Frequent Miler on the Air - Marriott’s marriage to MGM Resorts: A match made in Bonvoyland | Ep238 | 1-20-24

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Full details of the Marriott and MGM partnership are out and can only be accurately described as "a match made in Bonvoyland".  00:00 Intro 01:38 Turkish Airlines status match is back! (Giant Mailbag) https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-airlines-status-match-get-1-2-years-of-star-alliance-gold-with-very-reasonable-requirements/ 04:36 Amex Platinum 150K offer is back! (Card Talk) https://frequentmiler.com/amxplat/ 12:12 T-Mobile Home Internet Moneymaker ("Mattress running the numbers") https://frequentmiler.com/moneymaking-t-mobile-home-internet-deal-get-150-mastercard-gift-card-portal-earnings/ 17:54 JetBlue / Spirit Merger Blocked (Award Talk) 20:59 New Chase Sapphire Lounge at New York LGA (Award Talk) 22:41 Marriott’s marriage to MGM Resorts: A match made in Bonvoyland (Main Event) https://frequentmiler.com/no-marriott-match-to-mgm-but-elite-nights-live-on-mgm-marriott-partnership-details/ 22:51 Marriott / MGM partnership overview 24:19 Partnership benefits 25:15 Why aren't we very excited about this partnership? 25:35 Points transfer at a poor ratio 26:33 Ambassador match is only available to those with invite-only MGM status 27:49 No good status match for anyone but MGM Noir 29:33 Benefits are only scheduled to last through 12/31/24 31:41 What benefits do Marriott Platinum and Titanium members get in Las Vegas? 39:21 Will you earn 3x on the Altitude Reserve when checking out on a website with Apple Pay or Google Pay? (Question of the Week) Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Marriott's marriage to MGM Resorts. A match made in Bonvoy land.

You know, on the surface, it it sounds exciting marriott and mgm announced the details of their partnership and there are things in there that we've never seen before like the ability to match all the way to top tier marriott ambassador elite status there's no other way to do that um but maybe we're not as excited as we, as it seems like we should be. Well, you know, we'll see there's, there's positives and there's negatives like any marriage. Uh, we'll see whether we think this one ought to last. Uh, we'll, we'll see how that goes, but we'll talk more about it. And if you want to jump ahead to it, remember that we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So all you have to do is expand the description box and you can

hop ahead to a segment, or if you want to return back to the show and. So all you have to do is expand the description box and you can hop ahead to a segment or if you want to return back to the show and listen to something again to find out how we really feel about the Marriott MGM marriage. Well, you can do that because we have that stuff in the timestamps. Also, wherever you're watching or listening,

don't forget to like this show, leave a comment, give us some feedback there. All of those things help the algorithm. They help other people find the show. Subscribe, enable notifications. That way you don't miss when we drop a new episode, especially because there may be new episodes coming. We'll see. So you want to make sure you're subscribed and you have your notifications enabled. But for now, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yeah. Today's giant mail comes from Nabil, who listened to last week's show about airline status

matching, how to get elite status the quick way by status matching from other airlines. And Nabil says that from that show, Nabil learned about the Turkish airline status match and says, I have several flights on Turkish actually booked for this spring and summer, including one less than four months away. So thought Turkish status would be useful if I could attain it. I don't typically chase airline status, but I do have the four month promotional platinum pro status on American Airlines through Hyatt Globalist that expires in a few weeks. Thought it was a long shot since the expiry date was so soon and my flight activity on AA over the last year was literally zero. But I said it wouldn't hurt to try, so I submitted the

feedback form with the required documentation, and lo and behold, less than 24 hours later, I got an email that my status match was approved. With my upcoming travel plans, including two paid international round trips between the US and the Middle East on Turkish airlines over the next several months. I should be able to maintain that status for two years. Would have never known about the status match to Turkish. Wouldn't have known it was a thing without the podcast.

So thanks again for all you do. That's awesome. That's great to hear. That's exciting. It's also unfair. I don't know why, Nabil, your match got approved and mine, they said, no, it needs to be an expiration date at least four months from now. So congratulations to you. Maybe I'll take another swing at it because,

hey, if it worked for you, all I need to do is find the Turkish feedback agent who handled your case and hopefully they'll approve mine too. You know, yeah. You always say, Nick, that if you don't swing, you know, you don't have a chance of getting a hit. And, you know, it's so true with these things. And it goes for other details too. where they've said you have to submit written proof of your activity with the other airline that shows how you got the elite status level that you did. And so I would submit stuff like award flight activity that didn't actually count, but it was details that I would get approved. And so you just never know. You never know how they're going to do it. So it's worth a chance, especially when it's a free status match

as most of the ones we talked about last week were. And now Nabil's looking at probably two years of Star Alliance gold status. So that's access to United Club lounges when flying domestically on United because the status is with a foreign partner. And obviously the priority check-in and extra baggage and all those things that are nice benefits to have,

especially when you get it from trips you're already taking. So great job there. Well done. All right, let's move next into this week's card talk. What do we have for card talk this week, Greg?

