Frequent Miler on the Air - Luxury lodging... on points | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep252 | 4-26-24

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

There are many ways to book luxury hotels (credit card points, hotel points, etc) and this can be a great way to stay in some amazing luxury accommodations you'd never justify paying cash for. We'll dive into this today. (01:43) - Please share an experience when a positioning flight had not gone to plan, perhaps share a "Positioning Flight From Hell" type of experience. (Mailbag) Read about Greg's positioning flight mayhem here. (06:23) - On our Instagram post, @marriottbonvoy's account trolls Hyatt by saying "Fortunately for our guests, we don’t play games with welcome gifts, points, and awards at Luxury locations such as St. Regis, JW Marriott, W Hotels, The Luxury Collection, and more but that’s just us." (Crazy Thing) See our post: Marriott Platinum Elite Free Breakfast Simplified (12:12) - 30% transfer bonus Amex to Virgin (Mattress Running the Numbers) (15:17) - MaxFHR.com (Award Talk) Read more about MaxFHR here. (17:09) - Equinox credit for massages (Award Talk) (21:10) - Bilt’s new Rent Day snoozer (24:27) - Bilt BLADE Read more about the Bilt Blade partnership here.  Read Greg's Blade flight review here. (30:01) - Hyatt’s sad rollout of Mr & Mrs Smith Main Event: Luxury lodging... on points (41:52) - Find our "Which is the most rewarding hotel loyalty program? | Ep193 | 3-11-23" here. (42:54) - Major hotel chain luxury brands (43:34) - Hyatt (45:53) - Hilton (47:55) - Marriott (54:03) - IHG (58:12) - Wyndham (59:10)  - Read Nick's post about free cruise opportunities. (59:34) - Choice Privileges (1:01:36) - Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH): Book with Hilton points (coming soon). Read more about the Hilton SLH partnership here. (1:05:49) - Preferred Hotels & Resorts (1:09:05) - Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) (1:11:23) - Fine Hotels & Resorts & The Hotel Collection (1:13:28) - What's the best way to start on the Marriott credit card journey? (Question of the Week) See our chart for figuring out which Marriott cards you're eligible for.  

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, luxury lodging on points. We're going to talk about the many ways you can book luxury lodging with points, hotel points, credit card points, different kinds of points, and get outsized value so that you could stay at some unbelievable properties that you would never have thought to pay cash for, but you could do it with points and get away with it that way. Yeah, that's really the, I don't know, it's become the fun part of the game for me is going to places like that, that I would never have thought to go to. Even just today, we were in the car talking about some places to extend a trip that like it just never would have crossed my mind to do that before Points and Miles. So it's I think this is kind of the fun part of the hobby, especially on the hotel side, because you get to spend days at this place.

I mean, we often talk about flight redemptions, but the hotel redemptions, you know, arguably could be more important for a lot of people since you spend more time there. So, so it'd be fun talking about some of the luxury options for that today. But before we get deep into that, I want to remind you that you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip ahead to a specific segment, or you want to return to one, because we've got a jam packed show today with stuff that maybe you'll want to go back and listen to again. Remember, you can just check the show notes for those timestamps. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the video. Give us a thumbs up. Leave a comment. Let us know what you thought. Let us know what we got right or what we got wrong or how you think about

it differently in the comments. We love to hear from you. So there you go. All that out of the way. Let's see. We need to drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yep. Today's giant mail comes from Matt. Matt says, I recently subscribed to your YouTube channel after many months of viewing many of your videos and reading blog posts on your website. I appreciate all the knowledge and wisdom that you've put into your content. I have a question and a request regarding positioning flights. In my recent Frequent Miler content exploration, Greg mentioned positioning flights. I've yet to go on a positioning flight in order to then fly on a valuable flight award redemption. My skepticism about using this potentially amazing strategy can be explained by the uncertainty that travel brings. Flights get delayed and canceled to varying degrees. So how do you weigh

this into how viable and reliable a positioning flight will be in being able to fly on the subsequent flights that are dependent on the positioning flight for a given trip? And just as an aside, what we mean here by positioning flights is when, like, let's say you've booked an incredible flight, maybe Etihad First Apart apartments from New York City to Abu Dhabi, but you don't live near New York City. So you book a separate flight with a different airline. You book that flight to get to New York City in order to fly onward. That's a positioning flight. So that's what Matt is talking about here.

And he goes on to say, please share an experience when a positioning flight had not gone to plan. Perhaps share a positioning flight from not gone to plan, perhaps share a positioning flight from hell type of experience. Okay. So I decided to share this one today because this past week I posted about a trip that I'm hopefully taking soon. And maybe by the time you've listened to this, but in that post, I talked about how I have an extremely suboptimal positioning flight. I had no choice. If I wanted a particular flight, I had no choice but to book a flight that is scheduled to arrive 12 minutes at Newark before the recommended 30 minutes before boarding of

the next flight. And we would never recommend that to anyone. No, no's be clear. Never, ever, ever recommend that to somebody. It's a do as he says, not as he does type of a moment right here. Exactly. Exactly. So I do think it'd be a great idea for us to do a show about what you should do when booking positioning flights. But I thought I'd bring up this piece of giant mail today because it's kind of funny from a point of view of like, I very well may soon have that positioning flight from hell type of experience that I can report on on the show. I hope not. We will report on it in our next show, hopefully. But wait, so that begs the question then, do you not have any other positioning flight

from health stories? Like, have you not had any other fails with your positioning flights? Not that I can think of. How about you? No, no. And so that's, I think that was what stood out at me when I saw this question was that, you know, people often plan around what might go wrong. And regular operations are called irregular because they don't happen regularly. I mean, yes, obviously flights get delayed and canceled all the

time. And I'm sure that a lot of people listening have a horror story of some sort. But truth be told, I don't travel as much as many business travelers do, but I probably travel far more than most leisure travelers do. And in the last 10 10 or 15 years, I think like one or two times I've had a flight canceled and maybe one more, a significant delay in all of that time and lots and lots of flights. So, I mean, I've, maybe I have above average lock. I don't know, but, but the bottom line is that. I, I don't really worry about that too much now. I do worry about it in the sense that I would not book a flight that arrives 12 minutes before the 30-minute boarding cutoff or whatever for Greg's international flight.

I worry in the sense that I would book a positioning flight that's many hours in advance where there's at least another flight as a backup option that I could have that leaves later if the first one gets canceled for some reason. Sometimes if it's a big one, then I would position the day before so that I know that I'm going to be there. And that's what to me a lower end hotel free night certificate is for those overnight airport stays before an important flight like that. But Greg's right. We can have a whole show where we talk about those things. But the bottom line is that I do these from time to time, not tons of the time. Cause I live near New York

where there's a lot of flights, but I've done enough positioning flights and not had a problem by just following some best practices. So we'll have to talk about what those best practices are on a future show. That was a good question. It was good. All right. Let's skip over card talk for this week. So we got a jam packed show. We're going to go to what crazy thing, because we got a lot of crazy things. What crazy thing did Marriott Bonvoy do this week? Marriott Bonvoy. They obviously listened to our show and they were listening when we discussed the fact that if you really want to get on the crazy thing segment, do something crazy on a Wednesday because we generally record on Thursdays. And so it's, it'll be on our mind. So wait, before you go any farther, I'm going to say that somebody probably thought you

were facetious when you said Marriott definitely listens to the show, obviously listens to the show. You probably thought Greg was being facetious, but wait until he shares the rest of this because then you might be like, well, maybe they really did listen to the show. Go ahead. Okay. So I posted about Hyatt's implementation of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We're going to talk about that later in the show. It was not complimentary. And Carrie posted a funny video about it to our social media, to Instagram. And Mariette Bonvoy commented on that post.

