Frequent Miler on the Air - New Marriott Cards are Coming (Probably) | Ep164 | 8-20-22

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

1:05 Giant Mailbag: How to find and book awards on Virgin Atlantic's website https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIh2Bosgas8&lc=Ugw-T8OXIc04QG7G0cp4AaABAg 3:41 3 Cards, 3 Continents, 1 update https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-2022-team-challenge-3-cards-3-continents/ 9:58 Awards we booked this week 1 9:16 Mattress running the numbers: Winc Wines AA Loyalty Point Mileage Run https://frequentmiler.com/stackable-aadvantage-offer-2500-miles-and-4-bottles-of-wine-for-10/ 22:41 What crazy thing....did Marriott Bonvoy do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/rumor-mid-tier-marriott-cards-may-be-coming-next-month/ 26:26 Main Event: New Marriott Cards are Coming (Probably) https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-bonvoy-gregs-bountiful-bevy-of-brilliant-predictions/ 1:07:22 Question of the Week: How can I find Hyatt properties by category or location? https://frequentmiler.com/want-to-see-hyatts-full-footprint-theres-a-map/ Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event. New Marriott cards are coming.

Probably. Maybe. Maybe. Indicators are that there are new Marriott cards coming and that there's going to be big changes, maybe, to the Bonvoy Brilliant card. And of course, all of that was way too long of a title. So we shortened it all to new Marriott cards are coming, probably. Shake your eight ball. You know, it seems likely.

What was that? There was one of those. Oh, right. I can't remember. new marriott cards are coming probably shake your eight ball you know it seems likely right is that what was the there was there's one of those oh right right i can't remember the signs you know signs indicate yeah which might be what marriott's doing it's been a few years i mean for all we know yeah and we'll so we'll get into all the rumors and speculation and our reactions to it in the main event segment. First, of course, we have Giant Mailbag. Today's Giant Mail is via YouTube. So I posted a video, actually with Carrie's help. She did some great editing on the video.

But I made a video of me searching Virgin Atlantic's website for partner awards. So to find, for example, Delta Awards through Virgin Atlantic's website. We know we've talked about that there's sometimes great deals to be had there. And so you'll find on YouTube a video called How to Find and Book Awards on Virgin Atlantic's website. And I just wanted to point out that I threw this together just thinking, some people will be a little bit interested. And since I've learned some nifty tricks for using the glitchy website, that people will find it helpful. But what is amazing, how quickly so many people commented

how much they liked the video. And so just in danger of tooting my own horn here, I'm going to just read some of these very quickly. And I'm just going to transition from one to the next without any stops. Would love to see more of these types of videos. I love videos like this. Very helpful. Keep up the great work. This is beyond fantastic. Thank you. This is huge. Super, super helpful. Thank you so much.. This is beyond fantastic. Thank you. This is huge. Super, super helpful. Thank you so much. Best handholding video. Excellent. More of these, please. Very helpful. Great walkthrough. Thank you. Terrific video. Super helpful. Brilliant.

I was able to find Delta One from Seattle to Amsterdam for 50,000 points plus $6 in fees because of this. And it goes on. And so, yeah, yeah. I just loved the reactions. Thank you, everybody who took the time to comment. It means a lot to me and it means a lot to us because it tells us that this is the type of thing we probably should be doing more of. Absolutely. And it's useful to us when you comment to let us know that, you know, because like Greg said, then we know what it is you want to see more of. Then YouTube also knows that you want to see more of it. And so when we post the next one, they're more likely to make sure that you see that or people who need to see it, see it.

So thank you for commenting and thanks for letting us know. And good job, Greg. Nicely done with that. I feel like there's a lot of people that find this stuff confusing in general. And goodness knows the Virgin Atlantic site can be so glitchy that if you only tried once or twice, you may have missed all sorts of the neat tricks that Greg was able to put together. Right, right. All right. Great.

So more of that type of thing coming, hopefully. So next up, we've got three cards, three continents, one update. Because I believe that Steven has no update for this week. And I think I don't have an update this week either. Not that I recall over the last seven days. So I think we're down to just Greg updating this week. All right. So three continents, three cards, three continents is our challenge where we're taking the welcome bonuses from three credit cards and each individually.

We're building a three continent amazing trip out of it. And in the end, our audience will vote for who won, who created the best trip out of three welcome bonuses. And that's all going to kick off in mid-September. But for now, we're finishing up our plans. And my update is exactly that. I'm in the process now of basically battening down the hatches. So I'm going through all the things, like what are the little pieces? The flights are booked, the hotels are booked. What are are the little pieces? The flights are booked, the hotels are booked. What are all the little pieces like which countries am I visiting require visas and do I need to apply in advance? And if so, do so. What are the COVID entry requirements? I made sure that I could enter all the countries, but I also need to sometimes fill out health forms and other things. So I've been busily doing that

kind of thing. And I did though today, like I recorded all the cash rates for all the hotels I booked and none of the individual ones are going to, you know, blow people's minds as far as how much value I got. But, but altogether, I'm going to be, you know, getting more than $2,500 worth of hotel stays out of this trip. And that's based on like the best available member rate of the, you know, for each hotel for the nights that we're staying. So I think that's pretty good. With, if, there was originally a itinerary that would bring me to Southern Spain. And in that one, there was a hotel I had booked for two nights where the going rate at the time was around $1,500 a night. Wow. Wow. So it could have been a lot more. So it could have been a lot more, but, but I have to say that that was somehow artificially inflated. Like there must be some kind of event going on because none of the nights like before or after it were like that expensive

at that same hotel. And so don't look up what's going on. So you won't even know what you missed. All right. Yeah. I don't want to know. You don't want to know. Right. Well, and, and the planning part of it, I think is such a huge piece because I kind of made it sound like I didn't do anything this week. And I said, I didn't have any updates because I don't have a specific thing that I did that I can update you on. I spent a lot of hours reading through like what I can see and do in different places. And yeah, so there's a lot of that type of prep work. It's not glamorous or interesting necessarily, but, um, and, and a couple of special pieces that may come together, but again, I don't have enough, uh, confirms yet

to give a true update on any of that, but, but this is the fun part. Yeah. How about selecting seats? So I haven't done that. I haven't done that. You haven't done that yet. Okay. I've now selected seats on every single flight, me and my travel partner. So we're sitting together on all the flights and yeah, we're good to go. And for those who missed it, I did publish a post on how to, how to select seats when you book with one airline miles, a flight that's flown on another, because it's not always obvious how to do that. No, it isn't. And you know, actually it's funny because I didn't mention this to you, but, but I was trying to select seats. Like I booked something a while back and I went to select seats and the seat map told me right away that this was not what I expected it to be.

And so I was immediately disappointed and like filled with dread that, did I just mess everything up and planning around something that wasn't going to work out the way I expected. So I had a moment of that and I didn't select seats. And then I've since learned that there's a lot of equipment swappage going on. And so it's probably just a glitch. What I saw is not going to be what it is in the end, but we'll see. So anyway, yeah, I have not, that kind of discouraged me from looking at any of the other seats. Hopefully you won't be flying like 15 hours on a regional jet.