Yeah, this week we're going to talk about the Amex Platinum card again because we're excited that the 150,000 point offer is back. So it's come and gone over time. I think we first saw it in the early days of the pandemic, if I remember right. And then it went away, came back and so on. And I'm kind of surprised now to see it back and very pleasantly surprised. So, uh, we'll get into some details about that. So first of all, uh, the offer is you can get 150,000 points after $8,000 spend in six months. Of course, the card has a $695 annual fee.

Um, and before you, you know, dismiss that as like, oh, forget it, $695. Think about 150,000 points are worth way, way more than $700. And if you want some proof, check out our podcast, episode 201, how to get insane value from your Amex points. That'll convince you, I think, that 150,000 points is well worth pursuing. It's a great trade. I mean, even if you didn't value the other benefits that we'll talk about, which there are other benefits you might value, but even if you didn't, $700 for 150,000 points would be a terrific trade if you could make that trade. I would want to make it not all day long because I don't have $700 all day long, but at least a few times if you could. So, yeah, I think this offer is very exciting on the surface before we even get into the other reasons why you might want to pay the first year fee.

Yeah, exactly. So the personal Platinum card is so chock full of benefits and rebates that could make it worth getting. And for a lot of people can make it worth keeping. So just as a reminder, because we've talked about this card before, but $200 per year of airline incidental credits. And we have a post on how to actually get those credits, even if you don't have like the incidental fees in order to collect them.

$200 a year in fine hotel and resorts stays or the hotel collection stays up to $20 per month for various like streaming media and things like the Wall Street Journal, Sirius XM, Disney bundle, all kinds of things like that, up to $20 per month for that altogether. $50 monthly in Uber credit and $20 in December, $189 per year clear credit. You get Walmart Plus subscription for free, up to $100 in credits annually for Saks Fifth Avenue purchases. And then you get things like airport lounge access, you get Hilton Unmarried Gold status, and you get rental car elite benefits. So that is a huge selection of things

that could easily make it worth the 695. But the headline here is 150,000 points, baby. It's back. Yeah, I mean, well, it's great when you can combine the two because the 150,000 points, I mean, you know, like three, four years ago before the pandemic anyway, I don't think we ever would have imagined a 150,000 point bonus on this card. Right. I mean, at that point, I mean, if you're newer to the game, if you've joined since then, I got to remind you of this time four or five years ago when people would get really excited about a preapproval offer for 100,000 points on this card that only some people could get. And people would lament the fact that they hadn't gotten pre-approved for that and keep searching for it for years, yours truly included, where I'd be like, oh, well, I would get the

platinum card if only I could get the 100,000 point offer. So we never saw these 150K offers coming just a few years back. Yeah, OK, prices rise and things inflate, but $150K is still worth a lot. Like Greg said, go back to episode 201 if you're not sure why it is, but there are lots of reasons why it's worth a ton. And the benefits are just valuable. Like you said, I just used my airline incidental credits essentially for a United flight. And if you're not sure how to do that, well, again, look at our what still works for triggering the airline incidental credits essentially for a United flight. And if you're not sure how to do that, well, again, look at our what still works for triggering the airline incidental credits. So I just flew to Vegas for the weekend, used money that I had banked from those airline incidental credits to get there. And a couple of people I knew stayed at the Venetian for a night because one of the nights while I was there, it was under $200 for a night at the Venetian. So booking that using your prepaid fine hotels and resorts credit, I mean, you got yourself a great deal.