And so it wasn't just crazy that they commented on the post. That wasn't the crazy thing. That was surprising. The crazy thing is what they said. They wrote, fortunately for our guests, we don't play games with welcome gifts, points, and awards at luxury locations such as St. Regis, JW Marriott, W Hotels, The Luxury Collection, and more. But that's just us. Look at Marriott trolling Hyatt in our Instagram feed. It was hilarious on a number of levels, but first and foremost, I mean, not foremost. First, it was hilarious because they were obviously not only paying attention to what was going on in the hotel loyalty space, but with it enough and understanding it enough to see like a funny reel that Carrie had posted that was, you know,

meant to be humorous for those of us that are really into the hobby. So funny that they noticed it, picked up on it, understood, knew what it meant, took the initiative to comment with something relevant. But that's not the only reasons it's funny. No, no, it's funny. Yeah. On more levels than that. So the biggest one and the one that slammed us both like right in the face is like, we joke all the time about how much Marriott plays games with their benefits. I mean, we need a fricking, you know, huge award chart to figure out whether or not you're going to get a breakfast benefit at a Marriott hotel. And so, you know, the idea of Marriott of all the brands saying that is just, is just hilarious. I have to consult like a matrix, like a, like a post that we have,

that's got all the details to figure out if I'm going to get breakfast just today. I was at lunch with my wife and we were talking about staying at a hotel and she's like, well, would we get breakfast there? And I'm like, you know what? Hang on. Let me check because I didn't even know the answer. So, yeah. Right. Right. So, so then after thinking about it a while, I reread their post and it was like, wait a minute. They didn't say they don't play games at any Marriott hotels. They say they don't play games at St. Regis, JW Marriott, W Hotels, the Luxury Collection, and more. So I looked at our breakfast chart to see where do these hotels fit in the breakfast. And in fact, these are the ones that don't play games.

So whoever wrote this does understand the program. And they were saying, here are some brands where we don't play games. Where we don't play games. So that's so funny to me. We don't play games where we don't play games so that's that's so funny to me we don't play games at these brands we don't play games at these because they specifically did not mention for example design hotels addition ritz carlton any of which you are definitely not going to get breakfast as a welcome gift at best you'll get a few you'll get a few points when you check out so i think that was absolutely nutty and hilarious

that the person who wrote it knew which brands they don't play game set to give as an example because even you and i would have struggled a little bit we'd been like wait autograph collection is that like tribute portfolio do they play games with that i can't remember is it a hotel in the u.s or abroad or like So they had to know where they don't play games. Seriously. Yeah. The one I most had to look at, I knew St. Regis, JW Marriott, and W Hotels were all on the good side.

I wasn't sure about the luxury collection. But yeah, so that appears to be on the good side too, at least if the breakfast chart is correct. If the breakfast chart is correct. Probably. It was at one time. So yeah, that was pretty crazy, Marriott. Well done in giving us a good laugh.

I'm not sure if it was exactly for the reasons you thought it was, but we got a good laugh out of it anyway. We sure did. All right. So that's that. Oh, by the way, there will be a link to the post

I should mention in the show notes about or the link to the post that explains when you'll get the breakfast benefit or when not. It has searchable charts, basically. So you can, it depends on whether you're staying at a resort or a hotel and if it's in the US or if it's in Europe or whatever, but you can search for the brand and figure out what breakfast benefits you have, or if it needs to be chosen as a welcome amenity, because some brands you have to choose it. Yeah. It's not, not let me say it's not as

hard as figuring out if you're eligible for another marriott credit card well right right but close but close that's a much more difficult problem to solve and you have to be careful because you check in more than once before i've been like so the desk agent has said to me so you want the points for the welcome amenity right when like clearly I would have wanted the breakfast if I had- He was playing games. Yeah, like they, I wasn't one of those brands. See, they were playing games at a different brand, Craig. They don't play games. Right, right, right, right.

At the particular brands mentioned, they're trained not to play games. Not to play games, but otherwise there may be games being played. So, all right, that's- Don't bother writing in with your own experiences of where those particular brands did play games. I am absolutely sure they do too. Right all right. Don't bother writing in with your own experiences of where those particular brands did play games. I am absolutely sure they do, too.

Right. Right. All right. So let's move on to this week's Mattress Running the Numbers. So for Mattress Running the Numbers, we've got a transfer bonus, a 30% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Awards to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. That seems like a pretty good deal. Is that exciting or what? It's what?

You know, it's always good if you need the points to get a transfer bonus. Absolutely. I guess my question, I'll ask it of you, Nick, is would you transfer speculatively to get 30% extra virgin land points? No, I wouldn't. And we should mention, by the way, this runs through May 31st. So it's valid from now until May 31st of 2024. Would I speculatively transfer? No, I wouldn't for a lot of reasons. Number one, we typically recommend against speculatively transferring in general because your points are more valuable and they're flexible. You can transfer them then as you need them. And when you see an award available, you can transfer and get

that award. If you don't know yet what you're going to need, it's kind of hard to commit your points to a specific program. And if you do, you lose all the flexibility you had. So generally speaking, no. And then we have, like, we've both argued against speculatively transferring, but within the last year, both of us have speculatively transferred points. Now those speculative transfers have been slightly different ballgame than this one for a number of reasons. But one of the key reasons, I think even if there was an amazing transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, both of us would probably hesitate on transferring all of our points to Virgin Atlantic because their sweet spots are relatively limited and they've devalued a number of times overnight with no notice, no notification, just somebody had to find it on the

website and realize that they devalued. So I don't have a lot of trust in Virgin Atlantic for that reason. There are some good sweet spots. And if you do redeem Virgin Atlantic miles very regularly, and you've got tons of Amex points, well, maybe I could see the argument for it. But I think for most people, it'd be a bad idea to speculate. Yeah, yeah, totally. Virgin Atlantic sweet spots are just too specific. And so, you know, as opposed to like Avios would be one I would consider if I was low on them because you can move them around to the different Avios programs and one or the other probably has a decent deal for whatever you want to do. But with Virgin, I mean, unless they have a decent deal, there's nothing good you could do with those points. Yeah, well, and like Air Canada Aeroplanes, another one where I might consider speculating because they've got like 41 different airline partners. So there's an infinite number of awards that could be a good deal or for a variety of situations.

Whereas with Virgin Atlantic, primarily the best uses are going to be flying Delta 1 to Europe, which is great if you can find it, but it's not the easiest award to find by any stretch or maybe Air France or KLM flying blue to Europe. Those can certainly be decent value with Virgin Atlantic miles. And those are not terrible in terms of availability, but you can often find those same flights available through Air France for much more, if more. So like it's good if you find it, but it's kind of situational. You're going to have to want to go to Europe and fly in Air France and blah, blah, blah, like Greg said. Okay, that's that. Match joining the numbers is a no on speculative transfers for most folks. Let's talk next about this week's award talk.

And so for award talk, first up, we've got a neat new FHR tool. Yeah, so fineels and Resorts, you know, we care about it mostly because if you have an Amex Consumer Platinum card, you get $200 rebate each year when you use your card to pay for a Fine Hotels and Resorts stay. And the cool thing is there's this website called maxfhr.com, which is brought to you by the same people that make Max My Point, which is a tool for like, you could set alerts for when award space opens up at hotels, for example. And Max FHR is just a free tool that makes it super easy to browse through and find hotels and resorts properties.

You can filter to ones that are like, you know, $200 or less if you want to get a nearly 100% rebate or, you know, and it's lightning fast because it caches results. I don't know how often it updates, but, and when you pick a property, you can see the prices. You can see a whole calendar, the whole year of prices, like right away. It's super easy, just super easy, super fast. If you're at all in the market for a fine hotel and resort stay, you should check it out because it's there, easy, free. Very nice. Very nice. Speaking of which, by the way, if you're in the market for a fine hotels and resorts stay, I've been doing some Las Vegas trip planning lately and Palazzo, like Venetian Palazzo or a complex there, Palazzo has been available quite cheaply when I've done

searches lately. I've seen prices like just over $100, $132 or so. Now that's before taxes and resort fee and stuff like that. But that's one that just popped up recently that I don't recall being a good use of FHR before in the past. When I say before, I did hear a couple of months ago that they had rates running around $200 a night, but I'm seeing quite a bit less now. So just a tip out there for any Las Vegas travelers. All right. Next up, we have Equinox.

