Frequent Miler on the Air - Should you have a hotel credit card even ​If you aren’t loyal to a hotel chain? | Ask Us Anything Ep86 | 5-6-26

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

Do any of the luxury hotel booking platforms (like Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts®) allow booking for others? If you are hotel chain agnostic, should you have a hotel credit card? We answered these questions and more on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on May 6th, 2026.(00:16) - I have 14999 Delta Sky Miles and need one more lousy point to be able to book an award ticket. I can transfer 1000 points from Amex, but that seems like a waste. I tried to convince Delta support to comp me a point, but they were seemingly unable to help. Any suggestions (other than getting the Delta Amex card)? (04:03) - If you have complete flexibility to position to any airport in Europe to fly home to the USA, are flexible on arrival airport in the USA/Canada/Mexico, and time wasn’t a constraint, but you would like a good points redemption in J (not first), where would you position to and which airline would you book on? (08:39) - ​If you are hotel chain agnostic, should you have a hotel credit card? (12:24) - Question on 5/24 if over, are there any data points on the United or Southwest business card? (14:38) - Should we now value Membership Rewards points higher than Chase Ultimate Rewards points? I'd rather have an American Express Platinum Card® than a Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card at this point. Would you guys disagree? (19:50) - Do any of the luxury hotel booking platforms (e.g., Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts®, The Edit by Chase Travel℠, etc.) allow booking for others? (22:57) - ​At what cash back rate do you prefer cash over miles/points (excluding when you are working on a welcome offer)? (27:50) - Do you think we'll finally see an Ultimate Rewards Hyatt transfer bonus in the future? (30:15) - Question - Greg has mentioned a few times about being able to pay for the fees on British Airways with Avios, as a card benefit. I can't seem to see how to make that work. Any more details? (34:43) - ​For airlines that allow a stopover on an award flight, has your experience required a phone call reservation, or have you booked a stopover online? (37:03) - ​Can I apply corporate codes when booking hotels through Rove? Can Rove act like a shopping portal? Get corporate rates and Rove miles. (39:00) - ​​Is it possible to product change the old aviator if I've had it for less than a year now that it was product changed? I know banks frown upon this before the first annual fee posts. (40:58) - ​Barclays American Airlines card transferred to Citi. What would be the best course of action to get the welcome offer on the Citi American Airlines card now that I have one, but haven't previously gotten the welcome offer? (44:01) - ​​Does the FM team know if I make a reservation with the 25k Atmos Summit Companion certificate, and later cancel the reservation before the original expiry, if the certificate is returned and can be reused? (44:38) - ​Can I use Hyatt points for suite upgrades with cash booking through Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts®? (45:49) - ​​​What's each team member's biggest regret in their points and miles journey?Mentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the frequent miler team answers your questions live. All right. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, our monthly YouTube live. I think Stephen is a question to kick us off. Yes, so first question is from Scott. He has 14,99 Delta Sky Miles and needs one month.

more lousy point to be able to book in the water. He could transfer a thousand points from MX, but that seems like a waste. He tried to convince Delta support to comp him a point, but they were seemingly unable to help any suggestions other than getting the Delta MX card. So he asked this on the Ask Us Anything

blog post, so I gave him a few suggestions, but I'm curious if you guys have anything like Genius that would get him a quick sky mile. Well, you said genius, so you must be asking Kerry. I'm going to pass on that one. Well, my first question would be, how many times did you ask Delta customer service to give you one free mile?

Because I'd probably call again and hope that you get a better agent because I've definitely heard of agents, not specific to Delta necessarily, but I've definitely heard of agents comping a mile before in that type of situation. They should be able to do that. So that'd be my first course of action. I'd call a few times if you get some nose and see because somebody knows how to do that. Then after that, if that didn't work, there's the shopping. portal. So you buy something to the shopping portal to earn a couple of miles. You know, spend a dollar or somewhere that's one X. You can earn your one mile. So that would be another way. It might be a little slower, though. If you're looking for an award ticket in the near term,

I'd probably just pick up the phone and call a few times. I mean, there's tons of other ways to earn miles with like car rentals and hotel partners and stuff like that. But the shopping portal would probably be my next thought. Tim, you got something else? Oh, you know, I mean, you could do shot you could do um i mean off the top of you could you could convert i mean you could do a lot of stuff like so you could do a lot of stuff you could do uber you could do a shop or shop or um uh hotel points or transfer barriott points or stuff like that but this you know if this is for first of all if i were you i would never end up with 14,999 points i would do whatever i could to avoid having 14,999 points um but more to the point

I guess to me, this is one of those things where a thousand points is worth about, what, 10, 15 bucks. And I would just transfer it and not give myself the headache of having to, like, take the effort of going through a shopping portal and then checking and seeing when it credits and all this sort of stuff. And then does it, did I do that is it? Did I make the right purchase and how long will it take? And I would just transfer the thousand points if I were you and just save myself the headache. But those are all, you could do a shopping portal.

