Frequent Miler on the Air - Practical Sweet Spot Awards | Ep149 | 5-7-22

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

There are lots of great sweet spots that are exciting in theory are nearly impossible to actually book. This week, Greg and Nick discuss *practical* sweet spots -- the ones they have booked & you can, too. 1:25 This week's disclaimer 4:16 Mattress running the numbers: Is it worth mattress running to get 2x, 3x, or 4x IHG points. 10:12 Main Event: Practical sweet spot awards First up: Delta One to Europe for 50K 14:12 Star Alliance business class to Europe 17:32 Ability to book short flights cheaply 22:58 Using Iberia Avios for business class between Spain and the Eastern US 26:48 Qatar Qsuites via American Airlines miles or Avios 30:18 ANA Business Class to Japan / Asia 34:57 Hyatt awards 37:57 Vacasa vacation rentals via Wyndham Rewards 43:09 Choice privileges points for Nordic Choice properties 44:37 Capital One points for great Major League Baseball tickets 47:56 Question of the Week: I transferred points for what turned out to be phantom availability. Am I stuck? What could I have done differently? Join our email list: 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 Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, Practical Sweet Spot Awards. We're not going to talk about those crazy amazing awards that you just can't book anyway but rather awards that are actually doable and that that me and you uh that nick and i do all the time and there are some great sweet spots out there that we do actually do in real life it's not just a uh you know made up type of thing that that like you see on our award chart but that's that's impossible to book very good i mean because that's more right? The things you can actually use

rather than the things that you can just, I mean, it's fun to dream a little bit about the theoretical, but. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, it's really, every time we write about something like first-class ANA for only 55,000 points one way. People write back, but I can't find any word availability. And that's true. Those are so hard to find. So we're going to be talking about not those necessarily, but ones that are a little bit easier to find. And more importantly, ones we've actually done and that we know are possible and hope to do again. So before we do that, and instead of giant mailbag, I wanted to bring up the fact that Nick is like the mailman delivering the mail no matter what is going on in his life. So not only does his entire family, including him, have COVID right now, but his internet was experiencing COVID, too.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about what's going on, Nick, and then we'll move on to the show. It's been a week. It's been a week. So my wife tested positive on Monday, but my sons and I amazingly tested negative Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. And Thursday morning, I tested myself and I was negative. But by Thursday afternoon, my four-year-old had a high fever and they tested us all again and we're all positive. So luckily, you know, I'm vaccinated and boosted and feeling decent. I had a bit of a fever

yesterday. My four-year-old had quite a high fever, but that's meant a lot of scrambling this week because my wife isolated. So it was just me and the boys with no help the last few days, which was, you know, an experience. Gives me a newfound, renewed respect for all the single parents out there because a lot of work with no help. But anyway, now that we're all positive, we're all back together. So things are looking a little brighter. But I normally record this show actually from a spare room in my in-laws house.

So all of my recording equipment is there and I haven't been in the house because we were in New York city over the weekend and then my wife tested positive. So staying away from everyone, just in case we tested positive. So I don't have my microphone and my camera. So if I sound a little tinny this week, or I look a little grainy, that's just because we're going with the flow. But we haven't missed a show in like, gosh, it's almost three years now, right? Something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Not a single show. So, but right before recording, you were having internet trouble, right? Oh my goodness. T-Mobile, yesterday, T-Mobile totally shut off on me. I was on a call with my parents and they live somewhere else. They were saying they were trying to text and they were getting an error saying that

they couldn't send a text, had to connect to Wi-Fi. And I was like, oh, that's weird. And as I was saying, that's weird. Service totally shut off for me. Both our phones and our home internet, everything just went out for like 10 minutes. And then it came back and I haven't had slower service. Since everything came back, it's been very slow for the last 24 hours. And I've had a few things on my plate. So I have not yet had a chance to call T-Mobile, but it seems like

crossing our fingers it's working right now. Right now it seems good. But I think both for your sake, because you're suffering from COVID and your family's suffering, and also for the internet's sake, we should try to keep today's show shorter than usual. We'll try to buzz through it. And so we're actually going to skip the what crazy thing segment that we normally do to try to get things done quickly. And we'll move on to mattress running the numbers. I'm going to try to get through this one pretty quickly too. There's a promo out from IHG that sounds

really exciting. You can earn up to four times the rewards. So it's not Fipple rewards. It's not like last week's Fipple, but only quadruple, right? Right. But still four, four times rewards. That sounds awesome. And so I personally, I had this question. I actually have a rare paid stay coming up with IHG, three nights. It's averaging about $400 a night. That's a story for another time. I'm actually hoping to have a whole post on that, and we'll probably cover it on the podcast as well. But anyway, point is three nights

at about $400 a night. And so I had to question when I saw this promo, is it worth trying to get double, triple or quadruple points for my stay? And the reason I had asked that is because of the terms. So in order to get double points, you have to have already stayed one paid night before the promo began or during the time of the promo and before your stay. To get triple points, you need to have stayed five nights before the stay where you get triple. Okay. Right. So you get double on the, so you get one X on your first night during the promo period. You get two X on nights two through five.

You get three X on nights six through 14 and four X on nights 15 and up. So can that all be one consecutive stay? Like just 15 nights? You know, I didn't read the terms carefully enough to tell, but it sounded like it could be. I'm a little curious how they'd actually make that happen in real life, but let's assume it can be. So the question for me was, should I do it like a paid throwaway mattress run stay beforehand so I get earned 2x on the entire stay?