I hope not. So, so yeah, we, uh, but I, you know, and the other thing is that, so I told Greg this, but not everybody else, when I booked my air Canada award ticket, I booked it on a mix of different carriers. And the first time I booked it, I changed it. If you remember that update was several weeks ago. So the first time I booked it, the agent, as soon as it was all done, said, okay, let me go through and give you all of the confirmation numbers. Because as Greg mentioned in his post this week, sometimes the confirmation number for an individual airline is different. Now, sometimes there's ways to work around that by going to this airline or that airline's website. And he gave lots of good information in the post

about how you can do that. But the thing that I found interesting was that the agent said, oh, well, this airline works on this system and that airline works on that system. So she was going through and she was like, oh, this one works on the same system as us, but this one's on whatever it is. And I don't remember the name. Somebody who's in the travel agency thing probably knows what that all means, but they were like, oh, they're on this system. So she had to give me the individual confirmation numbers. So she was able to tell me which ones would work with the Air Canada numbers and which ones wouldn't. And then of course, when I changed it, I forgot to ask the second agent for those new confirmation numbers for the individual airlines. And part of

the problem was when I went to go select seats the first time around, it was weird. I pull up the whole confirmation on one airline's website and it said some segments were an economy. I went back to my confirmation. I was like, no, everything shows in business. And when I went to a different website to look at it, it was showed up in business. And so it gave me a moment of panic the first time around. So I haven't even looked the second time. So maybe next week, my update will be that I had a heart attack. I hope not. Wow. So that wraps up our three cards, three continents, three updates. Getting excited, though.

The trip is coming soon. So we're getting excited about that. All right. Next up, awards we booked this week. So let's see. I think you have hopefully an update about what Stephen booked because I know what he booked, but I don't know a lot about it. Maybe you know more about it. Let's talk about it. a sort of some sort of marketing group of a lot of independent hotels, as far as I can tell. But they, I think they curate like nicer hotels and they provide some like free champagne or

something when for any guests who book through Mr. and Mrs. Smith, something like that. Anyway, we've known about this partnership for a while, but to my knowledge, none of us on the FM team have booked any of these properties yet. Stephen now has, and he's there now. He's in Cornwall, England, which I don't know if you're familiar with. I know the name. That's about it. Okay. It's Southeast England.

It's sort of a giant peninsula into the ocean. So you have lots and lots of ocean side towns that go all around Cornwall. I mean, it's a really long distance. This is where the Southwest Coast path is that I had talked about in a previous episode about hiking part of that. And I'm pretty sure it goes right past where Stephen is now, which is nowhere near where I was, by the way, because the whole thing is something like 500 miles long. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. My goodness. So anyway, it looks pretty cool though, right? It looks beautiful. So he showed pictures, beautiful pictures of this property. And it even has like a little movie theater inside of it. So that's really unique. And what's sort of noteworthy is just that, and I assumed it was

possible to book these with free night certificates, but I didn't know that for a fact, but he booked one night with a free night certificate from IHG and two nights with IHG points. So it just sort of proves that this partnership, which we knew existed and knew could be done, is actually in practice, does work. I will tell you from my experience, though, at looking for these properties through IHG's website, it's really hit or miss finding ones that will accept points. And I think part of the issue is not that they don't accept points, but that they only accept them for certain rooms. And so if that room sold out, then you can't book with points. And often it might only, these are often very small properties. So the chance of

finding one in some places with available rooms to book with points can be really tricky. Anyway, he's at the St. Paul's Hotel. When Greg says hit or miss, keep in mind that a good batting average in Major League Baseball is like three out of 10, right? And it's not necessarily a good batting average. There's a little bit more miss than hit, I think, on the Mr. and Mrs. I haven't seen one of them available yet in my searches. I'm sure that they are. It's just unlucky, like Greg said. Yeah. And I think it depends a lot on where you're looking.

So they tend to have a lot more of them in certain places. And England is one of the places where I've seen a number of them and have seen availability with points. I've been looking in New Zealand and really struggling to find much of anything. I found one that was available for 179,000 points a night, which a little steep. Yeah. It's a little rich in my blood. IHG. Yeah.

So I might not book that one, but we'll see. All right. So move. Go ahead. Go ahead. Did you have something more about that? Well,

only when you mentioned the 179,000, then I made me realize I should, I'm going to interject with my, what I booked this week because it's IHG also. And then we'll hop into yours. So, so also on the IHG train of thought, I recently bought points because IHG had them on sale for half a cent each, like they frequently, frequently do. And I should have bought more because I, and I knew it at the time I was like, I don't know if I'm buying enough. And actually, even my wife said, should we buy more? And I said, you know what? They're on sale for half a cent each all the time. I'll just buy more the next time if I use these up. And then, of course, twice in the last, I don't know, week or so, two weeks maybe,

IHG has run incredible flash sales. At least we think. I don't know if they're glitches or flash sales or what, but all of a sudden tons of properties and typically expensive cities are charging way fewer points than normal. Not so few points that it's like, obviously a mistake, but few enough points that you're like, obviously, wow. So for instance, I booked a couple of nights in Paris at a property that was the going rate was 350 euros a night. That was the fully prepaid non-refundable rate. The refundable rate was more than 400 euros a night. And I booked it for 25,000 IHG points a night. So I had just bought those points for $125 per night. So huge discount over the going rate. So that was great. And not the only place I saw that. I saw rooms like that in other cities. I checked a bunch of

big cities, expensive cities I focused on because I figured those are places where you get great value. New York City had a bunch of them that were 20 or 25,000 points a night. And again, if you've looked at rates in New York City lately, you know that that's a great deal because cash rates have been really high in New York, even at properties that historically have been pretty cheap in lower times. So anyway, great deals all across the world I found, but it was only available for like a couple of hours each time. So you really have to kind of keep an eye out for that. And we didn't get that one spit out fast enough this time around. So

hopefully next time we will so that we get an alert out. But if you see that, if you see IHD flash sale, stop what you're doing because there are some deals that are worth it. Definitely. And if you have existing bookings, it just shows how important it is to keep rechecking the prices because you could save a lot of points potentially if you happen upon one of these flash sales or whatever. It's almost like their point pricing system is kind of a roller coaster

that just randomly dips now and then. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. So watch out for those dips. Hang on tight. All right. So that's Steven and me. What about you?