Equinox is a fitness gym, fitness club chain. I don't know Equinox well. I'm not trendy enough probably or urban enough to be very familiar with Equinox. And I say that because they're mostly located in major urban centers. So you've got New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, et cetera. I live in the middle of nowhere, so I don't have any Equinox locations near me. But it came up this week because we have, well, for the last several years now, the Amex Consumer Platinum Card has come with a benefit related to Equinox. And that benefit these days is a $300 statement credit,

or I should say up to $300 in statement credits, either for a digital membership via the Equinox app. You can join the app and have fitness classes, I think, on the app, or an annual membership at one of those fitness locations, which again are in major, major cities for the most part around the US, some exceptions to that, I guess. But anyway, the reason this came up this week is because a reader gave us a hot tip, and that is that many of the Equinox locations have spa services. They have massages and facials and things like that, and they price nicely if you're looking to use an annual $300 statement credit. And the nice thing about it is that this reader reported not being an Equinox member, just going for a massage last year, just happened to go there for a massage

and got a statement credit for the massage and initially thought that has to be a mistake. They didn't know why they got it, but didn't think hard about it. And then they went for another massage recently. And again, it got statement credited back both times under $300, which is believable because the 110 minute massage was $250 when I looked it up at a couple of Equinox website to join as a member in order to enroll in the benefit. However, this person that commented said they have not been a member and are still getting the statement credits. So my interpretation of that is that probably Amex is sending you to enroll as an Equinox member and not that you need to click the enroll button on the Amex website. But I could be wrong. So don't shoot the messenger if this doesn't work out if you're not

a member. But if you're not a member of Equinox and you have no interest in joining, but you do have an interest in a massage, it might be worth trying to book one and using your consumer platinum card to pay for it to see what happens. Right, right. And if you're not willing to risk it, find our post. We'll post a link to the post in the show notes and watch the comments there because probably very soon someone will report back success, hopefully, in doing this. Someone besides the original commenter or not. And so there should be information soon. I find this really interesting because I've never been interested in those Equinox credits. I actually did a, I had this like opportunity in quotes to do one day at Equinox, like one class. And I hated it. Nothing against Equinox. It was just like, it was just painful. And so the idea was like, okay, I could use these Amex consumer platinum credits to do something painful.

But now it's like, no, I could do something Amex consumer platinum credits to do something painful. But now it's like, no, I could do something to reduce pain with a massage. So that's great. I hope that works out. And if it does, definitely going to be looking for Equinox spa places when I'm traveling. There's nothing near me where I live, but when I travel, that'd be great. Nothing near me either, but I end up going to New York City usually a few times a year, and there's tons of them around New York City. So plenty of opportunity there for anybody New York based or New York travelers anyway. And then, like I said, most of the other major cities in the U.S. seem to have them. So I figure it'll probably be easy enough once a year

to make use of that. My wife will be pretty happy. So we'll see. We'll see how that works out. Maybe I'll see if I can get a data point on that coming up and report back with that. Anyway, that's that piece of award talk. Next piece of award talk. Tell us about Built, Greg. Built added a new Blade benefit. What's up here? Oh, well, let's talk first about their rent day promotion. You know, I skipped right over that. You know why I skipped over it? I know why you skipped over it. They're out with an exciting new rent day promotion. No, it's not exciting at all. It might sound exciting to you at first blush. They say you can redeem your points towards rent and get a hundred percent of your points back to be used towards the built home collection from April 25th to May 1st. So, so, so yeah. So the first part of

it sounds great, right? Like it's basically like getting free rent, pay with points and get the points back, but you have to use the points for the built home collection, which is like specific products that they show you on their app that you could redeem points for. When you pay with points for rent, you're getting 0.55 cents per point value. So just a twidge over half a cent per point value. So even if this was like 100% that you could use your points like twice for rent, for example, then it would only be 1.1 cents per point value, which would be, I guess, better than nothing. But it's not as good as using your points to book travel for 1.25. And it's certainly not as good as transferring to some high value transfer partners like Hawaiian

or, I mean, wow. Wow. Greg, you picked out like probably the least value. This segment brought to you by Hawaiian Mileage, Hawaiian Miles. I was trying to say Alaska Airlines is what I really mean. And, you picked out probably the least valuable. This segment brought to you by Hawaiian Mileage, Hawaiian Miles. I was trying to say Alaska Airlines is what I really mean. Easy slip of the tongue. Very similar places. To my defense, Alaska is trying to buy Hawaiian, so maybe those miles become just as valuable in the long run. But for now, don't transfer your points to Hawaiian. But Greg's core point here stands that there are better ways to use your points for much more value there's something there is something intelligible in all

that babble that's what that was the point there and the main point here is just don't do it the rent day thing is a bad deal right right okay so we got that rent day bad idea don't do it and what actually we should also say yeah they'd only be worth you get 1.1 cent and that's if you valued it at a hundred percent. Right. And this collection is like not stuff I would value it. No, exactly. First of all, I'm sure they overpriced them. So, so I'm sure that your, the value of points is nowhere near like, you know, a penny each. Right. And then you'd have to actually want the thing. So you'd have to want the thing. You'd have to want to pay the full sticker price for it. And then you're getting sort of the equivalent of 1.1 cent,

which isn't even that good to begin with. So yeah, it's just, I tried quickly before the show to see if my son's chess set, it was still in that collection. Don't do it. Not the chess set. Come on, don't do it. didn't do it not the chess set come on don't do it okay just buy him the chess set so he stops thinking about it all right just just go find it it's gonna be for sale somewhere go find the chess set buy him the chess exactly i should get him

a nice chat yeah maybe it's next birthday it's a good idea so that that i clearly i jumped over that because i was like oh i forgot all about day. So let's move on to the more interesting piece of Bilt news over the last week. Bilt has announced a new Blade benefit or a set of benefits for Blade. And you know more about Blade than I do. So you're the person to talk about this. Yeah, this one's actually really interesting. So Blade is that helicopter service that I use to fly from JFK to Manhattan. Now that was thanks to my wife getting top tier JetBlue elite status.

And that's one of the perks you get are some Blade helicopter transfers to New York City from JFK or Newark. But this is, so this is the same Blade, but now Built is partnered with Blade. And there are some benefits from, let's start at the least interesting. So if you want to book a Blade trip and pay for it, as long as you've connected your credit card to your Blade wallet, you don't have to pay with your Bilt card. As long as you pay with a card connected to your Bilt wallet, you get two bonus points per dollar.

So that's minor interesting. Where it gets more interesting is with elite status. So remember, built has multiple levels of elite status. At silver, which is lowest level, you get 10% off blade flights when booked through the built app. So, you know, I mean, 10% off, that's better than nothing, especially if you were planning to pay anyway, that's great. Built gold status also gets at 10% off. But a little more interesting maybe for some is that you also get access to blade lounges, regardless of whether you're flying blade with a two beverage limit, if not flying.

So my first thought when I read that, so when I flew from JFK to Manhattan, there were two lounges. The one that I actually thought of as a lounge lounge was at JFK, but nowhere near the terminal. They drive you from the terminal to Blade's own little helicopter terminal, and there's a proper little lounge. And so I just can't imagine anyone driving there to get a drink. I mean, that's so out of the way from everything that that doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, when we landed in Manhattan, there was like a arrivals lounge, just a little, it was almost like a trailer, but very nicely decorated inside. And they have a bartender in there.

And so there's not really much space to hang out if you just want to hang out. But it has a pretty view of, you know, the Hudson and you could, you know, you could have a couple drinks for free if you, if you happen to be near there. So they have, that was on the West side, I guess. And they also have another one on the East side. So you can go to either one of those. There you go. Interesting. But that's not it.

No, that's not it. The most interesting one is if you have platinum elite status with built you get all of the above plus one free blade flight between newark and jfk in manhattan newark or jfk in manhattan like what i did or between nice and monaco i forgot that they flew there so i, I mean, that would be baller. Come on, like landing in Nice and then helicoptering your way over to Monaco? I totally, yeah. In fact, my wife read that too. And she's like, we've got to do this. I'm like, yes, we've got to do this. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Now, you only get the one free one. There's a number of sort of obstacles here to it really being free. One is you only get one free one. So if a number of sort of obstacles here to it really being free. One is you only get one free one. So if you're traveling with someone else, they would have to be platinum too, or you would have to pay for the other person, but you do get 10% off that other one. The other obstacle, which I think is a little bit bigger to it being free is the fact that in order to fly completely for free, your luggage can't be more than something like 35 pounds. I don't remember the exact amount, but if you're flying to Monaco, well, I don't know, maybe you'll buy all your designer clothes there. So maybe you could travel really light. But anyway, I guess

my point is in the real world, if you're going to use this for free, you're probably talking more like a weekend trip to New York City, not a trip to Monaco, but I don't know. I don't know your travel habits. Yeah. And I said, well, obviously the luggage thing was a limitation factor. And in fact, my wife asked about that right away. And I explained to her after I said, well, yeah, there is a luggage limitation, exactly what Greg said. And it would only be one free seat, assuming only one of us has platinum status. But then I said, you know what, though? That would be a fun splurge still.

