Frequent Miler on the Air - Marriott's rumored business cards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep319 | 8-15-25

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

In today's podcast episode, we'll talk about whether or not Hertz will put Nick in jail, how Greg's British Airways flight was saved by Delta, and Marriott's "Brilliant" potential new business card line-up.Giant Mailbag(03:02) - Catch Greg on these podcasts: Chris Hutchins / All the Hacks: Top Airline & Hotel Transfer Partners to Maximize Your Points(03:42) - Point me to first class (Devon): What Credit Card Points Are Really Worth in 2025(04:18) - Many people wrote in with examples of where an International Driver's Permit is required (Japan, Italy, etc)See episode 318 about The Rental Car Game hereCard News(07:28) - Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card offer (100K + promo credit good for up to $500 towards a single Chase Travel℠ booking after $5K spend in 3 months) ending soon.Crazy Thing DOUBLE HEADER(09:36) - Alaska: Atmos Rewards(15:14) - A reader has a strange Lifemiles story to report...Nick's JetBlue 25for25 Update(18:52) - Marriott Day Use Rate: Got lounge access, earned elite night credit (and points)(20:30) - Edgar Hotel Martha's Vineyard: Undeniably Choice in some ways, but great room & value.(23:37) - Lounge access reminders worth a mention: Ritz card gets unlimited visits & guests at Sapphire Lounges. Use the Ritz card, not Priority Pass, for access. Amex Platinum cardholders get Escape Lounge with 2 guests. We've used Escape lounges at SJU, PVD, FLL, and PBI on this trip. Of those, only PVD is on Priority Pass (so remember to check for these!).(26:53) - Couldn't check in online for Etihad-booked flight ACK-LGA (expected -- no birthdays for P1 & P2). Got it fixed at the BOS Mosaic check-in area. Ended up being a quick fix. Glad they could do it at BOS because time was tight at ACK.(30:27) - Nick's Hertz rental (even if you only have the first part of the story -- it's entertaining!)Awards, Points, and More(36:14) - Air Canada Aeroplan program updates (mileage and status earning changes)(44:51) - Greg's positioning flight to Boston for the British Airways first class flight(49:01) - Greg flies AA Flagship Preferred Suites LHR to ORD(51:21) - If Uber to the airport seems expensive, try switching your airline(54:43) - New Reasonable Redemption Values (RRVs)Main Event: Marriott's rumored business cards(1:03:51) - The following is based on surveys, not announced changes...(1:05:18) - Amex Bonvoy Business card(1:13:28) - Amex Marriott Bevy Business(1:20:22) - The Rumored Amex Bonvoy Brilliant BusinessQuestion of the Week(1:28:22) - Which hotel-branded credit card is the best?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's show, we discuss whether Hertz will put Nick in jail. I hope not. We talk about how my British Airways flight was saved by Delta. And we discuss Marriott's brilliant potential new business card lineup. frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event marriott's rumored business cards all right going way back to when marriott bought up starwood preferred hotels amex and chase had to split up the marriott credit card business in the united states and marriott and chase lost uh their ability to to uh have new business marriette cards. And Amex kept their original business card and continued to market that. And that was,

I think before the merger, it was like $95 and afterwards it went up to like $125. But they haven't done anything with the business credit card market for Marriott since then. But it looks like that's changing. And we're going to talk about the rumors in today's main event. And remember, if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back and revisit something later on. You can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the description box to see the timestamps and links to the blog to find more information about all the things that we're talking about. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the video or give us a thumbs up, a star, a review. If you're listening in podcast

form, we appreciate all of that feedback from you. So thank you very much for that. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailback. All right. Giant Mail today is a few miscellaneous things actually from me or from us, talking about what readers have written in as well. First up, not in our notes at all. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge how awesome this is that I get to hang out with Nick a couple times a week and just chat about my favorite topic of miles and points. And we just have a great time. And the fact that we have an audience, a growing audience, that seems to care to actually listen

to us chatting about this stuff. It's just so awesome. So I just want to take a step back for a moment to acknowledge that. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And I ran into a number of people actually because I've been traveling so much this past week. I've run into a number of people who are also doing the JetBlue thing, who knew me from Frequent Myler and said how much they enjoy the podcast or the blog. And I, A, first of all, thank you for enjoying it. We appreciate the fact that you're listening. And it's always cool to run into people and see people face to face that are out there doing this stuff, you know, taking the things that we write about and putting it to use. So that's great. I always appreciate when somebody says hello. So thank you to

them. And if you see me in an airport somewhere, come say hi. Yeah. And shout out to my friend Eric, who ran into you and your family on boarding a Jepp Blue Flight. That's right. I had everything. I got the bags in my hands and the kids were talking. So I apologize for the short conversation, Eric, but it was nice to meet you. All right. Moving on. Also, as part of the giant mailbag segment, And I wanted to mention that I was a guest on a couple podcasts recently, and I think it's worth checking these out. Go visit Chris Hutchins, All the Hacks Podcast. I think now he just calls it Chris Hutchins, but the show I was in, it was called Top Airline and Hotel Transfer Partners to maximize your points. Chris and I had a great conversation on that show.

I re-listen to some of it yesterday as we're recording this. And I think it turned out really good. I think you'll enjoy that episode. So check that out. I was also a guest with Devin on her podcast called Point Me to First Class. And the show was called What Credit Card Points Are Really Worth in 2025. And we had a great conversation about, you guessed it, what credit card points are worth. That's awesome.

And I love both those podcasts. I think Chris and Devin both do a great job with their shows. So totally worth checking them out listening to those episodes and checking out. some of the other ones too. So hopefully you get to enjoy that. I'm looking forward to listening to those. I got a longer flight coming up tomorrow as we record this. So I'm going to have to download those

so I can listen to them in the air. Okay. Now finally, in response to last week's episode called the rental car game, many people wrote in. We talked about how we had never needed an international driver's permit when renting cards internationally.

except actually, no, Nick talked about one time in Taiwan needing one. Lots of people wrote in with different examples of where they needed it. There were several people mentioning Japan, a few people, Italy. There's probably others that I didn't notice. So, yeah, if you're going to run a car internationally, it's a good idea. Might as well get one in advance. That's a safe thing to do. And tell us about applying online, Nick.

So we recorded the podcast. And literally, either it was later that day or the very next morning, an email came in from auto slash saying, hey, AAA recently added, and this is before the podcast published, to be clear. It was between when we recorded it and before it published, hey, AAA recently added the ability to apply for an international driver's permit online. And I was like, oh, my goodness, I just sat in the recording that you can't do it online. And, of course, it's come out.

So I didn't realize that. And a number of readers, of course, also have since pointed that out. So absolutely, you can now apply online, which is great. It's going to take a little bit for them to ship it to you. So don't wait until the very last minute. But that's awesome. And for 20 bucks, if you can do it online from home, I feel like that seems like it's well worth it. It might be a little bit more than 20 if you're doing it online.

I'm not sure if they charge additional for shipping or whatever. But at any rate, it's cheap enough that it's not a bad idea to get if you're traveling internationally. I was pretty surprised by the number of data points we had from people that have run into needing it abroad because like I said, I've run it in dozens of countries and only once I've been asked for it. But I think it probably depends largely A on where you're going. and B, what company you're renting with?

Because I'm usually also renting with U.S.-based companies for the most part. I'm renting abroad with companies that are like a Hertz or a Navis or something like that. Every now and then I do something local like Sicily by car in Italy this year I did and the year before also and was able to use my New York license. But for 20 bucks, I'd go get it done. So especially now that you can do it online. And one person pointed out that you might not need one to rent the car, but you might need one if you get stopped, you know, by a police car or get an accent or something

like that. So might as well just get it. I think that's a good precaution. All right. Oh, and just as an aside, so we tend to record these on Thursday mornings, these shows. And so if you're with a big organization, actually any organization that has big news about points and miles, try to send it to us like by Wednesday evening because I can't tell you how many times like critical information comes in while we're recording the show. Something about Thursday mornings is when like all the big news comes out and we can't push back the show later because it needs to be edited. We'd like to get it out by Friday afternoon. So yeah, so I'm just asking the whole points in miles world. Just back up your announcements by about, you know, 12 hours, about, you know, 12 to 24 hours would

be helpful. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. All right. Let's move forward to this week's card news. So for card news, we got the Sapphire Reserve offer is going to be ending soon. So the consumer version of the Sapphire Reserve, of course, has a 100,000 point offer plus, what is it, $500 in travel credit through the Chase Travel Portal, right? After 5,000 spending in the first three months. So that's apparently going to end soon. And then what, Greg? Is this going to go down to like, I don't know, what was it, 60K before, but of course, the annual fee has increased quite a bit. What do you think? Right. This one's interesting because, first, we don't know, but normally when a new card, you know, comes out with a big new offer, when the offer changes,

normally it goes down, right? It goes down to whatever the standard offer will be. And that's probably what's going to happen now. But the reason I'm not sure about that is I get the sense, and I don't have any data to back this up, but I get the sense that the rollout of this new Sapphire Reserve card has not gone as big and blockbuster as Chase has hoped. If that's true, it seems to me they might be looking at a way to tweak the offer to actually make it more appealing. So we're just going to have to wait and see. I mean, I still think that the The smart money is on that it will go down, but it could go up. Yeah, I mean, I can't think of a time we've seen Chase launch a new card and the offer later increased on it.