Or should I do five mattress run nights beforehand to get to four pull points because I don't think there's even 14 days before my stay. So I don't think that's even possible. But so I had my, I was questioning that and I'm going to jump like pretty quickly to the answer here because there's like a lot of math involved, but basically this, each time you move up one more X, you're getting an extra 10 points per dollar on that stay. And it sounds great, but we recently ascertained that IHG points are usually worth 0.6 of a cent each. So anyway, so each of my, so $400 stays, $400 nights, right? To get an extra 10X, that's 4,000 extra points. That's worth about $24 in points. And so $24. So, so, um, less than a hundred dollars for my whole three nights stay. Um, I can't find a local IHG hotel that costs less than a hundred dollars right now. I mean,

prices at hotels nationwide are through the roof. There's just no way it would make sense for me to mattress run one night less, let alone alone certainly not five nights to get to triple rewards. So not going to do it. No, you would need a really expensive three nights day that you're earning all the extra points. It would have to be crazy expensive. Yeah. And yeah. And you're not that much of a glutton for punishment. I mean, some would say $400 a night is really expensive. It's more than I would normally spend. I would say. Right a night is really expensive. It's more than I would normally spend. I would say. Right, right, right, right.

I am one of those some, yes, with those seat prices. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so, you know, just helping anyone out who is thinking about it. I think in the vast majority of cases, don't think about mattress running before your stay. Unless, like Nick said, you have a crazy, crazy expensive stay, then it might make sense, but usually not. No. And, and, you know, the thing is though, register, always register for these promos because you never know when you're going to run into a situation where you need it. I mean, I remember one night when a flight got canceled and, you

know, so last minute I had to book a hotel and I knew I was going to get reimbursed by the credit card because of the cancellation and protection, the trip delay protection. So I knew I was going to get reimbursed by the credit card because of the cancellation and protection, the trip delay protection. So I knew I was going to get reimbursed. And I picked a Hilton. And I realized as I was walking in the door to check in, I was like, you know what? I didn't register for this quarter's promotion yet. And it was like triple points or something like that. So I literally pulled it up as I was walking to the front desk and registered.

I think I only had to register by checkout. But still, thankfully, I was still in the period where you could register because sometimes you have to register by a certain date, even though the promo continues to run after that. And, you know, here I was, I would have missed out on like 20,000 Helton points. It was an expensive night. Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. And, and, you know, I I'm going to double check that I'm registered. I think I already am, but I should be getting double points on nights two and three. So, you know, it's still going to be good. And there's also an extra like bonus points, um, for every three nights or something like that. So I should be getting 3000 bonus points as well. Um, on top of all that. So, so I'm pretty happy about that. Um, yeah. All right. So there you go. IHG,

IHG showing up in the show again. They're making some noise. I like it. Keep up the good work, IHG. Keep finding your way into segments. All right. So that brings us to the main event. So this week's main event time, practical sweet spot awards. So as we said in the intro, we're not talking about the words that sound amazing, but are impossible to book. We're talking about things that you can actually practically do. And the intent here without having the scripted at all is for us to kind of trade back and forth examples of things that are practical to book that ideally that we've booked ourselves and talk briefly about why it's a good deal. I'm going to start with one that is practical only if you are very flexible. I want to get the impractical one out of the way. Um, because it's one that I really do use now and then it's become harder

and harder to use over time, but every now and then it pops up as, as something doable. So this is the ability to use Virgin Atlantic miles to book Delta one to Europe for 50,000 points. All right. So why did, why So why did I include it in this list? Because just a few days before a recording, people noticed that Delta One awards from New York to Germany to Frankfurt, I think it was wide open during a certain period of time. So that's just an example where you could, you could have, if you wanted to go to Germany during that time, um,

you know, it was super easy to book. And, uh, so it's still a relevant, you know, award and, and then for specific, um, routes, like, so for example, out of Detroit, there's a number of Delta One flights to Europe. They have three flights a day to Amsterdam right now. And, you know, it's again, you have to be very flexible, but it is possible. So I checked every week in December to look for a word availability on Delta One Live Flat to Amsterdam. And I did find a day in December, just one, but it had seven Delta One seats available. So it's a pretty good award and it's one I've done before, I hope to do again. And it's just so contingent on Delta releasing award space. And you never know when that's going to happen.

No, you know, and a lot of those things, like I like this one too. And I booked it. I haven't actually, I don't think I've actually flown more than tickets. I've booked with it, but I have, I have booked it before anyway. And, and it adds and flows. And sometimes all of a sudden, you'll see a bunch of days. And like you said, I think the most amazing part is that we often see it'll be like five or six or eight seats available. And if you're going to fly with a group of that size, that's like your only shot, basically, of securing that many seats in business class. Of course, like you said, you need so much flexibility that it probably isn't practical

to fly your entire posse of eight people across the pond if you're going to try to get both directions. But if you have some flexibility, if you're retired, if you work remotely, et cetera, then it certainly is possible to book this one. So I like that. I think that was a good pick. I knew that was where you were going when you started in with a qualifier. I was like, oh, we're going with Delta One. It's so easy to book. All you got to do is transfer over the points. They transfer instantly. They transfer from everybody basically except for Capital One.

