Frequent Miler on the Air - Our Favorite Sweet Spot Awards: Awesomeness vs Practicality | Ep120 | 10-16-21

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

1:23 Giant Mailbag 6:04 Mattress running the numbers: Is it worth spending $15K on the JetBlue Plus card to get Mosaic status? https://frequentmiler.com/jetblue-mosaic-status-with-15k-spend-from-10-1-to-12-31/ 10:17 Main Event: Our favorite sweet spot awards -Turkish Hawaii https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-book-united-flights-using-turkish-miles-smiles/ -ANA RTW https://frequentmiler.com/tips-for-booking-anas-round-the-world-award/ -ANA to/from Asia https://frequentmiler.com/ana-mileage-club-sweet-spots/#Asia-2 -ANA Star Alliance to Europe for 88K RT https://frequentmiler.com/ana-mileage-club-sweet-spots/#Europe-2 -ANA First Class booked via Virgin Atlantic https://frequentmiler.com/best-uses-for-virgin-atlantic-points/#North_America_Europe_or_Australia_to_Japan_ANA_First_Class -Ibera 34K biz to Europe https://frequentmiler.com/avios-sweet-spots-for-award-tickets-british-airways-iberia/#Europe_from_34K_one-way_via_Iberia -Flying Blue Promo Rewards https://frequentmiler.com/air-france-klm-flying-blue-sweet-spots-for-award-travel/#Flying_Blue_Promo_Rewards -Virgin Atlantic for flying Air France Premium Economy https://frequentmiler.com/best-uses-for-virgin-atlantic-points/ -Redeeming Marriott points for Alaska miles to/from Asia -Asiana 40K each way to Europe in business or 50K in first class -Choice Privileges for Nordic Choice https://frequentmiler.com/free-hotel-breakfast-dinner-at-nordic-choice-clarion-collection-sweet-spot-spotlight/ Subscribe to 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 Liler on the air starts now. Whoa, what was that? Regular listeners might be a little surprised by what just happened.

That's our new, awesome, I think, intro. Hot off the presses. Hot off brand new this week. It sure is. We hope you like it. And if you're listening instead of watching, I do recommend you hop over to YouTube and just check it out to see if you like the video side of this intro. I know Nick and I really enjoy it. Yeah. A lot of fun. Carrie did a great job with it and a lot of fun putting that all together. So great work there. Fun intro. Hopefully you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy watching it. It's fun. All right. Enough dither dallying. Okay.

It is time to introduce today's main event, our favorite sweet spot awards. We're going to discuss what our favorite sweet spot awards are, and we're going to debate the awesomeness of each one and the practicality of each one. Just because an award is awesome doesn't mean it's all that practical to book. Okay. First, we have a giant mailbag. Okay. The giant mailbag. Drag it out. I've got some giant mail again. This is Peter from YouTube, who was responding to last week's

episode about Chase battling for the middle. And we talked about how the new Hyatt card does not offer anniversary free nights. And he has his sort of an interesting perspective on it, which I have no way of knowing whether Peter's right about this, but it sounds right what he wrote. It sounds right to me. So here we go. He says, I believe Chase does not want to give out free anniversary nights. Background. The Chase anniversary nights with the IHG card used to not have a cap. True story. However, Chase was not happy with the contract and they changed the terms. As it was explained to me, there was a stipulation in the contract that if a hotel was in a sold out situation, they could backcharge Chase for what they could have sold the room for.

This means Chase was getting a backcharge bill for several hundred, if not thousands of dollars. This is particularly true with savvy customers who may not use the Chase IHG hotel card much during the year and basically use it for the Chase anniversary free night to get outsized value. And he says, as a result, Chase renegotiated the contract with IHG, and there's now a cap of 40,000 points per night. The reason I kind of thought this, I found this interesting, and I thought this sounded maybe right, is that I have read before, with multiple hotel programs, when a hotel is

near capacity and someone books that hotel with points, the hotel chain has to reimburse them a lot more than they would normally. And it's maybe tied to the standard hotel rate or whatever. Yeah. I've read the same as opposed to to peanuts if the place is empty, basically. Right. Exactly. If it's less than 90% full, they get almost nothing from the hotel chain. But when it's full, they get a lot. And I can imagine that these free nights that are tied to the credit card are actually on Chase's side to have to pay for it.

I don't know if that's true. But anyway, I found that interesting. Hard to say. I mean, on the one hand, I would think that that's just part of the negotiation, part of the cost for the program and having Chase administer a card for them and bring them a bunch of business. So I definitely could see it not being true. I mean, I could imagine a world in which that wouldn't be true, but it's not so far-fetched. Like you said that, you know, I don't know that that could make some sense. And, and, you know, the chase rep at the Hyatt event, when I asked about not having a free night, had said to me basically that they didn't want to offer a card where people were just going to use

it for the free night certificate and put it in the sock drawer all year long. And he didn't actually use the word sock drawer, but whatever he said was very clear that he understood that plenty of bloggers say, okay, you get this card and you keep it just for this annual benefit. He almost exactly said that, talking about bloggers writing about cards that way. Exactly. Which cards are best for that? The best sock drawer cards, we have posts on that. Right, exactly. And he seemed acutely aware of that. And Chase did not want to offer that. They wanted a card that people were going to use.

And obviously, when we look at it, we say, okay, well, you're not going to use it because the Hyatt card is so compelling. You're going to use it because you want elite status or the rebate and blah, blah, blah. We talked about that all last week. But I think it's interesting strategy, right? That they made something that, yeah, they're going to force you to spend on it and it's not going to be the best spending card ever, but they're hoping that the carrot that they hang out there is enough and they don't think. And I mean, truthfully, they're right. The free night certificate doesn't encourage you to spend

unless there's a spending requirement attached to it. And they do have that on the personal Hyatt card. So yeah, I mean, that seems like a reasonable idea, even if it's just a conspiracy theory that's wrong. It's a pretty reasonable one. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so it's interesting to think about. Yeah. All right. So then no crazy thing this week. It's not necessarily that nothing crazy happened this week. No. We didn't think of anything crazy. We had a lot to say on the main event, so we figured, all right, we'll trim back on the crazy thing this week.

We'll give everybody a pass. But we will do Mattress Running the Numbers. Okay. Mattress Running the Numbers this week. Go ahead. It's really sort of more like Mileage Running the the numbers because it's about an airline, right? But it's not about flying to get status. We're talking about we can now spend $15,000 on the JetBlue Plus card to get their top tier and only tier elite status with just $15,000 spend between now and the end of the year. Interesting. Very interesting. Is it a good deal? I mean, I don't know. Obviously,

that's a good question for mattress running the numbers, so to speak, or mileage running the numbers. So $15,000 spend. I mean, if you're the type of person who looks at that amount and says, oh, well, I could earn three new credit card bonuses with that spend or four or whatever. Yes, absolutely. So if you would be doing that spend instead of new credit card signup bonuses, I think it'd be hard to justify. But if you're able to do that along with other bonuses, I mean, I don't know, is it worth it? Are the benefits of mosaic status that good? Of course, top tier airline status for just $15,000 spent. I mean, that's pretty unprecedented, right? I mean, that's about as easy as it gets. It is. But again, it's their only

tier. And the best feature of mosaic status used to be that you could get free changes on your tickets. But now they extend that to everybody. So it has kind of weak benefits. Kind of weak, yeah. That said, I'm going to argue that someone who has that credit card probably ought to consider it if they can do that spend. And as you said, it won't interfere with earning other sign-up bonuses. So why? I want to knowup bonuses. And the argument is- So why?