So there's lots of ways to take advantage of the benefits on the card. I think it's certainly one to consider. And I think it's because a lot of people look at $695 or at $8,000 spend and say, well, that's just off limits. But one of the keys to playing this game is saying, well, hold on a second. How could it be worth it? And what would make it worth paying $695? And how could I spend $8,000 in six months if you're not regularly spending that much? Although really, I think $8,000 in six months with ordinary expenses is probably not far

out of reach for most people. So I think the spending requirement here is actually relatively reasonable. If you're able to mix in some ways of time shifting spend, paying your taxes at that time of year, then there are a lot of ways to meet that spending requirement. Yeah, it's actually because they give you six full months. That's that's a very reasonable spend requirement. I do want to caution if you go to other websites and see a lesser offer, that doesn't necessarily mean that this offer is gone. This is an offer that's only currently, at the time of this recording, available for certain people to refer their friends to. So some people, when they log into their account and they already have a platinum card, have a special offer where they get 30,000 points if their friend gets approved and their friend gets this 150,000 point offer. The way we make that available to you on our website is that we, through our Frequent Miler Insiders group on Facebook, we collect people's referral offers and cycle through them so

that on our website, we always show the 150K offer when it's available to anyone. And then our subscribers who are part of our Frequent Miler Insiders group get the benefit of getting those referral bonuses themselves, get the 30,000 points and sometimes much more than that when multiple people sign up while their link is on our site. So it's a win-win for everybody. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's definitely one to consider and to look at and one that you'll find through FrequentMiler. But like Greg said, you won't find that through all other blogs. Let's put it that way. It's not an offer that most blogs are going to cover or include on their list.

So one of the many benefits of checking out FrequentMiler. All right. So that's Card Talk, platinum 150k offer. Great offer. Worth considering if you're eligible. And by the way, if you've heard us talk recently about amex family rules it's probably worth a quick mention here that these days if you've had a different flavor of the platinum card i think you're not eligible right so if you've had

the schwab platinum before or the morgan stanley now i believe then you're not eligible for that vanilla platinum so to speak however if you've had other cards like the Amex Gold card, that will not prevent you from getting the welcome bonus on the platinum card. Yeah, good reminder. Okay, let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. This week's Mattress Running the Numbers, we've got T-Mobile Home Internet on the docket for this week. There is a deal for signing up for T-Mobile Home Internet where you can get a $150 prepaid master card and portal earnings. So this seems pretty interesting.

Steven wrote about this. So you can sign up for T-Mobile Home Internet. And first, again, $150 virtual prepaid master card. It requires having the service for 60 days before it'll be validated. And then once it's validated and done, you get the $150 gift card, but that gift card is only valid for six months. So that's one thing to be aware of the $150 gift card. You want to use it right away. If you can, it says that it's valid and accepted both in-store and via mobile payment apps. I think your mileage may vary on that. I had a friend recently get tripped up with trying to add virtual gift cards to Google Wallet anyway and have a lot of trouble with that.

So I don't know if I trust the fact that she could use it as mobile payment. But at any rate, easy enough to use like Amazon.com or Walmart or wherever it is you're shopping, I think anyway, for $150. So that's a pretty good deal. You can also go through the American Airlines Advantage shopping portal. And right now, at least at the time that we're recording this, of course, this could change by the time the show publishes. So you're going to have to check the current rate. But at the time we're recording this anyway, you can earn 7,400 American Airlines miles and therefore 7,400 American Airlines loyalty points when you sign up for T-Mobile

Home Internet after clicking through Advantage shopping. So how much is it? Well, the base plan is $50 a month. If you're only getting the internet and you don't have any T-Mobile phone service, then it's $50 a month. So you have to pay for at least two months because you need service for 60 days. Let's call it three because by the time you cancel, you'll probably end up on the hook for a little bit more. So it'll cost you about $150. If you don't have T-Mobile at all right now, you'll get $150 back and a prepaid MasterCard and 7,400 loyalty points. Let's just start there. Is that mattress run worthy? Is that worth doing, Craig? Yeah. I mean, as long as there's no fees to cancel and you want to just sign up to get this deal, it's great. Now, $50 a month for internet is a

good deal in its own if it's fast internet, which I haven't looked into that at all. But if it is, then this is a great sweetener to just sign up for a cheap internet plan. Yeah, well, it is. And we'll talk more about that in a second. But it gets even better because if you have a T-Mobile plan already, if you've got the Go 5G, a Magenta plan or one of the Essentials plans, then it's only $45 a month. I think if you're on autopay, you get the $5 autopay discount. So it'll only be $45 a month. But better yet, if you're on one of the newer Go 5 Next plans or Go 5 Plus or a Magenta max plan then with auto pay enabled it's only 30 a month for internet access and that's what i pay because i have magenta max and so i have t-mobile home internet what do you think greg is my internet good enough nick's always having internet uh issues or has been in the past but but now that he's all T-Mobile'd up, maybe going forward, it'll be better.