Right. But I also can't think of a time when Chase launched a new card and I was less enthusiastic about the card and the bonus. So I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen because I don't think anybody's been gushing about the Sapphire Reserve cards, right? I mean, they've got some potential upsides to them, but they weren't, like you said, I don't think. they made the splash that buys all the advertising in the airports that they expect it. Because I keep flying through JFK and Boston, of course, so I keep seeing all of the advertisements for the Sapphire Reserve.

And I'm like, wow, that's got to be expensive. So maybe they'll want to excite people more. We'll see. We'll find out what happens there. All right. Let's talk about what crazy thing. And this week, we've got a double header. We do.

What crazy thing has Alaska Airlines not done? What crazy thing is Alaska Airlines about to do? About to do. All right. It's well known through many leaks that Alaska, having bought Hawaiian Airlines and planning to merge their loyalty programs, but not the airline brandings. They're still going to operate as Hawaiian as one airline and Alaska is another, but the rewards program, their loyalty program, will be combined. And what's now known as we're recording this is the name of this. combined program, they're ditching Alaska mileage plan, and they're taking up Atmos or Atmos

Rewards. Atmos rewards. At most, I think this is going to be a benefit of a, I don't know, a lead balloon. It's such a strange name, isn't it? Oh, it's so weird in so many ways. So, I mean, it probably comes from the idea of like atmospheric or something like that, that they want to to show that something's like that it's like sky high or whatever where they probably wanted to do strata like stratospheric but city just took that so they can't do that so at most they could do at most oh Greg do you have some atmosphere of the new name it's being reduced to being at most one point or one cent per point it's an odd one because I think especially so I really enjoyed reading Gary Leff's take on this over review from the wing because he wrote about the cost of

like rebranding something like this and A, the cost of just hiring a company to come up with a new name and do the focus groups and make sure that it's something that's going to be pronounceable for people in different countries because if you're going to have a sort of a global program, you've got to make it sort of globally possible to say. So they probably put a lot of money into that and then all the money you've got to put into making people familiar with a brand that they've never heard of before, right? It's like it's a huge investment. And I imagine that it's going to be pronounced at most by a lot of people around the world. And that sounds so much like at most. It does. It sounds so underwhelming. It's like they couldn't even bother to put the tea on

at most. Right. Right. Just too much. We're tired of this whole thing. And it doesn't tell you anything about what kind of rewards program it is. It's just generic non-word. You know, I can think of two, there's probably many more, but I can think of two examples where I had similar reactions. One was British Airways renamed their points program, obvious. They had that made-up word, and then that got taken up by all the other programs that share that points currency, obvious. I mean, I guess that went okay for them, but like, why? Why try to get people to learn a made-up word? I don't see what the point of that is.

And of course, there's the famous one as Marriott Bonvoy. That quickly became a negative adjective that we used to say, you know, you've been Bonvoy to say something bad has happened. And I think this time Alaska has bonvoid themselves with their new name. Yeah, it's such a weird name. Like you said, you don't really associate it with anything. And since they own both Alaska and Hawaiian, it seems like maybe there would be some opportunity. I don't know what it would be.

But to market one of those, or really honestly, I'm sure that part of renaming it was appeasing the people that were kind of had an affinity to Hawaiian rather than just continuing with the Alaska mileage plan name. But I feel like everybody knew mileage plan. It tells you what it's about. It's about airline miles would have been way easier to just keep that name. Oh, it totally would. And of course, the fear now is because they got rid of miles as part of the rewards program name, the thought is that they are going to abandon the earnings of points based on how far you fly and switch to, you know, based on how much you spend, which is what virtually every other airline program has already done. I would not expect, I would not, you know, I would have expected this anyway, regardless of the name. It just makes sense. I mean, I know a lot of people hate that because they're used to, you know, kind of gaming the system, figuring out how to get the most miles for long distance flying. But if you think about it from the company's point of view, they want to reward the people who spend the most with them.

It just makes logical sense. So I wouldn't criticize them for that, but I understand why people might be disappointed when that happens. Yeah, I also think it's just easier for the average consumer to understand. You know, if you're earning miles based on distance, then you have to find a tool online somewhere to show you the distance from point A to point B. And then you got to figure out which fair class is it and what percentage of the distance is that fair class earned. It's like it's super complicated. Whereas X number of points per dollar spent, super easy for everybody to understand. Super easy to compare from one airline to another.

So again, I get why people like us hate the idea of a revenue based program, but I totally see it from the company perspective on that one too. It is probably way easier for them. So that's likely coming, but we don't know more about that yet. However, that's not the only crazy thing. What crazy thing did Avianca Life Miles do this week? We got an email from someone who goes by the letter T. She says, I'm a Life Miles plus subscriber, which, as an aside, that gives you the ability to change and cancel flights for free, I think, up to three days before or something like

that, and had an award book that I needed to cancel. I called Life Miles, and the process seemed smooth. The agent recognized my status and canceled the flight with no penalty. However, about an hour later, received an email from Avianca, in Spanish, something about a flight. It was late, and I was too lazy to translate, so I assumed it was just a cancellation confirmation. Next morning, I got a similar email. Curious, I look closer. The email last night announced departure time and gate for a flight from El Salvador to Bogota. And the next day's email announced subsequent departure to Medellin. My first thought was that it was an identity theft, so I called Avianca.

The agent sounded genuinely confused. He said he could see two different flights on this record using different systems. He was not sure what was going on, but advised me to contact life miles. So as a general tip, most airlines have this. They have different call centers for their airline program, or I should say a lot of airlines have different one for the airline program versus their rewards program. And so this agent was saying call the rewards program Life Miles. I got transferred and explained the same story that I was receiving boarding notifications for a flight I never

booked. To my shock, the Life Miles agent wasn't confused at all. She calmly told me to disregard the emails because I already got my Miles back. After some pushback from my side explaining that Miles was the last thing I was worried about at that moment, she ended up telling me that this was their process for canceling flights without penalty. My jaw dropped. I asked bluntly, are you saying that you had to put my family on a fake flight to Columbia that I never booked nor intended to take just in order to bypass some system of yours and issue me the refund? She said, yes, this is how our system works. Of course, of course. Put you on a fake flight to Medellin. That's the way to handle a refund, obviously, right? Yeah. Oh, I love that story.

Wow, that is insane. That's crazy. Yeah. I have not yet had to cancel. one. So I haven't experienced that for myself. I'm curious from other listeners if you've had that experience before also and been put on a fake flight to Medellin. It seems like an odd system. And if they're, you know, like, I think the thing that would concern me is are they reporting the passenger list on that and like reporting that I was a no show on a flight to Medellin or something? Because I, you know, I don't know what factors come into play when they choose who to to pull for the special security screening, if you've never had the SSSS on your boarding pass or been asked additional questions when you're coming in through immigration. But I would think that if you

had a lot of flights to Medellin that you just didn't show up for, that might cause a flag somewhere, right? Yeah, for sure. Oh, man, this is just too funny. So I have no idea whether this has happened to anyone else. It might have been a one-off weird thing that happened and an agent making up an explanation that wasn't true. Wouldn't surprise. Wouldn't surprise. me at all if that's the case. Yeah. Right. 100%. But it would be, it's hilarious on its own, and it would be super hilarious if this is really

their standard approach. So we definitely want to hear from you if you've canceled Life Miles bookings when you have Life Miles Plus involved. So let us know through mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. There you go. All right. Let's go on to this week's JetBlue 25 for 25 update. My updates from the road, because.

Of course, if you've been listening, then you know that my family is going after the JetBlue 25 for 25 promotion, where you have to fly to 25 destinations by the end of the year to earn 350,000 points in 25 years of JetBlue Mosaic status. So we're working on that. We're at, what, 16 down now, and number 17 will be before this podcast publishes. So we'll be at 17 by then anyway. And a few just general updates, things, points and miles related stuff that's come up during the trip. First off, I wrote a post a week.

ago or so about the day use rates, how to book day use rates at various hotels. And within that post, when it first published, I noted that I would include an update later on about whether or not I got lounge access at Marriott as a Platinum member. And I'm glad to report that, yes, I did book a Marriott with a lounge as a platinum member at the day use rate. And I did get access to the lounge. In fact, the day use rate was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and breakfast goes until 10. So we arrived right at 9 a.m. and we were able to have breakfast and then use the lounge throughout the day. So that worked out really well. Also, kind of surprising, I got elite night credit for the day use rate, even though we didn't stay overnight. And of course, I got points based on

paying for it. So that worked out really well. I would check out Marriott for a day use rate in the future. And specifically, the Marriott JFK, service was great. And they actually gave us an extra hour beyond what the day use rate was supposed to be. And then when we missed the 6 p.m. shuttle, they said, oh, let's re-key your keys so you can go back to the lounge and eat a little bit more before the next shuttle. Just super friendly service. So. That was a great place to book that. Second piece, Edgar Hotel Martha's Vineyard is where we stayed when we went to Martha's Vineyard. And this was a really good value on points.

So if you're interested in visiting Martha's Vineyard and you look at cash prices in the summer, they're like eye-wateringly high. I was about to book a hotel for almost $1,000 using a Hotels.com gift card. Yeah, for one night because we needed that night. and I had the gift card from Capital One shopping. I wasn't particularly happy about using $1,000 for a single night. But anyway, I was going to do that when I realized, oh, wait a second, this is an Ascend collection property.