You could transfer points from Marriott or I think there's some other hotel programs. You could take an Uber ride or a lift. ride or something like that. Yeah, I'm thinking like an Uber or Starbucks. You can get miles with that, right? You could book a $3.000 Airbnb experience. There you go. Good idea. That's a terrible idea right there. I like it. What else did you come up with, Stephen? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was mostly everything that you've suggested. I'd forgotten like the Uber out, and so that might be one of the ones to post quickest. I checked to see how much it would cost to actually buy the miles, just because I wasn't sure if you could just buy a thousand miles.

the minimum is 2,000 miles and that costs $70, which is just absolutely crawling. Yeah, that is me. But yeah, I figured, like, if you've got some points in, like, an orphaned hotel program or something like that, you'll probably get a really terrible transfer ratio,

but if you're not going to do anything else with them, that would get you the small number of points you need. And like Tim also mentioned, like this Marriott is another option. But overall, that's not a great option in this particular case, because then you'd be transferring, 3,000 Mario points and getting 1,000 Delta Sky Miles, whereas

you'd get better value just by transferring the MX points, even that you've got to pay the excise fees. So, yeah. Yeah. And then our second question came from Megan. If you have complete flexibility

to position to any airport in Europe to fly home to the US, a flexible on the arrival airport in the US, Canada, or Mexico, and time wasn't a constraint, but you would like a good point redemption and J, not first, where would you position to and which airline would you book on? Let's say you, Tim. Yeah, let's start with Tim for this one.

Well, you know, I'm not, you know, there is, so my first thought, and this is, would be, where do I want to go to and where can I get a nonstop flight to the West Coast? And for me, like, so much of, and this is people who have seen any of these when we talk about Europe, I absolutely hate flights from the East Coast to Europe. Even in business class, they're too short. If you try to get breakfast and dinner and sleep in the middle, you end up with like three hours of sleep or two hours of sleep. And it's not a pleasant experience for me. So I'm always trying to fly from the West Coast because then it ends up getting, you know, it's about a nine-hour flight and that's a good length of time.

and there's honestly not a lot of really easy redemptions. The one that I most commonly do is Frankfurt to Seattle nonstop on Condor, simply because I can usually get it for a decent value through Alaska, and it's often available. Now that's said, in the spirit of the, like, if there was anything that I, I'm trying to think I would probably do, back in the day, I would have said Iberia easily for the, like the Chicago to Madrid for what was it, 34,000 obfios or whatever it was,

40,500. Yeah, something like that, yeah. But that's been repeatedly devalued now. So I don't know. I like Mexico City, and I think there's still some opportunity to get some Delta partner awards by booking from Europe to directly to South America or Central America. So maybe that. I'm not sure.

Do you guys have any fun examples or fun ideas? Okay, I'll hop in. No. So the thing here that sticks out that kind of contradicts a little bit of. of what Tim said is that I think the question Asker here asked about positioning to an airport in Europe for a flight back to the United States. So that's probably going to be a daytime

flight. So I'm a little of the last concern with the shortness on the East Coast routes. You're totally right. They are all too, as somebody who lives on the East Coast, I can totally concur with Tim that flights from the East Coast to Europe are too short. So if I have my choice of anything, I'm flying through Istanbul. So I can get a full night

sleep on the way to Europe. But, you know, that out of the way. For the way back for daytime flight, Condor is the first thing that comes to my mind, too, because of what Tim said, it's frequently available through Alaska. It's a good deal at 55,000 miles. It's a decent onboard experience. It's not amazing, but it's good. So that's probably my first thought. I like Singapore, and you can book Singapore also from Frankfurt to JFK with 60,000, you know, era plan points. And so that's another one that comes to mind. That's a really good deal for much better in-flight experience than what you're going to get on other airlines.

And some people don't like the way that the Singapore seat lays down for the bed, but in a daytime flight, that doesn't matter. So I think that would, Singapore would probably be able to pick for a daytime flight back to the U.S. 60K via aeroplane. Final answer. Bring it in, Regis. Now, if you guys were flying economy, I'm guessing suddenly you wouldn't be optimizing for longer flights. Then I'd be looking for the Azores to Providence or something short. Do you have any other ideas? I'm not sure if it's still available, but years ago, you could fly from Shannon to Shannon, Ireland, to St. John's Newfoundland. And I actually took that flight one time.

And it was under five hours. It was like a four hour and 15 minute, four and a half hour flight. So if I'm going for a deep flight, I'm going, if that still exists. Yeah, what airline would that be? No, I don't even remember now. I'm assuming I think it was actually. No, I think it was British Midlands, if I remember correctly. Remember that in that day?