If you're traveling anyway, I just looked it up because I was curious. Between Nice and Monaco, €195 a person. So it's not cheap, $200 per 200 and change a person. Certainly not cheap. But at the same time, I don't know if it was a big trip and your flight was covered by miles and your hotel is covered by miles. I don't know. That's the kind of activity I might do at that price. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're getting one free, I mean, it's, it's a big discount off of the overall thing. So I, yeah,

that's cool. That was really smart. I think a bill to do that. It really gives something, you know, exciting that you could look forward look forward to if you get platinum status besides the occasional giant transfer bonus. Speaking of which, I need a little bit of complaint here. It's been since February 1st that we've had a big transfer bonus, Bilt. Are you listening? Knock, knock. Feels like it's time. It is time.

You know, I didn't expect it's time. It is time. You know, I didn't expect that we'd see one every month. So I thought they'd probably take a couple off. But yeah, it's time now to get back to that. So yeah, so maybe we'll see one in June. We'll see. We can hope. Fingers crossed.

Okay, but that's not all we have today. We also, in award talk, have Hyatt's sad rollout of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Hopefully the sad music just played. The wah, wah, wah, wah. Bad news here. It really is. Be the bearer of bad news, Craig. You know, a lot of this, you have to contrast with how excited I was about this. So when Hyatt bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith,ith you know i started looking up properties in the mr

mrs smith collection and and it's it's a vast collection of many incredible properties some that i knew about already and had already wanted to go to but you know they're way too expensive for me to pay for with without having some way to do it with points and getting a good value and so i was very excited about it especially because the way they had done slh before for me to pay for without having some way to do it with points and getting a good value. And so I was very excited about it, especially because the way they had done SLH before was relatively good. They had jammed them into their award charts. And so even the most expensive, like $2,000 a night or higher property, maxed out at 45,000 Hyatt points per night because of the award charts. So that's what I was expecting. But it's not that at all. Great expectations were not met.

No. But before we talk about the bad news, let's say the good news. There's over 700 properties already online that are bookable in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith portfolio, bookable through Hyatt. And more than 60 more are coming on May 15th because those properties were also part of the SLH collection that Hyatt had in its catalog before. And so I think kind of technically they don't want to bring them online before May 15th because they're honoring that old relationship until May 15th. And so it'd be confusing. So anyway, so those will be coming online. You can earn five base points per dollar on your paid stays as a Hyatt member and also any elite bonuses you're owed. Like if you're a top tier globalist, you get that 30% bonus. So you earn a total of 6.5 points per dollar on

paid stays as a top tier globalist. You'll earn elite qualifying nights on your Mr. and Mrs. Smith stays as long as you're booking through Hyatt. And those stays will count as a brand, Mr. and Mrs. Smith brand towards Hyatt's brand explorer. That's where every five Hyatt brands you've stayed at across your lifetime, you get a free night certificate category one through four. And for globalists, you will maybe possibly kind of, in some cases, get a room upgrade upon check-in based upon availability. Right, right. So that made it to the good news list. Right, right. That made it to the good news list. Exactly. You know, the other piece of this

that I've seen in almost every blog post that I've read, and I glanced over a number of them, it's been in the good news is over 700 properties are already online. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's an infinite number of properties I can book online that I don't want to book. It doesn't really help unless you are already planning to pay or okay with paying for one of these. And there are some that are reasonably priced. So maybe there's one that you are actually going to pay for. And okay, great. It's online now.

You can book through Haya. You can earn Haya Delete credit. But tons of these properties, it doesn't matter to me. They were already online before and they were as relevant to my life as they're going to be today because of the bad news. Right, right. Actually, before we go on, let me just expand on that good news a little bit, because there are reasonably priced properties out there. We did see that most of the cases, or many cases, the pricing through Hyatt isn't any different than you'd find elsewhere. And it certainly seems to totally match what you'd get

booking through Mr. and Mrs. Smith directly. And so if you were going to book one of those anyway, now you're getting the five points per dollar and a stay credit, elite credit towards elite status. So I think that's actually really good news. If you're into staying these boutique hotels, but you also are into having high elite status and stuff, then those two together are good. I mean, it's not super exciting, but it's good.

All right, bad news. The number one bad news thing is that there's no award chart. They moved to 100% dynamic award pricing. We looked at a bunch of rates after tax compared to the point price. And usually you're getting close to 1.4 cents per point, but sometimes it's considerably worse than that. Sometimes it's just under one cent per point. So even at 1.4, when we've looked at redeeming points for Hyatt's own hotels in the past, we've seen a median. So that means like 50% of the time you get like 2.1 cents or 2.2 cents, somewhere in that range, or better. Or better. Value per point. So half the time you're getting better than, let's just say over 2 cents per

point, just to make it simpler. And here we're saying the best you're going to get is 1.4. So it's become a really poor use of your Hyatt points, sadly. Yeah. On average, you'll get 50% more value or better, right? If you're of your Hyatt points, sadly. Yeah. Like on average, you'll get 50% more value or better, right? If you're booking a Hyatt property than the max that you can expect, as it seems right now, anyway, based on all the searches we've done at a Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So, you know, it's just, that's a big bummer and it's not just a bummer for that, but we'll come back to why it's not just a bummer for what it is, but it's definitely a bummer for that, but we'll come back to why it's not just a bummer for what it is. But it's definitely a bummer because we're used to being able to get great value out of Hyatt points. And this is A, a poor value of Hyatt points and B, like a poor transfer of points.

If you were going to transfer points from Chase Ultimate Rewards, for instance, to book this through Hyatt, that's probably not a good idea, especially if you're a Sapphire Reserve holder. And maybe even if you're just a Sapphire Preferred holder, because you can use points booking through Chase at 1.25 cents per point with a Sapphire Preferred or one and a half cents per point with a Sapphire Reserve, and probably in some cases get the same property for fewer points. Now, of course, you probably wouldn't get Hyatt Elite Night credit and you wouldn't earn your Hyatt points. So there's reasons why you might not want to do that, but it probably wouldn't make sense to transfer to Hyatt. I don't think in most cases to book these anyway. And then of course, obviously you can do far better with

lots of other things. And that's not all. Also following up with more bad news here. This is pretty minor, I think, but the Hyatt credit card is not going to recognize these properties as Hyatt. So you're just going to earn one point per dollar with a Hyatt credit card. So ironically, you're going to want to use your Wells Fargo autographed journey card that earns five exit hotels at the Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties. You also can't use your free night awards at any of these, because remember, these are free night awards with Hyatt are all based on categories category one through four category one through seven and Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties are not in categories but you would say but what about that ultimate free night award that's not bound by categories now I can't use that one either is bound by Hyatt properties apparently by non

Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties well it's it's, yeah, I mean, they have exclusions also against the homes and villas. So it's not as ultimate as it should be, given that you have to stay 150 nights in a year in Hyatt hotels in order to get one of these puppies. Also, other than the chance of an upgrade, there's no other elite benefits that you're eligible for. So if you're hoping for free breakfast, now I think a lot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties already provide breakfast as part of the deal, but for those that don't, you're going to be paying for it. So yeah. And now with your roll of the Hyatt credit card. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Before we even get to what I think is weighing most heavily on my mind about this, let me back up and say, I think that one of the things I am most disappointed about here is that when Hyatt bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we saw the

writing on the wall for SLH figuring, okay, well, obviously the partnership with SLH isn't going to last. And it didn't, you know, and nobody was shocked about that. But I think that Hyatt implied anyway, that buying Mr. and Mrs. Smith was going to allow for a tighter integration for like a closer partnership with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Something, again, tighter between the two. And if this is tighter, then I don't know what kind of a scale they're measuring on, but it's broken. Yeah, no. I mean, not only did they imply, they outright told, I was at a Hyatt meeting and they outright told us, you know, that that was one of the advantages of them buying Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that they will be able to

treat the Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties as fully integrated into the Hyatt system. And so it's certainly, I walked away with that, you know, excited that we'd have better elite recognition and so on and better, or at least as good use of points at these properties as we did with SLH. And it turns out it's just really so sad. For those of us who like to use points at high-end properties and to get outsized value, you're not going to get outsized value with using Hyatt points and Mr. Smith properties. It's sad. Yeah, it is. It is. And not going to get outsized value with the points, not going to get any elite benefits. That's not a tight integration. There's no elite benefits.