What have you booked this week? Yeah. So a while ago, I had booked a Qantas business class, a word flight from Sydney to the US. So it was Sydney, Australia to Dallas. And so my intent all along, it was to see if I could add on an award flight from New Zealand to Sydney at the beginning of the flight, and then at the end, a flight from Dallas to Detroit, which is the airport close to me. I searched for a word space between New Zealand and Sydney and

did not find it, but there was a word space from Dallas to Detroit. So I called American and just updated the ticket and they were able to tag that on with no additional fee. And that's because they still have zone-based award pricing where it's a fixed rate from the South Pacific to North America. And so it's great that they didn't have to reprice the award or try to find new availability on Qantas because they wouldn't have found it. And so I basically just wanted to point that out for anyone who, you know, when you see these great deals, like you see availability on a flight that's usually not available like Qantas business class. And if you snag it and you use airline miles like Americans, that you can do the sort of thing I'm talking about. You could later on make changes and not even have to pay more. Yeah, that's great. And I'm glad you brought that up and I'm glad that worked out because

I just recently, we reported a great award availability on Fiji Airways. And so I booked both my family of four and a couple other family members on that on Fiji Airways, both from Los Angeles and San Francisco. And of course, we live on the East Coast in New York. I didn't book the flights across the country because I didn't know if maybe we'll want to go out to L.A. a few days early and visit some family. But I know now and I thought, but I know now from what you said that the ones that I booked through American Airlines, at the very least, I can call later and add those legs probably from New York to California.

And that availability will be easier to find, at least in economy. I may not find it in business class, but even if I only find it in economy, that's better than paying for those flights. So good to know I might be able to do that. I figured I could do that with American. I hope that I will also be able to do that with Alaska. And that's why I just booked the flight that I absolutely needed and figured we'll figure out the rest later on. Yeah. You know, with Alaska, it's going to be a little trickier for you. I think they would let you do it, but they will only let you fly Alaska itself to LA. So I think that would mean going through Seattle, most likely. I don't know if they have any directs across the country. I think they have from New York to Los Angeles and Alaska. If they do, then yeah, then you're golden.

Yep. All right. So anyway, so there we go. Our three awards, or rather the awards we booked this week, that out of the way, I think next up should be Mattress Running the Numbers. And this week for Mattress Running the Numbers, we're going to mileage run a little bit or loyalty point run.

I'm excited to have this back in the show because at the beginning of the year, I feel like it took off. It was like, you know, we were on fire with our American Airlines loyalty points. It was like, man, we're going to burn down the house here. We're going to get all the, you know, the loyalty points we can really fast.

And then we kind of ran out of gas for a while and we slowed down. But this week we got one coming back here that I am going to do. I haven't done it yet. I need to do it before anything changes do. I haven't done it yet. I need to do it before anything changes here. I need to hop on it.

So what's the deal and are you doing it? Yeah. So the deal is Wink Wine. You know, I never heard of Wink before this, but W-I-N-C. If you are lucky enough to have a Simply Miles account with Wink Wine, uh, showing up as an offer in there, that'll give you, I think it's a thousand American Airlines miles for a purchase of $30 or more. And if you also have a city merchant offer, uh, for Wink Wines, that'll give you $20 back on a purchase of $30 or more. And then you can shop through the American Airlines shopping portal to Wink Wine to get

1,500 miles. So between the shopping portal and Simply Miles, that's a total of 2,500 American Airlines miles and $20 back from city for a $30 purchase. And they have this special deal where you could get four bottles of wine for 30 bucks, basically. And so read the post for more details, but that's the deal. So your net $10, you get 2,500 American Airlines miles, which includes of course, 2,500 loyalty points, which will get you towards American Airlines elite status. Yeah. And that's great. I mean, the 2,500 miles, even if you only value American Airlines miles at a penny each, and you can certainly do much better than that, but even if you only value them in a penny a piece, that's $25 worth of miles that you can use for $10. So already you're making a pretty good trade there.

And then if you also value the loyalty points, which certainly I do because I'm working my way towards status here. So if you do, then great. You'll have some of those, too, to get you a little bit closer to elite status and a few bottles of wine on top of that. So now I don't know if the wine is any good. My expectations wouldn't be super high. I have four bottles of wine for 10 bucks, but Hey, you know, good enough to gift. Uh, so hopefully there's a link like up here for that post, by the way, I'll pop that in there. So hopefully you see it pop up over my head or something. Uh, if not check the description, whether, and I say that obviously podcast listeners can't see over my head right now. So if you're listening in the podcast

or you're watching on YouTube and you don't see something pop up, look in the description, always in the video description, I'll put in relevant links of stuff we talked about. So you can always look at the description and find the links there. Yeah, very good. And one thing to note is that Wink does not deliver to all states in the US. Michigan, my home state, being one of the places they don't deliver to. So I would like to do this deal. Whether I do it or not will depend on who I think would want four bottles of wine that does not live in Michigan. So we'll see. Very good. All right. So that brings us to what crazy thing did Marriott Bonvoy do this week? All right. So the crazy thing ties right into our main event today, which is

the rumors coming out are about these new credit cards and they both start with the letter b so marriott has brought us a bevy of bees uh including the the bonvoy uh bountiful is one of the new cards and the bonvoy bevy is one of the new cards and and that will go along with the current bonvoy and bonvoy bold and bonvoy brilliant and bonvoy boundless i can't even hold it together. Come on, Marriott. Come on. All right. Bevy of Bees does not at all sound appealing to me. All right. I got stung ready once this summer. I'm not looking for a Bevy of Bees, Marriott. Find something new. All right. Find something. Well, they're bringing them. They're bringing them your way. Right. Right. Right. Thanks for that, Marriott. I mean, you know, I just, I look at this and I'm like, what marketing person?

Okay. Marketing on Marriott's end, fine. I can see you want to tie everything together and you like your alliteration. Okay, fine. But I'm really surprised that nobody at either bank, like the people that really have to make the product and sell the product, the people that are have to make the product and sell the product, the people that are intimately familiar with credit cards and the product they're producing. I can't believe that none of the bankers have been like, you know what, maybe we ought to rethink this and come up with a name that people know what it means or can differentiate. Because

I write about this stuff. And right now, off the top of my head, I'm not positive that I could tell you which is which. Isn't it, but, but isn't it obvious to you? If you look at the Bonvoy Bountiful and the Bonvoy Boundless, it's pretty obvious which one would be the better card and, and. Right, right. And there's a bevy of reasons why one of those is clearly better than the other. So yeah, it's not even just better,

but knowing what's different between them. What's different, yeah. It's already hard when you get multiple cards for the average person to follow and remember what's different. And then if you also have a confusing set of names, oh my goodness, who is supposed to keep track of this? Well, think of it this way.

The Bountiful is full of Bount. The Boundless has less Bound. Less Bound. Yeah. So what does the Bevy have? What does the Bevy have? It has lots of similar things. That's brilliant, isn't it? All right. So yeah, I don't get this whole thing. I don't get it at all. I think it's confusing for consumers. And especially when you're going to have different price points too. I can just imagine the average person that is not

intimately familiar with credit cards, right? They just show up at a Marriott and they stay at Marriott's because that's what their company pays for or whatever. And so finally they see a sign and they're like, oh, I'm going to check out one of these credit cards. And so they can't remember what it said exactly. And they look it up and they land on some page. And are they going to know that there are like six different cards and that one only costs you about a hundred bucks a year and one's two 50 and one six, if they land on the six 50 first, are they going to keep looking for anything else? Or they just need to be like, Oh my goodness, the $650. No, thanks. Uh, there's not enough clarity that there's variety there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I could, I imagine if you land

on the expensive card page, there'll be a little. Well, I could, I imagine if you land on the expensive card page, there'll be a little thing saying, do you think this is insane? Try out our a hundred dollar card instead. Right. Right. It's bound to hell. They'll say that all with, with the letter B at the beginning of every word. I'm not sure how. Yes. I don't, I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. Craziness. All right. All right. Let's, let's get into the let's get into the the meat of this now okay right it's time for the main event welcome to the main event so so aott cards are coming out this month, including the fact that two new names have been trademarked.