Well, you know, and so it's true. It's true. Well, we say always, I mean, I certainly have had my issues over the years. And so I used to have one of the 4G LTE T-Mobile home internet boxes, and that thing really became a pain after a while and did not work well.

And I had lots of problems. Once I moved over to the newer 5G home internet tower, it's been much better. Now, my computer itself has had some issues lately, but I think from an internet standpoint, it's been okay. In terms of speed, I live in the middle of nowhere. So keep that in mind. I live in rural America in a county with about 30 people per square mile. So I live in the middle of absolutely nowhere where you cannot get cable internet. There is no cable TV where I am. So you can't get cable, can't get fiber, anything like that. So when you're comparing this, know that that's my situation. And here I get about 180 megs down. So that's pretty good. It's not going to compete with your fiber optic internet, but it's fast enough that I'm able to

record this show. So that's the download speed. Upload speed is slower, maybe, I don't know, 10 or 20 megs up. I can't remember exactly the last time I did a speed test, but it's reasonably good. And certainly if you're able to get it for $30 a month, even if you don't want the service, if you pay for three months of that, that's $90 you're going to spend, and you're going to get $150 prepaid gift card and 7,400 miles. And if we value the miles, I don't know, around a penny and a half each, which is probably reasonable for American Airlines miles. It's like $100 worth of miles and the loyalty points to get you closer to status. I think this one's worth signing up for just for the miles, really, the miles and the MasterCard.

And then if it also ends up that you end up with cheaper internet access that you're happy enough with, well then great, because that's, I think quite a bit less than what internet costs, I think through like the major providers. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's made me like, think about it. I don't know if, if a T-Mobile has slightly more expensive plans with higher, you know, bandwidth. But yeah, it's definitely worth looking into. Yeah. And there's no caps. So there's no like limit on how much data. So I don't, I don't get throttled or anything like that. So that's worth mentioning too, because I think some plans these days, like do actually have data limits maybe in places, but I don't know. They don't with Gmail. So yeah, there you go. There you have it. Not the fastest ever, but plenty faster. I mean, I'm able to stream movies and, you know, do all of the

modern internet stuff. So I think worth worth checking that one out. All right. That's mattress running the numbers are skipping over crazy thing. And this week we're going to talk about award talk. So for award talk, first up, we got JetBlue and Spirit. What's going on with JetBlue and Spirit, Greg? Yeah. Well, the Department of Justice had tried to block the marriage between these two. So JetBlue bought Spirit in a way, but the government said not so fast, took them to court. And the judge says, nope, you're not going to get to do this. So unless they appeal in some way and come back with some other plan that will go through, it looks like this whole thing is dead, which I'll tell you, it makes me sad. And the reason

it makes me sad is because Spirit has a really good network out of Detroit where I fly from. And while I don't hate Spirit, it's just not my preferred airline to fly. I was a bit excited about the idea of JetBlue having a great network out of Detroit. And that's not going to happen. So, alas. What, what, what, what? Let me ask you this, Greg. Does this make you more or less confident about the predictions regarding the Alaska and Hawaiian merger? Does this affect, you know, I know you thought that that merger is probably going to go through unchallenged, or at least it was going to go through successfully, right? So does this make you

feel differently about that prediction? Not really, because my prediction had more to do with what the government was going to do, whether or not they would try to block it. And they had already put in the motions to block this JetBlue Spirit one. So I guess you could argue that coming off that success, they might feel more ready to challenge other ones. But yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. But I'm still cautiously optimistic that the Alaska purchase of Hawaiian will go through. It's a very different situation. It is a different situation. I know one of the things I read was that a big difference is that the Alaska-Hawaiian deal, I don't think really involves so many slot-restricted airports

or things where, or at least not as heavily restricted anyway. It's not exactly the same as Spirit and JetBlue combining and JetBlue suddenly getting way more slots at airports that are very busy. So I could see where perhaps it is, like you said, very different. So unfortunate for people who have JetBlue elite status and were hoping for that marriage to come through, or for the person who wrote in and asked, hey, should I get the Spirit Airlines MasterCard now in the hopes that maybe those points will turn into JetBlue, TrueBluePoint someday?