That means this is a choice property. I was really surprised because there were no other points options on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket for that matter. And those are both destinations that are probably pretty popular for people doing JetBlue 25 for 25. So I was thrilled to find a choice, privileged property, last chain that I expected to find on Martha's Vineyard just based on the summertime cash prices. But so this is 45,000 points per night, choice points. So 23K transferred from city would book this for a night. And the property itself was in some ways undeniably a choice property. If you judged it just by the hallways,

you might wonder if you booked a super budget property. Certainly not a thousand dollar a night property. But once you get into the rooms, rooms are super nice. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. So location is good. It's right next to Edgar Town. So you can walk into town and you can take the free bus around Martha's Vineyard. So definitely worth checking out if you would like to go to Martha's Vineyard. Look like the outdoor dining was nice there. Is that true? Yes, they have a restaurant attached to it right next to it. And it did look good. We didn't end up eating there. We ended up eating in Edgar Town. So I didn't eat there. But it was cute. And it had good reviews like 4.2 stars out of five on Google. So, you know, decent reviews. And the prices

were reasonable. They were more reasonable than restaurants further into town, so it certainly might be worth checking it out. But there were quite a few options nearby. There's also a grocery store, literally next door to the hotel. So you can hop into the grocery store. You can get sandwiches at the grocery store. Sub was like eight bucks at the grocery store. So again, Martha's Vineyard could be a little pricey. So the grocery store was a pretty good value. And actually, Edgar Hotel makes mention of that on their website that there's a grocery store nearby and your room is spacious so you can get stuff and bring it and eat it in your room. And it's true. It's certainly a good option. And Martha's Vineyard, by the way,

I had never been before. I liked it quite a bit. I would go back. I was surprised, actually, at how much I liked it. It wasn't a place that I necessarily had on my bucket list to places that I really was drawn to. And I ended up liking it quite a bit. So I love these challenges like this that bring me to places that weren't necessarily at the top of my list. And then I said, wow, this is, I can understand why it's expensive in the summertime. It's a nice place. So anyway, that certainly was a decent find along the way, happy to have gotten good value. And if you buy choice points right now, you'd get at like a 75% discount over the cash cost of the room almost.

So definitely one worth checking out. All right, lounge access reminders that I thought were worth a mention very quickly. I think we recently mentioned, but I wanted to mention it again, that Ritz card holders get unlimited access to Sapphire lounges. That's been huge for us because we've flown out of Boston three, four times this week already. And so you don't use your priority pass. I've found quite a few people that have been confused about that because people who have a priority pass can visit the Sapphire Lounge once per year.

But that's not how you access it if you have the Ritz card. You just bring the Ritz card and show the Ritz card. You get unlimited visits and unlimited guests. So we've had no problem getting the whole family in multiple times just this week. So that's something worth a mention for those who have the Ritzkart's card. Of course, you can't apply outright for the Ritz-Carlton card. It's a Chase Marriott card. you have to first get like the Chase Marriott boundless card and then after a year you should be

able to upgrade to the Ritz card. So that's I thought worth a mention. Also worth a mention here is that MX Platinum card holders get escape lounge access now that's something you may have known. But there's a lot of escape lounges. I should let me walk that back. There are some escape lounges that are accessible with priority pass. And so if you have a priority pass, you can get into some of them. So my habit had been just looking at the priority pass app. And just in this last couple of weeks here, we've gone to escape lounges at San Juan, Providence, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach. And the only one of those that shows up in the priority pass is Providence. The other three of those are not accessible with priority pass.

You need an MX platinum card or a Delta Reserve card. And if you have the reserve, the Delta Reserve, you need to be flying Delta same day. And you still get two guests of escape lounges, unlike Centurion lounges, where you don't get any guests, you still get two guests at escape lounges. So I thought that was worth a mention because I think a lot of. of MX Platinum card holders, A, probably don't even realize that there are escape lounges in some airports. There are in quite a few of the smaller airports around the U.S. actually. So I think you may not even realize that there's an escape lounge, especially if you only

look at the Priority Pass app, and very easy to have forgotten, I think, the fact that you get the two free guests. So that's important. So in my experience with, I've only been to, I think I've been to three escape lounges over time. in my experience like all of them shared two traits pretty good food but very small lounge were any did any of the ones you visited break that mold no no they're all that pretty good food pretty small lounge and the food when they say pretty good it's usually are all the ones

i've been to it's a small selection there's not a wide range of stuff but the stuff that's there is usually pretty good same as my experiences yeah yeah i think that that's probably like the brand experience with escape lounges there in smaller spaces where they wouldn't have put in a full Centurion lounge instead decided to go with an escape lounge. So, but yeah, that's pretty spot on. So you may have hard time finding a place to sit. And some people may say, oh, well, why can't use priority pass for all of them? But some of them are so small that if you could get in with a priority pass, you'd never get in. The line would be, you know, down the block. So I can totally understand why there aren't accessible via priority.

already pass. All right. But anyway, I wanted to make those reminders for those of with Ritz cards and platinum cards. Two more things. One, I'll try to go through quickly and the other one's more fun. So I couldn't check in for one of my flights. I booked a JetBlue flight with Etihad Guest points. Actually, I've booked a couple with Etihad Guest. And so I had booked from Nantucket to LaGuardia through Etihad guest. And I was not able to check in online. Now, I expected that because other readers had reported that and said that the problem was in the birthdays being transmitted incorrectly from Etihad to JetBlue. In my experience, the birthdays just didn't show up at all for my wife and I in the JetBlue app. So you can see the passenger information. My kids' birthdays

showed up, but not the birthdays for my wife and I. I don't know why, but they just weren't there. And in this case, we were flying Boston to Nantucket on a regular JetBlue paid fair and then Nantucket to LaGuardia with the Etihad gas miles. And in hindsight, that was probably not a good way to do it because I worried that if I can't handle this until I get to Nantucket, it's going to be a problem because it was a quick turn with only 45 minutes between the flights and you have to go through security again in Nantucket. So I didn't think that there'd be a lot of time to fix that in Nantucket. So we got to Boston extra early before the flight to Nantucket and went to the Mosaic check-in. And at first, the person at the Mosaic check-in said, oh, it's because you have to check in

Nantucket. You have to fix this there. And I said, no, there's not going to be enough time to fix this there. I really need to try and get this worked out here. And then it was only about four minutes. Very easy for her. Once she looked at it and realized what was wrong, she was able to just take our IDs and put the information in. And that was it. So it was much faster and easier than I expected. There was no pushback about it being booked through Etihad. It was actually really simple. So get to the airport, go to the check-in counter. You should get it fixed. Let me back out. Had you tried calling or online chatting with either Edihad or JetBlue to try to fix it in advance? No, because I figured I'd probably be able to get it fixed at the airport. So

I should have probably, and maybe I'll do that after we finish recording today, because I have another one coming up tomorrow that is not yet ready for check-in, so I could try, see if that works. My expectation, my strong expectation is that JetBlue will tell me to call Etihad, and Etihad will tell me that it's not their fault. But it's probably worth checking just to see what happens, I guess. So as a somewhat relevant, you know, data point, back when I had booked JetBlue with Qatar avios, not Edihad, but with Qatar, I can't remember what the thing was, but I had to contact Qatar about something about it, to fix something about it, and I just used their online chat, and I got done in no time at all.

Well, that's a great tip. Now, I have no idea if Eddie Hadd even has that, or if they do, they would have agents capable of fixing it. Yeah, that's second part I'm not sure about, but we'll see. We'll see. That's, it's where, a worth a gamble. So we'll give it a shot and I'll report back next week as to how that all turned out. I expected to not be a problem. Now, whether or not I'm getting credit for 25 for 25, that's been a big question. Will you actually get credit for these partner booked awards? And Jet Blues told us a bunch of times that we should. So I would think that we're going to, but I won't know until I either get the points or don't get the points. And because that you're only

supposed to get the points weeks after you complete the 15 and then the 20, I'm probably not going to know until mid-September, whether we got these or not. So I will report back when I find out for sure whether we got credit for them, but I don't know for sure yet. Yep, yep. All right. And then finally, finally, I have the start of a Hertz horror story. All right.

What could be a Hertz horror story? I hope not. Oh, my goodness. But I have the first half and you'll have to check back next week because it'll be a cliffhanger. Right now it's more of a comedy than a tragedy, but it could change. Right. It could turn.

There could be some twists here coming. So yesterday we flew from New York JFK to Hyannis on Cape Cod, Cape Cod airport in Massachusetts. And then tomorrow we're flying out of Boston. So when we arrived at the Cape Cod airport yesterday, I had a Hertz car booked for pickup there and return in Boston tomorrow, tomorrow as we record this. So from Wednesday to Friday.