There's just so many pieces of this. The Hyatt credit card not earning four points per dollar, I agree, is like not a big deal because you could use a different card and earn almost as much. But it's just another indication of how this is not at all a tight partnership. I mean, there's nothing tight about this. Can't even get the credit card bonus as though it belongs to Hyatt. So, yeah. And that's probably a function of the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Smith is already kind of a loose collection of properties. It's more like a marketing thing than it is like a management thing. So I'm sure that's why you don't earn the four points per dollar. But when you look at it

as an outsider, you say, my goodness, I can't even earn that. Forget about all the other stuff. So bummer on all of those fronts. But that's not it. This makes me nervous because I could totally see Hyatt saying, oh, well, members are thrilled that you can book any room with points at a Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And there's always award availability because it's dynamic, so they can book an award whenever they want. And so shouldn't we do that with our other Hyatt properties and make everything dynamically priced? I mean, I'm nervous that that's coming, Greg. Yeah, yeah. It's a real risk. I'm hoping that people express their displeasure. When you're on social media, when you're filling out Hyatt questionnaires about, do you like this or that, make sure they understand that you're disappointed if you are, because that's our only hope, I think,

of it not spreading. Because you're exactly right that it does risk that. Of course, they could go to a hybrid model like Hilton has, where Hilton has any room for an outrageous number of points or a standard room for a fixed point price. They could do something like that, but yeah, there's real risk that they didn't do that here. So there's real risk that they would move fully dynamic at some point in the future. And that would be a sad day. I mean, that would be the end of us looking at Hyatt as a great value opportunity. Maybe we would still be happy with their elite program, but I think if you're not getting great value for your points, we're not going to be as excited about staying,

you know, despite the good benefits. And so it's sort of a snowball effect of moving us, I think, away from Hyatt altogether. Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right. So that's the bad news on that. And that wraps up our award talk for the day. We were very deflated with that news. And so let's move on to better things. Let's talk about today's main event. Yeah. Main event time, luxury lodging on points. If you're just listening to the past segment, you know that what we're not going to be talking about in this segment is how great of a deal it is to book Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties with points. But luckily, there are many other options to book luxury properties with points and get outsized value for your points. Now, let me say, one of the things I had thought about doing for

this main event was comparing hotel loyalty programs, the value you get from one or the other, because Hyatt has been on our mind because of the Mr. and Ms. Smith situation. Hilton's been on our mind because of them adding SLH to their portfolio. But then I was looking back at past episodes, and we did one just a year ago, episode 193, which was called Which is the Most Rewarding Hotel Loyalty Program? And most of the information in there is still relevant and up to date. So give that a listen if you're interested in finding out which is the most rewarding hotel loyalty program. This though is more specific. This is about booking luxury hotels with your points and getting good value doing that. So

first, let's talk about not these independent collections, but rather hotels that are available within the big chains. So most of the major big chains have luxury brands with some really high-end hotels in them. And if you're booking within one of the hotel chains where they cap the award prices so that the most expensive hotel isn't going to be more than a certain number of points, then you can often get great value at hotels that you would never consider paying for because the points don't go above a certain amount. And so you end up getting very good value for your points there. And so Hyatt is actually, I think, the number one place I would look for these because they do shove all regular hotels into their standard award chart

that's capped at 45,000 points per night. And Hyatt points are easy to get because you could transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards or from Built to Hyatt one-to-one. And Hyatt has some really high-end, nice brands like the Park Hyatt, Alila, Thompson, and the Unbound Collection, which is really, that's a collection of independent hotels like SLH or whatever, but it's ones that have actually signed up within Hyatt and really work within the Hyatt ecosystem. So just a couple examples of those brands where I've actually stayed and enjoyed. The Park Hyatt Ven Dome is an extraordinary hotel in Paris. And the free breakfast benefit there for globalists is extraordinary. It's really an amazing spread.

The Lila Ventana Big Sur, of course, I've talked about a number of times. And that's closed for a while because of mudslides, I think, or at least roads out in Big Sur. But that's another example where you can stay at a hotel that otherwise would cost around $2,000 a night. And you can stay at a hotel that otherwise would cost around $2,000 a night, and you can stay with points. And so stay at these places that you would never have thought of staying without points to do it. Hyatt has a number of really luxurious places. And then even some of their brands that you wouldn't necessarily think of as a luxury

brand are much more luxurious outside of the United States, particularly in Asia. When you look at some of the properties that aren't even at the top, top tier, there's still a greater level of luxury than what you probably associate with them. So yeah, lots of good opportunities for luxury hotels with Hyatt. Yeah. And just to round out the Hyatt situation, they also have some high end all-inclusives that max out at 58,000 points per night for a like a regular

one bedroom with two people Hy Hyatt, the Miraval, it's a small chain of all-inclusive, what do you call it, spa resorts. They are 72,000 points per night at peak season. And I've stayed at a couple Miravals and I really enjoyed them a lot. And I wouldn't though pay the 2000--ish per night to stay at them. But I don't have to because I could pay with points. So that's great. All right, let's talk about Hilton. Why don't you take Hilton, Nick?

Okay, so Hilton has really a max price of 150,000 points per night right now. But that's only one property. The Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives, I think, is the only one charging 150,000 points per night. Otherwise, their top-tier properties cost, only one charging 150,000 points per night. Otherwise, their top tier properties cost at most 120,000 points per night. And there are many that are 95,000 points per night. Also, they're the luxury type properties. When we talk about luxury with Hilton, we're talking usually about Waldorf Vistoria, LX, which is a newer Hilton luxury brand, but there are a number of those now. Conrad and Curio Collection. Those are your luxury brands for Hilton and soon SLH, but we'll talk about that later on. So 120,000

points per night, usually at those places. It's nice because you can get the fifth night free on an awards day. So if you were looking at 120,000 points per night, because that's the more common top end for that. So what is that? For four nights, you'd be looking at 480,000. So on average, five nights, you'd be looking at under 100,000 points per night anyway for their top tier luxury places if you're booking a fifth night free award. And they've got lots of really luxurious high end places in those chains, perhaps fewer than what we associate with Marriott, for instance, but I think a growing number. One that I stayed at that I absolutely loved was the Conrad Bora Bora. It's just a gorgeous property. Everything was very nice and high-end and clean

and well-kept. So really enjoyed that. And obviously a very expensive property to stay at with cash, but very frequently available for 120,000 points or sometimes even less because it is, of course, dynamic pricing. So you got some good options there. And I like Conrad Hotels in general. It's a nice luxury brand. The Conrad in Tokyo is also quite nice. And I've stayed at a number of the different Conrads around the world and always been quite happy. Yeah. Yeah. And they've been building out their higher end properties, seems pretty aggressively. So that's a good trend to see more and more of those in my mind because I enjoy doing the luxury hotels with points for sure. Now Marriott is interesting. So because they got rid of award charts, they have a system that's a little more like Hilton where

hotels seem to be capped at a certain price. And like Hilton, it seems to be – well, I shouldn't say that. I was going to say it seems to be more or less dynamic because some properties seem to be like fixed at that top rate. But that's not necessarily true. It is like Hilton in that they somehow behind the scenes come up with a top price. It seems like that's what's happening anyway. The most I've seen for the majority of Marriott hotels is 150,000 points a night. There's a couple of special things like there's Ritz-Carlton Reserve that's going to be more.

There's the North Island. That's what in the Seychelles, I think, right? That's going to be more. There's the North Island. That's what in the Seychelles, I think, right? That's going to be way off the charts. But for all of their regular luxury hotels, which are really high end, don't get me wrong, you shouldn't be seeing more than 150,000 points these days. Their high end brands are like Ritz Carlton, St. Regis, JW. Now JW, I didn't used to think of as like super high-end, but they've started to build out some super high-end hotels in the JW collection. So it's there. W is another one and the luxury collection and addition. Now of those Ritz and addition are ones that even with

platinum status, you're not guaranteed free breakfast. They do play games at those. They play games, yes. With Marriott, if you're paying with points entirely, you get the stay five, pay four benefit, which means it's sort of like fifth night free, except what they do is they take off the cheapest night out of the five nights if they're priced differentially. Some examples of ones that are really special, Nick has stayed at St. Regis Bora Bora. That looks terrific.

It is. It is. It's where, if you've ever seen the movie Couples Retreat with Vince Vaughn, that's where they filmed it. So the fictional hotel in the movie was actually the St. Regis. And they play it 24 hours a day on one of the TV channels. So if you just really want to look at it on the TV instead of walking around. Instead of walking around. Yeah. That seems like such a bad idea. But yeah, you could do that.

Another one worth pointing out we've talked about before is the JW Marriott Masai Mara Lodge, which is a luxury safari camp in Kenya. And I just looked at that earlier today. Just looked at the award calendar on Marriott's website, and it seems to range from about 106,000 points per night to 150,000 per night. But again, this is one of these that cost often over $2,000 a night. And so the point value can still be very good, even though you're paying those very high amounts of points. A couple downsides on the Marriott situation is that unlike Hilton and Hyatt, there's not a good value way to earn lots of Marriott points.