Not even Capital One. They got Virgin Atlantic. Right. So Capital One, you got to do a little bit of reading because it transfers to Virgin Red. And then from there you could transfer one to one to Virgin Atlantic. Yeah. But the other transferable currency is instant. easily book it online, no cost, no

loss, super simple. So I like them. Good, good pick. All right. So next I'm going to pick one that's a little wishy-washy as the specific details, but I'm going to call it Star Alliance Business Class to Europe because Star Alliance has so many airlines that fly to Europe. There is constantly availability.

It's hard. Apart from the holiday, the summer and holiday periods, I find it's hard to find a time when you can't find any business class space to Europe on some Star Alliance carrier. So if you're willing to connect and you're willing to position to one of the cities in the US with flights to Europe, then there's a lot of possibilities. Now, the reason I left this kind of open is because your best option for booking that is going to vary a bit. For me, I think my pick these days would probably be Avianca LifeMiles because it's relatively easy. Now you'd pay for Turkish perhaps, but Turkish has been difficult

to deal with because of the fact they don't have a checkout button on the website they have one that doesn't work anyway and an a is also a potentially good option just 88 000 miles round trip but then you have to book round trip and you have to wait for your miles transferred a and a and you have to hope you don't cancel the trip and get stuck with miles that are going to expire so if you want easy then avionic life miles is probably the way to do it and the nice thing there is if you have a positioning flight a connector if you've easy, then Avianca Life Miles is probably the way to do it. And the nice thing there is if you have a positioning flight, a connector, if you've got some availability in the US and it happens to be an economy, whereas most of your across the pond flight is in business, then you'll pay less than 63,000 miles one way. So it can work out to be really good.

It's pretty easy to hack that. So I think that's a great one. If you have United Miles, United, it's very easy also to book those both of those programs I like because there are no fuel surcharges. So and there are lots of ways to book Star Alliance. I guess that's the other thing that makes a really nice Chicago plan. So many different options that are decent. So and again, pretty easy to find award availability if you plan in advance at all all or if you plan at the last minute. Either way, it's relatively simple to find that.

Yeah, totally agree with all that. The one thing I'd say, if you have the ability at United Miles, you know, except when Avianca Life Miles charges less because you have an economy segment or because it's one of those weird routes where they just charge less for some reason. I would rather pay a little bit extra with United to have the flexibility of free award changes and free cancellations. So, you know, yeah, I like United for that. Yes, it's not an incredible deal at 70k one way, but it's still a decent deal. And to get live flight business class can be very nice. I think 77k on partners these days. Oh, is that right? Is that right? I think so, yeah.

Well, then it gets a little more. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it depends. It also depends on how many people you're flying. It's like Swiss is pretty easy to find four seats often or Turkish sometimes to find four seats. If you're flying four people, overpaying by 14,000 miles per passenger, or maybe more if you have an economy, it starts to add up. So then, you know, then you might consider life miles. But if you're one or two passengers, there's some wisdom in overpaying by a little bit for the flexibility and ease. So I can see what you're saying there. Yeah. Yeah. Another one that I think we'll both have input into is it's not a flashy thing, but

the ability to use miles to book short flights cheaply. There are so many ways to do this. In my post on this topic, I posted about how you could use back to Avianca Life Miles for short flights within the US. It depends on what sort of zone you're in as to what the pricing is. But what is that, like 6,500 or something like 7,000? I think this started at 7,500. but once they kind of sort of got rid of the award chart, then there were some that were pricing a little bit less. Officially, it was the old award chart was 7,500 each way within a zone, but you may find some that are less than that. Anyway, if you see a United flight and it's available to partners at short distance, it's

worth checking Avianca's website to see how much it they charge for it because sometimes you could get a great deal that way it doesn't even have to be real short like the best sweet spots are either within a zone or between zones one and two which is most of the us from like the middle part over like from east of nevada uh basically zones one and zones more or less. And so you can fly from North Dakota to Florida. And I think that that's all within one zone. That was 7,500 each way. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's great. And between two zones, like New York to Chicago, it was 10,000 each way. So there's definitely some good options there. Right. Right. Right, absolutely. And just to cover some other examples,

using British Airways to fly American can be cheap. That is on short flights. Same thing, short flights using Virgin Atlantic to fly Delta nonstop could be cheap. What else do we have in that category that comes to mind is there anything else those are the the best two but the other uh well no i i think those are the ones that i would say obviously turkish potentially but that's really potentially difficult not really practical although i you know i say that and just a couple weeks ago here i booked round trip tickets to hawaii for 7500 miles a person i emailed a bunch of ticket offices, and I got a response from several of them, including a couple in the United States. So it turned out to be really easy. I had the hold and ticketed and everything, basically,

in like a day. So that one is less practical than all the others. Totally recognize that, but potentially a possibility. I like, though, the ones you said, and I've booked all of those. I've booked Avianca for short flights for Ununited. And I've used British Airways Avios for flights on American. I'm sure you have, too. I've actually used the British Airways Avios on American before just for the additional luggage. At one point, I needed to take a trip to Chicago and I needed to bring some heavy stuff with me. So I booked business class because it was 15,000 avios from upstate New York to Chicago,

and I got extra baggage allowance. So that was worthwhile. Preston Pysh, Yeah. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And outside of the US, short flights, use your British Airways avios for short flights. It starts at, I think, like 4,000 or 4,500 or something points. I don't remember.