So we got to the airport and there was a line developing at the Hertz counter person there seemed very overwhelmed. As it turned out, her computer system was down. So she had to do everything manually in terms of writing out all of the rental agreements. And she had a printout of the reservations that apparently, I think probably had printed out that morning because she let everybody know that if they hadn't made their reservation well in advance, she wasn't going to have a car for them. And I later realized that's because their names just weren't going to be on the printout. So, so anyway, she, uh, she did have ours on the printout. So she had to manually do the agreement. And she was the only Hertz employee there. So she was letting everyone know that

either she could go clean the car and it was going to take longer or you could go bring the car somewhere and clean it yourself and they'd give you a discount. Like it was definitely a bit of a disorganized situation going on. And while we were in the process of her filling out rental agreement stuff and before she had assigned a car to us, somebody else came in behind us to return a car. And it was a large sedan, which is what we had also rented. So the agent at the counter kind of took the customer's word for it in terms of the car being full of gas and the mileage readout and that it was still in good condition. And just assigned the car to us, gave us the keys and said, check it out. And if there's a problem with it, come back in and let me know.

And she filled out the paperwork and gave it to us and we were on our way. And the problem with all of that, of course, is that the computer system was down. So, in that moment, as far as Hertz is concerned, I don't think that they have any way of knowing that the previous customer had returned to the car. It's not showing up as returned in their system. And certainly no way of knowing that I have the car. It's all just on paper, sitting there in a counter at Cape Cod Airport. She didn't return her car. You were a no-show for your reservation. Right. The best that anyone could figure out is you stole her car, the car from her. Right, right. That's, that's, and you know, so the five,

And the funny thing is that the other customer bringing the keys back was like, I just needed a drop off receipt showing that I dropped it off. And the woman at the counter said, yeah, I can't do that. I don't have any access to the computer. And so the customer returning said, well, I need something showing that I returned it because I don't want to get a text message later that it was stolen. This isn't my first rodeo. It was like exactly, right? And so she was prethinking that. So the woman at the counter did handwrite her something. I don't know what good that does either of us right now. But. Anyway, so I'm hopeful, A, that the car doesn't get reported as stolen, B, I don't get arrested for stealing this other customer's car, and C, that when I get to the airport tomorrow, I don't have an extra confusing situation. Even if A and B don't happen, when I get to the airport with a car that wasn't assigned to me, I wonder how that's going to go. Right, right, right. Are they going to charge the first person a huge one-way drop-off fee? Right. Well, luckily, that person was already on a one-way because she, had driven the car from Florida, she said. So luckily she was already out of one way. There's extra days for it. Yeah, yeah. Who knows? For anyone listening who's not aware of this,

Hertz infamously has reported cars stolen that were correctly returned, and people have ended up in jail because of that. And it happened, like, many times. Like, even well after it had been reported all over the news everywhere, it still kept. happening like you'd think they would know well this is really bad customer you know acquisition strategy because right i mean you have your customers captive but not in the kind of way that most marketing people want them to be captive customers right right right well and i i sincerely hope that the woman that dropped the car off doesn't end up having to duke this out with her it's over the fact that a like you said like will they charge her for keeping the car extra long and returning to a different place

and then she's going to have to fight that with her handwritten receipt, or am I going to be the one that ends up getting arrested for stealing her car? Who knows? Who knows what happens here? So, like, it's just, it's crazy. And I'll let you know next week how the return went when I return the car. In the meantime, I have my fingers crossed that whoever woke up at Cape Cod Airport this morning had access to the computer system and put everything in from yesterday or whatever.

But right now, I just look at the hurts app. She's probably like, oh, this is going to be a disaster. going back tomorrow. Right. I'm going to work for some other company, forget this. Right. Well, I just opened the Hertz app as we're talking and it doesn't show a car assigned. It still shows my reservation there. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good. I feel less comfortable about the woman who dropped off the car, her situation than yours. Like, I think her situation is a bit scarier. But either way, I hope it works out for both of you. Yes. So do I. And I'm sure that she does, even though she probably hopes that it's all set. I hope that works out for all of us. All right, let's talk about

awards, points, and more. All right. First up, Air Canada Aeroplane is out with pretty huge program changes, specifically right about how you earn status, I think. Tell us what's going on there. Yeah, so both mileage earning and status earning. Milage earning is now going to be revenue-based, and I say now this will start all of this. We'll start January 1st, 2026. So if you have flights between now and the end of the year, it's still going to be the previous system. But starting in January, you'll earn one to six points per Canadian dollar spent. So you have to do a little conversion to U.S. dollars, depending on your status. So if you have no status, you're going to earn one air plan point per Canadian dollar spent on Air Canada operated and Air Canada ticketed flights.

It won't be distance-based anymore. So you're going to earn more, of course, in premium cabins. you'll earn more if you've got status. So the winners here are those who fly short, expensive flights, and maybe business class flights to Europe, though long business class flights still not necessarily. If you're flying all the way to Australia, perhaps, you may still earn fewer points than you did before, believe it or not. So it seems like most people are going to lose in that realm in terms of points earning. And it's just not nearly as generous as most U.S.-based programs. So it probably won't make a ton of sense to

credit your flights to Air Canada Aeroplane if you're flying, again, on air-ticketed flights. And partner flights, it might be a little bit different because partner flights will still be subject to the old distance-based system. I say partner flights, I believe they're close partners, United Lufanza, and Copa will also earn according to that one to six Canadian dollars, or rather points per Canadian dollars spent. So, again, short, expensive flights. or might still be worth crediting to Air Canada Aeroplane. Otherwise, I don't know. Status is complicated.

They simplified or they branded it as a simplification. And it's anything but I had such a hard time hearing the details, reading the details, wrapping my mind around the details. So if you're an Air Canada enthusiast, all I can tell you is it's getting more complicated and more difficult to earn elite stuff. us. There's going to be a single metric, status qualifying credits, SQCs. You're not going to earn any of those on basic economy tickets. You'll earn two SQCs per Canadian dollar on standard fares, four per Canadian dollar on flex fares and higher. And your partner tickets are going to earn one SQC per five

arrow plan points earned, but only up to a cap of 25,000 SQCs per year. So if you're flying on partner flights that you ticketed through those partners and you're earning based on the distance-based chart, you're going to get one status qualifying point for every five aeroplane points that you earn on that flight. But again, it's capped at 25K, so you can't get to super high levels of status through partner flights alone. The Chase Aeroplane card is losing its status boost benefit, where you can now spend on the card in order to get your status level bumped up one starting next year. That will go away, and instead you'll earn SQCs through spend. That is going to top out at 35K status, it'll be the most that you'll be able to earn through card spend.

Now, currently, in 2025, $50,000 in spend on the Chase Aeroplane card will get you 35K status because I think really it gets you 25K and you get the boost, right? Is that what it is? But in 2026, you're going to have to spend $75,000 on the Chase Arrowplan card to get that same 35K status. And again, there is no boost. You'll just top out at 35K. And there are some opportunities to earn SQCs through other parts.

partners, hotels and stuff like that. But all of those are subject to annual caps. So the short story is that they've made it such that if you really want the top tiers of elite status with Air Canada, you're going to have to spend a lot of money on Air Canada. There's no other way around it. So here's what I find really strange. There's nothing, there's nothing strange about switching to a dollar-based accrual or Canadian dollar-based accrual. But what's so weird is like most programs who have been updating their system, their rewards programs in the past five years or so have been simplifying them. Like you look at, you look at Delta's thing, I mean, for good or bad. They just, they used to have three different metrics you had to track to figure

out what elite status you'd get. They moved to one. And it's pretty simple. There's no caps on anything. You just earn a certain amount of MQDs and that's how you get status. So I expected that here. And especially, you know, so they were like, we're moving to a single metric SQCs. And then, so we were in a briefing last week with the aeroplane people about this. Then they went on to recite what sounded like the U.S. tax code to me of like all the exceptions, limitations, blah, blah, blahs. I mean, my eyes glazed over in seconds. I have no idea actually what they said because I actually literally, I'm not kidding. I literally fell asleep for part of it. I'm sorry aeroplane guys, but this is the most complicated simplification, most complicated and boring, that I've ever, ever encountered.

It's true. And there were several of us from Frequent Miller there. And the thing is, like, we all live and breathe loyalty programs, right? I mean, like, that's what we think about all day, every day. And so to have bored and confused us as much as it did says something about the changes to the program. And it's too bad because I, do really like AeroPlan's award program. And luckily, there's no changes yet coming in terms of awards. Word redemptions. That's what I meant. Yeah. So, you know, I love it for that side of things. But wow, this side, you're right. It was very much like listening to someone recite tax code. It just seemed overly complicated and difficult to understand. And the different caps and things and amounts, it just made it so much harder. Like you said, American Airlines, whether you shot through the portal, you spend money on tickets you spend money in your credit cards all the same you're earning one one loyalty

point for every mile that you earn basically and like it's just so much simpler so much simpler exactly i don't come on guys uh come on you know i guess it's too late to try again but yeah but but here's what i expected you guys or i should say what i hoped you guys were going to say is that, look, when Alaska changed their program a couple years ago now, maybe, they, their award charts, how they, how they price awards so closely matched what you guys had done. They were, they were copying in a complimentary way. Like, they took the good stuff and they made it very similar, but they, they had one, they recently added one thing that, that is fantastic, which is elite earnings on award

bookings, right? Even partner award bookings. And that's what I was kind of hoping, thinking that you guys were going to say to us. And as soon as it became clear to me that this was not about that, it was just about earning through spend and you had to, you know, follow this complicated spreadsheet to get there. I was out. You know what? That's a brilliant idea. And I hope Air Canada is listening because I have to imagine, like we've said before that all these foreign airlines want transfers from the U.S. credit card companies because they, I mean, or, you know, people to be using their U.S.-based credit cards because the airlines make a lot of money, selling miles to the banks, right? And so you would think that encouraging people to redeem lots

and lots of aeroplane points would be good business for them because it encourages people then to be transferring to Air Canada Aeroplane, right? So giving them the chance to earn elite status to reward redemption would seem like it would be a benefit to the business. And you might say, oh, but then you have to give those people elite benefits. Yeah, but the thing is, how much are they going to be using the elite benefits? If they're primarily redeeming their rewards to travel on other airlines, it's not that expensive to Air Canada Aeroplane. Probably, I guess the problem is gold status to get them into Star Alliance lounges. That would be your big, you know, whatever, Star Gold, rather, would get you into lounges.