So one is the Chase Bonvoy, Bonvoy, sorry, Bonvoy Bountiful. It's a mouthful. It's a tongue twister. Right, right. I'm surprised. They really should have Barclays or Bank of America offering these. But I think Barclays Bonvoy Bountiful

would sound better than Chase's. But anyway, Chase's Bonvoy Bountiful and Amex is a Bonvoy Bevy. So we have indications that these two new cards are coming. We don't really have any evidence that they're coming in September, but a random commenter on View from the Wing said so. So that's not really much evidence. However, there's some evidence that things are changing

on another card the bonvoy brilliant in september uh september 22nd to be specific and so because of that like it wouldn't surprise me at all if since we know new cards are coming we know there's a change to the existing card that all that will happen roughly the same time. Yeah, I mean, it does. The timing seems to line up with the credit changing also from the $300 to the 25, the annual credit on the brilliant card changing that time. There's just all the moving parts seem to be coming together. The rumors seem to be true. If I could pick any part of the rumors not to be true, it would be the naming convention, just for the record. Because you say Bevy, I'm like, well, you said Bevy lends credibility. And I know you weren't saying that Bevy lends credibility. It's the fact that the card's coming lends credibility, but it's just hard to even take

that seriously because, oh, it doesn't lend credibility. What's a Bevy? I mean, a Bevy is a group of things, isn't it? Yeah, a group of things that share something in common, like the letter B. So when you say the miracle, it's true. That's it. That's what I'm going to ask here. Like a bevy of what? A bevy of Bs. That's exactly like you said.

So clearly, clearly that's what it is. So the three things we know is that there's a card that's trademarked called the Bonvoy Bountiful. There's a card that's trademarked called the Bonvoy Bevy. And that the Bonvoy Brilliant card is changing its $300 rebate as of September 22nd from the current rebate, which is $300 back when you spend at a Marriott hotel. Two, they're changing it to $25 monthly dining credit, meaning you use your card at any restaurant and they'll rebate up to $25 each month that you do so. That is important thing to know as a fact we i mean that's that's information right from marriott that that's happening september 22nd it's important thing to know as a fact because it goes back to all these rumors about changes expected with the bonvoy brilliant card brilliant

right now is the 450 amex marriott card and um a year ago we we posted a set of, I don't know if rumors is the right word. It was really a survey that went out with very specific ideas about changes to the card that Marriott was surveying members to find out what do you think about these changes. And they were so specific that we figured it was worth publishing the details of this because usually when they're looking at changes, it's more like, well, what do you think of if we do this or this other thing or this other thing? But this was a whole set of very specific things and it didn't have other choices. It was more like just here it all is. And one of those things in there was that they would change the $300 credit to the dining

credit exactly as they've promised to do on September 22nd. So suddenly, all of this information we know about how the Bonvoy Brilliant card may be changing, it seems more likely now than before. Would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it definitely seems to make sense. Everything seems to line up. So yeah, that seems to be a sign of things to come. And I was disappointed when they talked about changing that to a dining credit. And I think some people will be big fans of that, but others will find that harder to use because you got to do it each month. You

got to remember to take the card out, blah, blah, blah. So I think I had gained hope that we weren't going to see that for quite a long time because they sent out the survey and then there was crickets about that for a long time. But then the news came that yes, indeed, they're changing that. So it makes it kind of hard to believe or hard to imagine that there aren't going to be other changes also. And so it seems a lot more, I don't know, a lot more likely that we'll see something very similar to what was rumored. Right. So let's now describe what the brilliant card is going to turn into, assuming all of this is true. And then we'll come back to the new cards and say, here's what we think those new cards are going to look like. So now I think it's important to just mention one more time. This is what we assume is going to happen based on the previous rumors and the fact that

this kind of ties those rumors together. So we don't know. So if you have one of these cards, don't be like, oh my goodness, this is what's happening and call him X and complain and say, Greg, the frequent miler said, blah, blah, blah. I had nothing to do with that. I was just sitting here nodding my head along with him. We don't know yet. It's still rumors at this point, but we think it's probably good. Good point. Except for the dining credits. Except for the dining credits. You can call and complain about that if you want. Please do. It's not going to do you any good. They're going to tell you, I'll go buy a bit of better butter with your dining credit because they're like their beast.

I love it. Okay. Bonvoy Brilliant Card. That's currently $450 a year. If all this is true, it's going to go up to $650 a year. So $200 more. Currently, every year upon renewing the card, you get a 50K certificate, meaning a free night certificate that's good for a hotel night that costs up to 50,000 points, or you could use it for a hotel night that's up to 65,000 points by adding up to 15,000 of your own points to the certificate to book, for example, a 65,000 point night. But that's going to change to an 85 K certificate. So that would be bookable up to a hundred K if you throw on 15,000 points. So really nice place for that, right? I mean, that's really, really nice. Probably really, really nice as things stand now, most of the,

you know, very top, most luxurious hotels are available at 100,000 points, kind of worst case. But there are some that are above that already. And we do expect more to go above that next year when Marriott takes some of the gloves off of the, if you remember when they got rid of award charts, they capped most of their portfolio at the old peak pricing rates. But there was no promise to go beyond 2022 with those rates. So what you're telling me is that the gloves are off right around the time when you're going to get your renewal 85K certificate. That's right. Just making sure I understood that. All right.

Thanks. Thanks, Mariette. I still think you'll be able to get some really, really nice properties with these certificates. I'm sure. We already discussed the $25 per month dining credit. Currently, you get automatic gold status with a brilliant card and the rumor is that it will be automatic platinum status now so the extra two hundred dollars is getting you an actual uh usable status like like status that has some value um now some

people are going to argue with that comment because there are a lot of Marriott hotels that don't do a good job of delivering value for your elite status. But in general, a lot of them are supposed to provide free breakfast. A lot of them are supposed to provide free lounge access. A lot of 4 p.m. guaranteed late checkout. There are some real tangible benefits for platinum status that you will get at a lot of Marriott properties. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot too. It's not just like one or two. A lot of Marriott properties, you can get those

and they can really add up. Breakfast at a nice resort can certainly add up to be a lot of value, well worth the extra couple hundred dollars a year if you're going to stay at least once a year at a nice resort that will have breakfast for you. And when I say nice resort, you're not going to get breakfast at a Ritz Carlton, but you will at a St. Regis. I mean, so there are some very nice places where you can do really well with that benefit. That's absolutely true. And you could easily, if you think about that, this card has

gone up by 200 over the previous price if you thought it was worth having at the previous price the platinum says alone could be worth that extra 200 never even mind that the certificate becomes much more valuable for sure um the other thing that that is there is um instead of getting 15 elite knights credit each year supposedly supposedly you'll be getting 25. So that means to the extent that you are seeking a higher level of status than platinum, or to the extent that you're working your way towards lifetime platinum status, either way, those 25 knights will be in your account each year and you can use them towards status.