And hopefully you didn't go do it already. Question answered. Don't do it. Question answered there, yeah. No, that back door is closed. All right, but that's not it for Award Talk this week. Chase has some Award Talk for us as well, right? Yeah, Chase opened up a new Sapphire

Lounge at LaGuardia Airport, and it looks spectacular. It looks really great to get in. You just need a Priority Pass card, and that will get you in once a year with any Priority Pass card, but without guests, or you can pay extra for guests. But if you have the Sapphire Reserve or the Ritz card and you have the priority pass that comes with either of those cards, then you can get in as many times as you want and actually bring up to two guests. So that's pretty cool that, I don't know,

to me as someone who's a Ritz card holder, I've always been talking up how great that version of Priority Pass is. And now here's like one little extra place where it has extra power. Yeah, that's great. And these Sapphire lounges have been very well reviewed in each of the airports where they've opened so far. People seem to really like them. So I haven't actually been to one myself yet, but everything I've read and the pictures I've seen make them look very nice. So I'm interested in checking this out. And certainly if and when they open one at JFK, I'll be even happier because I'm more

likely to fly out of JFK than LaGuardia. But hey, it's good news for people flying out of LaGuardia. You've got a Centurion lounge now. You've got a Sapphire lounge. Capital One, where are you at? Where's the Capital One lounge at LaGuardia, I guess. But of course, I'm not really hoping for that Capital One because I don't usually fly out of LaGuardia. But if you do, good news for you. All right. I think that brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. Marriott's marriage to MGM Resorts, a match made in Bonvoy land. All right, Nick, can you give us a brief overview? What's going on?

What happened here? Yeah, so of course, MGM used to partner with Hyatt, but they dropped that partnership in October of 2023 in favor of a partnership with Marriott. And we finally found out how that partnership is playing out. So Marriott members and we finally found out how that partnership is playing out. So Marriott members will now earn points and select elite benefits when they book MGM properties through Marriott. There are, and I should say, at participating MGM collection with Marriott Bonvoy properties,

which is their long way of saying at the places that they want you to have those things to earn points and benefits, which is most of the MGM properties around the United States. There are 11 participating properties in Las Vegas, one in Atlantic City, one in Biloxi, Mississippi, one in Detroit, one outside of Washington, D.C., the MGM National Harbor there in Maryland, and then the MGM in Springfield, Massachusetts. So there are quite a few different places where you'll be able to earn points and elite benefits when you book through Marriott. That's nice. We mentioned 16, and I said most MGM properties are participating. There are a couple in Las Vegas that are not. Nomad, which is like the hotel within a hotel concept at Park MGM, and Delano,

which is the hotel within a hotel concept at Mandalay Bay. Those two, strangely, oddly, are not part of this. So if you're looking to book one of those, then keep in mind that you will not earn Marriott points or get elite benefits at those places. But speaking of benefits, there are a number of exciting new benefits, right, Craig? Yeah. The headline of these benefits sounds terrific. So if you don't look into the details of how to get these benefits, it sounds pretty amazing. You can match from MGM status all,000 spend with Marriott each year if you want to earn it the normal way, plus 100 nights spent at Marriott. You could get it just through this match now, which is unheard of. You can get waived resort fees. You could get a suite upgrade. You can get 1 p.m. early check-in, 4 p.m. late checkout, free parking,

and the ability to transfer points between Marriott and MGM. All that sounds great, so why aren't we ecstatic about all this? Did you catch a little bit of facetiousness in our tone so far in talking about this great partnership? If you did, then you got it. Because unfortunately, it's not all good news. It sounds good on the surface, but it's actually not really good at all. So let's work our way through all of the bad news. So points do transfer between Marriott and MGM, or will soon anyway, between Marriott and MGM rewards, which might sound good, except that points transfer at a poor ratio of 10 to 8.

So if you have 10,000 Marriott points and you transfer those to MGM, you'll end up with 8,000 MGM points. But then if you transfer back to Marriott, you might think that it becomes 10,000 again, but it doesn't. It also transfers 10 to 8. So you're going to lose 20% of your points again.

So if you transfer back to Marriott, you're going to end up with 6,400 Marriott points. It's like currency exchange, folks. It's like doing currency exchange at the airport. You'll quickly get to zero points this way. So not a good deal at all, unless you're just looking to top off for a specific redemption and you've got a bunch of points in one program or the other. But even then, you're getting pretty poor value for your points. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not that was not one of the exciting things. So the other stuff, like the ability to match to ambassador elite. Tell us about that. I mean, isn't that exciting? That would be awesome if you could get ambassador elite status without gambling the amount that it would normally be required, you'd normally be required to spend in order to get ambassador elite status because that match is only available to MGM Noir members. And that is an invite only status. So there's not even like a tier credit qualification criteria for that.