So maybe it would cost them too much. They figure in United Lounge visits, but I don't know. There must be a way around that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyways, let's move on. I'm going to tell the story now of a trip to London I took a couple weeks ago with my wife.

We had booked British Airways First Class from Boston to London on a Friday morning. So it was a daytime flight. I love, there's not many, but I love these daytime flights to Europe because, you know, you get up early to get to the airport, so you're kind of tired. And then you take the daytime flight. you arrive in the evening in London or wherever you're flying in Europe and you and then you could go out to dinner and then go to bed at what's a reasonable time there, you know, like 11 p.m. midnight or whatever there, even though it's much earlier for you, but because you got up so earlier early and you had a day flying and everything, you're usually wiped out and I find it's not

that hard to sleep. So you get right on to the new schedule. So I love that whole daytime thing. There aren't many daytime flights to Europe. Most of them are to London from New York or Boston. With that out of the way, so we had to get to Boston either crazy early in Friday morning. That wasn't even possible. It wasn't possible to get there in time for boarding from Detroit on Friday morning. Even if it was possible, it would have been a tight connection and that would have been really scary. So we booked the night before.

I booked a JetBlue flight for, it was actually three of us. My son was also with us. And I, it occurred to me that even though it was a, you know, nonstop flight from Detroit to Boston, that if something happened to that flight, we'd be in trouble because there was literally only one other flight available that evening, which was a Delta flight. So I had used my Delta Miles to book the Delta flight. which was scheduled to take off about an hour later than the JetBlue flight to go to Boston. I used my miles because they're freely cancelable.

As long as you don't book a basic economy fair, you could cancel get your taxes and fees back and all your miles back up to departure time. So my plan was fly JetBlue as soon as I'm clear that JetBlue is actually going. Maybe we're up in the air using the Wi-Fi. I would cancel the Delta flight and that would be fine. It turned out really lucky I did that. Jepp Blue just outright completely canceled our flight that afternoon. I checked to see about alternative flights.

Like if I hadn't pre-booked the Delta flight, it was completely it. The one I had booked and the one before it, which would be earlier than the JetBlue flight, were both completely sold out. So it's just so lucky I had. had that backup flight. So all as well, that ends well, but it's just a reminder that when booking a positioning flight, especially with a different carrier and a different, you know, P&R, different booking altogether, it's a really good idea to book a cancelable backup flight because you might have to use it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, you know, I'm glad you brought this up

because we have a flight tomorrow as we record this, that JetBlue only has the one a day. And and if that got canceled, it would be a problem. And I had thought to myself at some point, you know what, I'll book a backup flight, but I never did. I just realized. So I'm going to do that just for some peace of mind there. Because like you said, I mean, it's good to have and then you can cancel it if you need to cancel it. So when you really need to be somewhere, that's a smart strategy. So I'm glad that worked out for you. Yeah. And luckily, most, you know, U.S.-based airlines now allow free cancellations. So whether you're booking with United or American, Alaska, if you're booking with a partner award, like if you're using Alaska Miles to

book American, there is that there is a small fee per person that doesn't get refunded. Yeah, $12.50 per person for one way. But that's, you know, that's not too bad for the peace of mind if you need to do that. Okay, so I want to mention that. And then just out of interest, so we flew to Boston, very late. I had booked the Hilton Boston Airport Hotel, which is actually connected. They have like indoor, like hallways from the airport to the Hilton. So that was very nice. It'd be really great if it was raining out. I can't remember if it was or not. I think it may have been. And I had booked that. That was significantly more expensive than the Hyatt, which is near the airport, but not as accessible. I mean, I guess it's possible to walk it, but you'd be outside and not

necessarily on paved routes. But I partly booked it because I have all these Hilton credits. So I have all these business platinum cards and Hilton credit cards that offer $50 back per quarter. So great, I'll pay for it that way. We got in so late that I decided to do it in the morning. So we got the room keys. I got up a little bit earlier, went down to check out and to use all my cards. Their computer systems were down. So, of course, we had to go catch the plan. I couldn't wait for them to come back up.

So it just got paid with whatever card I had used to book the reservation, and that was it. We had two rooms because my son was in one. We were in another. The second room I had booked, actually, with Rove through the Rove Miles platform. Rove was surprisingly actually cheaper than Hilton's member rate for that night, and I earned tons of Roeve miles, which are transferable to a bunch of currencies. I would have booked both rooms that way, except that I wanted one to be booked directly with Hilton so that I could use my cards to pay and get this credit. You didn't even get that. So that didn't work out.

But otherwise, it's a very, very convenient hotel estate. That's great. That's great. Yeah, I mentioned been at the High Regency Boston Harbor. I think this is a fourth time this week that we've stayed at this place. And it's walkable to the car rental center. But like Greg kind of suggested, there's a section that it's not clear you can walk on it. I have three, four times this week.

But whether or not you actually are supposed to, I'm not totally sure. So being connected to the airport would certainly have some advantage there. So that's a good tip to keep in mind for the future. All right. Next little tidbit here is Uber. If your Uber to the airport seems expensive, try switching your. airline. And so we wrote a post about this because Max Miles points on Instagram and TikTok had uncovered this difference in pricing. And it was one specific instance. And I don't know whether

it's widespread or how widespread it is. But it's certainly something I'm going to keep in mind and test out in the future because I can see it happening more than once. So in his example, he was showing that going from Manhattan to JFK's Terminal 4 costs less if you're flying with Virgin Atlantic. Let me take that back. In the Uber app, when you choose that you're going to the airport, usually it gives you the option to choose which airline you're flying so they know where to drop you off. And so if you're going to JFK, Terminal 4, and you choose Virgin Atlantic as the airline that you're flying, it's significantly cheaper than if you choose the other airlines in Terminal 4. He used Delta in the example, and I also used Delta when I wrote about it. But actually, readers pointed out that all of the other airlines in that terminal also

the same way that Delta did, but Virgin Atlantic priced significantly less. And when I say significantly less, like he showed about $14 less on a one way. And these are kind of expensive because Manhattan, the JFK is pricey. In my example, I think it was like $30 or so less flying with Virgin Atlantic than with Delta. So 25, 35, something like that. So it also changed, by the way, depending on the starting point that I chose, so I checked a few different hotels. And it wouldn't surprise me that the price is different from a different hotel because you have a different pickup, different distance, different streets. But what was different was that the gap between the price for Virgin Atlantic and Delta shrunk at the kind of higher end hotels that I put in. It was only like $5 difference where it was like $30 difference from the Wyndham property that I chose.

So I don't know what the algorithm is doing there, but take that and run with it. I mean, it might be making some guesses about how price conscious people are, or might be from data, right? Like, it might be, they might have experience of people at certain hotels pulling up the app and then not booking something because it was. I'm sure they do, yeah. So I tried it from my home to the Detroit airport. I didn't find any variation no matter what airline I picked. But someone else from somewhere else in the Detroit metropolitan area reported that they did see a difference in price. when they picked, I don't think it was Virgin Atlantic, but I can't remember, because Virgin Atlantic

doesn't even fly from Detroit, but I can't remember what airline they picked to get it to show up cheaper. So that's kind of interesting. So that also shows that it's not just what airport you're going to and what airline, but also where you're coming from as to whether or not you can save some money doing that. Yeah, we had a few readers report that sometimes they'll pick like the hotel across the street to see and it'll be less from the hotel literally across the street, just depending on where you're staying and whatnot. So anyway, I think that's a good tip to keep in mind because there are times when I look at it, I'm like, wow, that seems super pricey. And I haven't tried another airline or a starting point across the street. And now I will when that happens. So good tip there. We appreciate

that from Max Miles points on Instagram and TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about new reasonable redemption values for a couple of hotel chains. So as you probably know, we compute what we call reasonable redemption values for hotel and airline programs. And these are the points at which we think it's reasonable to expect to get this much value or more. With hotels, what we're looking for is really just the median value you get compared to the same hotel's cash rates. And for the past, I don't know, six months or so, we've been using a tool called Condola, which does a great job visit for end users to let you see, you know, which hotels are available for points in a given area versus their cash rates. But they also gave us access behind the scenes to a tool

to see the data, because they scrape data across like all of the hotel's properties. And so it's an awesome data set. And we finally got into the point where we were able to add Wyndham and Hilton to our reasonable redemption values from Gondola's data. And what's happened with those two, well, let me back up, the previous ones we've done, Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, I can't remember what else, were shockingly close, the RVs we computed from Gondell were shockingly close to what we had done manually before. So that gave us both, you know, made us happy that apparently what we were doing before was good, but also gave us confidence in Gondola's data. Windham and Hilton, though, we now have lower our RVs. than we had from what we had done manually. Wyndham dropped the most from 1.01,

so essentially one cent per point value, to 0.7 with the gondola data. If you look at, yeah, big difference. If you look at the 75th percentile, so medians are 50th percentiles, but if you look at the 75 percentile, you're up to 0.9 with Wyndham. So it's not that hard to cherry pick

and get close to 1.1. cent per point. And at the 90th percentile, you get 1.15. There's a lot of variability in the value you get with Wyndham points across properties. The minimum we found through Gondell was 0.24, so that's awful. But the max was 3.87, which is really terrific. It varied by brands, too. So some of the brands with the better value for your point were Dulce, Wyndham, and Ramada. At the lower end of value were Baymont, Days Inn, and Super 8, and something called Fenn. So, real quick, before we go on to talk about Hilton, Nick, does this change anything about how you would think about the Wyndham?