Presumably, you'll continue to be able to also hold a business Marriott card, which would give you another 15 nights. So you'd be starting every year with that combination with 40 elite nights. More than halfway to titanium, right? More than halfway to titanium, which requires 75 nights each year. So you'd be well on your way towards titanium status, which would only be necessary if you're not going to spend $50,000 on the card each year. Because it has a few bonuses when you spend $50,000. So one is you get a second 85K certificate.

So that's potentially very valuable. And then you also can choose 50,000 points. So basically, let's pretend you spend exactly $50,000 on this card. It normally earns two points per dollar, assuming that it has the same earning rate as it does today, which is the expectation. It earns two points per dollar for assuming that it has the same earning rate as it does today, which is the expectation. It earns two points per dollar for most spend by getting another 50,000 points when you're done with your 50K spend that changes the average to three points per dollar. So that's not bad.

Suddenly it's like in range of where you might actually want to put your spend. And then throwing in the 85K free night certificate suddenly makes it like, yeah, if I had the ability to do $50,000 spend, it might be the best card to do that on in my arsenal of cards where I might consider spending that much. So that's worth considering. It is because so now you'd be looking at your anniversary free night certificate, your extra 85,000 point certificate, and almost enough points to book two more nights at 85,000 points. If you found an 85,000 point property, I mean, four nights at that level of a hotel each year could be worth putting that kind of spent on the card. Yeah. Or even another way of looking at it is that that's three nights at a hundred K a night property. True. So that's, and that's a lot. I mean, that's, you know, those, those hundred K

a night properties are probably often going for, you know, $1,500 a night or more. If you were paying cash. Certainly more than a thousand. And even if it was only a thousand, that's $3,000 in value for 50 K spend. That's pretty good. So, you know, and certainly if it's $3,000 in value for 50K spend, that's pretty good. So certainly if it's a $1,500 or $2,000 a night place. Now, of course I say that, and if you weren't actually going to spend a thousand or $1,500, you shouldn't value it that much, but you also probably do value it more than like just a little bit. Yeah. Well said. Okay. And then the final piece of this brilliant rumor is that with 75K spend, you get titanium status. So if you're already spending 50K, that means just an additional 25K will get you titanium status. Titanium status gives you what? It gives you-

An extra choice benefit? An extra, not if you don't- Oh, no, not if you don't get it through nights. No, that's right. If you don't achieve it through nights. No, that's right. That's right. Only if you achieve it through nights do you get another choice benefit.

So really what it comes down to is- Get you breakfast sitting next to the person with platinum status. It does get you that. There's a few miscellaneous things like certain properties like Ritz hotels will count you as eligible for a upgrade to a suite if you have titanium status, but not platinum status. Okay. There's no guarantee you'll get upgraded to a suite, but it's just you'll theoretically be considered. It's in the cards for you. There are miscellaneous hotels like the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London that will let you into their club with titanium status, but not platinum status. But the feature I kind of like the most, even though I haven't used it very much,

is United Silver Elite status. Yeah, that can be a really good benefit because it's going to end up getting you a free check bag, which means you could go ahead and book your basic economy ticket, save yourself a few bucks and still get a free check bag. Or you book yourself a ticket, get yourself a free seat selection and maybe an upgrade on a regular economy ticket anyway. Steven Pepper just recently got upgraded to a domestic first class flight. I think he was going to Chicago or Newark or something like that. But courtesy of his United Silver, I also got an upgrade to first class on a flight once already with United Silver. I ended up having to cancel a flight, but within 24 hours of departure before I had canceled it, I had gotten upgraded. So, so that, and I got upgraded from Newark to Detroit.

It was a flight I actually booked with my Avianca LifeMiles, but put my United number in there and boom, I got the upgrade. So, so that can be pretty nice. If you're not going to fly enough for elite status anyway, it gives you a little something. It's not going to be far more than what you'd get with a credit card, but you're not going to get an upgrade or a seat selection with your credit card benefits. So that's kind of nice to have. So it's a nice to have. I wouldn't spend $25,000 for it personally. Yeah. That's the hard part because the card's not offering other bonuses with that extra $25,000 spend. So it's going to be a tough decision for cardholders,

I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would ask whether to go beyond the 50K. I'd be more likely to say, okay, if you like Marriott enough to spend $50,000 a year on the credit card, you're going to be happy enough with those free nights days, then get yourself the business card also, assuming that the elite nights stack and you'll have 40 elite nights and then just do 35 nights a year. I mean, I feel like it should be easy enough to make up the gap there on the 35 nights a year or get pretty close to it. If you like Marriott enough to have this $650 card and spend $50,000 on it, then hopefully you're spending enough nights that you should be able to get pretty close to the titanium status without spending another 25K, I would think. Yeah, that's well thought out.

All right. Should we go to the new cards now? Let's do it. And speculate away. And I would tell you the first one to talk about if I could only remember the names. So Bonvoy Bountiful and Bonvoy Bevy from Chase and Amex. I think they're going to be basically the same. That's the first part of my guess is that the rumor is that

these are going to be sort of mid-tier in between the high-end Brilliant card and the lower-end $95-ish cards that are in the Bonvoy portfolio. So we're speculating that these are going to be, or I am, that these are going to cost around $250 a year. And that the free night certificate that each one offers will be a 50K free night certificate. So if you remember, the Brilliant card will no longer have a 50K, it'll have the 85K. So there's a hole in the middle there for the 50K. And also remember that the $95-ish cards give a 35K free night. So you have to have something offering 50K, so why not these cards? And you know what, just for you, Nick, I'm going to throw in a $10 monthly

dining credit that these cards will offer you. Because we know you want to carry around two cards to restaurants once a month. Once a month. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I was looking for. I actually read my mind yet again. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not a big fan of that. Obviously you can sense from my lack of enthusiasm as I say that mostly because it's not a card you're going to want to probably, or I assume it's likely not going to be a card you're going to want to generally use for dining because you probably have something else in your wallet that's more rewarding for dining spend. And, or there's lots of other limited time promotions that pop around on

other cards for dining spend that probably it's not going to be your ideal pick all the time. So then you got to remember to rotate it in and that's always annoying. But that said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, no, let me not go out on a limb and predict this. Let me say, I hope I would like to see when you made this, you said, I made a statement a minute ago. You said there has to be a 50 K certificate somewhere. And I'm going to say, well, no, there doesn't have to be any more because now there's no award chart. So Marriott, here's your chance. Give us a 60 K cert,

make it a little bit more useful, you know, toss things up a little bit, you know, put these properties on their toes, make it a different certificate of some sort. It doesn't have to be a 50 K, make it a 60 K, make it a 65 K. So we can add 15,000 points and get an even better property out of the deal. I don't have to be a 50K, make it a 60K, make it a 65K. So we can add 15,000 points and get an even better property out of the deal. I don't think that's going to happen, but I would like to see it happen. Come on, make it a 55,000 point. Add a little something here, Marriott, because we think these cards are going to have what? We're guessing like a $250 annual

fee, right? Right, right. So for 250 bucks, give me a little bit more, Marriott. Come on, a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty confident about the 50K, I guess. You're probably right. I'm going to, you know, bet heavily on that one.