Yeah. So I want to know why. Here's the argument is you wrote that one of the benefits when you reach mosaic status is you get 15,000 points as like an elite benefit. You did question whether that would happen with a spend. Let's say it does. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it does. Then basically this card for $15,000 spend is earning a minimum of two points per dollar. The more you do your spend at grocery stores where the card normally earns two points per dollar, you're going to average three points

per dollar because of getting that 15,000 point bonus. That's pretty good. Presumably, if you already have a JetBlue card, it's because you like JetBlue and you'd appreciate getting more points. So I think that's, it's not an amazing offer, but to be able to earn a decent amount on that spend. So it's not really like throwing away that spend. And then you also get the mosaic status. That seems like a good combination to me. It really isn't bad. And I mean, even if you weren't doing it at the grocery store, which you should be, that makes the most sense. But even if you're just doing it at like Simon Mall, for instance, so what, 15 gift cards at $4 a pop, you're talking $60 and gift card cost. And then whatever liquidation, if you're a manufactured spender, I mean, that's pretty

low hanging fruit. It's pretty easy to do. And so if you're, you know, if you're looking at it that way, I think that, yeah, it's probably worth it. Even if you don't get a ton of benefit out of mosaic status, at least for the chance to maybe match it. I mean, that's what I found potentially interesting, maybe match it somewhere else. Although I say that, and the point you made that if you actually have the JetBlue card, you probably just enjoy flying JetBlue. And so, I mean, you know, I, for whatever small benefits you get there, two free check bags. So, you know, an extra check bag, which if you're traveling with a family and you pack heavy and bring a lot of bags, I mean, that certainly can add up pretty quickly. So mean not bad and you can redeem

points for the studio right to to london if you've got mosaic status yeah you have to have mosaic status for that and i mean it looks pretty nice right and don't forget four card holders jet blue points are worth a little bit more because you get a 10 rebate on the uh on the awards so so if you got the card you should probably do it, right? That's the moral of the story. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. It's not going to hurt you to do it. Right, very much.

Yeah, right. Very much, probably. Okay, so then that's Matt just running the numbers. So that brings us to the main event. Main event. Today's main event is our favorite airline, well, our favorite Sweet Spot Awards. And we're going to start with our favorite airline sweet spot awards.

And we're going to take turns introducing a favorite sweet spot award, discuss it and debate the awesomeness versus practicality. Why don't you go first? Well, I think we have to kick it off with Turkish miles and smiles to Hawaii because that's kind of a signature sweet spot that we unearthed. So Turkish miles and smiles charges just 7,500 miles each way in economy class for domestic Star Alliance awards. So that's entirely in one country. So you could fly Air Canada all within Canada or Air China all

within China, et cetera, et cetera. Or of course, you could fly United anywhere in the United States, including to Alaska and Hawaii for 7,500 points one way in economy class or 12,500 in business. And that's not only on non-stops. You can have connections. You can have a couple of connections if you need to. I mean, there's some difficulties there perhaps in terms of connections, depending on how you book, but in terms of the rules for layovers, blah, blah, blah. But at any rate, fantastic, fantastic deal, right? I mean, I booked the nonstop from Newark to Honolulu during the pandemic, which I had to cancel,

but I booked multiple passengers at 12,500 miles one way, you know, a lie flat bed from Newark to Honolulu. Right, crazy. That's absolutely insane. I mean, other programs are charging, I guess, a minimum of 40,000 miles for that one way, but many much more than that, I think. And, okay, so. Great deal.

Amazing deal. The awesomeness factor, one to 10. What do you think? Awesomeness factor? I mean, 10. Awesomeness factor. Come on, 10. I agree.

We don't have to debate it. Okay. 10 out of 10. Done. 10. Done. Done. 10. Done. All right. Practicality factor.

You know, I am going to give this like a higher than Greg. So whatever Greg goes, I'm going to double it. Let's put it that way. I would go six and a half. Really? Six and a half. Wow. All right. See, I'm, I'm like three. Yeah, I know you are. Tell me why. Why are you at three? So first of all, I'm not that interested in flying United

economy to Hawaii. It's a freaking long way from at least where I live. And if I'm going there, I want to fly first class. And United so rarely opens up first class to Hawaii. That alone drops it way down to the impractical level for me. And then the fact that Turkish, if you try to book this online, not only does it not show all available flights online, but it doesn't have a button. It is missing the pay button, the checkout button. If you find the award, there's no button to actually book it. Very true. Very true. There is no button. That drops the practicality. And then if you call, you may or may not get someone who knows what the heck they're doing

and can find it. You have to usually email to get this done. It's all rigmarole. That all those factors together drop it down to a three for me. Three. See, this was one of the things that stood out. And so this is going to save me some time in the post-drost because I can just address this right now.

Let's get it over with. In your post where you talked about the best transfer partners, right? You talked about Turkish and you said, quote, I don't have the patience to jump the hoops necessary to book these awards. What hoops? You have to email somebody.

You have to write an email. And it's like, I gave you the template. All you have to do is insert the airline or the airports rather, and the flight numbers, like the templates I gave you the template. All you have to do is insert the airline or the airports rather, and the flight numbers, like the templates right there in the post. So all you got to do is Google Turkish Airlines ticket office. And there's like literally a dropdown menu where you pick the different offices and you get the email address and just send an email to like 30 offices at once. And who cares if three of them put on hold? Great. So then you get three

holds and you only pay for one of them. All right. All right. I mean, there's not much work there. Fair point. Fair point. If you do it that way, it's not too bad. I mean, people complain and I understand why.

It's not as easy as booking something that you can just click a button online and do. But there's not a lot of work involved there. All right. All right. All right. But you have to give me that the United, uh, first class award space.

Oh, horrible. It is horrible, but who's got great first class award space to Hawaii. I mean, Oh, nobody, nobody does.

So that's not a comparison point. Nobody does. So, so, so I, and I think that a lot of people are obviously willing to fly economy class. Cause if you look at the planes that are flying to Hawaii, there's very few with flatbed seats.

And a lot of them are 737s and things that have like, what, you know, 10 or 12 first class seats and like 100 economy class seats. So the vast majority of people fly economy to Hawaii. All right. All right. Can we negotiate down to a five for the practicality? I'm going to give it a five. No, I'm going to give it a seven. And here's why. All right. Because if we can agree,

he went up lots of people. That's right. Lots of people fly economy to Hawaii. United has great economy class availability. So tons of seats bring the whole family for 7500 people each. And if you don't live in a major airline hub, no big deal.

You can probably get availability on most of those small regional United flights. Turkish should be better. Should be better. Greg should deal. You can probably get availability on most of those small regional United flights. Turkish should be better. Should be better, Greg. Should be higher. Okay. All right. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. All right. Number two. All right. Next one. Your turn. ANA Round the World Awards. They have a distance-based Round the World Award chart,

meaning you could string together a bunch of Star Alliance flights to fly around the world and then they add up all the distances and how far you go determines how much you pay in NA miles. The great thing about it is their business class round the world awards are dirt cheap amazing girls yeah so so depending on how far you go they started around 115 000 miles to go around the world but that's with a pretty straight shot around like more practical around the world is going to cost you about 125 000 miles per person maybe 145 yeah yeah 125 145 are both it's are both very practical if you don't go to the far, far south, like South Africa or Australia or far in South America. If you do go to one of those, you might be looking more like 170,000 round trip, which is still an incredible deal to fly around the world in business class. And you can stop in like eight cities. So as long

as you want, depending availability, like eight cities, 12 segments. So I mean, we're not just flying around for the sake of flying around. You're flying around and stopping in a bunch of places. So it's like a bunch of different trips in one. Yes. Yes. It's just, it's spectacular. So let's talk. I think this is a 10 in awesomeness. Yes. I'm glad you allowed me to give them a 10, even though I gave Turkish a 10, because this deserves the 10. I'm going to give it a, I think a six in practicality. So, so, so, so, so here's the thing. One of the things I hate about ANA is, is you, you can't put awards on hold and you can't the transfers from like American Express, which is the main way we get our things, aren't instant. So when you find an award, you then like maybe you book it, but have to cancel for whatever reason, the darn miles like expire after three years with no course of, you know,