I know you have the Wyndham business earner card, which gets like 8X at gas stations and 5X for utilities. Does this change anything about what you think about the card, how you use it? I've filled up my tank with the Wyndham card every time this week and will tomorrow as well. No, it doesn't really. So in my opinion, so I generally collect miles and points to be able to get experiences that either I couldn't otherwise have or wouldn't spend the money on. And so I'm generally looking for those sort of outsized opportunities to get great value out of my miles and points anyway. I'm not usually collecting miles and points to use them on stays that would be affordable

for me, for instance. So, you know, there are times when I will stay in a property that cost $75 or $100 a night or $125. And those are things that I'm willing to pay in that range. And whatever that range is for you is going to vary from person to person, wildly, I'm sure. But I'm generally not collecting miles to pay for those less expensive hotel stays. I'm collecting them so that when I wanted to stay in Manhattan yesterday, I wouldn't have to pay a Manhattan cash rate, which is ironic because I did. But I found a good one, though. I found one that was not bad. So anyway, so I generally tend to look for opportunities to use them for more than one cent anyway. And you still have Vicasa and Gondola's data is not accounting for the

ability to book vacation rentals like Vakasa vacation rentals through Wyndham. And while Club Wyndham presumably is included in there, again, it's that's one of those situations where at Club Wyndham properties, which are like condo style properties usually and at Vakasa properties, it's usually very easy to get north of one cent per point and then in larger cities like new york for instance easy to get more than one cent per point windham surprisingly has some properties across europe that also can be a pretty good value and those are the situations where i'm generally looking to use windham points anyway so no this doesn't really affect how i look at them at all because i'm not often using them for like a days in anyway you know somebody mentioned the super eight and bozeman i'm

to keep that in mind for the future because Bozeman hotel prices are pretty expensive and somebody mentioned that the Super 8 was pretty nice there. But most often, I'm not using my points for those days. So I'm not terribly concerned about this change. Yeah. Yeah, same. Okay, let's move on to Hilton. Now, the reason it took us so long to add Hilton from Gondola data is they didn't previously have the SLH as part of their data set. And we thought it was important for that to be included. And what we found was that, so our old RV was 0.48 cents per point. So basically half a cent per point value was our median when we did a manual search. With gondola's data, though, you're at 0.41. So it's quite a bit down from before. And one big thing that changes there is before when

Hilton points were for sale at half a cent each, we could pretty much say to people, like, you know, when people ask if that's a good deal, I mean, obviously it's a good deal if you have, if you have a use in mind where you're getting better than half a cent per point value. But previously, we could say, well, you know, you're not going to, you're probably going to come out at worst, like about even. And so, and you have a good chance of doing better. But, but now, you know if the if the average more like if the median is more like 0.41 which is got what conval sees I think you know I think I'm back to you really actually have to know what you're going to do with the points before you buy that I wouldn't say yeah you're probably

going to do well with it you might not okay anyway the if you're cherry picking awards it doesn't get as much better as Wyndham does so the 75th percentile you have a point cents per point value and at the 90th percentile 0.63. So that's pretty good, but it's not like, like Wyndham at the 90th percentile was, you know, um, one point one five. Anyway, a lot more. But anyway, it's hard to to do the math in your head because you really have to think of it as a, as a percentage increase over the median and that's hard to do. Minimum. Point one nine, maximum one point two What we have are, we also have, with Hilton, some brands have higher RVs than the median. The brand's Luxor, LXR, and SLH are both higher than the median, but not really dramatically.

So especially SLH only came to 0.5 median. So, you know, it's not a shockingly high number there. At the low end, below the median, you have Hilton Grand Vacations really standing out. with a very, very low RRV. So don't use your points for Hilton Grand Vacations or don't expect to get good value that way, but, you know, do use them. As always, you're more likely to get better value per point at the more luxury properties, I think.

Yeah, and this doesn't really surprise me, this change here, just my anecdotal experience lately looking at hotels. I've really been unpleasantly surprised at how poor value. you I'm seeing from my Hilton points for the most part. So it's unfortunate. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I've seen the same thing, especially like, you know, I've been using Gondel a lot when I'm searching within a city or town to see what, um, what hotels have the best point values. And it's so rare for Hilton to sort to the top. They just have the sort of average value in generally. And anyway. Yep. So yeah. Yeah. And I have a hard time parting with 80,000.

Hilton points for like a Hampton Inn or a Hilton Garden in. I'm happy to stay at a Hampton Inn or a Hilton Garden in. But 80,000 Hilton points seems like, you know, awfully expensive for a limited service property, you know. So I'm, yeah, I've not been particularly, especially when cash prices don't support that, you know. Right. Cash prices are relatively low. It's, it's too bad. So anyway, that's, uh, that's news that didn't, didn't shock us. Let's get into this week's main event. Main event time, Marriott's rumored business cards. So tell us about this, Nick. I think there were some surveys that went out that suggest that American Express and Marriott are looking to overhaul their business card lineup.

Is that right? That's the word on the street. So the word on the street, the rumors are that there are going to be three MX business cards, and we'll talk about them in a minute. Again, this is on the MX side because AMX can issue business cards, Chase cannot. So you're not going to see similar cards to these on the Chase. side. These are going to be MX cards. So all of these have a base earning rate of two points per dollar spent to Marriott points per dollar spent. So based on our RVs, that's a return of about one and a half percent on your everyday spend. So these are not great choices for everyday spend just

for that. You get six X on your Marriott spend, which again, according per our reasonable redemption value, it's worth about four and a half percent back. So it's all right on your Marriott hotel spend. it's not the best necessarily but it's not the best you can do but it's not that bad yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then three or four x on different categories so those three or four x categories you're looking at 2.25 or 3% back which again in those categories is like probably not the best but also not terrible it's somewhere in between yeah yeah all right so three different cards i guess let's start with the first card the card that currently exists the mx bonvoy business card right now the annual fee is $125

but word on the street is that that's going to go up to $150. So you're going to see a $25 increase in the annual fee. And instead of having an annual 35K free night certificate, you're going to get a twice annual $80 Marriott credit. So there will no longer be an automatic free night certificate on the MX Bonvoy business card. Now, again, I want to reiterate that these are rumored changes based on surveys that they've sent out. So, A, they aren't definitive. We don't know for sure this is going to happen.

and b we have no idea when so don't hurry to cancel your card right now because we have no idea when this is going to actually take effect but but that's the expectation that you're no longer going to get a free night certificate and instead you'll get an $80 marriac credit twice a year so essentially get $160 in marriac credit for 150 you'll still get your 15 elite night credits and you'll get a 10% discount on award redemptions so you get a little bit of a bump there from the 10% discount, what say you about the MX Bonvoy business card? Is this positive change, negative change? What are your thoughts? I think I have a different take than most people will have here. I think a lot of people will be really disappointed if this happens, but I actually look at this

and say, I like it. So the 35K free night certificate that I get currently is fine. I usually do really well with it. But, you know, every now and then, there's this issue of like, I've got one lying around that hasn't been used yet. It's going to expire. How can I use it? And so I search for, you know, a staycation or something where I can use it, which has been nice. I mean, it's kind of nice being forced to do little trips like that. But at the same time, it's, you know, another kind of thing to have to worry about. The twice-annual $80 Marriott credit, depending on how that works, if it's really like for any spend at a Marriott Hotel, I think I stay at Marriott hotels at least twice a year

without even thinking about it. And so as long as I, you know, charge, you know, food or whatever that I spend during that stay to this business card, I think I would get that $160 back, which would more than make up for the annual fee. And what am I getting out of keeping the card? I'm getting that 10% points discount, which if it really works as a discount, not a rebate, then that means that there's going to be some properties that today can't be booked with free night certificates. Like you have an 85K free night certificate and the property you want to stay at is 102,000 points.

So I'm mixing my cards here now because I have multiple Marriott cards. So, you know, some of them offer 85K free night certificate. but you're only allowed to top off up to 15,000 points on top of your free night certificate. So you could use an 85K for a property that costs up to 100,000. If that 10% off happened because I have this business card, suddenly it would drop the price to where I could use my free night certificate, and that would be a big win, I think. So I'm kind of, I can't say I'm excited about it, but I see more positive than negative for me personally with this. What about you? If you think that the 10% discount is either A,

going to make properties bookable that weren't bookable before, or B, that the system is even going to be set up to allow the use of that free night certificate, I got a bridge to sell you. Those places are just going to go up and price 10%. Come on now. There's no way. They're going to take those, they already priced those properties intentionally so that you can't use a free night certificate. You really don't think they're just going to do that again and increase the price. I think this is just going to lead to a point thing. It's going to cover up a little bit of devaluation. I don't know.