The dining credit, I wouldn't be surprised if it's something even less useful than a dining credit to the extent't be surprised if it's something even less useful than a dining credit to the extent that there are any monthly credits. But that one is totally made up on my part. Whereas the other pieces of it, there were some rumors swirling about those. I could certainly see them adding a soul cycle credit or something like that, Equinox credit or something even less useful. So I think those things are equally possible here. Although we say that with some skepticism and Amex has been doing

a great job with the coupon book model. I feel like they've been adding some things that are decent for a lot of people. Now we've joked about how Walmart plus on the platinum card doesn't seem like a logical fit and it still doesn't seem like a logical fit to me. But now that that has a paramount plus access also with it, that suddenly becomes probably more interesting to people who have the platinum card and are signing up for it. So it seems to be certainly does to me, pulling some things like that together lately. So, I mean, good job on that. So maybe, maybe Amex will come up with a useful credit here. Chase, on the other hand, which Chase cards have monthly credits?

So, you know, with Chase, they kind of come and go, right? So, you know, Chase had some Peloton digital access credits for a while. And I think those might be done now. And then there's, I don't know, different. Yeah. There's been like the go puff thing and,

you know, yeah. I haven't even gotten to work. I don't even know what you have to do for that. I tried and placed an order or two and get any credit. And I was like, ah, whatever.

Right. Right. Go puff in my life. So, but yeah, so that really hasn't been their style. So I wonder if they'll do something different. I would love to see Chase, if you're listening, something that's not a monthly credit, but

an actual credit you use all at once. That'd be great. Chase would be great. Oh, that, that would be great. That would be great. And that was one of the things, you know, we originally, um, gave them props for when they, when they made the bad decision of increasing the Sapphire Reserve card from 450 to 550.

They, at the time, threw in this like $60 DoorDash credit and it could be used all at once at that time. And so that was at least like, wow, that's like a real useful credit because you do one or two deliveries and you're done. But then since then, we've seen mostly like monthly type of credits coming out of Chase. So I'd be surprised. I would love for it to be, you know, one lump sum type of thing if they could. Call up your friends at DoorDash, Chase.

Call up your friends at DoorDash. Come on. I'd take that. Let's do that one again. Yeah. Or Uber Eats, whatever. Although I guess maybe Amex has Uber hooked up in their partnership. I don't know. Who knows? I don't know. Let's see who has those merchant offers. So Uber must be willing to talk.

So give them a call. Come on, Chase. So I'd be happy to see something like that. Right. Let me take a little tangent here and say that when you have these dining credits, so like when Amex says, with the current Bonvoy Brilliant card changing to the dining credits on September 22nd, one of the things you can do if you don't want to take the card out each month is each month buy dining gift cards from one of the apps that passes along the, the, the merchant code so that it looks like a dining, um, charge. So flues, for example, there's a flu, an app called flues, where if you buy like an Uber eats gift card or a door dash gift card, our grub hub gift card, all of those code as dining and Amex will then reimburse them. So you could just go online or go on your phone app, buy a $25 Uber Eats, let's say, gift card every month and be done. And that's how you can get your credit value. All right. That makes me want to ask a question that's going you can get your credit value. All right. You know, that makes me want to ask a question that's going to take us back a step. So at the risk of confusing anybody, I want

to back up for a quick second to the brilliant card and the rumored changes that we've talked about just a minute ago, because that monthly dining credit component is coming on that card. But correct me if I'm wrong. If you were to sign up for that card now, if you were to apply for that card now and get approved now, you would get the $300 annual Marriott credit that you'd be able to use, I believe now before at least before September 22nd, and then also get the $25 monthly credit starting in September. So essentially you can end up with $600 in credits, $300 in Marriott credits. And if you do what Greg just described there with the dining credits, end up with $300 in dining credits plus the welcome bonus.

So that begs the question, is now the time to apply for the Brilliant card or should you be hanging out waiting to see what happens with a new welcome bonus if and when the annual fee goes up and they introduce two brand new cards because of course you know that marriott makes it really hard to know which cards you're eligible for and not eligible for and if you sign up for that brilliant card today i would bet you're not going to be able to get the two new cards that come out the bevy and the betty butters bit of Butters, Bit of Butter, whatever it is. Yeah, that one, right. So, yeah. So, what to do? I mean, do you sign up now and figure 600 bucks plus the points? I mean, that's pretty good. I don't know. And one other possibility,

you know, Amex will often sort of grandfather you into that annual fee for a year. So it's possible, I'm not saying it's definite, but it's possible that if you get the Bonvoy Brilliant card now before September 22nd, that you'll definitely only pay $450 for the first year annual fee, but it's possible that the second year annual fee also will be grandfathered in at 450. And so that's sort of like an extra $200 bonus as well, assuming the rumors come true. So yeah, so you've got a lot of incentive to do it ahead of time. But as Nick said, it could ruin your chances for being able to get a bevy of other bountiful cards. But also it might actually, the brilliant card itself might have a 200,000 point bonus or five free 85K nights or, you know, something that's so good that you'll feel bad. You missed it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's tough. Cause I don't think anybody can really predict

it. I mean, we don't really know. It certainly seems, I guess the thing that I look at is I'm like, well, it looks very highly likely that this is going to happen. And so assuming that the increase in annual fee does indeed happen, which seems like a pretty strong possibility, and we don't have any inside information on that. So there's no hint going on. It's just it seems likely to us. So if that happens, then I know you stand to come out well ahead if you are applying now, right? Because the $600 and the points and the $200, if you end up getting lucky with the annual fee thing, that all adds up to nice. That's all a good bonus.

It might not be as good as what you can get, but the bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? if Betty Botter didn't make a better bonus for like, you know, a bit of better butter didn't make her bonus better than, uh, you know, you may lose out. Right. So I don't, I don't know. I would, I'd be more tempted to jump sooner rather than later. And I say that, I'm not going to apply for the brilliant myself, but if I were on the fence, that might push me over the edge. And I say that with a lot of trepidation because I feel like Amex in particular has really blown us away with some great bonuses over the last couple of years. So while I'm saying I'd probably like to have the bonus that I know will be really good right now,

there's definitely part of me that thinks Amex might really surprise us. Like when Greg said 585k certificates, that sounds ridiculous, but I don't know that Amex is not going to be ridiculous, right? I mean, they've been pretty ridiculous this last couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That said, as I think about it, it's been Chase who's been coming out with those offers with the multiple free nights certificates. That's true. You're right. I think Amex has done that to date. That's not to say they won't. That's true. I'm guessing maybe something more along the lines of 200,000 points, which we haven't, I don't think, seen in a Marriott card to date. And maybe also they'll throw in titanium status the first year

as a temporary benefit. We'll see. All right. I think that's a'll see. All right. I think that's a reasonable guess. All right. So some interesting stuff there. So we didn't talk anything about speculation about the bonuses on those $250 cards. You got any idea, any speculation, any guesses as to what they're going to hold out there

to make those cards appealing, but not quite as appealing as the more expensive card? What are they going to all right i'm guessing that they're gonna do something different to to try to differentiate between chase and amex so i'll say going totally on a limb uh amex 150k bonus chase uh 550k certs i don't know that's, that's going to be tough because I can't do three. Cause that would be, that would be a objectively worse bonus than 150 K on, on Amex. Well, and they can't do less than five. I don't think since they've been doing five on the $100 card, right? Like the 95 or 99 or whatever it is. Right. So they've been doing five on that.