That is something above the highest level that you can earn with a published requirement. So essentially, this is for the whales, the big time gamblers, the heavy hitters, the high rollers, whatever you want to call them, the people who gamble enough that MGM is like, oh yeah, come on out. We'll pay for your airfare. We'll get you a limo from the airport. We'll give you the big suite. If you're in that boat, you probably could already spend $23,000 a year at Marriott and get yourself ambassador status. At least I think that's probably true. Maybe some people have figured out how to game that system. Although, since it's invite only, I think that would be hard.

There are ways to earn tier credits to get yourself up to as high as platinum status with MGM. But the noir status is just, I don't think, easily gameable. All right. But at least if you have MGM platinum status, you can match to Marriott to something, a good level of Marriott status, right? No. No.

No. No. No, you can't. So, yeah, I mean, even if you have MGM platinum status, which requires 200,000 tier credits a year, which is a lot for somebody who doesn't gamble or doesn't you know play that system it's a lot uh and so you would need that in order to match to marriott gold status which yeah which which you can get for well almost for free with a number of credit cards just give you that and it doesn't give you much in

the way of perks at all gold status no it doesn. There's no free breakfast at that level. There's like, what, a 2 p.m. checkout based on availability or something like that. I mean, Marriott gold status is not worth much. It's certainly not worth gambling enough to get status with MGM. No, no. So, all right. But that's not all. There are some other good benefits, aren't there, Craig? Yeah, but I guess most of these great benefits we talked about were for that top tier Marriott Ambassador Elite status, right? So that's where you have to have that level status to get waived resort fees, the suite upgrade, which is only up to three nights, by the way. You got Marriott ambassador status. You can get one upgrade a year to a suite in Las Vegas,

one a year, up to three nights. So don't expect to come for more than three nights or you're gonna have to stay somewhere else. Yeah. And even the 1 p.m. early check-in and 4 p.m. late checkout are only for that top tier. As a Marriott titanium or platinum, you don't get that. And free parking, same thing. You don't get that at any of those tiers. But okay. So, well, maybe it's worth trying to get to that top tier Marriott status to get all this right. So you can have these benefits for the rest of your life at MGM Resorts. Well, you know, that would be nice if it lasted for the rest of your life. Maybe, maybe it would be. But unfortunately, it won't because all of the benefits we're talking about are currently scheduled to last through December 31st of 2024. So if you're just starting

out and you're like, oh, I'm going to go after Marriott ambassador status because I can spend $23,000 on 100 nights this year at Marriott properties. We'll be careful because these benefits we're talking about are only going to be valid through the end of this year as of now. Now, of course, they may extend them, but they're only promising that they'll be valid through the end of this year. So if you hit ambassador status like on December 1st, congrats, you've got a month to get free parking and a suite. At least that it's guaranteed at this point. We don't know. Yeah.

All right. Well, at least there must be a good way to match in the other direction, right? So if you have Marriott, Titanium or Platinum status, you should be able to match to MGM status and get some goodies that way, right? I mean, you would think that because with the Hyatt partnership, you only needed Explora status to match to MGM Gold. And MGM Gold is where you get waived resort fees, free parking, even free valet parking, in fact, at the MGM resorts. And Explora status with Hyatt only requires 30 nights a year. So you would think that Marriott Platinums with 50 nights or Titaniums with 75 would be able to get something nice like that out of MGM. But no, there's no status match for anybody but ambassadors.

So you're literally not going to get any of those status benefits. Nothing with MGM at all, which is just that's kind of mind blowing. I'm really surprised that they're not giving you any path to stats. Yeah. All right. Well, you do get a lot of benefits though, right? Yeah. So we've gone through all the negatives. We went through the biggest positives and the biggest negatives, but there must be some good stuff that people with Marriott Platinum and titanium status get, right? Sure, sure. You get a 50% bonus on the points you earn from your paid stays as a Platinum or 75% as a Titanium member. So you'll earn some more points, the same as you would at any Marriott

property. You'll get room upgrades based on availability. Of course, they're not often available in Las Vegas. If you haven't gone to Las Vegas very often, then the tip is that they'll become available if you tip the check-in agent. But there's not very much available on a complimentary basis is my general experience in Las Vegas. So the room upgrades based on availability. Good luck having something available for that. You do get a priority check-in line as a Platinum or Titanium member. And that can be really valuable because I have seen the check-in lines just snake around in length that would take three or four hours to get checked in. If you're at a peak time on like a Friday coming into Las Vegas, the check-in times are just outrageous. So a priority check-in line,

that can really save you a ton of time. As an MGM Gold member in the past, there are so many times when I've gotten there and seen the line and been like, wow, thank goodness I don't have to stand in that. So that is a nice benefit that I don't want to sell short, but that's basically it. Because you get 2 p.m. late checkout, subject to availability. MGM likes to sell late checkout. In fact, one of the things that you can earn points on is the fee you pay for late checkout. So I'll take bets on I'll happily take bets on how often you think late checkout will be available without a fee. So not much come in there.