So yeah, you could earn two points per dollar with the Marriott credit card, but the other ways of earning like more than two points per dollar, like using a Chase Ultimate Rewards card to earn three points per dollar or five points per dollar is bad value with Marriott because you could be transferring those points to Hyatt and Hyatt's points are worth a lot more. Remember we talked about Hyatt points cap out for regular types of hotels, top out at 45,000 points per night versus Marriott's 150,000. So if you transfer your Chase Alden rewards to Marriott, you could think of it as like you're getting one third of the value that you could be getting with Hyatt.

Now it doesn't always work out that badly, but that's like sort of on average, that's how bad that is. So that to me is one big downside of Marriott. And also unlike Hilton, but similar to Hyatt, Marriott's free night certificates are capped. And so you're not likely to be able to use a free night certificate at one of these at the highest end properties. So they do have these 85K free night certificates where you could add up to 15,000 points to them. And so you could stay at a hotel that costs up to 100,000 points. But anything above that, you just can't use a free night certificate at all. Which is definitely a bummer.

But I will say I've been surprised lately. And when I say lately, I mean like the last couple of weeks and searches I've happened to do where I've seen properties that I didn't expect to be available with a free night certificate that were the St. Regis, New York. I hadn't seen in a long time under a hundred thousand points, but I've recently done searches for a couple of times. I'm going to be in New York city where it would be available with an 85 K free night certificate. And you do have to click through to the, in the search results to actually see that because they'll often list the low price being like a cash in points on an upgraded room. And you can't use a cert on that. But, but anyway, I was able to verify that was available. And both the Ritz and the St. Regis in the Maldives, I've been trying to convince my wife that we should sneak in a little trip to the

Maldives. And because I've seen them, both properties have been available under 100,000 points per night. So bookable with an 85K free night certificate, because of course you can top those off with up to 15,000 points. you know again we're talking about properties there those types of properties it's very expensive high-end luxury places that you probably wouldn't consider paying cash for most of us wouldn't anyway most of the time so so it's worth a look around with marriott and that's the thing with dynamic pricing you do have to keep looking and you have to try different sets of dates and maybe you'll have to tailor your trip around when it's actually available. So there are a lot of gotchas there, I guess, and things to consider, but there are some great luxury properties. So if you're staying a lot at

Marriott's for business, for instance, so you've got a ton of points, you've got good ways to use. Right. Yeah. And that's absolutely true. I should have mentioned that one good way to earn Marriott points is actually if you have elite status and you're actually paying for Marriott stays, they reward most stays with 10 points per dollar. Then you get your elite bonus and everything. So you could actually earn a lot of points that way. The old fashioned way by staying at hotels. It's not the way we like to earn our points. But Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt are not the only shows in town, right?

What does IHG got for us? Yeah. So IHG has some high-end brands. Probably the highest end is Six Senses Resorts, which they bought Six Senses a number of years ago now. They still haven't incorporated them all into the IHG program. So I think last count, there were something like 16 of them. I don't know how many there are total, but that are bookable with points. But the bad news there is they charge so many points for these things that it can be stunning, the point price. They also have other luxury brands like Regent, Intercontinental, Vignette. I'm not familiar with that, but that came up on their website. And Kempton, which, I mean, it's not really a luxury. it's sort of more of a higher end brand than a luxury brand, I think, but some of their properties probably qualify as luxury.

Vignette, you're not familiar with because the first one in the US opened, I think, last year, I think is what it was. I stayed there in DC. I wouldn't put it in the same category as the rest of those, at least not the first one I stayed at. All right. Well, so that's easier than not to have to think about that one. The Sixth Sense's properties look incredible. I would love to stay at one. And there are some things that can help there. One is that if you have a certain IHG credit cards, you get the fourth night free. So that can bring down the point price by 25%, which is great. And if you don't have enough points, you can often buy points on sale for half a cent each. So it's pretty easy to get the number of

points you need. And I think you'd often see that, especially if you have the card, so you're getting the fourth night free, that you'd be paying for the stay. You'd be paying way less for the stay by buying the points and using the points to book the stay. Also because some of those properties have resort fees that are based on the paid rate, like a percentage of the paid rate. And so in those cases, you don't have a resort fee at all if you're paying entirely with points. And so you save that way as well. And so, yeah. So IHG, it doesn't have nearly the number of luxury properties as some of these others, but they do have some. And you can earn three points per dollar from their credit card just for all spend and then

a lot more for different categories, like up to 10 points per dollar at IHG hotels, for example, from the credit card itself. Plus you get all your elite bonuses and stuff. So you can earn a lot with paid stays at IHG properties. Yeah. And we've talked about how you can earn elite status from spend on an IHG credit card is $40,000 spend on the IHG Premier, Premier Business Card. And we've said that that could be a good value for some people.

And if you are one of those people that is looking at a stay at one of these properties, then we're speaking to you with that and saying, you know, that might be worth it because getting free breakfast at a Six Senses for however long you're going to be there, for instance, maybe, well, actually Six Senses is a bad example because I don't know much about Six Senses. Maybe breakfast is free for a lot of people at Six Senses. I assume it's expensive. Certainly at an Intercontinental, normally it's expensive. So if you're going to stay a week at the Intercontinental and at a Bora Bora or wherever, then you may value that diamond status quite highly. Yeah. Yeah. Also, if you're going to stay at Six Senses or Intercontinental at very expensive properties, don't forget about the ability to buy ambassador status with IHG, which is status that's meant to be only for intercontinental hotels, but also

gives you benefits at six senses. And it only costs like $200 to buy in and you get benefits, at least at six senses hotels that I think would be well worth paying ahead to get those benefits if you just have a single, let's say four or longer, four night or longer stay coming up, I would definitely look into that. If you have a bunch of intercontinental stays too, then it could definitely make sense. You don't get free breakfast at intercontinental hotels with that status, but you do get things like 4 p.m. late checkout guaranteed, which you don't even get with actually diamond status. So the ideal combination there, if you're staying at intercontinental hotels to have diamond status, so you get free breakfast and have

ambassador status, then you get all the goodies. Great. Wyndham. Wyndham is not a chain I normally associate with luxury hotels, Greg. Do they belong in this list? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I haven't stayed at one, but they have their registry collection, which are apparently some high-end properties. And the nice thing with Wyndham is they won't charge you more than 30,000 points per night. And so for very, very expensive hotels, assuming there are any on the registry collection, I know there are a few, that could be a very good deal. You can transfer points in from City Thank You Rewards or from Capital One to get your Wyndham points if you don't already have them. And of course, we love the Wyndham Earner business card, which you can get for the welcome bonus, but also get in order to get Wyndham Diamond status, which is their top tier status and get earn eight points per dollar at both Wyndham stays and for gas at gas stations, you get eight points per dollar, five points per dollar for utilities. So you'd earn a lot of points with that card as well. And then, of course, you can match your diamond status to various casino statuses and get free cruises and things that Nick has talked about many times as well. Yeah, a lot of reasons to like Wyndham.

Luxury hotels is not one of the ones that would have come to mind, but I didn't even know about this registry collection until you put together the outline today. And I saw it in there and I was like, the registry collection? What's that? So that was news to me on that one. But one that's not news to me is that Choice Privileges has some high-end options.