Jeff Ross. I think it starts at six now. Preston Pysh, Now it's not much but it still can be cheap yeah but in japan on that note are a great value because they're again that six thousand or whatever the smallest is when you're at the shortest band and and some of them don't even charge any taxes it's just just miles right right and uh another one that i love outside of the US is Virgin Atlantic to fly KLM or Air France as low as 4,000 miles one way in economy or as low as 8,000 miles one way in business class. So that's a great deal. And award availability tends to be really, really good for those short flights. Yeah, that know, that gives me some ideas

because they have some some fifth freedom flights that I bet probably price out really cheaply via Virgin Atlantic now that I think about it. But anyway, so yeah, there's definitely some good options there if you're looking to bounce around Europe or other parts of the world using those obvious or life miles. Also, keep in mind, United has a short distance span for partner flights, or at least they used to. I haven't actually checked that in quite a while, but it used to be for the very short distance flights, it was 8,000 miles each way back when they still had an award chart. So that's one that was useful again, flying ANA around parts of Asia. So- Yeah. I think they had within Japan as 5,000 miles, if I'm remembering right, and no taxes. So that's a heck of a deal. All the ANA flights are our economy anyway. So within Japan, yeah. So it's a great use of United

Miles. And plenty of availability in the times that I've booked. So they only release it so far in advance. I remember that being an issue domestic flights so if you're trying to book like a year in advance i don't think you'll see anything but but the thing is like you know they're domestic flights on large enough planes that there's any of economy class availability plenty of flights in a more normal time now right now i have no idea what the situation is today but as kovid begins to get, hopefully, then that will be a very practical use one for those looking to visit Japan. Cheaper than taking the train, flying, which is pretty crazy. That is crazy.

But and yeah, yeah, it's a great, great way to go. All right. What do you have next? All right. Next up is going to be using Iberia Avios for business class between Spain and the eastern part of the United States. I've used this one before. It's not wide open availability. So this is another one where you're going to have to have a little bit of flexibility. But if you plan far enough in advance and you do have a little bit of flexibility, then you can usually find some. You may not find it on the

route you want. Like if you're in New York, it might be a little bit harder. But if you're flying to Boston or Washington, D.C., I think typically you'll find a little bit more availability to some of those cities. But I've used this before because in off-peak times, it's 34,000 miles each way. And off-peak covers a lot of the calendar. It doesn't just cover what you would probably think of as off-peak. I booked this, I can't remember the exact date, but it was a June date. And I was like, June is off peak. It seems like summertime to me. So I've been surprised at times. The calendar changes each year. The exact dates change each year. But the off-peak calendar covers a significant portion.

And the nice thing also is that then if you're connecting beyond that within Europe, you pay for those additional segments, but they're pretty short. So it's not going to cost you a heck of a lot more necessarily. When I included a connection from Milan, I think it was something like 44,500 miles, which is still a great deal for business class from Europe to the United States. So you do get hit with some surcharges, but the surcharges on Iberia are pretty, I don't know, pretty mild, I would say. I think it's about $110-ish on the way to Europe, more or less, depends on exchange rates and everything, and maybe $200 on the way back or something along those lines. I think it also probably depends on your departure point. So that's why it's a little wishy-washy as to exactly how much, but fairly reasonable.

Yeah. No, that's a great one. That's fantastic. And it's one I haven't done at all yet. But, you know, it's something I would certainly keep in mind, especially if I, if it was practical for me to fly out of one of the airports that that Iberia services, which is only is fairly limited. It is fairly limited. Yeah. But if you're somebody who has to position normally for your flights, if you don't live in a gateway, then that probably isn't a huge limitation since New York or Boston or Washington are on the way. But anyway, I like it. I like the Iberia business class more than I expected to. There are newer planes. We're just as good as anybody else is. and from europe is that most of them are all good none of them are spectacular that i can think of really maybe singapore being an exception but most of them are about the same in my experience anyway the ones i've flown between the united states and europe so it's not going to blow you away but neither are a lot of the various business class products yeah yeah i mean you have some like other special cases like you have british airways new new suites that are probably going to be much nicer than normal. Same with Atlantic. Both of those are between New York and London, I believe. I think Delta one suites when you when you could get on those are better than average. But you're right. For the most part, you're looking at most airlines will fly good business class that usually with direct aisle access,

Lufthansa is like one that, and there's a few others that usually fly unfortunately with two by two by two seating. And so you don't always have direct aisle access if you're like on a window. Yeah. Well, and Iberia did on the A350 anyway, have direct aisle access for everybody. So that was, again, it exceeded my expectations based on what I had heard about Iberia for many years. It was fine. It was good. In fact, I wouldn't even say fine. It was good. That's great. That's great. The last flight award that I'm going to mention from my own list is Cutter Q Suites. This is one that I've booked a number of times, but I haven't yet flown. I've had to cancel each time I've booked them. But the point is, it's been actually fairly easy to book and it's gotten easier recently. So Cutter has this business class product that's known to be

phenomenal called QSuites. A lot of people sort of call it the business class first class you know that it's that it's a lot like first class and um they the the deal uh for quite a while and and um which still exists is to use american airlines miles to fly uh cutter to doha for 70 000 miles or beyond doha like you fly all the way to South Africa for 75,000 miles one way. So that's two very long flights in this amazing business class for a very reasonable price. And American no longer charges change or cancellation fees. So it's like if you have the American miles, it's kind of a no brainer. If you can, if you're even thinking about doing one of these trips and you can find the Cutter Award availability