But you do get a welcome gift of a thousand Marriott Bonvoy points or a daily fifteen dollar food and beverage credit for each day of your stay. So that sounds pretty good to get fifteen bucks a day to spend on food. If you want to choose that, you wouldn't want to choose the thousand points, but fifteen bucks a day to spend on food. That's pretty good. Right, Greg? Sure. If you don't eat much, I guess you don't eat much eat much at all, then yes, because Las Vegas is very expensive these days. In fact, I was there this past weekend for an event and one of my friends who lives in Chicago at some point looked at me and said, you know, Chicago is expensive, but Vegas is really expensive. And he had a couple of words to firm up how strongly he meant that because it is. Everything adds

up if you're paying the cash prices anyway. It gets really expensive really quickly. A slice of pizza was like $8 at MGM the last time I was there for one slice. It's pretty ridiculous if you're not gambling. Obviously, if you're gambling and you're earning comps, there are lots of ways to play the game and

do okay, but when it comes to just walking up to a food and beverage outlet and paying for it, $15 is not going to get you very much at all. It was like $10 and change for a tea at Starbucks on the casino floor when I was there the other day. So $15 is not going to get you very far to begin with. But then that's ignoring the fact that in order to get those benefits we just talked about, the 50% to 75% bonus points, the room upgrades, the priority check-in, and this welcome benefit and the late checkout, you need to book through Marriott in order to get those things. Now, that might sound intuitive to you. Like, yeah, of course, you've got to book through Marriott in order to get the Marriott benefits.

But the problem here is that MGM regularly sells their rooms much cheaper directly through MGM than through any other channel. So if you just join the MGM Rewards Program and log into your account, often room rates will be far, far cheaper booking through MGM, way more than $15 a day cheaper. So you're just paying for these benefits that aren't worth the premium you're going to be paying to book through Marriott. Yeah. Yeah. So is it, is there any, is there any use to this at all then? Like, so it sounds like we should normally, if we're going to be staying in an MGM property, be booking directly through MGM to save money. But what about, is there any play here at all for those looking to earn extra elite nights with Marriott? And so you want to book when Vegas is cheap, often during weekdays. Does that make sense?

I mean, my initial reaction is no, because the requirement to book through Marriott really kills so much of the value here. Maybe, maybe there are times that are so cheap publicly that the difference, even if it's a high percentage, is not a high dollar figure to book through Marriott. So maybe there's some times when you can get Luxor Excalibur publicly for $50 a night or less. Now, you might be able to book those places for like five or ten dollars a night if you book through MGM. So is it worth paying fifty dollars a night to book through Marriott? Not in my opinion, but I guess maybe if you're a few nights short of elite status and that's the cheapest way to get there, like you can't get cheaper nights somewhere else, then maybe, you know, maybe that'll be worth it to you in the sense that you need those elite nights and it's

cheaper than other methods of picking up elite nights, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But don't forget, you're also paying the resort fee. Right. So you're not just just paying the 50 bucks a night. You're paying, well, taxes on that plus the resort fee. So it's going to add up the resort fee. Yeah, it is going to add up plus parking if you rented a car. And so, yeah, I mean, it's it will get silly very quickly here. And it's disappointing to me because I had kind of developed a loyalty to MGM over the years. I stayed almost exclusively at MGM properties for like more than a decade at this point because

because of the partnership with Hyatt, that's what made me loyal to MGM. And I got used to it. And there are places that I am used to visiting when I go to Las Vegas. And I just can't see staying at an MGM going forward. It's just going to be too expensive to either book through Marriott or not get free parking and all those things, especially when you can get Caesar's status by having the Wyndham earner business card that gives you Wyndham diamond status. You can match over to Caesar's diamond and that'll get you free valet parking at Caesar's properties. And it'll get you no resort fee at Caesars properties and oftentimes cheaper rates when you're booking through Caesars. So that $95 credit card from Wyndham gets you at far better benefits at maybe not quite an equal number of Las Vegas properties,