So the Ascend collection is like their sort of boutique-y, luxury-ish collection. Yeah. is like they're sort of boutique-y, luxury-ish. Yeah, it almost didn't fit in here in my mind because it's a little more like, kind of like how I slipped in Kempton because Kempton doesn't really feel like super high-end luxury. It feels a little bit more like Hotel Indigo to me. But, you know, so it's like you left that one out

because it didn't belong. But Ascend, yeah, it's like, you know, it's sort of like Hotel Indigo goes for a boutique feel, even though it's not a boutique itself. Although I guess I should say, and that's an IHG brand, by the way. But with Ascend, yeah, it's sort of like Hotel Indigo goes for a boutique feel, even though it's not a boutique itself. Although I guess I should say, and that's an IHG brand, by the way. But with Ascend, it's different because they seem more like a boutique hotel. They're independent hotels that join Choice Privileges in order to get that marketing channel. So they really are independent hotels. And all of these hotel chains have that kind of thing going where they have sometimes multiple

brands that are really just independent hotel collections. And so Choice is called Ascend Collection. And I haven't stayed at a lot of them, but I've stayed at a couple. Villa Copenhagen, very, very nice hotel in Copenhagen. Another one that I stayed was the Peacock Inn in Princeton. I know, Nick, you stayed in one in California, I think. Yeah, the Hotel Napa Valley. I don't know if I would have thought of that as top-end luxury. It was fine. Yeah, and neither ones I'm talking about

are I would call top-end luxury, but they were very nice. Nice thing here, like Choice, most properties are less than 40,000 points per night, but that's their top, you know, most you're going to spend per night with choice. And you can transfer one to two from Citibank thank you rewards or from Wells Fargo. And so these hotels are really maxing out at 20,000 transferable points per night. So, you know, it makes them really desirable, especially when you find ones that are less than 40,000, like a 20,000 point hotel tops out at 10,000 transferable points because that one to two transfer. So that can be really cheap for some really nice hotels. Yep. Very good. All right. So that brings us through most of the major chains, but we're not quite done. There's a few more ways to book luxury properties through some of the chain connections that we've talked about. I mentioned

that we'd come back to small luxury hotels of the world, SLH, which I should mention when SLH and Hyatt first partnered up, I was lukewarm on whether or not to be excited about it. And that certainly changed over time. And so I was super bummed when we found out that Hyatt was losing SLH. And then I was even more bummed when we found out what was going on with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But I've been super excited because the partnership with Hilton sounds like it's going to be pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So we learned that Hilton is going to honor like fifth night free awards with these hotels. They're going to let you use their uncapped Hilton's free night certificates at these hotels and basically elite benefits. They're going to try to honor them

as well as they can at these hotels, which is really remarkable. Again, we were talking earlier in the show about how Hyatt's integration with Mr. and Ms. Smith is so sort of arm's length. It's kind of barely there despite them owning Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And here, it's just a partnership with SLH. And yet, Hilton seems determined to make it feel like you're actually staying at a Hilton property, even though it's just this partnership. So that's really cool, I think. The ability to use your free night certificates could be unbelievable. Could be unbelievable because it means there are SLH hotels that cost thousands of dollars a night. And so to be able to use your free night certificates at these would be fantastic.

It'd be just the best thing since sliced Marriott points. But I keep saying could be because we don't know yet what properties are going to be in this collection. And so we're hoping, we're hoping, and let's give a couple examples of what we're hoping for. We're in Hotel Victoria in Lake Como. Come on, let's go. Let's go, Hilton. Get it in there. Yeah, we've talked about it a bunch of times before. I loved it. It's a fantastic place. In the summertime, it costs about $2,000 a night, and it's worth it, I would dare say. It's that type of a place. And so being able to use Hilton points or a Hilton free night certificate, I wouldn't

be able to get enough Hilton free night certificates if I can go back there now and then, or other places like it. And I think that's really the thing that has me more excited now about SLH because I've stated a couple that have been quite nice, and you have also stated a couple that were really nice, right? I really have. And we did a whole coffee break recently about like, and we talked about some of our favorites. I'll just mention one, the Eichert's Private Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand, which again, it's like one of those hotels that costs something like $2,000 a night and service was spectacular. If we could use free night certificates there, amazing, amazing. So here's to hoping. Yeah. And we're saying amazing because

you can get an annual free night certificate from Hilton just by having the Aspire card, which has a bunch of other benefits. The Amex Hilton Aspire card has a bunch of other benefits that also make the card worth having, but being able to pay the $5.50 per year and get a free night certificate that you could use at a hotel that costs $2,000 a night would be a pretty terrific trade, even without considering all the rest of the reasons why you might want to have the card. And then, of course, you can earn more Hilton free night certificates with spend on a couple of their cards. So you have other opportunities to generate those. So that's why we're pretty excited, because hopefully you have other opportunities to generate those. So that's why we're pretty excited because hopefully we'll be able to use those. But again, I think my understanding is what they're going to bring a hundred properties or so online this summer at

some point is the plan. So this year, this year. So we should start to see them this summer, some point, and then they didn't commit to more than around 100 this year. So we'll see. I can't wait to find out what's in there. And hopefully it's, you know, I'm sure they're, I'm sure, you know, the Hilton people I talked to were excited about this too, because they want to go to them. And so, you know, they, I'm sure they're motivated to try to get some of these good ones, but whether they will or not, we'll see. Who knows? We'll see. But okay, SLH isn't the only partnership like that.

Similar partnership is Preferred Hotels and Resorts, which of course is a partner with Choice Privileges. And it's similar in the sense that there are a number of quite nice looking Preferred Hotels and Resorts around the world, but not similar in the sense that while Hilton will probably charge a large number of points for the SLH properties, though we didn't mention that they did say that they would fit within their current bounds more or less. So I expect them to price it not more than 150K to start, but you'll like the price even more with choice privileges because

the preferred hotels and resorts, which partners with choice privileges, cost up to 55,000 choice privileges points per night. And remember, you can transfer one to two, as we said before, from either Citi or Wells Fargo. So you're talking really 27,500 transferable points per night to stay at some properties that look quite high end. Yeah, yeah. Now, I do want to caution. So preferred hotels and resorts, their entire collection includes some of these, you know, multi multi thousand dollar a night types of properties, but most of those types of properties are not in choices catalog of bookable hotels, but there are a lot of, of solidly nice higher end hotels. So think more like a nice Kempton level for most of the time, rather than thinking of like a Ritz or a St. Regis type of thing. I didn't see a lot of that type of that level of luxury in their catalog, but I think there's a little bit of that. It's

just that you're going to see more of that boutique-y type of nice. Which is why I said quite nice. Quite nice. Quite nice. Not like, whoa, but quite nice. All right. It reminds me of the British use of quite. Are you familiar with that? No, I guess I'm not. Okay. So the British use of quite is quite different from how we use quite in the States. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. So my dad sort of has a british background and he he grew up in south africa but his parents were british and and so he has he had a british point of view and one of his one of his like an annual review one of the his boss wrote in there that he was quite good at his job and my dad dad took that. He was scared for his job. If someone in the UK tells you you're doing quite a good job, I mean, the quite really has a different meaning there. It's not meant as like more than 50%. It's not good. It's just not good. So I'm not sure which quite you meant in that. Well, I haven't stayed at any of the preferred hotels and resorts yet.

I've only looked at them. So I guess I don't know one way or another. Yeah. Yeah. Whether they're quite nice or quite nice. Well, yeah. So funnily enough, so some of the choice privileges, Ascend Collection hotels are also part of Preferred Hotels, and so can be booked either way. So I have stayed at one, which was the Copenhagen, Villa Copenhagen, and that was quite nice in the American sense.

Very good. Very good. All right. And then next up, Leading Hotels of the World. This is one you've taken a closer look at a little bit, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Leading Hotels of the World is a collection of really high-end hotels. The World, this is one you've taken a closer look at a little bit, right? Yeah, yeah. So Leading Hotels of the World is a collection of really high-end hotels. And they have their own rewards program called Leaders Club. And Citibank, if you have Citi Thank You Points and you have the Premier Card or the old Prestige Card, you can transfer your city points to leaders club at what looks

like a bad ratio. A thousand city points becomes 200 leaders club points, but it works out to getting about 1.6 cents per point value from your city points. So it's not a award chart type of thing. You're not going to get better value at the top end of the award chart like we were talking about before, but you still can get solid value from your city points at that 1.6. Yeah, I tried it out at a hotel in Florida, and I was actually really pleased that by being a member of Leaders Club, which you have to be in order to transfer your points, it gave me some benefits automatically and they actually honored them. And so I got some really nice perks for our stay and got great value from, or I thought the 1.6 was, I was very happy

with that value for that stay. So that's a really nice option, if not sort of like mind-blowing option as we were so excited about using free night shirts potentially at SLH hotels. So it's not that level, but it's still a really solid another option for high-end hotels. Well, it's a good option if you're a Citi Thank You Points ecosystem person, because you don't have a lot of great opportunities for outsized value with hotels with most of the transferable currencies, truth be told, other than if you've got something that transfers the Hyatt, right? I mean, maybe MX to Hilton when there's a transfer bonus, I guess. But this 1.6 is pretty good for using your transferable points for hotels to begin with and certainly going to be your best option for booking luxury hotels with your city thank you points so and if