unless there's another major pandemic, no chance of extending those, those miles, except for paying an outrageous amount to extend them. Um, the, the other things that are a little bit impractical is just the nature of around the world trips in itself is how many people have the, the other things that are a little bit impractical is just the nature of around the world trips in itself is how many people have the time to go, you know, really take full advantage of this. Um, and, uh, finally, um, not sure it really goes under practicality, but you have to kind of, if you, if you don't want to spend a lot in cash, you have to know which airlines don't charge a lot in fuel surcharges because ANA is going to pass those along. So you have to be

careful when flying across the Atlantic, avoid Lufthansa and Swiss and that kind of thing. And so all those things to me together drop the practicality down from the top. But make it a higher practicality than emailing Turkish Miles and Smiles to book an award. I'm going to give this a two and a half, Greg. A two and a half because A, those fuel surcharges going to be a bit of a pain if you're building around the world and low practicality for most people. Most people don't have the time, like you said, to be able to build a trip like this. And then you didn't touch on impracticality. You have to find availability that lines up. And when you're booking it around

the world, then you've got to get it within some whatever the period of time you have to travel is. So you're more limited in terms of finding the availability. And then you've got to call and talk to an agent and build it piece by piece, which is not going to be remarkably easier than calling Turkish two or three times to look for availability or sending an email. There's got to be lower practicality than Turkish. And I think it's awesome. I think it's a great sweet spot.

It's something I definitely want to take advantage of. You agreed with the 10, right? For awesomeness. 10 for awesomeness. Easily. Very easily a 10. Two and a half on practicality. Two and a half. I'm going to settle on four. You talked me down to four. Okay. All right. Good.

All right. Let's move on. What's the next one, Nick? And a round trip to Asia. So there's like a plethora of sweet spots in one here. If you go during low season to Japan, you're talking 75,000 miles round trip in business class from the United States to Japan, 85 K if it's regular season, 90 K at peak season, that's 45,000 each way, 90,000 peak season on ANA or any of the star Alliance partners. So you could fly United or EVA or Asiana or whatever it is. So 90,000 round trip to Japan,apan amazing but also the rest of asia too i mean it's 95 000 to china and taiwan and a bunch of different places also and then not that much more about a hundred thousand round trip for most destinations in asia including the indian

subcontinent ana for round trip business class awards whether on ana metal or star alliance partners to asia is a phenomenal value and remember on a round trip you get awards, whether on ANA medal or star Alliance partners to Asia is a phenomenal value. And remember on a round trip, you get a free stopover. So you can even stop somewhere on the way for that. That's amazing. Yep. It is an amazing award. So what, what's your awesomeness factor? You know, I feel like if I give them all a 10 that weakens the value of a 10. But at the same time, I look at it and I say, okay, so even on partners, ANA is charging 90,000 round trip to Japan and United will charge you like 80,000 one way. They're charging either a little bit more or less than United charges one way for a round trip award. How do I not give that a 10? I don't know. I mean, I feel like I feel compelled to give that a 10. Don't you? All right. Well, let's let me get your. Well,

OK, I I don't I'm going to give it a eight. OK. And the reason so the reason is that even though it isn't unquestionably awesome, when you're, you could book for more, but not a lot more with Virgin Atlantic miles. If you're flying ANA to Japan. Only if you're flying nonstop. Yes, that's true. And so you got like what six cities or something like that.

Whereas with ANA, you've got probably a little bit more and you've got all the star alliance options. You can connect on United from somewhere. So I feel like practicality is higher, Craig. But once you get into Star Alliance, the price goes up a little bit. And then it is better than other options, but it's not like... Whoa, whoa.

90,000 round trip to Japan in business class. Now, I know you don't probably have everything memorized, but what is even close to that? Well, there are one world options, right? That are more around 55K one way or something like that. And am I remembering this right? Which one world option? Or 60K one way with- Alaska. You can use Alaska. American 60K each way. So you're talking 120 round trips.

So what, 33% more? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm setting a high bar for a 10. Okay. All right. All right.

So eight for awesomeness. So this is only 33% better than the next best example what's your, um, what's your practicality rating? You can book these online. The ANA website's a bit of a pain. And the big problem is what Greg mentioned earlier, the fact that you have to transfer and wait and wait and hope that the miles get over there in time. So that's the biggest challenge. I think you don't really have to worry about fuel surcharges on most of the partners to Asia. So I practicality, I'm going to give this a seven because it's not particularly hard to book. Um, it's just a little bit of a pain cause you got to wait for the transfer. That's my, my, yeah, I, I was thinking

seven. Also the, the other, the other thing I have to take away from any ANA practicality is not just things I mentioned before, but the requirement of round trip. I can't think of many times that I've been booking international travel and not at least wanted to book separate one ways because I'm trying to do different things. And so the requirement to book round trip is definitely reduces it. You know what, I'm going to drop it to a 6.8 because also ANA technically has the requirement that you can only book for certain family members. So you can't necessarily book for friends unless they happen to be family members. So that's got to drop it a little bit to probably not a ton. Let's just go to a six just for fun. Okay. All right. So I'm going to throw in,

I'm going to throw in a trick though, while,'re here. If you want to book one way using this deal, what you can do is you won't get the full deal, but you get close. You could book, for example, US to Japan in business class and return only as far as Hawaii in economy. And because they charge less, it's still considered round trip. They charge less than economy to Hawaii and you got the economy pricing on that half. It all averages down to a, I can't remember exactly how much,

but still a very good and better than other options award price. So that's how good it is that even booking a throwaway return, you just said is better than using American Airlines. Okay. All right. So I don't know about it. Well, all right. So anyway, next up after ANA to Asia, go ahead. Your turn, I think. Okay. You know what? Just back in one sec. I don't know that we mentioned that when using ANA Miles to fly ANA, you also get better award space than using other Star Alliance Miles to book ANA. So that time booking Star Alliance Awards instead of booking ANA itself. Again, round trip, but we're going to highlight ANA, using ANA miles to fly Star Alliance business class round trip to Europe for only 88,000 miles.

Plus, you get a free stopover. ANA lets you build free stopover into these round trip awards. So how great is that? Very, very good. It's not the best deal to Europe. So for an awesomeness factor, I'm going to give it a seven, I guess. I mean, if you said eight, I wouldn't probably argue. Obviously, all of the sweet spots we're going to talk about are going to be high numbers. Otherwise it wouldn't be on our best sweet spot list. But it's not quite the best price in Europe. When you figure in the stopover, it's very good. I'm going to give it a seven because of some of the practicality issues. There's an additional one we haven't talked about actually. So I'll

come back to that when I do practicality. What do you think on awesomeness? Yeah, I'm thinking seven or eight. I'm in the same ballpark as you. It's excellent, but it's not necessarily the best. And there are other ones that are sort of close-ish, especially, again, the practicality thing is what it's hard to get past some of the practicality issues. Yeah. And it has to be round trip, whereas you could book one way with Turkish if it's not too much work for you, Greg. You could book one way with Turkish for $45,000 each way. So it's about the same price. You don't get the stopover. So you miss out on that piece of it, but you don't have to book round trip then. And you're going to pay fuel surcharges on the same airlines with Turkish. Or of course, obviously, you can pick a program that doesn't have fuel surcharges. And so like Avianca, for instance, and we'll

touch on that maybe a little bit later. But so there are other options that are possibly around the same goodness. Now, one of the practicality things, though, that we didn't mention yet about ANA is the fact, or maybe you did mention, I don't think you did. Did you, did you mention the expiration policy? Cause that's kind of, yeah. Yeah. The mileage expiration policy. I hate that. So, you know, you transfer one of the things I love about booking award flights is that usually cancellation fees aren't like horrible and you get your miles back. Um, and they are with ANA charges, what 3,000, they're cheap. Yeah. You $3,000 more miles to get your miles back. But their miles have a hard expiry after three years. And that starts the clock ticking and you've got to figure out

how to use it before then. Now, I shouldn't complain that much because that's way better than paid tickets where you get credit with the airline back that expires after one year. Right. But I'm still complaining because it's worse than many other airlines policies. It is. Yes. It's not. So practicality wise, we do need to dock ANA a little bit for that.