Maybe it's the seneca in me, Craig, but I don't see this being a benefit. I think the 10% points discount, yes, it'll mean you spend 10% fewer points than other people. And if you redeem a lot of Marriott points every year, that could be worth more than the 35K certificate was. So you're not wrong to say that this isn't necessarily as bad as people say it is. I think that that specific use case that you called out is super unlikely to work out. We'll see. I would not put my faith in that. Instead, I would say if you generally redeem 350,000 points a year

or more, then you're going to get $35,000, you know, you're going to save $35,000 potentially over what other people are going to have to pay when they just inevitably increase the cost of awards across the board. So I guess that's decent. And yeah, all right, $160 worth of merit for $150,000 is not awful. But at the same time, if I would, offered to sell you $160 in Marriott gift cards for $150 right now, would you like get out of bed for that? Of course not. Of course not. Yeah. So I, but let me, let me react to your, suppose they raise point prices across the board because they know about this 10% points discount on this one specific card. That doesn't change the fact that there's going to be properties that without having

this card would be unbookable with free nights or certificate. and with having the card. So I'm not saying it's overall a good plus for the program. I'm just saying that like, I guess at that point you would need that card to unlock those properties. Maybe, if that works, maybe. The thing is like you already have rooms at properties

that are not the standard room, but cost fewer points in your free night certificate, and you still can't book those for whatever reason. So if they do it that way, then forget it. Yeah, and so my expectation is that you, won't be able to use your free night's certificate in that case. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I'd be happy to be wrong and you'd be right on that. Yeah, no, you're right. If they, if they show it as like a special rate as opposed to the standard rate, then it won't work. And you're right. You're right.

And in that case, I would cancel this card. We'll see what happens one way or the other. I mean, if you've got a lot of Marriott points, like I said, it might might work out. But yeah, and it's not, it's not horrible to get $160 and Marriott credit for $150. And you still get, you still get your 15 elite night credit. So I'll keep it until I have lifetime platinum status. But once I have lifetime platinum status, this card is probably going in the trash. Yeah. And I should I should back up on the, I would cancel it. It really depends on what my plans are to use Marriott points. Because yeah, I mean, I have, I don't remember how many hundreds of thousands right now. And so if I were going to spend the splurge on a big stay, I would want this card in order to make that

big stay cheaper, even if it meant just having the car. for one year before canceling it. Yeah. Right. Right. Totally agree with that. So, yep, that's where we stand on that. I think we're both in agreement, basically.

Yeah. All right. The MX, Mary. Oh, you know what? There was one other thing I wanted to say about that. Actually, now I think about it, you said that you get to that point where you have the 35K cert and you're like, oh, man, this is going to expire. I got to use it.

I feel like the same thing is going to happen with those Marriac credits for me because I do stay at Marriott's more than twice a year, but rarely am I paying the paid rate for it. And I don't all that off. and charge other things to the room. So I think I'm going to end up in that situation, too, where I'm like, well, we've got to get dinner at the hotel tonight because I don't use this $80 credit. I feel like with my wife and I,

we fairly often will, you know, have drinks in the bar or something that would get charged for a room. And so I'm thinking that it's not at all unlikely that I would use this without too much thought. I mean, the thought is that you have to make sure that it's this card that's on the reservation for the automatic checkout or you have to remember it, you know, before checkout to change it.

Yeah, if the computer system's down, you're not going to be able to use it. You're going to be stuck in that situation again. When could that possibly happen? Who knows? Who knows? We've had two computer system down stories just in the show alone. All right. Next up, let's talk about these other cards.

You've got the MX Marriott Bevy business card is the next rumored card to be coming out. So this will be the mid-tier card, similar to the Bevy consumer card. The business card, business version of the Amex Mariet Bevy card, the rumored annual field, be $350. It won't come with an automatic free night certificate like the consumer bevy card. You'll have to spend to get a free night certificate. So you have to spend $25,000 in a calendar year to get a 65K Marriott's a new number. That's a new number.

That's a new one, yeah. 65 is the new 50. The new 50. Yeah, well, if that doesn't tell you that awards are going up in price, I don't know what would. Oh, yeah, right there for sure. Yeah. So anyway, 65K free night certificate, you'll get 20 a little.

late night credits instead of 15 you get 20 with the bevy business one elite night per five thousand dollars spend so you can spend your way to higher levels of status or those various benefits that you get the choice benefits at 50 and 75 k and then one or 50 and 75 nights I should say and then a 120 dollar transit credit so this will be a $10 a month transit credit so presumably for like Uber and Lyft or other forms of public transit I guess and a $10 monthly wireless credit so $120 a year and wireless credits similar to the platinum cards, or the business platinum card, I should say.

So what do you think about the Mariah Bavi business card? Yeah, you know, the, it's interesting that they're moving the certificate value up to 65K. I think the spending requirement is higher. Is that right than the consumer one? I can't remember what the consumer spending requirement is.

I thought it was 25, but maybe it is to get the 50K certificate. I imagine, if that's true, if the spending is the same, that they would also move the consumer one up to 65K, but that remains to be seen. Where things get interesting, I think, is for those chasing elite status who want to, you know, who would value those 20 elite night credits

because business card elite night credits stack with consumer card elite night credits. So as things stand right now, you can get up to 25 elite night credits on the consumer side with a Bonvoy Brilliant card. And now with this card, that would add, 20 more plus, however many you earn from spend. So if you spend the 25K per calendar year in order to earn your 65K certificate, which if you had this card, I don't know why you'd have this card if you're not planning to do that.

So let's just say you're going to do that. Then that's five more elite night credit. So you're starting, so you're sort of each year getting 50 elite nights with that combination before any stays count on top of it. So I would think earning, you know, titanium status, 75-night status would be pretty easy. You could pick your 50-night choice benefit. You could pick five elite nights. So you only need 20 more nights at Marriott hotels to get to 75-night status.

So for those that are really interested in that, that's a path forward. But overall, I don't see anything compelling enough about this card to be excited about it. Yeah. So what do you think about the 65K free nights? after 25K spend? Is that a good return on your spend? Is that worth going for? Because like you said, that's sort of the marquee benefit here, that and the ability to spend towards elite nights. You said yourself that you shouldn't probably consider this card if you're not going to do the 25K spend. Is it a good return, though? No. Well, so, all right, you know, what it does is if you are sure

you're going to use it and you would have used points otherwise, then you could look at it as being more than 2x extra on your 25K spend. So remember the base earning rate is two points per dollar. So you think it is four point something points per dollar on the first 25K spend, as long as you use that, again, with all those caveats. But, you know, honestly, if I'm looking to spend my way to a hotel certificate, I'm looking, I'd be looking at Hilton where you can spend 15K on the surpass card and get a free night certificate that's uncapped.

anywhere or 30k I think on the aspire you could I believe you could do 15k on the surpass then upgrade to the spire and and do another 15k is you have two certificates that way so there's a lot more you could do on the Hilton side I yeah I'm not excited about this it's not I'm not saying it's bad it's just it's I find it very uninspiring yep I would tend to agree with you on all of that I will mention by the way that you are right about the consumer bevy card only requires 15K and spent to get a 50 50K certificate. So I think

without doing the math completely, that's a pretty similar ratio with the 65K cert for 25K spent. But anyway, yeah, you know, I think that like you said, you could kind of look at it as giving decent return on spend, but when you consider that you have

to pay $350 a year for the card, then I, it's not compelling enough. It's not enough return because it's costing you quite a bit to get that. So, yeah, I'm not a, you know, if you use $120 transit credit and the $120 wireless credit, it may not sting as much, but I'm not terribly excited about this either. I think at $350 is just too expensive for me to get wildly excited.

I think it could fit for those chasing elite status, high levels of elite status, like you said. Yeah. I'm not going to rush out for it. You got to remember, too. We're coming from perspective of people who have earned, like, free night certificates over time and seeing how often they're difficult to use for top value. So you get the 65K certificate. You're allowed to top off up to 15,000 points.

That means it's good for up to an 80,000 points day. How many times are you going to be looking at a higher-end property or almost any property in New York City and seeing that the price is over 80,000 points? And then you'll just be like, I can't even use it. And that's extremely frustrating. So I would always, if the choice, if you could get points instead of free night, even if it's less points, I'll take the less points. Yeah, and I think there was a brilliant comparison, see what I did there, with the Hilton card, because you get an uncapped free night certificate for less spend, you know, with the Hilton surpass card.

So, and obviously it's a business card and surpasses a consumer card, blah, blah, blah. But I think it's a good point of comparison that Hilton is better for if you want to spend your way to a free night certificate. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. And with a similar footprint to Marriott, right? Maybe not quite the same, but pretty close. Usually if there's a Marriott, there's probably a Hilt nearby too. All right.

And then finally, drum roll please, the rumored MX Bonvoy Brilliant Business card. They like their bees. The MX Bonvoy Brilliant Business will have a brilliant-ish annual fee. I don't know if we should call it Brilliant. $695 a year. Oh, man, another one of those. big annual fees here. $6.95 a year comes with platinum status, just like the Consumer Brilliant

Card and 85K Free Night Certificate on Card Anniversary. Again, similar structure to the Consumer Brilliant card. An annual choice award with $60,000 in spend, then you can choose to get 50,000 points, five nightly upgrade awards, an 85K free night certificate, or $1,000 off of a Marriott Bonvoy branded bed, if you want to buy one of those. Same 25 Elite Night credits as the Consumer Brilliant. one elite night per 5K spend, a twice annual $80 Marriac credit. Those things are a little bit different than what you get on the consumer version.