It's now been folded into British Airways, I think, completely. I wonder if that flight, that route still exists somehow. Yeah, I'm not sure if it did. This is 23 years ago, but anyway. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, if we're already, I'm going to move us along to some of the live questions that are coming in. We're going to start with Nick.

Actually, we're going to start with Stevens, since you didn't answer either of those two. If you are hotel chain agnostic, should you have a hotel credit card? Yes and no. Like, possibly no, possibly yes. It kind of depends on what you want to do. So if your hotel chain agnostic, then it doesn't necessarily mean you're not going to stay in any chain hotels. It just means that you're not necessarily looking for loyalty in any particular one, I guess. But credit cards are still a decent way to be able to rack up hotel points.

And so I'd say it's still worth having them, especially because they're not. And quite a few of them come with an annual free night. And then if your partner also gets that, that's like two nights that you could get for good value for two annual fees each year. Some of the hotel cards also come with status anyway. And so even if you're agnostic, it's still nice to have like gold status with Hilton or something like that. Or possibly platinum status with Marriott, if you have the Bonvoy brilliant cards. So I'd say for the most part, hotel cards can still make sense. but if you're someone who likes luxury stays in like boutique properties that aren't part of chain

hotels, then it probably doesn't really make all that much sense. But otherwise, yeah, certainly get one or more than I'd say. Anyone got something to chime in on that? I have a follow-up question, but I co-sign with everything Stephen said. And I think sometimes folks like hotel chain agnostic doesn't mean that a card for the first year doesn't still offer plenty of value, just like Stephen said. And it doesn't matter. you can be agnostic to anything.

And you're still going to get a ton of value by getting those points and being able to use them. However, my question is for any of you three, if you are hotel chain atheists, not agnostic, or it wouldn't be atheist, but whatever that is, whatever would be hotels, which hotel chain? I don't believe in hotels or? What hotel chain would you specifically say, no, I will not, is there a hotel chain where you will be, you will not darken the door of that hotel chain. If their credit card was available, even if it had a sign-up bonus, you would not simply because you didn't want, you don't want those,

you wouldn't want to use those. You wouldn't want those points. I don't think so. I can't think of anything I. Maybe Motel 6. I'd stay in one of it makes sense. I can still, if it's like the only thing on like a long road trip, you just want a super cheap place to stay the night or something.

But even, yeah, but I wouldn't get a Maitel sex credit card, but other than that, like... Okay, when you put it that way, agreed. I guess best Western to an extent, just because I've never bothered getting a best Western card, just because it feels like their card doesn't offer much value in terms of the number of points you get for how expensive the redemptions are. So, yeah, that's one that I've never actually bothered with. So I guess I'm agnostic regarding their cards.

Atheist. You know, I would agree with you about that. the way things stand. But if Best Western started offering a free night certificate for whatever, a $100 annual fee or whatever, I would totally get it. There's the best Western somewhere that I'd spend a night in and I'd get my money's worth. That's typically the way it works at the hotel free night certificates on credit cards. If I'm going to pay $100 to get a $200 night somewhere, that, like, why wouldn't I do that? There's not a great reason for me not to. So I think I would agree with Stephen, the way things stand, I wouldn't be getting the,

the best Western card, or Motel 6, probably. I mean, I've stayed in some Motel 6s in my time. Don't get me wrong. When's the last time? It's a good joke, makes you know, it's a haves. It's been a while. Yeah, I would imagine so. All right, moving on, Nick.

This one will send you. Question on 524. If I'm over 524, is there any, are there any data points on United or Southwest business card? Off the top of my head, I don't know. So if somebody else does know, hop in. I think that the co-branded cards in general, occasionally people are successful, even if over 524, though my recollection is typically that happens when a new offer drops near the beginning.

It seems that they may relax things a little bit when the new offer comes out. I'm not particularly familiar with either of those, though. I have not had Locke over 524 getting approved for anything with Chase. So, and, you know, of course, there are some of those targeted offers within your account that say you're already approved that maybe you'll get approved for it. But I think that's not even necessarily 100%. I think somebody else here might be able to hop in on this. Anybody, any other thoughts? Any other takers?

I was going to suggest what you just mentioned is to check to see if you've, like, being pre-approved. So when you log into your account, if you are logged into a business side of an account, like just scroll down, you'll see business cards. if you're on your personal side of things, scroll down, I think it's just credit cards or other personal cards. Go in there and then, do you remember what the wording was as you scroll down? It says you're already approved.

It's green and it says you're already approved. And if you see that, then it should go past. Yeah, so take a look at that. And then, like, there's a tab at the top of that where you can flip between personal and business cards. And so if you see it under business cards, then in theory you should be approved.