And by the way, we've been talking all this time. And one of the things we should have mentioned in hindsight, I'm realizing, is who these programs partner with. So ANA, we've been talking all this time. And one of the things we should have mentioned, in hindsight, I'm realizing, is who these programs partner with. So ANA, we've been talking about. And there are membership rewards and Amex membership rewards transfer partners. So the advantage there is that it's really easy to earn a lot of membership rewards points because there are so many cards that earn membership rewards. And then there's like the bananas offers, like the Resi Platinum offer, where you get a ton of points on one single card. And lots of cards with good category bonuses, yada, yada. So it's easy, relatively easy to put together the miles, but yeah, the downside would be expiration policy. Once you've transferred, cause we all know now nowadays we know acutely well that, uh,

plans change. So, right, right. Um, and, and a bit of a, and, and, and the other one that we talked about before was using Turkish miles and smiles to book United flights. And you could transfer from capital one or Citibank one-to-one. So those are, those are good. And my, so practicality on the ANA star Alliance Europe, I would drop it a notch from whatever we've, I don't remember what we, what we've just determined, but I would drop it a notch from Asia because more of the European partners have fuel surcharges. So you're going to Asia with no fuel surcharges to Europe. You're more limited. Good point. All right.

So five or six there in practicality, probably. Yeah. All right. Next up. I think you're up. Oh, next. Are we on ANA again? Is there another ANA one in this list?

One more ANA. But this is flying ANA. This is not using ANA miles. That's true. That's true. It is. So using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly ANA first class. So you can do that.

Amazing, amazing deal here. 60,000 each way in first class from the East Coast of the U.S. to Japan on non-stops. Or what is it? 55,000 each way from the West Coast, right? Right, right. 55,000. Right, right. That's insane.

I mean, first class flights, award flights are usually, international first class award flights are usually so much more expensive than business class that it's out of control. But here we're talking about 55K or 60K one way to Japan, which is cheaper than many programs, many programs charged to go business class one way to Europe, which is much, much closer. Right. I mean, you're talking from New York, you're talking like a 12, 13, charge to go business class one way to Europe, which is much, much closer. Right. I mean, you're talking from New York, you're talking like a 12, 13, 14 hour flight, something like that. So that's an amazing value. That's a lot of hours in the sky in first class and first class on ANA. I mean, ANA is known to not be a slouch in terms of their first class product to begin with and their new first class product.

Looks amazing. Jeff Bullas Wow. I mean, amazing, amazing. And we're talking flights that are regularly a lot of money. Preston Pyshko, Oh my gosh. Yeah. Jeff Bullas Lots and lots of money. We're talking like 10 grand kind of flights. They're like crazy, ridiculous, expensive flights. So that's really a standout value at 60 or 55K, right? Preston Pys. So, yeah.

And you can, you could get Virgin Atlantic miles from almost every transferable currency except for capital one. I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. Not Brex either. Right.

I don't think Brex. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I don't think Brex is the neither, but, but from city chase and, and Amex,

you can transfer to Virgin Atlantic. So really easy to get the miles together. So, okay. What do you rank them? Awesomeness. Awesomeness is a 10 for me. Yeah, you know, I think I'm going to go a nine on awesomeness because of the practicality issues. But that's, why not just dock them on practicality?

Well, I'll dock them there too. It's pretty awesome. Judges, what do the judges say here? It's pretty awesome. We don't have any judges today. What's your practicality? Practicality, I'm going to say six. And the reason for not making it higher, there's a few things. One is finding an A first-class award space is really difficult. That's the main thing. The other thing that brings it down is you can only go nonstop. So you'd have to pick an airport that you could easily position to as your starting point where ANA flies from and flies first class from. And then booking, I mean, you do have to call Virgin Atlantic to book it. I don't see that as a big problem. And I do like that Virgin Atlantic, Miles, they're called Points now. They don't expire. I don't see it as a problem because

in my experience, the agents actually seem to know what they're doing. Preston Pyshko, So you would rather spend 12 minutes on the phone than three minutes writing an email that you send to 30-year-olds. Just trying to confirm. Just trying to confirm. 20 minutes on the phone over three minutes email. Okay, keep going.

Yeah, I relented on the email issue. Preston Pyshko, Keep going. I know you did. I know you did. I'm just making sure that I reconfirm your preferences. I would just say that unlike ANA miles, Virgin Atlantic miles do not expire as long as you have activity in your account every, I can't remember, 12 months or 18 months or whatever. Right.

So that's a good thing. That certainly is a good thing. And in fairness, I'm joking, Greg, about his preference to call rather than send a quick email. But Virgin Atlantic agents are well known to be very competent overall. So for the most part, you can count on getting somebody who's competent, knows what they're doing. And it's a relatively smooth experience calling and booking over the phone. You do have to wait on hold sometimes. I've had to wait on hold more than once. But if you get through to somebody, and sometimes they get through really quickly, and then it's a smooth process. So all right. so i practicality i give it a little low because of the finding first class

availability and having to call yeah that's why because you can't book it online and and i prefer to do stuff online like send an email um i prefer to book or book things online when there's a checkout button um but uh but only dock them a little bit so i don't know where'd you go on practicality on that you said a six i think i I don't know. Where'd you go on practicality on that? You said a six? I think I said six. All right. I'll give you,

yeah, six or seven. Because it's hard to find availability and then you have to call an order. That's the main thing. The finding it is tough. You know, I think it's worth a mention.

Correct me if I'm wrong, that Virgin Atlantic won't charge you too much for a lap infant, whereas many others will. So that's another awesomeness piece to this award. Yeah. And that is a very good point to bring up. And if you are somebody traveling with a lap infant, you should look up my post. If you Google something like frequent miler, six phone calls, six different answers, because I went through calling Virgin Atlantic to book an ANA award and find a price out at a lap infant award anyway on

ANA. And so the short version of the story is that while I just said moments ago that Virgin Atlantic agents are very competent, generally speaking, they are. I called six times in a row and got quoted six different prices for the lap infant fee. So you want to know before you call what it should be and don't overpay. So check out that post and you'll know how much you should pay. And if somebody tells you the wrong price, push back or call again. There you go. All right. So next up. All right. Next up is Iberia. You could use Iberia Avios, which transfer from almost all the transferable points currencies. Or even if you have, I think it's Capital One that doesn't transfer directly to Iberia, you could transfer to British Airways Avios,

and from there move your points to Iberia. You can book Iberia's own business class flight from the US to Europe for as low as 34,000 points one way. That's when they have off-peak award pricing. Which is a large chunk of time. It's not like a couple of days. It's not like the only days you don't want to go. It's actually a pretty big off-peak calendar. Right, right. So 34,000, that's so much lower than anyone else.