And then the $120 transit that's $10 a month, $10 a month wireless credit, priority pass, global entry, pre-check. So stuff that you would expect on a $695 annual fee card, right? Yeah. Yeah. So my take on this, it's kind of similar to what I said about the Bevi business. I think this is interested for those, interesting for those who are chasing, elite status. I mean, this one gets you five more elite nights over the bevy. So if you had both

the consumer and the business, brilliant cards, that's a huge amount of annual fees. And you'd have platinum status twice, which doesn't mean anything. But what you'd also have is you'd start each year automatically with 50 elite night credits and then an extra elite night for every $5,000 spend. So, you know, it's certainly, again, interesting. If, if, if, if, if, you know, if, if, if, If you're chasing elite status, those who, also it's interesting, if you want a business card and you don't have the brilliant card and you just want platinum status and that's all you want, then it's interesting for that point of view too. But this is a lot to spend on a card that has benefits, you know, like an 85K free night award, which we've talked about limitations on these free night certificates. It has these pittily $10 per month credits that can be hard to use. use, they are apparently going to do away with the $25 monthly dining credit that the consumer

card has and instead have this twice annual $80 Marriott credit. So that's a lot less total potential value, although I kind of like that it's not broken up monthly. So I don't know. I'm, I don't know. So if you're, if you said, yeah, I'm one of those people that's really interested in elite status with Marriott and so it's worth it to me to get both of these brilliant cards. I think you should step back and ask yourself, how valuable is Bonvoy elite status really? Having platinum status at certain properties, there's no question. It gives you a lot of value, but you get that with just one of these cards. Spending your, or, you know, getting up to titanium status gets you some extra stuff. Not a lot, but it does give you united silver and aeroplane

silver or plan 25k or whatever it's called uh status so there's something there but it's is it worth an extra 695 a year even even given whatever credits you get back for it for it all it i i find it hard to imagine that situation personally yeah i agree with you that having both brilliant cards is i'd have a hard time justifying it too there's just not not brilliant no i think it's not a brilliant play for most people to get both of them now but i think if you're going to get one of them. And if the consumer card doesn't change at all, I don't know. I mean, this might not be a terrible trade because that twice annual $80 Marriott credit that I already said, you know, I'm going to end up having to buy dinner at a Marriott that I didn't necessarily plan to maybe. But, you know,

if you're somebody like Reich, who's like, well, I usually get a drink at the bar or I pay for quite a few Marriott stays every year, that 160 is probably relatively easy to use. and if you can make use of the wireless and transit credits, then that's $400 in credits, valued at whatever you think you should value your $400 in credits at. But whenever you figure out there, you subtract that out of the $695 annual fee. And it's probably not a bad trade for an annual 85K free night certificate

and platinum status. I totally agree with Greg that it's hard to use the 85K free night shirts in some situations, but it's also not hard to get four or five hundred, worth of value out of that certificate, you know, and certainly you can get well more than that. So I think the combination there is actually not terrible and you get the platinum status so you get breakfast. So I think that this one to me is a little bit, I like this more than having to spend $25,000 on a $350 card in order to get a 65K free night certificate. The bevy cards

just don't make much sense to me. So I would rather do this and get the automatic platinum status so I get breakfast and lounge access where that applies. But I think that Greg's point about stepping back for a second and saying, what is this all really worth is an important one. Marriott has not excited me in recent years in a lot of ways. I've stated enough of them. And it's not the properties themselves. It's the program that has not excited me between having to pay resort fees or destination fees anywhere I want to use a free night certificate. It's going to cost me something for that. The parking fees are going to cost me something. And then breakfast is technically only for two people, whereas I've been able to get breakfast

for all four at Hyatt properties in my family. We're having to pay for breakfast for two people at whatever the hotel restaurant price is when we stay at Marriott properties now. It's just not as valuable to me as it was before we had kids anyway. So I'm less enthused about Marriott these days than I once was. And I'm heading towards Lifetime Platinum and then I'll be done with the cards, I think. I do feel like I need to defend. There are individual properties that are very generous with elite benefits.

I stayed at one in the Buffalo area, the Rikert House, which is a really nice hotel, and invited family members who live in the area to breakfast and did not expect for them to be comped at all. So we had a huge table full of people. They comp the whole thing. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. That's incredible.

Well, and Marriott has some properties like that, right? But that's not a Marriott thing. That's a great hotel. Exactly. It's doing a great job. It's certainly not Marriott telling anybody to be generous or to treat elites. Well, it doesn't seem to matter to Marriott at all. Yeah.

And when hotels are called out for not even adhering to the base level of the terms and conditions, Marriott doesn't do anything about it anymore. They should at least try to stop them or whatever. that they don't seem to even be putting in any effort anymore. Right, right, which is definitely disappointing for Marriott enthusiasts. So like I said, I think the card could make sense if you just want one brilliant card and you want it to be a business card, you don't want to get the consumer card that'll add to your 524 account. Well, then, yeah, of course, obviously get the business one.

And it's not necessarily a bad deal if you know you'll get good value out of the 85K start every year and you can use the credits on this. I'm glad that the Marriott credit isn't a monthly thing. and I'm glad that it's not full of too many monthly credits. Two of them is two more than I want, but it's like four fewer than I might expect the way things have been going. So anyway, there you have it.

That's our comprehensive review. It aren't even out yet. You've got it. And I'm going to just reiterate what Nick already said a few times, which is that this is all based on surveys. We don't know if any of this is going to happen. And so all of our reactions, everything we told you is based on the possibility

that what they wrote in these surveys is going to come to light. Yep. Okay. Very good. Let's move on to this week's question of the week, which is hotel credit card related. So it fits right in. So Kim writes in and says, I listen to your show all the time.

I don't have a current hotel credit card yet. I've been looking to get one, but I can't decide which one to go with with all the programs out there. In you guys' opinion, which one would be the best hotel branded card to go with? I.H.G. Hyatt, Marriott, or Hilton, and why? Any feedback would be a pretty

Appreciate it. Thank you, Kim. So we talked all about these rumored business cards that aren't even out yet. So I would say these probably don't even count, right? Out of all of the various hotel credit cards out there, there are tons of them. If somebody said, I want to get one hotel credit card, what would that one be? It's so hard because we really need to know so much more about you, your travel habits, what you're interested in in terms of like, do you care about elite status? Do you care about super luxury hotels? Do you care? You know, where you more likely say at low-end hotels. I mean, there's so much we would need to know to really give a good recommendation. But I'm going to give a recommendation anyway, which is to say that I think there is one card on the market that where its value seems to far exceed its annual fee, even though its annual fee is quite high, is a Hilton Aspire card, which will give you Hilton Diamond status. I'll give you tons of opportunities for credits to more than make up for the annual fee, and it will give you an uncap. free night certificate every year at any Hilton property. Yeah, I think that that is probably the best recommendation.

Like Greg said, it's kind of like saying, I'm looking to eat dinner in the United States today. Do you have any recommendations for a restaurant? And it's like, it depends on where you are, what kind of food you like, or what price point. Like there's so many variables, Kim, that it's impossible to give you a perfect answer. But that's as close to a perfect answer as there's going to be probably. the second best I might give you would be the Hilton's surpass card. And it's kind of crazy because we both talked earlier in this show about how we've not seen great value out of Hilton points lately.

And so it's not that we love Hilton points. The reason I would say maybe the surpass card is because it offers somewhat decent bonus categories in categories that you're likely to be spending money anyway. And so if you don't have another card that offers a better return on your guess, station spend or U.S. supermarket spend, et cetera, then the surpass card might be a good natural fit for your spending habits and give you access to a free night certificate with the 15K spend every year. If you aren't interested in going after the super expensive, you know, I say super expensive. In today's market, it's not even super expensive. It's just expensive,

the aspire card. If the $550 annual fee on the aspire card turns you off, then look at the surpass card. I think that's a decent value for the price still gives you Hilton gold status. and Hilton's are everywhere. And so, you know, it's... Yeah, but honestly, I mean, I could make up a story why an IHG card would be the best for you, why the Hyatt card would be best for you, why the particular merit cards. So, gosh, there is no single right answer. We just did our best to give a really good answer that should apply to many people, I guess.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. And we should caveat that with the fact that Greg and I both have lots of hotel credit cards. so you know we've got a bunch so picking one guess which is the one hotel credit card that i don't have yeah the one that you just recommend it which is crazy i will probably upgrade i will probably upgrade to it soon but i haven't yet there you go there you have it all right well if you 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 frequent myler dot com slash subscribe because that's frequent myler dot com slash subscribe join our email list you can follow us on all the various social media you can join our frequent

Insider's Facebook group where you can ask questions like this one and get a whole bunch of different answers from different people who will recommend all of their hotel cards to you, Kim. So you can ask there and get lots of different answers and feedback anytime you have a question. Speaking of questions, 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 a giant mailbag, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.

If you love travel, you'll love Winging It Travel podcast. Every Monday I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicegate.com.