to just book it and hope you are able to take that trip. There you go. I think that's an awesome one. That's one that I regret not having taken advantage of before the pandemic times and that I hope to take advantage of. Advantage, see what I did there? At some point before the award

chart inevitably changes someday, because that seems like a really great sweet spot still. So, so hopefully I'll get a chance to do that. And you're right. It's been relatively easy to find availability oftentimes for multiple passengers, sometimes even for four passengers on that. So that's pretty terrific. So good pick there. And I do have a post on how to find that availability. So check that out if you are struggling. And I mentioned that it's gotten easier lately, and that's because people without American Airlines miles now can get a good value by using British Airways Avios, which transfer from everybody. So if you have transferable points, you could get your British Airways or Cutter, actually, Avios,

and book to Doha for 70,000 points. And then if you go past Doha, it varies what the price will be. But still, this award now is open to pretty much anybody with transferable points. That's a really good point because I know some people are locked out of American Airlines miles or don't have many American Airlines miles. So that's a really good point. And the nice thing, at least with British Airways, I don't know the change in cancellation fees on Qatar, but with British Airways, I'm fairly sure the cancellation fee is either

$55 or forfeiting the taxes. If the taxes are less than $55, which leaving the United States, it should be $5 and 60 cents. I believe that I don't believe that British Airways charges any surcharges on Qatar, although I mean, if I'm wrong on that. I'm not sure off the top of my head. All right. But at any rate, you're looking at a fairly reasonable cancellation fee. Nobody really wants to pay $55, but it's a lot better than the $200 cancellation fees of old that we used to see from the major US carriers. So if you don't have

American Airlines miles, which would be free to cancel, British Airways Avios is not a bad alternative. Okay. One more for me, and I think Greg's going to roll his eyes a little bit at this one, but I'm going to give it here because A, it's practical-ish, and B, because I've done it before. And that's ANA business class to Japan or to Asia in general, because ANA releases a decent amount of award space. If you plan far in advance, business class is relatively easy to find, whereas first class, good luck. You know, there's a lot of flexibility for that. Business class is actually much easier to find,

especially if you're going to position somewhere in the United States. So you're willing to position a more than one gateway, then ANA business class is pretty easy to find. Off-peak, which covers, again, a bigger portion of the calendar than you might expect. The last few years, I think it's included cherry blossom Festival time. How is that off-peak? I don't understand. But 75,000 miles round trip per passenger, round trip to Japan in business class, that's a great sweet spot, especially because you can usually find at least two seats and often

four if you're planning in advance. So that's a good thing. And at max peak, you're paying 90,000. Or if you're booking on partners, if you're booking a partner award, 90,000 round trip there, or you continue on. And like I did it to China once, and that was 95,000 on ANA and included a free stopover. So the reason I'm hesitating, go ahead. You're going to say why I'm hesitating. Oh, no, no. I was going to say I'm not rolling my eyes for at least two reasons. One is look at those prices.

You know, we've been talking excitedly about, you know, 50,000 miles one way to Europe, for example, when I was talking about the Delta One with Virgin Atlantic. And you're talking about round trip or 90,000 round trip to Asia, not Europe, you know, much longer flight for 90,000 or less for round trip. And so that's just an amazing deal. As long as you have the American Express points, you could transfer to ANA. It's practical to get the points. Another reason I'm not rolling my eyes is that ANA releases more award space to their own members than to partners.

So even if you, um, would prefer to book with like, uh, LifeMiles, for example, um, you know, because you have more transfer partners, uh, to LifeMiles, for example, even if you wanted to, you might not be able to because they don't necessarily release that award space to their partners all the time. Great point. But I do think you should cover why I should have rolled my eyes. Why should I have rolled my eyes? Well, for a couple of reasons.

Number one, transfers to ANA are instant. So if you find that availability you want to book, you can't get that instant gratification of transferring and booking. And of course your award space may disappear by the time your miles transfer. It takes, I don't know, a day or two or three or somewhere in there in the day or two range for miles to transfer from membership rewards to ANA. So that's hang up number one. And hang up number two that Greg knows very well is that ANA miles expire after three years, regardless of activity, there's no way to renew that if by transferring more miles or something, you've got to use them or lose them. So that's a big cautionary tale there because if plans are

going to change, you may end up stuck with miles that will expire. Yeah, it really is a big downside to it, but I still consider it a practical thing to do because usually when you see, as you mentioned, they have a lot of business class award availability. Usually it's not like a rush to grab it up while it's available. So you probably will get the miles in time. There is some risk, but yes, I absolutely hate the fact that the miles expire without any way to keep them alive. That seems to be, yeah, that's just, you know, in a more normal world, I wouldn't even be worried

about that. That never would have been, never really would have crossed my mind. I would have figured, you know, within three years, I'll find another reason to take a trip. Even if this one gets canceled, then I'll just prioritize making, you know, booking a trip to Japan. But, you know, of course these days, who knows? I to Japan. But of course, these days, who knows? I think things are reopening and probably planning far in advance now. Probably you'll be okay planning a trip sometime down the road. But of course, I don't even think Japan is open for tourists yet at this point. So that's the part that makes it a little shaky now. I don't know for sure that I'll be able to go within the next three years. So I hope,