It's almost silly. It really is. I mean, we were talking a few moments ago about ANA at $88,000 round trip. And this is one of the reasons why I can't give that a 10 because Iberia at $34,000 is pretty phenomenal. So that's great, especially when you look at the fact that, again, those transatlantic one-way awards would typically cost a couple thousand dollars one way or round trip if you're booking round trip would also cost a couple thousand dollars. It's about the same whether you're flying one way or round trip often because international premium cabins one way can be

quite expensive. But at any rate, 34K is a very good value. Every now and then they put them on sale even better than that. We've seen it at 25.5K at least once a year. I think over the last several years for some period of time, they've offered awards at that price. And then during the pandemic, they dropped to half price for a little bit. And so it was 17,000 points each way. So, uh, so they, they even go on sale from there. And one of the things that I think makes this particularly awesome is that membership rewards so frequently offers transfer bonuses to Avios in normal times anyway, that we often see 30% or 40% transfer bonuses where this will cost you even less than the 34%

each way if you catch one of those transfer bonuses. So it's an awesome sweet spot on its own and it gets awesomer when there are transfer bonuses. So I'm a fan. Yeah. So as far as judging its awesomeness, I'm struggling a little bit here because it's not as aspirational as some of the things we've talked about so far. So it's not like I'm going to be incredibly excited for what I'm going to fly. I mean, not that it's bad. It's still live flat to Europe. That's a good product, but I'm not going to be as excited. So I'm feeling, but on the other hand, I mean, it's as cheap as you can imagine. It's as cheap as many airlines would charge for economy to Europe. So I don't know, seven or eight. Yeah, I agree.

Strong deal. Not exciting. But truthfully, there aren't really, I'm going to say many, and I'm thinking any, airlines that I get excited about flying to Europe. Yeah. Basically, you're going to get a lie-flat seat and probably decent food and okay service and just about everybody. So I don't get really excited about any of the carriers flying Europe. I mean, you could make an argument for, okay, you can fly Emirates first class on certain routes. There's a few first class options that are pretty exciting, but not many. But overall, I don't get excited about that. I get

excited about where I'm going and when I can get a good deal. So I totally agree with your awesomeness factor there. Okay, practicality. Practicality, my impression, I haven't spent much time looking, but my impression is that Iberia does not open a lot of award space in business class. It ebbs and flows. It's not as hard to find as ANA first class, but it's not wide open. Star Alliance is usually pretty easy to find in general. Iberia is not that is pretty limited. And the fact that depending on

where you ultimately want to end up in Europe, you're very likely to have multiple stops involved. So first, for example, from Detroit, which Iberia doesn't serve, I would probably fly to Chicago, let's say, and then Iberia to Madrid and then Madrid to wherever I want to end up. If I was actually going to Madrid, though, it would be a practical way to go. I can't go nonstop to Madrid otherwise. So one stop would be very reasonable. I'm going to say seven. Yeah, I mean, that's probably fair.

And we've only talked about the 34K cause that's the price from the East coast price from the West coast, a little bit higher, I think. And hopefully, you know, because I only think, uh, 50 K is that 52, five, something like that. I don't know off the top of my head. I can't remember. It's also very good from the West coast and they do serve a couple of West coast airports. So yeah, practicality wise, I think this is kind of hampered by the fact that you have

to live in a city that Iberia serves, or you're going to have to book another way to get to that city, which isn't necessarily a bad deal. I mean, domestic flights in the US are not necessarily that unreasonable, probably. So you could probably get to one of their gateways for not very much miles or money, but it is some additional hassle. But don't forget, they also fly some non-stops to Barcelona, I think. So you have a couple of additional options there. Yeah. I mean, practicality, I mean, I'm from New York. So for me, practicality is pretty high because I live about equally distant from New York as I do from Boston.

All right. So then Greg is going to talk about the next one while my throat regulates. There we go. Let's do that. All right. So next up is Flying Blue promo rewards. So Air France Flying Blue is a Sky Team Alliance member. So that means you can use them to fly Delta, KLM, Air France, a bunch of other airlines.

But when using them to fly their own flights, which would be Air France or is KLM included in their Flying Blue promo awards? I'm not even sure. Nick thinks so. And so- Yes, definitely. Okay. Now it's up to definitely. So they approximately monthly have new, like basically sales on awards and those tend to be quite inexpensive, but it's sort of the jackpot when they offer sales from to

places in the US that we want to start from or end up at. But when they do, we see some incredible prices and especially, which is more common, economy prices to Europe, we've seen things as low as I feel like 11,000 miles one way, maybe less. Preston Pysh, I think I even saw a little bit less. I think 9,000 and something high at one point I think I saw. Preston Pysh, I think you're right. So they often advertise it at a particular price, but then depending on where you're going. So for example, it might say from this US city to Paris is 13,000 one way in economy. But then when you go to search for that city to some other city in Europe through Paris, sometimes the price is even less. And that's actually true even without sales,

but with the sales, it makes that a spectacular deal. And so if you have the ability to get Air France miles, which is very easy, and these sales appear, it's almost a crime not to go have a little vacation in Europe. Yeah, no, it really is. They get so cheap. And like you said, I think the trick here is that don't only look at, okay, what's on sale and how much does it's a one way, it might not be a big deal. So you can get a good deal. And certainly if you're interested in going to Eastern European cities, a lot of the Eastern European cities are the ones that will price lower like this. So it's worth hunting around whenever you see these. And I thought that we should talk about this on the list

because I know that not everybody wants to fly premium cabins. A lot of people want to be able to fly a full family. It's much easier to find availability and economy class for a full family. So that makes this a pretty good deal. If you can fly everybody for 10 or 12 or even 15,000 points one way, that's pretty good. Assuming you aren't able to also take advantage of a transfer bonus because Air France miles are so easy to put together. That end of it is really, really simple too. So I think there are a number of advantages, but also in business class, we sometimes see amazing deals in business class during these two. Yes, that's absolutely true. So I'm going to give the awesomeness factor. I don't know.

As much as Nick has a good point about that, it's great to include sweet spots that are in economy, it just doesn't excite me. So I'm going to give it a six for awesomeness. Plus the fact that they're not there all the time. It's not like a sweet spot that's always available. Practicality, some things in its favor. You can transfer from anybody to Air France. Air France is partners with everybody. And despite our previous understanding of Air France miles, the miles don't expire as long as you have the same type of activity. So for example,

if you transfer to Air France and your miles are about to expire and you transfer a thousand more miles, just that would keep them alive. Um, the problem is it gets really weird. If you, if you credit flight activity to Air France, then all these different rules apply. So don't do that. Don't ever credit a paid flight to Air France, unless you want to always do that forever and ever. Forever and ever you get on that treadmill. And so the practicality, I mean, it's down because they're not always available, but it's a pretty practical book. I think these are, if the award matches your needs, I think it's pretty practical. I'll give it an eight.

Oh my goodness, an eight for practicality. I guess you're doing that assuming that it happens to be one that matches your needs. Yeah, I see. But then you might as well give Iberia an eight then, right? I mean, I give it a three because promo awards come out the first of every month and they're only valid for like a short window that starts like a month from now. And it's usually like three months down the road. So you're talking about having to plan a trip just a couple months in advance to Europe, which totally my style, not the style for probably the average traveler.

Very good. I think it's fairly impractical for most people. It is definitely a strong deal for people who are able to take advantage, but I give it a three. Easy to book online. I'll give you that. Very easy to book. Easy to book.

And we're talking economy awards, so it should be fairly easy to find availability. Right. Okay. What's next? Okay. Next up is use Virgin Atlantic for Air France premium economy. So you can fly premium economy on Air France.

Now, you know more about this than I do. You wrote the post. You tell us. Sure. So you can use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly on Air France and KLM as well as Delta. And the award prices for most things are pretty similar to Air France's award prices. So, for example, if you want to fly economy or you want to fly business class on Air France or KLM, the prices aren't going to be all that different. But what really stands out is premium economy.

If you want to fly Air France premium economy and if award availability exists, then Virgin Atlantic is just way cheaper for flying across the pond. So you can fly for, they have both standard and peak pricing. So one way standard pricing, 24,000 miles one way. Boom. I mean, that's like, that's less than what most programs charge for an economy class flight. You're flying premium econ which is like domestic business class basically right i mean so your recliner seat i i should mention this is from the east coast us or from the caribbean so right so it is limited to that um and and to fly in peak peak times which like iberia it's not like a huge amount of time that's peak. It's just certain times, 34,000.