They can't do less than 550K certs on a card that presumably is going to cost two and a half times as much. Oh, you know what they could do is they could do 385K certs. They could. Hey, Chase, listen up. Listen up. You're out there, Chase. 385K certs.

That would be interesting. It would be. Then there'll be all this deliberation about which is better, the 150K on Emek's side or 385Ks on Chase's side. And it's not as obvious as it sounds if you're just adding the numbers. Yeah, no, actually, I think that would be a brilliant, see what I did there, guess as to what we might see. I feel like that's actually a really good prediction.

So are you going to be interested in any of these cards? Yeah. Well, so if the Brilliant turns out the way we think, my wife currently has the Brilliant, and I think I would be interested in watching for hopefully the law for some upgrade bonuses. And well, I'm sorry, I don't need to upgrade in that case. It's already brilliant. But I would definitely consider spending the 50K on that one. And then the others, I think the chance of me being eligible for any of them is zero. As you mentioned and as we've talked about before, Marriott has byzantine rules

a bountiful bevy of byzantine um what's a b word for rules rules rules that's what marriott would do go ahead about whether you can qualify for this new card or that new card based on having the other Marriott card and whether you applied for it in the last 90 days or two years or whether you still have it and whether your brother is born under the sign of Aquarius. So- Right, right.

And it is just as easy to understand as that was. So yeah, it's nicely done there, there, Maria. So you won't be eligible as a short version of the story, probably for any of those, because you also need to be under 524, presumably for the chase cards. So even if you were somehow eligible, that would also stand in the way potentially. So yeah, that'll make it kind of tough for a lot of people to even be eligible for these cards. So I don't know, on the other hand, maybe they won't need to be quite as generous. Now you threw out some other predictions there on the $250 cards. One of which you said was a prediction of maybe earning

platinum status with $75,000 annual spend. And I think this is just a prediction, right? This is your guess that that could be one of the benefits of the bevy of bountiful $250 a year cards. So would that be worth spending $75,000? I mean, I look at that and I mean, my answer immediately is, well, why wouldn't she get the brilliant and just spend $50,000? Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. I can't see why anyone would do that. I think that would be a mistake. Unless they throw in additional perks for spend like the Brilliant is expected to. If they don't do that, then I can't see any reason to do that spend. What's going to happen with the Ritz card? Yeah, that's the question, right? So the Ritz card, as it currently stands, is not a card you can sign up for new, but you can if you have or get a Chase Marriott consumer credit card, which there are two on the market of those right now, soon to be three, theoretically.

If you have one of those, you can upgrade to the Ritz card as things stand today. The Ritz card as it stands today is almost identical to the Brilliant card. $450 annual fee. You get a $50K free night certificate every year. You have $300 in credits. That's different, though. The type of credits is different. In the Ritz case, you get airline incidental fees credited back, but it's basically designed to be practically the same card as the Brilliant card. What will happen? Will they change it to be

just like the Brilliant? Will they up the annual fee to $650 and add all the great features that it has? Will they alternatively, the current card as it stands now is not that different from what we're predicting the Bevy and Bountiful card will look like. So will they just force product changes to the Bountiful card will look like so will they just force product changes to the the bountiful card um or will they just leave it as is or i don't know there's probably other options there too but what do you think you know so i don't think that chase will increase the annual fee on the card and the reason i don't think that is because chase has a history of grandfathering people in to whatever it was that they had, whenever it was that they got it. So for instance,

Greg mentioned that the Ritz card has an annual fee of $450, but my Ritz card only has an annual fee of $395 because when I opened it, that was the annual fee. And even when they increased the fee, right, exactly. I'm predicting the future then. So even when they increase the annual fee to 450, mine didn't change. Mine's still 395. So I feel like it's not so likely that they will go and increase people that already have different annual fees on the card to some new level. I just don't think that's Chase's style in general. So no, I mean, if they did, I probably wouldn't complain if it ends up with the same benefits that the brilliant card is rumored to have, but, uh, cause I probably be fine with that. I think so. Uh, I think, and I say, I think I don't really need another $650 card in my, my, my wallet. So maybe I should temper that down a little bit and say, I, I, uh, I might be okay.

Chase. No, let's just leave it alone. But I think it's more likely that they would force product change people than it is that they would increase the annual fee. I think that's probably more likely to come true. I hope it doesn't. I hope they just leave the annual fee and add the benefits, but I can't really imagine that that's going to happen. I don't know you do you have what's your prediction here my prediction is they're just going to leave it alone entirely that instead of it being like the brilliant card it's going to be like these two new cards it's just going to have a higher annual fee but it's also going to have more credits to make up for that so um so it you know it it's been own thing. It'll continue to be its own thing.

That's my prediction. I would absolutely love for it to, to gain the benefits that the brilliant is rumored to have. Um, but, um, you know, my guess is it won't. Yeah. I think that's a reasonable guess. Cause actually when I think about it, I initially, I was thinking, well, if it stays the same, then who would keep it because you're paying paying $450 for what you could get for $250, except not the same because the $300 annual travel credits on the Ritz card are better, objectively better than what you're going to have, I'm sure, on the Bountiful card. So when you take that away and you get a 50K free night certificate for whatever the difference is and fee $150 for most people, not for me, it's a $95 difference.

Super happy with my 50 K start at that price. So that's already great. And then the Ritz card also has all of those travel protections that match the Sapphire reserve. And it's got a priority pass with a free priority pass for each authorized user and unlimited guests. So I really don't want Chase to mess with the Ritz card at all. Leave it alone, Chase. Right, right, right. And I know you really don't want to lose those Ritz Carlton club level access awards, whatever they're called. Let's make a trade, Chase. Take those away and just leave me with the 395 annual fee. I'll be

happy. Give us some additional credits in exchange. Dining credits or anything, because a trade chase take those away and just leave me with the 395 annual fee i'll be happy give us or give us some additional credits and exchange dining credits or anything because as we've um written about before i can't remember we've talked about on the show but those particular benefits of the ritz card are really useless and and um kind of worse and useless because you'll inevitably waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to use it to good value. And you'll find out that you could have just paid for a club level room for less headache than it costs you to find a room that's upgradable. For anybody who's not familiar with the Ritz card. So it comes with an annual 50,000 point free night certificate. But then the other benefit that Greg's referencing is that you get three club upgrades per year