but who knows? So yeah. So that's that. So, okay. So those are the flight awards. So you've got, I'm guessing practical hotel awards. Yes. Yes. So rather than talk about specific hotels, I, I, you know, I just put Hyatt in its own category and especially high-end Hyatts that go for huge amount. Let's say they cost $900 a night or up. They have a lot of luxury brands that are very expensive to book with cash. And thanks to the fact that Hyatt is one of the few major chains that still has an award chart. Those hotels can be booked with points and you can get fantastic value for your points. So I just love that as a category. It's totally practical. You could transfer from your Chase Ultimate Awards points or from your

built points to Hyatt and book amazing, amazing stays. That's a really good one. And I'm going to highlight within that for my pick here, the ability to book suites and premium suites with points because that is really valuable rather than hoping. I've read a story in a Facebook group, Marriott Envoy Insiders Facebook group this week about someone who applied a suite night award for a one night stay, got confirmed,

showed in the app that they were in this two bedroom suite, got to the hotel and the hotel said, sorry, somebody got COVID and had to quarantine. And so we gave them a two bedroom suite. You can only have a one king room, which was less than the one king fireplace room they had paid for. So they didn't even get the room they paid for. And Marriott told them, well, yes, suite night awards are guaranteed once confirmed, but there's no consequence to the hotel if they can't make it available. So I look at a situation like that and I say, wow, that would really stink if I thought for sure I had a suite locked up because I used my suite night award and I arrived and they didn't have the suite. I'd be pretty annoyed, especially because I know with Hyatt, I can book it with points and know that I've got it. So there's no monkeying around. I can have it at booking. I just last weekend stayed at the Hyatt Centric Wall Street,

which was fantastic. I ended up getting upgraded to what you could book as a premium suite with 40,000 points per night. It was huge, a huge suite. I'll be writing a bottom line review. So you'll see that soon. And it was a fantastic say service was amazing there. And so, you know, it's nice to be able to do that kind of thing, especially because you mentioned a number of times that sometimes there isn't standard award availability, but you can't find a standard suite or a premium suite bookable with higher points. That's right. That's right. And so, you know, sometimes it's totally worth it. If you have enough points, if you have enough chase points or whatever to transfer over. It can be totally worth it and get some amazing stays that you would have never thought to pay cash for without without that ability.

So love that. Love that. I think I'm going to I'm going to let you do two in a row because I think you have one that's not really a hotel that you're going to probably want to talk about. Okay, true. True story. Yeah. So using window points for Vacasa vacation rentals. And that's one that I've done myself. I booked a Vacasa vacation rental last spring.

I booked a trip to Pigeon Forge. And it's a fantastic cabin on the mountainside and overlooking the Smoky Mountains. And the place would have cost about $340 a night all in. So for my few nights stay, it would have been well over $1,000. And instead, for my three nights, I paid 45,000 Wyndham points. And now that my wife has the Wyndham business card, it would cost us even less. So of course, Wyndham charges 15,000 points per bedroom per night for Vacasa vacation rentals. And so you pay even less if you've got the Wyndham business card. If you have the Wyndham business credit card, then you get 10% off on a week. So you only pay 13,000. Actually, any Wyndham earner card, you get 10% off. And not just Vacasa stays

also. Of course, you do have regular Wyndham stays. But Vacasa is the sweet spot here because if you can book a one bedroom, you're booking it for 13,500 points per night. And the thing is, there are a number of Vacasa rentals that have one bedroom, but have more beds than that. So I booked a cabin that was two level. So there was a bedroom with a bed, and then there was a living room. And then on the second level, there was a pullout sofa. And then there was a loft above that, that had a couple of futon mattresses. So you could pretty easily sleep an entire family there, four, five, six people, if you needed to for 15,000 points per night. And there are other places like that. I've looked at places in Hawaii recently and seen some great looking places that are one bedroom. That'd be 15,000 points per night.

It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I think to me, this is almost like the ultimate in practical sweet spot awards. Like you can get just unbelievable value for your Wyndham points. I mean, it's not hard to get, I mean, it'd be, it's not hard at all to get two cents for point value and you could get considerably more than that, especially since they don't charge you extra points for the cleaning and other like taxes and fees. That's all included. Whereas with cash, you would have to pay for those things. And because, you know, I just feel like vacation rentals are what people like to do. You know, it's becoming more and more common for people to do that. And now that you could transfer from either Citi or Capital One to Wyndham one-to-one, a lot of people, a lot of listeners have points available or can easily get the points that

transfer to Wyndham. Plus, as Nick said, the Wyndham earner business card is such a good deal because you get 15,000 points every year upon your card's anniversary automatically. That more than covers the card's annual fee. You get that discount on the awards and earning eight points per dollar at gas stations is so nice, especially if you're lucky enough to have a gas station nearby that sells gift cards that you could use. You know, $2,000 in gift cards would get you more than considerably more points than one night stay. So what a deal. Yeah, it is.

