. No, no. Never would have.

I agree with that. Hyatt is still Chase's most valuable transfer partner, and it's still sort of their silver bullet, if you will, although built also transfers to Hyatt, it's worth pointing out. But because if the value of Hyatt goes down, then obviously the value of chase transferable points go down if that's been your main use,

if Hyatt has been your main use of it, and it has been for both of us and probably a lot of people who are into this stuff. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning I'm more excited now about using the BILT card for 3X Dining than I had used for a while. Mostly because I wanted more chase points. I had been using the Freedom Unlimited for a while for 3X Dining because I like to earn three Hyatt points per dollar, but I like Builds Transfer Partners better overall,

and I mostly use those for Hyatt also, but three points per dollar that I can transfer to Hyatt or a better set of Maryland partners, I've been preferring Build Points for those types of purchases, so it ties into it. Including Alaska, you could transfer Build Points to Alaska as another one. So once the ultimate reward, sorry So once the membership rewards, Amex membership rewards, indirect

transfer goes away, Bilt will probably be the only way to transfer points to Alaska. So I'm going to add one. So I agree with Nick about both of his picks, but as far as which transferable points program is going up, I look more towards Citibank. Citi Thank You Rewards, they have been doing some really interesting things with hotels. So, you know, they've had for a few years now the ability to transfer one to two to choice privileges, and that gives, that unlocks a bunch of opportunities. They more recently added the ability to to transfer points to leading hotels of the world and you could get decent value from your points through that. And then really recently they added the ability to transfer one to four to preferred hotels.

And there's some amazing opportunities possible there. Now there's also big challenges there because preferred hotels is still working on their capabilities, put it that way. I think they'll get there, but for now, booking with points is an adventure. But there are some other reasons that I like Citi and say that their value is going up. Another one is the ability to transfer to EVA. And the reason that the value of that is going fly from North America to Asia or back. EVA for their own members has a lot of award availability.

So the ability to transfer to EVA and book flights to Asia is really valuable. Finally, on the speculative of speculative side, we believe that cities can be adding American Airlines as a transfer partner. And if and when that happens, that should increase the value. So I think of it as like, I want to do everything I can right now to increase my city balance. For all those reasons, including that I should be able to transfer to American Airlines at

some point in the future. Yeah, yeah, I think that's those are great points. You know, I don't get as excited about the city transfers to preferred hotels and, and choice privileges, only because it yields good value for city points, but not amazing value most of the time. You're looking at usually what like around 1.6 to maybe two cents per point, which is good for hotels, it's not bad, and it's good for city points,

but it's not as good as like Greg's example before about transferring MX Membership Awards points to Hawaiian and on to Alaska to pay 4,500 points for a $600 flight. So I get less excited about that, but I can't disagree. They are certainly on an upward swing, and if they add American Airlines, that's gonna be huge. So I think you're about that, but I can't disagree. They are certainly on an upward swing. And if they add American Airlines, that's going to be huge. So I think you're right that they're they're trending upward,

not upward enough for me to be excited yet. But Greg's point that maybe now is a good time to start earning some of those points so that you have them as they become more and more valuable. That's probably a good point. So there you go. Unusually, Nick and I seem to agree on virtually everything on today's episode. good point.