but pretty close and certainly equally located for the most part. So I can't see staying at MGM again moving forward. And I'm a little sad about that. I'll miss some of it, but there's just no way that I could see a good reason to stick with MGM in the future. All right, there you go. Next time you're in Vegas, if you're hoping to run into Nick, make sure to check into a Caesars property going forward. Or Resorts World. I mean, I wrote about Resorts World this week, and that's a Hilton property now, or at least the hotels are Hilton managed. So there's a Conrad and a Hilton and a Crockford's, which is an LXR collection. And really, I love Resorts World. I'm a big fan. I wrote about it this week. So I would probably still consider using like Hilton free night certificates on a weekend when it's expensive to stay at Conrad or Crockford's if I could, because I like Resorts World.

But if not for that, then yes, Caesars is where I would be next because it's just it doesn't make any sense to go with with MGM to me. All right. All right. So there you have it. Unfortunately, sadly, this is a marriage made in Bonvoy land that, you know, I wish wouldn't last. But I think they signed the agreement for something like 10 years. So I think this is going nowhere. They're both mentioned in the beginning that they were hoping to renew. So I think this is not going anywhere for a long time. Unfortunately, but that brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week comes in from a guy named Nick. So Nick has a question for Greg. We've talked a bunch on

this show, or you've talked, let's make it sound like somebody else wrote it. You've talked a bunch on this show about the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Card and how it earns three points per dollar on mobile wallet payments. And so if you use Apple Pay or Google Pay and you tap your phone or tap your watch to pay, you earn three points per dollar. And then those points can be redeemed for one and a half cents per point if you redeem them the right ways, which I'm not going to get into the weeds with that. You can go back to a previous episode that hopefully in the show notes they'll mention which episode to listen to the card talk about that card. Anyway, so we know that's true. What about when you check out

online? If you check out online and you use the Apple Pay option, let's say you're on a website for some store or something. And if you check out using the checkout with Google Wallet or checkout with Apple Pay option, will you still earn the three points per dollar, Greg? I don't know. And I'm saying that because specifically, I've heard different things from different people. And I haven't personally done anything in the way of trying to investigate that. Because I remember I used to think it was only in person until some people have said they do it online. So what do you know about this, Nick? Well, as I've drilled into it, what I have found is that people that use Apple Pay seem to universally report that if they check out

with Apple Pay on a website, it earns the three points per dollar. I don't think I've seen yet a failure report of that using the Apple Pay checkout option on a merchant website. They still earn the mobile bonus. So if you have that option to pay for something online with Apple Wallet, then by all means, do that with your Altitude Reserve card, because that's a great return on spend. However, almost universally at this point, in my own experiments over the last couple of months using Google Wallet checkout on websites, it almost universally only codes as one point per dollar. I've tried a variety of different websites and different types of purchases. And if I've gotten three points per

dollar one time, maybe I did. But almost- And have you been doing this on your phone, on websites on your phone or on the desktop? Because that might be different. Yeah, that's a great question. I've done it on both and I've only gotten one point per dollar because that is a good question as to what the differentiation would be there. Because I wondered the same thing. I was like, oh, well, do I just have to do it on my phone? But no, it seems in my experience so far anyway, when I use the Google Wallet checkout on websites, and again, I've done this a bunch. I did a bunch over the holidays just to test it out and see with purchases. Anytime I saw a Google Wallet option,

I tried to use that. But yeah, no. And there's another problem with that going through the phone in that I worry that if I'm going through a shopping portal, that something's not going to go right when I'm on the mobile browser. Some shopping portals will tell you that they won't award points for purchases made through mobile browsers, and it might pull up the store app or pull up the Google Wallet app and interfere with your cash back. So I'd rather make purchases like that on the website in most cases. And unfortunately, they're just not working out well. So if you've got contrary data points, I'd love to hear them and hear about where it is that it has worked for three points per dollar for you, because I'm sure that it's possible that there are some places where it'll still code as 3x.

But again, thus far with my own experiments, it seems that Google Wallet is not reliable for that when you're checking out on a merchant website. So there you go. There you have it. That was top of mind because I just had another purchase the other day and I was like, oh, man, didn't get my 3X again. So stop making those mistakes. All right. That, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about 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 to join our email list.

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And if you have a question or you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future Giant Mailbag or Question of the Week, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.