that you can apply to a paid stay of up to seven nights, except that you have to book a paid stay with a certain rate. And it has to be available at that certain rate package, which doesn't necessarily mean at that price, but under that rate package code in order to be able to apply the club upgrade certificate. So you're going to overpay for the room in order to be able to apply the club upgrade certificate. So you're going to overpay for the room in order to be able to use the club upgrade cert. So it's really usually not worth it. I used one one time and it wasn't even a great deal. It was just a slightly better deal that I would have gotten if I had just booked it myself. So yeah, so it's a

generally useless benefit on the Ritz card. And people always are looking, I newcomers to the Ritz card, I think are always like, Oh, how do I use these? And can I use them? And looking for ways, and like Greg said,

you know, just waste time. It's not worth it. They're not worth it. Right. Right. Right. You know,

it'd be cool if they change them to sweet night awards that are specific to Ritz Carlton property. Cause the, the regular Marriott sweet night awards cannot be used at Ritz properties. So give, give us Ritz card holders, something extra for when cannot be used at Ritz properties. So give us Ritz card holders something extra for when we're at a Ritz property and I'll take that. That'd be nice. I don't see it happening, but that'd be nice. No, no. I don't think Chase is going to make any, unless they make it like the Brilliant,

I don't think they're going to make any changes to the Ritz card. And I doubt they're going to make it like the Brilliant. Their grandfather grandfather cards usually kick around forever with whatever the grandfather benefits are. Right. I think the only time I can think of that, I remember that they made a big change on an old dead card was the Fairmont card. When they forced product change people to like a Sapphire preferred from the Fairmont card.

Right. It's the only thing I can ever remember that they, they did one of those, like where it just went away altogether. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um, well, cause they lost the partnership with Fairmont, I think. So they, they had no choice. I believe. Right. Yeah. Right. I think there's still like the old continental cards, you know, like still kicking around somewhere before the pre-united days. So, so anyway, uh, I we'll see what happens there. I'm interested in seeing what happens.

We'll probably find out in September. So stay tuned. Hopefully it's not going to all come out while Greg and Steven and I are on our three cards, three continents trip and are unable. Oh, it is so definitely going to do exactly that. We're going to be struggling to get the news out. Yeah, that's 100%. Yeah, that's going to be struggling to get the news out. Yeah. That's, that's a hundred percent. Yeah. That's going to be difficult. All right. So it just crossed my mind. I was like, oh man, that's going to be right smack in the middle of everything. All right. So anyway, that's, I think that wraps us up though for the main event. All right. That's the main event. Okay. So that brings us, I think too, this week's question of the week. And so the question of

the week was timely, I thought, because it goes with something that I wrote up at some point earlier this week. I'm trying to pull it back up. There is a new promotion out to get double elite knights at some Hyatt properties. And so the question is going to be about that, but that's not actually what it's going to be about. We'll get there in a second. Amy asked in our Frequent Miler Insiders, Hyatt's new double nights promo might be the best way to earn those extra elite nights to maintain global status. Is there any way to search for category one properties on the Hyatt website?

So the first thing I need to address is that the new double nights promotion, double nights only applies to the inclusive collection properties. So it's basically a bunch of all inclusives, mostly in the Caribbean and Mexico that are involved in that inclusive collection at this point. And so there's nothing that's going to be anywhere near category one. Those are all, I think, I think they're all category five and up. There might be a category four in there, but mostly they're 20,000 points and up. So the double elite night portion of the latest bonus journeys promotion is only useful if you were already interested, I think, in going to an all-inclusive property during the window. So that part of it, Amy, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there are no category ones to qualify for double elite nights. However, Amy's question about,

is there a way to search for category one properties that is relevant because a yes there is and b I published a post this week because Brandt and our frequent miler insiders had posted that there is a nap view that I had somehow missed did you know this existed by the way Craig I did I I use it all the time I did not know this existed I was so surprised when you published are you kidding me? I had no idea. Well, no, I knew that some people must have known it was there, but I didn't. And several people in Frequent Miler Insiders clearly didn't either. So, and seemed that, you know, at least some of the people that read the post didn't either. So I knew that there was a list.

I've always used the list. So if you just search for Hyatt Hotels by category, something like that, or you search for the post, that'll be linked in the description of this video. But if you're looking for it in the future and you can't remember, you look that up and it'll bring you to a page that lists all the Hyatt properties by category. And you can sort, so you can out of a dropdown menu. You mean by location, right? And then you... No, well, I always look by category first because then that's how I Google it, but maybe you can do it by location. I've always gotten to it by looking by location and they have it sorted by different parts of the world and then you can filter by category. And you can filter by both.

So I didn't know about your piece. Well, you can filter by either one. You can filter by location. If you want to look in a specific part of the world, you can filter by category to look at just the category ones or category twos or category threes. And then of course, what I didn't know is there's a little link in the top right corner that was kind of buried in the graphic there that I never would have noticed for a map view. So you can scroll around the map and look at where you can find all the various Hyatt properties around the world. So you've been

using that for years and not letting me know, Greg? Yeah. I mean, I remember when they first added SLH properties to bookable through Marriott and- Through Hyatt. And that the- Through Hyatt. Yeah. Wow. And the website had a way of looking at the map view and that was a great way to find them. And then I, yeah, then I saw, oh, you don't have to

just look at SLH properties this way. You can find them all this way. Yeah. So I think that's a really useful tool. And certainly filtering by category might make sense. I don't know about you, but I'm already looking at potential mattress runs for end of the year if I am getting close enough to elite status, to globalist status, specifically with Hyatt. I've been trying to look for those category one properties, take a look and see what's available off peak, because of course, category one off peak is only 3,500 points per night. So I've been looking at making some reservations for late in the year in case I need just five or 10 or even 20 nights, maybe, because maybe it'll be worth it at 3,500

points a night if I'm within striking distance of getting globalist status or even just 50 nights to get the sweet upgrades that come with 50 nights, because those would be worth something to me too, to do a few extra nights. So using that page to find the category one properties certainly might be useful for those of you looking for those end of the year mattress runs. Yeah, that's a great point. And you may need less of them. If you go into FrequentMiler Insiders, Brandt also posted something about a potential fast tracky sort of a way to requalify for a high globalist status. And so people who currently have globalist status, if you have a concierge, you might be able to reach out and see if you can get on the fast track to requalify.

I haven't done that myself yet. And I think there's probably going to be mixed success on that. But he had posted about potentially a much reduced way. So worth taking a look for that. Oh, definitely. That sounds really interesting. We'll see. All right.

So I think that brings us to the end for this week. I hope you've enjoyed this week's conversation. And if you have, and you'd like to get more in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on all the various social medias, Instagram, and Facebook. We have our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, and you'll want to follow us on Instagram because we've got this three cards, three continents trip coming up really soon here. And we're going to be posting stuff that we're doing during the trip on Instagram. So you want to follow us on Instagram sooner rather than later. We'll of course, talk more about that. And you'll hear about it in the

days before we take off on the trip, but I'm bringing it up now because you'll want to get on there sometime soon so that you get that all figured out. So all of those things out of the way, if you have feedback or questions or stuff for the giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.