you're earning most of your city thank you points at 3x at the grocery store or gas station on the city premiere or at 5x if you've got a custom cash card or two and you're playing the game right there then you know that's 1.6 cents per point it's pretty good it's a decent return exactly that's leading hotels of the world and then then finally, last but not least, we got fine hotels and resorts in the hotel collection, which are Amex booking channels. So these are not actually specific hotels, but rather an Amex booking channel. And when you book through Amex fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection, you get some extra benefits, more benefits at fine hotels and resorts than at the hotel collection. Hotel collection is basically just $100 property credit that you get for booking through there. If you book through

fine hotels and resorts, though, you get a number of benefits, noon check in based on availability, but a guaranteed 4pm late checkout, usually some sort of property credit of about $100. I've got a stay coming up at Wynn where it's $150, but it's a spa credit. So it's a little bit more money, but a little bit less valuable. So you got a little bit of variance there. And then of course, potential for a room upgrade and whatnot. We talk about that mostly because the consumer platinum cards, including the vanilla, so to speak, MX platinum card, and also the Schwab platinum card and the Morgan Stanley platinum card, all come with an annual $200 rebate for prepaid bookings at either FHR properties or the hotel collection. So you've got a way to potentially get $200 off. And in some cases, you might be

able to get a decently luxurious hotel for close to free or a nicely reduced rate, depending on what the cash rates were, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So that one, it's not about booking with points and getting outsized value that way, but any point collector is likely to have a platinum card or have thought about signing up for one at some point for the big welcome bonus. And so I think it's good to know about this other choice of getting value and booking luxury hotels. And if you check out the post about where you can find good value or low prices with FHR properties, you'll find that there are some decently luxurious places. I mean, Greg and I stayed at Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi a couple of years ago, and the nightly rate was like 206 or something like that, I think. And so the $200 credit was almost perfect there.

And so in Four Seasons is a chain that you would typically associate with being a luxury chain. So for sure, there are sometimes opportunities like that. Okay. I think that brings us to the end of the main event and into this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week, I had one, I had a number of good questions come in this week. So there were, it was a hard choice, but I got a pop quiz for you, Greg. All right. Ready? All right. Pop quiz. And it comes in from Chris. Chris says, I currently do not have any Marriott credit cards. What's the best way to start on the Marriott credit card journey? I would ultimately like to have the Amex business card, the Ritz card and the Amex brilliant card. What's the best way to maximize welcome bonuses? So Greg, where do you start? Because now, of course, I guess I should have

given some context. We, of course, talked about Marriott today and how there aren't many great ways to earn their points. But one of the best ways to earn their points is through credit card welcome bonuses. Though, unlike most credit card systems out there, boy, it's really complicated when it comes to Marriott cards because both Chase and Amex issue Marriott cards, but each side has rules about which cards you can get and which welcome bonuses you can get, depending on which other cards you have or have had or had earned a welcome bonus on in the last 30 days or 90 days or 24 months or whatever the case may be. So, Greg, I gave you some time to think, and surely by now you've thought of what's the best way to get the Amex business card, the Amex brilliant card and the Ritz card.

Yeah. I mean, the cheating answers is, Hey, go look at our post where we, where we show you what all the rules are and then you could figure it out there. But I'm going to, I guess, guess, cause I haven't looked at the chart for a while. So first of all, in order to get the Ritz card, you're going to have to have a consumer merit card from Chase. So the one that usually has the best welcome bonus is the Bonvoy Boundless. There's also the Audacious or something.

No, I forget what that $150 or $250 one is, what that one's called. But anyway, Bevy, Bevy, or is that the amex one so i think that i don't know that you could get the welcome bonus on all three that's that's the part i'm not remembering if there's a path to that so so if if there's not what i'm pretty sure you could do is get one of those two get the welcome bonus so So whichever one has the better welcome bonus, I'd say, and then look to upgrade to the Ritz card after you've had it for a year. And then I'm confident that you can get the welcome bonus for the Amex business Marriott card.

So that could be your next one. When? When could you get the welcome bonus? When? Yes. Anytime. Okay. You're right. Card have yes i'm sorry i'm looking at the chart live oh okay what i'm not sure about is if is if you can possibly get a welcome bonus now on the on the brilliant card was that the other one he wanted okay wait so according to our chart which yeah you know of course i'm going by the

chart because that's that's what i have to go by because i have to go by a chart in order to know what i'm talking about thanks for that mary you don't play games i know i know so when i look at our chart anyway the bonvoy business card that is part of a merged cell that for the chase bonvoy boundless card has both the 24 and the 90 indicated which tells me that you are not eligible for the Chase Bonvoy Boundless card has both the 24 and the 90 indicated, which tells me that you are not eligible for the welcome bonus if you were approved for the other. So you would not be eligible

for a welcome bonus on the Bonvoy business, according to our chart anyway, if you were approved for the Chase Bonvoy Boundless, for instance, within the last 90 days, or if you've received a bonus, a welcome bonus or upgrade bonus in the last 24 months. So if you've received a bonus, a welcome bonus or upgrade bonus in the

last 24 months. So if you were to take the path that Greg just mentioned, based on our chart, at least, I think you would not be eligible for 24 months. Wow. That's all right. Well, all right. So I failed the pop quiz. Failed the pop quiz. So I, well, I, you know, I don't, but you didn't really fail the pop quiz because there isn't a great answer. So I think, and I'm saying, I think, because I'm consulting the chart. I pulled it up before we started because I knew I was going to have to have it here in order to check Greg's work because I wouldn't have remembered that off the top of my head. Right. So according to the chart and according to my recollection, you can easily get both the brilliant card, the Amex brilliant card, which is the expensive Amex Consumer card,

and the Amex Business card. Having one of those does not prevent you from getting the other one. So you can have both of those. So I think my first step, if I were you, is to get the two of those. And then you're going to have to wait a while in order to be able to get the other cards, and this is the Chase cards in the system, because i think you're going to have to wait what is it the chase bonvoy bound list you're going to have to wait 24 months so it's still the same thing it's gonna be the same same result 24 months you have to wait two years in order to get a chase card and then upgrade your chase card so yeah there's no way to do it i don't think faster in order to get welcome bonuses there's no way to do it faster than 24 months now you know we should back up and say you could open a card without the welcome bonus. At least Amex will let you open a card,

even if you're not eligible for the welcome bonus. I don't think Chase will approve you if you're not eligible for the welcome bonus though. Is that right? That sounds right to me. I wouldn't swear on it, but I'm pretty sure even Chase's terms say you're not eligible for a welcome offer if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that sort of implies that it's possible to get approved, but maybe you'd have to call recon or something and say you're willing to get it without the bonus. I'm not sure. At least with Amex, they'll pop it up and say, hey, you're not eligible. Do you want to continue and apply for the card anyway? And it's worth a mention that you might want to do that still in

some cases. Now, not here to answer this specific question, but for me, for instance, if I were going to go to the Maldives and stay for an extended period because I don't currently have Marriott Platinum status, I have Marriott Gold status right now, I might consider getting the Brilliant card even without the welcome bonus because I would get the Platinum status as one of the benefits of the card and then get breakfast. Now, I wouldn't at the Ritz, the St. Regis Maldives, I would not at the Ritz. If I said that, I might have misspoken there. Anyway, if I were going to do that, I would have my wife refer me for the card because if I get approved, she would still get the referral bonus for me applying for the card, even though I'm not eligible for the welcome bonus. So we'd still at least get 20 or 30,000 Amex membership rewards points because she would refer me from one of her Amex membership rewards cards. And right now, as we record this, there's a bonus of an additional 10 points per dollar for three months.

So she'd also get that on the card from which she refers me, from which she generates the referral link. So it wouldn't be without any bonus at all. It'd just be without the welcome bonus that's the headline number for the brilliant card. Right, right. All right. So there you have it. So I guess the answer is get both the Amex cards and then wait 24 months, was it?

24 months, yeah. From the bonus. From the bonus. That's right. From the day you earn the bonus to get a Chase consumer card and then wait a year to upgrade to the Reds card. So it's a three-year plan. Long process, yeah. Yeah. So maybe there is a better way to do it then maybe you want to start

with the chase card now now i wish i had no i wish i knew the answer now i feel like if you start with the chase card then you wait 24 months in order to get one of the mx cards maybe and then you could upgrade and maybe you could end up with it in less than three years actually if you go that way if you start with Chase Gray. All right. Well, I'm sorry. I don't have a better answer for you, Chris. I'm going to have to run the numbers on that. So hopefully I'll give you an update.

Thank you very much, though. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a like, give us a thumbs up, leave some feedback. We always appreciate hearing from you. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for the Giant Mailbag, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.