So even that, a lot of airlines charge 30,000 one way to fly to Europe. Delta usually these days charges at least 40,000 miles one way. Here's a way to fly premium economy, 34,000 or 24,000 if you are coming from the East Coast. Right. And also, again, still, you have that advantage of a lap infant deal. If you're looking to book a lap infant, those are usually cheap through Virgin Atlantic. Though, oddly, I believe they don't list the lap infant price on Air France. So I don't know for certain that you can just look that with Air France, whereas everybody else is there on the pages for awards.

So that wasn't clear to me, but probably a good deal anyway. It is with everybody else. So I would think, yeah, I mean, that's an interesting one because in a normal world, premium economy availability should be easier to find, right? Preston Pyshko Yeah. When I first found this award sweet spot, I looked at some Air France flights to Europe and I found award availability was through the charts. Whereas business class was hard to find at all, economy was good, but not great. It was almost like every single seat in premium economy was wide open, available to Virgin Atlantic. That was part of what made this an incredible sweet spot.

Preston Pyshko Then you wrote about it and killed it, you evil blogger. Well, not really. That is once the pandemic hit, Air France seems to have eliminated entirely premium economy from award space availability, at least from partner award space availability. Although I haven't even found it when looking through Air France itself. So I don't know what's going on there. I'm assuming it'll come back once flying comes back from Air France. But if not, that certainly plummets the practicality of this award. If not, then we'll just have wasted four minutes of your time there. So this will become a zero practicality. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to jump in and we haven't done the awesomeness factor, but the practicality as things stand right now is a one or a zero. A zero right now. It's not practical at all. It's a zero right now. We can hope that it returns to like a nine or whatever that, you know, because that was

that was a big jump, right? Because it went from like basically super practical and easy to not at all. You know, yeah. Before it was, if you were, if you had easy access to an East Coast airport that has Air France service, it was, yeah, crazy easy. Because you can book it online. You don't even have to call anybody, right? You book it right on the Virgin Islands website.

So, which, you know, maybe has some difficulties i guess maybe i should dock it a little bit so if if if the availability returns maybe we'd put it at an eight or a nine or whatever for practicality but maybe you have to dock it a little bit because it's a little difficult sometimes to find the airport that you want on the virgin atlantic website right so you need to know greg strict yeah that's true, that's true. It can be, yeah. Okay. So what's your awesomeness factor for this one? Five, but only because I don't get very excited about premium economy on the flip side. I agree with the five.

For people that are playing with the family, I guess. It's pretty awesome. But when we're talking 34K peak and then you have like Iberia on the other hand. Yeah, I applied business class to Europe for the same price if I can find the availability. Yeah. Right. So five. Five. Okay. All right. Why don't you... Okay. So that rounds out our transfer partner sweet spots, right? Now, let's be clear. Those are not the only airline transfer partner, like credit card transfer partner program

sweet spots. Those are just the best that came to our minds. That's right. That's right. So what we're going to move on to now are the ones where there are no bank programs that transfer to these, but you can transfer to these programs from Marriott Bonvoy at sort of a three to one ratio. But there's a couple of sweet spots there that we felt like we'd be remiss in not mentioning. So why don't you go first?

Alaska. Alaska, because Alaska has incredible prices, both to Asia and Australia. So you're talking $50,000 one way on Cathay Pacific in business class to Asia with a free stopover. So you fly from somewhere in the US to Hong Kong, stop over, continue on Cathay Pacific in a normal world anyway, has great reach in Asia, 50,000 one way. That's amazing. You're talking about, I mean, if it was three to one, it's 150,000 Marriott points, but

it's less than that because it's 120, 120,000 Marriott points would give you the 50,000 Alaska miles that you need to book that. So that's, that's a pretty good deal. If you normally redeem Marriott points at the 0.63 cents per point that we value them at, you're talking about, I don't know. I didn't do the math, but about seven, $750, probably worth of Marriott points for a one-way business class ticket to like all of Asia. That's pretty terrific. Or 60,000 business on Japan Airlines, 70,000 first class on Japan Airlines, again, free stopover or Australia for 55,000 in

business class. And you can fly that in Qantas with a free stopover or on Fiji Airways and stop over in Fiji on your way to Australia for 55,000 miles one way. I mean, that's just a little bit more than 120,000 Marriott points. That's incredible. It really is. Awesomeness, what do you think? You know, I can't give it as high because you have to give up hotel points in order to get it. And hotel points are harder to get these days. Shouldn't you consider that on the practicality side? Well, I don't know.

It's hard. It's hard to say. Yeah, you're kind of right. It's well, you have to give up a currency that's hard to gather easily in meaningful amounts. So, I mean, it depends on your situation. You're traveling all the time and staying in Marriott's every night of the week when your employer's footing the bill, then, you know, you're just earning tons and tons of

Marriott points, hand over fist or whatever. And then this may be awesome, awesome, awesome. Or you are earning tons of Alaska miles directly. Maybe you're crediting some cheap international business class flights to Alaska and earning all those multiples that they offer. That would be- True, true story. So I mean, awesome. This is very good, I mean, awesome. This, this is very good. I mean, this is almost as good as ANA round trip and, and certainly, and it's one way and it's one way with a stopover. So yeah, I mean, that's nine. Yeah, I'm, I'm there. Okay. Nine. All right. Practicality. Practicality. I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's better than some because you have multiple airlines to be looking at to find availability. One thing that hurts it is the fact that you can't mix and match multiple partners.

So you can't fly, at least this thing stand today, you can't book multiple one world partners. You could fly one segment on Alaska airlines itself and the rest on, on one partner. Six. Yeah. I mean, you can book these easily online, but I think we need to dock it.

I'm going to go for, because you have to transfer from Marriott and who knows how long that's going to take because it's unpredictable, right? It's not like always the same amount of time for everybody. And it's longer than transferring from any credit card program at the very least. So it's not going to be instant. So you've got to hope that availability sticks around. Not super practical.

I'm going to give it a four. All right. All right. Should we go on to the next one? Yes, absolutely. Go ahead. Okay. Next one we have is Asiana, which has a fantastic Star Alliance award chart. And they will charge only 40,000 miles for one-way flights to Europe from the U.S. In business class. In business class.

Is this just the Eastern U.S. or all of the U.S.? No, I think that's all of the U.S. Only 40,000 miles one way or 50,000 miles for one way first class. That's amazing. That's amazing. 50,000 in first class. That's amazing. Right, right. You know, so the only thing that comes close, you could argue that using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Japan Airways first class is a better deal because you're going further and it's not that much close. You could argue that using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Japan Airways first class is a better deal because you're going further and it's not that much more. But I mean, aside from that, that's like off the charts. What really hurts this one, and I guess this speaks to practicality perhaps, is that the best airlines for flying Star Alliance First Class to Europe are Lufthansa and Swiss. Okay, Swiss, right.