It's a great deal and fairly practical in the sense that Picasa has a decent number of vacation routes within the United States. Now, if you're looking to travel abroad, they don't have very many options abroad. There's a couple maybe in Central America. So this is pretty much limited within the United States. Now, if you're looking to travel abroad, they don't have very many options abroad. There's a couple maybe in Central America. So this is pretty much limited to the United States. But they have vacation rentals in a lot of the popular places to go. So you got a lot of different options. And of course, if you book a multi-bedroom place, then you're talking more points. So you're talking 15,000 points per bedroom per night. So a two-bedroom place will cost you 30,000 points, or if you've got a business card, 27,500, but that still can be

a fantastic deal. And we think that the cap on that is somewhere around $350 per night. So that's based on the per room, per room. And that's based on the price before cleaning fees and all the rest of that and the average cost per night. So if you book a four nights day and it comes out cheaper per night than a three nights day, that will usually make it available. The impractical part of this is you can't book it easily online yourself. And we say the cap is about $350 because there's no published cap. And so we've just had to figure it out by trial and error. And we've had some conflicting reports on the exact price point somewhere in 330, 350, 360 range. So it's somewhere around there per bedroom per night that you can use the points for. So it's a little impractical because you can't see availability online. You have to call now.

You can't email anymore. You got to call Wyndham to book it. So there are some hangups, but still overall, it's a great one. And even if you don't have one of the Wyndham cards, they have a shopping portal where you can earn points. And they ran a great promotion last year. Hopefully, we'll see another one of those this year where they just give away a lot of points. Yeah, exactly. And just a quick correction. It's 27,000 points per night, not 27,500 if you have a Wyndham card, including the business card.

Well, I did that complicated math for my post, so it was clear in my head. Good, good. All right. The next one I have is not a hotel. So if you have any more hotel ones that you want to float right now. I mean, there's plenty of hotel great deals out there. We want to highlight certain ones that are practical. And I think those two are extremely practical. Very quickly, one other practical one is Nordic Choice. So using choice points for Nordic Choice properties, because Nordic Choice properties, A, tend to have pretty good availability and B, tend to have great points per dollar or rather

a great value for points anyway cents per point uh value when you're booking them and you get free breakfast and if you book Clarion collection you get free dinner and so uh that's a particularly good deal especially if you have City points since they transfer one to two to choice and then you can book your Nordic choice properties the downside is you can only book 100 days in advance but if you're planning a trip to Scandinavia you can always book some other property that's cancelable and wait until 100 days in advance and start looking for your Nordic choice properties. And that I think is another good one that's easy enough. Yeah. Probably, yeah. Having choice in there in

general for booking Nordic choice, for booking Ascend hotel collection properties and Cambria all makes sense, especially now that you could transfer from Citibank one to two. So double your points when transferring over from Citi, as long as you have the Premier or Prestige card, that makes it great deal, very easy to book those. I purposely left out from this discussion using choice points to book preferred hotels,

which I've done, It's possible. And preferred hotels are some great ones out there, but it's so difficult to do that. It's just not, not at all practical. No. Um, what my last one is the ability to use capital one miles Capital One Miles to book Major League Baseball in great seats for 5,000 points per ticket. So you get these like $200 seats for 5,000 points. That's crazy. And you were able to pick up some tickets, right? I picked up. Yeah, I picked up some for a Detroit Tigers game.

So looking forward to that, you know, I, I'm not even a baseball fan really, but I, I find it fun to, you know, hang out in the sunshine, hopefully sunshine, um, and, uh, you know, hang out with friends and, and, uh, eat, uh, eat peanuts and hot dogs and stuff. So yeah, it should be a good day. And the nice thing is that Capital One added those, uh, June and July games. So I'm hopeful that they're going to continue to add the August games also. should be a good day and the nice thing is that capital one added those uh june and july games so i'm hopeful that they're going to continue to add the august games also so keep your eye out on that um and again 5 000 points per ticket now that's only the capital one exclusive tickets so when you log in capital one will sell other seats to games so you know you're getting the exclusives

if you only see one set of tickets, like one set of seats available, and it's 5,000 points per seat, and it's like close up to the field somewhere, then you know you've got the Capital One exclusives. If you see lots of tickets for sale, then they've sold out of the exclusives, and they're just selling other seats, and that's not a good value. So you want to just look for those 5,000 point per ticket ones. And like you said, I mean, they're oftentimes in these parks, they're like $200 seats or in some parks, like $300 seats. So they're really good seats right next to the field, five, 10 rows from the field.

In many cases, I was able to pick up tickets to a couple of games, both for family and friends. And then for my family, I booked tickets to a Mets game this summer. And again, like Greg, I'm not a huge baseball fan. I picked the New York Mets though, because they're club seats, which means we have some place to go inside. If we want to go inside for a little bit, if the sunshine is too much, I've got young kids, maybe they can't probably can't handle as much sun exposure.

So we can go inside if we need to, if it's a really sunny, hot day. The other nice thing is those club seats there. You can order food. There's waiters. You can order food to your seats. So I don't have to round up all the troops to go get a hot day. The other nice thing is those club seats there. You can order food. There's waiters. You can order food to your seats. So I don't have to round up all the troops to go get a hot dog. We can just order stuff to your seats and even Shake Shack. They have Shake Shack in Citi Field. So I'm very curious to see if the MX Gold Card $10 credit will trigger when I order Shake Shack in my seat at a New York Met. That'll be good to find. All right. So I think that's about it, unless you have any others.