But except you can't book Swiss. You can't book Swiss. They don't release First Class award space. And Lufthansa only releases First Class award space within two to four weeks or so before a flight. You've got to wait until the last minute. And then worst of all, they impose very large fuel surcharges. So you're talking about probably about $800 one way that you'll pay in addition to the 50,000 Asiana miles. That said, if you're saving 50,000 airline miles to book book it you might be willing to

pay 800 cash you know you know maybe maybe maybe maybe so i think i think that really kills the practicality of this thing yeah well i mean that along with the fact that there's no way to book it online so you gotta call asiana so you gotta So you got to call and speak to somebody and book it. Yeah. So, and obviously you got the whole transfer times for Marriott. That's still the same problem. Another awesomeness factor though, 10% of the adult mileage price for lap infant awards. So you're talking 4,000 each way in business or 5,000 in first, which is among the best out there. So that's certainly a good point there, but yeah, practicality, I'm going to give this like a two. I've never, never booked anything

over the phone with Asiana and I haven't read people say, Oh, it's super easy to do. I haven't necessarily read people say it's super difficult, but yeah, it's one of those awards that like, it's, it's sort of academically good to know about, but you're probably never going to book it. Right. Exactly. On to hotels about, but you're probably never going to book it. Right, exactly. On to hotels then, right? Hotel sweet spots. Yeah, it's not just for airlines anymore. So the first of our hotel sweet spots you have to talk about

because this was so good that you put Chase out there above everybody else as the best airline transfer or credit card transfer points program only because of Hyatt, like the 1.6 cents per point program was it. I sealed the deal for Greg. So talk to me about what is so awesome about Hyatt. All right. Well, you know, so Hyatt in general has, has, um, incredibly cheap award prices for, uh, for ultra luxury properties. They top out at 40,000 points per

night for a base room. Compare that to Hilton where you're looking at 95,000 to 120,000. And that's if you could find a standard room available. Marriott tops out at a hundred thousand. And so, you know, I love Hyatt for that. Specifically though, this sweet spot I'm talking about is sweets. So spelled a little differently from a sweet spot, but Hyatt is sort of alone in being in, in offering the option to book suites at standard, at sort of fixed award prices. All right. So, for example, like Marriott, a lot of individual hotels will offer suites with an upgrade price. And usually those upgrade prices are kind of insane, but sometimes you'll find a Marriott that has reasonable upgrade prices. But Hyatt imposes an award chart for these. So if there are suites and if there are premium suites that are

available for booking awards, then these hotels have to adhere to that award chart, which at worst is double the standard room rate. Which may arguably be at best because that's for a premium suite, double the regular award chart, which could be an amazing deal. Yeah, exactly. So if you think about that, suites, especially at expensive properties, are often many times the cost of a base room. You know, you're looking at not unusually thousands of dollars a night for one of these, and all you're paying with Hyatt is double the award price for a print suite or VIP suite.

These huge suites, often with multiple bathrooms, often with sometimes multiple balconies, and who knows what. Sometimes they come with other perks as well, like lounge access and stuff. So I just had an experience recently where the ability to book standard awards was really important. So I wanted to stay at Ventana Big Sur. And during the dates I was looking at, they didn't have standard rooms available. Those were all booked. But I was still able to book my stay because I could book a suite instead of a standard room.

And I highly, highly value that. So all that said, I don't think the awesomeness factor of this is through the roof. What I think is through the roof is the practicality because not just in the ability to book it, but because it's something that, at least in my, like I use this option often, you know, whereas all the other ones we're talking about are sort of a, someday I might get around to booking this thing, but this is the type of thing that I use all the time. So, so it's, it's, uh, it's very high in practicality that the, especially now that you could book these online, um, and awesomeness, I'm going to give a six. You know, the awesomeness factor for me on this is higher than it is for Greg. We've talked before about the fact that I travel with two

young kids. A suite is very valuable to me. So being able to book that for a reasonable number of points and lock that in and not have to wait until five days before my stay to find out if my suite upgrade has cleared. Hello, Marriott. Do you hear me there? It's really valuable to me. So to me, this is even more awesome, not just because of the difference between the cash price of the room and the points price. And that can be amazing in a lot of cases. I mean, we just recently stayed in one in Dubai that, you know, the cash price would have been thousands, like you said. And instead, you know, we paid a very reasonable number of points. So there are a lot of those opportunities where you can stay in a really out of control suite and get super outsized value. But for me,

the value of locking in a suite in advance to be able to have a separate bedroom with a door, some separations and space to spread out place to put the kids sleep. They need to take a nap or whatever else. That's really awesome. So I give Hyatt a lot of credit there. I think kind of on the awesomeness scale, like I can't give it a 10 on the same level as the airline sweet spots, but from a hotel perspective, it's a 10. I think overall in the awesomeness of what we've been doing, seven is fair. All right. All right. Then going over practicality. So the only thing that I want to give it a 10, the only thing that I dock it a little bit for is the fact that each hotel can decide which of their premium suites is bookable with points. And that's, I don't know if it makes it less practical. It's

just, it's sort of an annoyance factor, but still all the other things. I'm going to agree with you. And I'm going to go into eight. I'm going to dock it a little bit more maybe because I hate, and Hyatt, if you're listening, I hope you hear this. I hate this trend of calling a junior suite a standard suite. Like stop it. Just because you put a sofa in the room, do not charge more points. It's ridiculous. It's not a suite. A suite is, it has a separate room with a door. Thanks Hyatt. Okay. So practically I'm gonna drop it a little bit only because some properties, like you said, either a don't make the really good suites available on points, or they play this game with this junior suite

being the standard suite, which that annoys me. Because the standard suite's less points than a premium suite. Even though I docked it a little bit in my mind for these kinds of things, I'm still going to give it a 10, just because it's so much more practical to book than any of the other wards we've talked about.

It is. It's definitely the most practical. Very, very easy to book. So, okay, give me that Wyndham Vacasa next hotel suite spot. Got to talk about it quickly here. So I think you should introduce this one. All right. So Wyndham charges just 15,000 points per bedroom per night for Vacasa vacation rentals. Vacasa manages vacation rentals. So these are vacation rentals, like what you would find through Airbnb or VRBO or Verbo, however you pronounce it. And in fact, in some cases, you'll see the same properties available through Vacasa,

also advertised on Airbnb and other sites like that. And so the awesome part here is that there are many places that are one bedroom. They're either condos or sometimes complete homes. I wrote a post about booking an entire one bedroom cabin with a nice loft area in the Great Smoky Mountains. And because it only had one bedroom, it was 15,000 Wyndham points per night for a place that normally would have been almost $350 a night, plus the cleaning fees and the taxes. So it would have come out to well over 400, almost $500 a night. And I was able to use just 15,000 window points per night. So this can be really good for that because you don't pay any additional fees, no cleaning fees, no taxes, no nothing.

15,000 points per night for Vacasa vacation rentals if you find those either zero bedroom or one bedroom. And again, the key is that even though some of them are one bedroom, some of them have many more than one bed. They have a loft area that for all intents and purposes is a bedroom and it's got a few beds. You just have to look around and hunt around a little bit. Right. Right. And it's actually surprisingly easy, at least in my experience, to find these in certain locations. It seems like certain areas are more likely to have these than others. Like you found them widely

available, I think in Eastern Tennessee. I found them widely available in Northern California, I think it was. And the trick is to find them is to simply put into the online search tool, one bedroom max and something like six adults. So that sort of forces it to find those things where there's multiple beds. I mean, put at least four adults, I guess, if you want to make sure there's two beds, for example. And he's talking about searching that at vacasa.com. Vacasa.com is where you're going to search for properties. You're not going to be able to book it there,

but you're going to search for properties at vacasa.com. Exactly, exactly. And one other thing about the sweet spot is if you have a Wyndham earner credit card, it's a bit sweeter, 10% off. So it only costs 13,500 points per night. Yeah, absolutely. So definitely pretty awesome there. So I feel like in order to evaluate the awesomeness, maybe you need to talk about the practicality a little bit. Is this a practical award to book? Well, I mean, I'm willing to give it an awesomeness factor without talking about practicality because I can separate those in my head. All right. I think it's a seven.

I think it's really great to be able to book vacation rentals with points at a really cheap rate. I love that. So I think that's pretty awesome. What about you? If you're going to separate out the practicality? No, I'll give you a seven on awesomeness. I mean, that's a great value for Wyndham points.