No, that's it. All right. Well, I'm going to do a really quick host roast. I'm going to give you a pass, but still mention that it's a good idea to check the batteries on your smoke detectors before you do a broadcast recording. It sure is. We've been listening to his smoke detector chirp about once a minute during the show. And so sorry for everyone who has to hear that. Yeah, I was hoping that you weren't going to hear that. But apparently it did come through on the

mic. You know what, I think I used the built in mic instead of the mic on this. I was hoping the mic on this would block that out. So sorry about that. Apologies this week for those listening to that. All right. So I have a question of the week, unless you have another roast that you're going to add on top of that. No, no, that's it. Okay. Question of the week, which I saw you had responded to actually just before the show. So you have seen this one but it was a good question I thought so it came in from let's see a sheesh who said they met or rather he said he recently had an issue with Singapore Airlines he was booking to award tickets from Delhi to to Chicago using point I mean they found availability they found availability on air india via singapore airlines so they transferred the points because they saw the availability on the singapore airlines website

so they transferred points presumably from mx membership rewards that's where they said they they transferred them from so they transferred a whole bunch of mx membership rewards points to singapore airlines because they saw this air india availability on point.me they saw it on the singapore website but he says while booking i got an error on the last page, the payment page that asked me to call after several calls lasting more than three hours. It was phantom space and they couldn't do anything about it. Now the miles are stuck. So they're stuck in Singapore Airlines. And so he wants to know, is there a way to get these miles back to Amex? Because he doesn't want them in Singapore miles now. He's requested from this from Singapore Airlines,

and they told him that they'll let him know. He's hoping to hear back and wondering what could he have done differently to avoid this situation? So I thought this was a good question. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, first to his first question, I hope I'm wrong, but I think the answer is no, that there's nothing he can do to get his points back to membership rewards. Transferring from a transferable points program is one way. And even when things go wrong, they don't generally have a way to reverse it. I mean, I've heard some stories with a different airline where it was maybe possible in this one special occasion, but I would not count on that by any means. And so that's just really, really

unfortunate because sometimes that happens that an airline shows award space and usually for a partner where that award space isn't really there. So, you're worried about that possibility, what you could do, like what he could have done in this case, if he had even thought that it was possible, is to try the United and Air Canada websites, which are other Star Alliance programs, see if they could also see the Air India award space. If they could, then I would be safe to book from Singapore. My guess is that he transferred to Singapore. And this is just a guess, because that's the only one that Point Me showed had that space.

Otherwise, it probably would have said book with, you know, with Life Miles or whatever and so yeah that's that's my best advice if you see it if you see space only on Singapore for anything but Singapore itself I would question that I would question that really with any paragraph if you like if you see a Star Alliance carrier or an award available through a Star Alliance carrier and it's only available through one, that would really seem weird to me. Except when it's at own program flights. That's common. Singapore will show its own flights when other programs don't have access to Singapore flights. But yes, if Singapore

or any airline has access to a partner space and you're not seeing another one, question that. Yeah, yeah. And the problem is, of course, you say question that and that's all well and good, except you would probably think, well, OK, but how do you determine whether or not it's phantom or other sites just aren't seeing it or whatever? I mean, I would lean towards assuming it's phantom if you don't see that same space available via United or Canada Aeroplan or LifeMiles.

So I would probably not transfer in that case, except I say probably not. I mean, if I really wanted to book that award, I guess I would maybe have tried it too. But I always cross-reference it. If I don't see it in both places, I will usually just assume that it's Phantom. Yeah.

So Singapore is one of those, like ANA, where miles expire, hard expiry after three years-ish. And so, you know, that's one, yeah, unfortunately, you have to be extra careful before transferring to Singapore because of that. So now he's stuck, unfortunately, as are a lot of us for other reasons, with Singapore miles that we have to use before they expire. And so we have to find other uses. And so that's probably what you're going to have to do because I'm like, I don't know if you actually said this, maybe I missed it. You did, but I know you said it in response. I'm not aware of being able to get miles back in the transferable currency. The only time I can ever think of being able to get miles back in the transferable currency. The only time I can ever think of that happening was when at one point Swiss released a bunch of first-class space to Air Canada Aeroplan, I guess by accident. And so people somehow did get the

points back into Amex membership rewards in that one case, but that was something that was widespread. It was a whole bunch of first-class seats. So there were probably a lot of customers complaining about it. I think in a one-off situation, you're unlikely to get that resolved. One thing I would recommend you do, and I recommend this not because it's going to benefit you, but because hopefully it'll benefit all of the rest of us collectively, is to reach out to point.me and tell them what happened. Because I know that part of their tool, they want to only show things that are actually bookable and they don't show things that show up sometimes that they aren't confident are bookable. So I think that if the tool was showing that space,

they, for some reason thought that it was bookable and clearly it wasn't. So it would be good to tell them that so that they can get that fixed so they can figure out why that phantom space was showing up. Yeah. Very good. Okay. All right. That brings us to the end. So if you enjoyed this week, apart from my chirping smoke detector and poor sound and stuffed up nose, if you'd like to actually, except for all that, except for all that you'd like to read our post, so you don't have to deal with all those problems.

So this will all be fixed next week, hopefully. But if you'd like to read our posts, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And if you'd like to ask a question

or give us some feedback, you can send that too. Mailbag at frequent miler.com. I was not quite on the ball there. I was hoping I was going to get it there. I thought the smoke detector was going to chirp again. So I was like, let me get that out so he can say it. I can at least mute the sections where I'm not talking. I want to get this ready. All right. Thank you guys very much for being there with us. And we will see you again next week. Bye, everybody.