If you find these places that are a good value. I think what would detract me a little bit on the awesomeness side is that in some places, these Vacasa rentals are very cheap. And so it's not a good deal everywhere. True. So, you know, if you're like Myrtle beach, for instance, the place that I looked and checked them out and there's a bunch of Vacasa places, but they're all like a hundred bucks a night. So 15,000 points per night is no great shakes there. And in some places it's mostly like condos that maybe just little studios or something, which doesn't excite me as much as like those standalone cabins in the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

area or some of the other places you've highlighted. So, so awesomeness. Yeah. But, but you know what? Yeah. You're looking to maximize the value. I get that. I do that too. But if you think about it, even if you're just going to book $150 property for a couple nights, if you're paying cash, they would add on all these cleaning fees and things. And so the actual point value you're getting is going to be pretty good for Wyndham Points. So it's still a good value in those cases. Practicality though has some things going on. So, I mean, number one is that Lizzie is overworked. So, those who've listened a lot, we'll get the reference there because for a while, it seemed like Wyndham only had one employee handling reservations. Used to be you had to email.

Now, I guess you have to call and speak to somebody from Wyndham who handles the cost of vacation rentals. They now have a dedicated phone number. So that's at least, I guess, an improvement if, if I'd rather email. Yeah, I would too. Yeah. So wait, wait, you would, you'd rather, you'd rather email. Okay. Just that's interesting. It's interesting thing here. I like emailing Lizzie. Oh, okay. All right. I see. If Lizzie can handle Turkish awards, then I would go to her for that too. So anyway, so yeah, so you have to call in order to book. And there are blackout dates. And they don't publish the criteria for blackout dates.

What we think we've determined is somewhere around $325 or $350 a night as the average nightly rate before considering any cleaning fees or anything is where they start blacking it out. It's a little tough because we've had mixed data. And we think that's for one bedroom units, whereas our guess, we haven't looked into this, but our guess is that the limit is higher for two bedroom and more, but yeah, one of these days we'll have to try and book one of those.

But so another thing docking practicality is the 30 day cancellation window. Oh, right. Right. Right. To get your points back. You have to cancel before more than 30 days in advance of your stay. Otherwise it's non-refundable and that's it. And I, I have heard a couple of people that have run into that and Wyndham has held firm on that non-refundable within 30 days. So that's a big drag. Um, it's a big drag, big, big drag, but, but in favor on the practicality, and we haven't really discussed this with any of the sweet spots so far. So Greg's going to tell me, oh, it's not part of the practicality.

But in favor of the practicality, if you've got the wind and business card, really easy to put together a lot of points, right? I mean, eight points per dollar at gas stations, really practical to put together 15,000 points pretty easily. Sure. Sure. The flip side is the only transfer option is from capital one and it's impractical to have a capital one card if your name is greg right uh because capital one will shut you down and take away your points redeem them all for half a cent each improve the program rub your nose today yeah that's exactly their style so uh so

yeah there's some practicality in favor some against yeah you know and so six or seven five five i don't know was i being too nice i think so because you got to be able to find one bedroom places one bedroom has to fit your needs they have to be in the area you want to be in that's a good another is relatively small. Their footprint is spotty. They have a strong footprint in just certain areas of the country and not much outside of the country at all. Three. I'm thinking three on the practicality. I'm dropping as we go. It's going down. We better move on before it goes to nothing. Go ahead.

All right. So I don't actually know a lot about this, but I've read about it now and then as a great sweet spot of choice privileges points is that there is a sort of a sub chain of hotels called Nordic choice hotels that can be booked with choice privileges points and that they tend to charge up to 16,000 points per night for these hotels, which my understanding is cash rates are pretty high. So that's a very good value. And they often tend to also include things like breakfast and dinner and, and, uh, other things that are very valuable, especially in, uh, Nordic countries that are often very pricey for going out to eat and so on. Very pricey, very pricey. Yes. I, there's no place I've been.

That's more expensive than Norway. I don't think maybe, I mean, Maldives food was expensive in the Maldives. Okay. I'll give you that. It was pretty close in Norway. I mean, it was pretty close in Norway. It was pretty expensive. So being able to get free breakfast, a good deal. But then also, like you said, some of these Nordic choice chains, and if you really want to go to loyalty lobby, because

they've written the book on this, so to speak. I want to say it's like Clarion collection. And there's another one, the brands within the Nordic Choice program that offer the free dinner also. And it looks like a pretty substantial free dinner. Now, not every property is 16,000 points per night. There are some that are more, but a lot of them are available. And there's some that are less. Yeah. And cash prices, I mean, not only food is expensive, everything is expensive in Norway. So I booked one of these just a couple of years ago for an overnight. I booked an Oslo airport hotel, like a Comfort Inn or something there. And the Comfort Inn was like 16,000 points or 250 euros for an airport hotel. And to give you a glimpse, if you're not familiar, if you haven't been, and you have no idea how expensive when I say things are expensive, the taxi ride from the hotel to the airport was less than two miles. And it cost me like 50-ish dollars for a taxi from the airport to the hotel.

And I was like, wow, they must have ripped me off or taken me the long road or something. Got into the hotel and they had a sign about a negotiated rate for the taxi back to the airport that was like $45 or something like that. It was unbelievable. So there was a shuttle and you could pay a little bit for the shuttle and that was reasonable and blah, blah, blah. But that gives you just a glimpse into things are expensive. Things are expensive. So it's a great deal. If you're going to go to Norway or you're going to go anywhere really in Scandinavia, Nordic Choice can be a very solid deal. If you're going to go to Norway or you're going to go anywhere really in Scandinavia, Nordic choice can be a very solid deal. All right. So I don't have any way to judge the awesomeness or practicality of this off the top of my head. I mean, it seems really good if you're going to Norway. Yeah, it's really good if you're going to Norway and you're not like, I think that

what takes away from this perhaps is that I feel like a lot of people who play this game, play this game looking forward to going on vacation and staying at a really nice Hyatt or a property that they wouldn't ordinarily pay for. Any Comfort Inn or Quality Inn or Clarion doesn't fit that feeling of aspirational perhaps. However, if you're somebody who doesn't need an aspirational hotel this is a terrific value because hotels are all going to be expensive so it's pretty awesome as long as an aspirational hotel is not your primary factor and that's not to say that they aren't nice they're fine they're decent and you're going to enjoy your stay but it's not going to be like you're going to the ventana big star you know so. You know, so that's I guess something that, so awesomeness,

I'm going to give it like, I don't know, a seven because it's a very good point value for points that you typically wouldn't expect quite that much from. All right, we'll take it. We'll take it. Practicality, I mean, you got to be wanting to go stay, but you got to be wanting to go to Scandinavia

and you got to want to stay in one of the minority choice properties. Practically, yeah, four, four, three. Yeah, three or four. Although getting choice points is pretty easy, especially because you can actually indirectly buy them for less than a penny each by booking points and cash days and canceling them. So at these prices, at these award prices, it'd be worth buying the points needed and you'd save money that way.

You sure? All right. So we were going to also discuss some honorable mentions, but we've taken a long time to go over the things we have. We have. So I'm going to let the readers scream it out. Go ahead in the comments,

tell us all the sweet spots that we missed. What did we miss? I'm going to guarantee you that at least eight of them were probably on our honorable mentions list that we thought about and eliminated, but I'm curious to hear what readers think. So put it in the comments on this on YouTube or on your podcast platform. Tell us the ones that we missed that we should have had in the list. All right. And you already did the post-roast. I'm going to skip the post-roast.

Okay. All right. I'm going to let you off on that because we've gone long. I had more. I'm telling you, I could have done a whole show just roasting Greg. Well, you could do your own one-man show for that one.

That's true. That's what we'll have to do. So then, and I'm going to skip question of the week because we've gone long. So let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. If you enjoyed this and you want to read this, you're like, okay, this is pretty awesome. This is cool. I want to book this kind of stuff. I want to collect the miles and points. I want to read about this every single day or week or whatever it may be. You

want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe, get on our email list, follow us on social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, wherever you're listening to this or watching this hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, ding the notification bell. Even if you disagreed with our sweet spots, hit that like button anyway and tell us why you disagreed with them in the comments. All right. Yes.

Thank you very much for that. And we will see you guys again next week. Bye, everybody. Music