But I think it was my, I can't remember if it was me and my wife was targeted for a sapphire reserve. You already approved. But then applied and it was declined because she'd already had one in the past. And so it's not necessarily a guarantee, but now that they've changed the sapphire reserve and sapphire preferred, like lifetime rule, family rule kind of thing, I don't know, maybe it would be different because she also has a sapphire preferred at the moment.

So I can't remember if it was because she's had a sapphire reserve years ago or because your company has a staff I preferred. But you're looking on the business side of things anyway. So, yeah, fingers crossed, you have some luck. All right. Moving on then to Tim. Should we now value membership rewards points higher than Chase? I'd rather have a platinum than a reserve at this point.

Would you guys disagree? So to me, I think this is two different questions. The first question is, would you rather have a, an Amex platinum than a Sapphire Reserve card, which are their Chase and Amex's respective premium cards, or ultra-premium cards. And I would say with 100% agreement, yes, I would rather have an A MX platinum than a Sapphire Reserve. The yearly credits that it has are easier to use and more useful for me and much easier to recoup or exceed the annual fee of that card. The second question is, should we value membership rewards?

higher than Chase's ultimate rewards. And to me, that's completely almost distinct from the question of the platinum versus the reserve. And that's a question of, I mean, some people might, and I think for years, what we would, we actually valued membership rewards as the more than Chase. It's only recently that we made them equal, probably within the last, I know, a year, year and a half, guys, if I remember correctly. And what, what comes to value, what creates the value,

most of the value for both of those or both of those ecosystems is their transfer partners. And it's going to be a question of what are your travel habits, where do you want to go, and how do those transfer partners help you accomplish that?

And in terms of how you may value that, you may say that membership rewards gets you there quicker than, or is more valuable to you along those lines than Chase. And there are some, you know, so like the big feather in Chase's cap is Hyatt, and that's getting,

hit on kind of two sides now because not only, well, I guess the big thing is on the Hyatt side because Hyatt is going to be effectively devaluing their awards pretty significantly within the next month here by going to a five tier, a, what is it now, an eight by five tier point system. So they still have an award. And that's just for standard rooms. Yeah, they still have an award chart, but they have three different award charts, depending on if it's all-inclusive, Miraval, or a higher property. And each of those award charts has 40 different possible,

depending on season and category and stuff. So it's effectively dynamic. I mean, really, it's effectively dynamic. And there's also some category changes coming. So we don't, and for years, that's been kind of the feather and Chase's hat. Now, that said, even post that devaluation, I don't know that there will be another transferable currency to a hotel program that will easily overtake that value in terms of just being able to use transferable

points towards hotels at a good value. Membership rewards hotel programs probably won't. That said, membership rewards still has a lot of transfer partners that Chase doesn't. And in A&A comes to mind, Avianca comes to mind. And those are both great programs that have some really good redemptions for, especially for international business class and international economy flights. So I mean, I would say to me, they're, they're kind of equivalent now. But I do think that once as the, if the shine comes off Hyatt, the shine comes off of Chase as well. Because outside of Hyatt, Chase's transferable program is not quite as, there's not a lot of unique partners. I guess United too. And if you have a United card, you could probably get some good

value there. So anyway, to me, the, the actual, the two currencies. these are more or less equivalent now. But that's also without knowing how drastic that high devaluation is going to be. If I can add one thing to, I agree with everything Tim said. So co-sign all of that. To add a little color to his point at the beginning, the question, I have the same first reaction that the question between the two cards is totally separate from the value of the points.

And so to add a little color to that, which points I value more has nothing to do with the cards? Because with an ultra-premium card, generally, speaking, that's not going to be the primary way that I'm generating points in that particular program. Now, obviously, if you're spending a lot on flights or hotels, maybe it is for you. But for me, I'm looking at the ultra-premium cards as more so buying a coupon book. And so, yeah, the platinum card coupon book is much more appealing to me. I'll get much more value out of those coupons. That has nothing to do with how many points I'm going to earn or use with Amex. And so that's why I totally

agree with Tim. It's a completely separate thing between those two cards. Now, I may still prefer to earn points at office supply stores with an ink cash card. For instance, on the Chase site, that might be my primary point generator, but the platinum card could still make sense. It has nothing to do with the value of the points overall, though. So, and otherwise, just co-sign everything that Tim said. And that still is co-signing what Tim said. So, yeah, with Tim said. All right, very good. Stephen, we're going to move on to you. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that frequent Myler is also a website.

At Frequentmyler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to Frequentmyler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. Do any of the luxury hotel booking platforms, for example, MX, FHR, Chase Edit, allow booking for other people? FHR definitely does.

I've done it myself recently with my wife. We used some of her platinum credits and booked to stay several nights in Crete using some of her credits, but we did it all under my name because I'm the one who has Marriott's status and that works absolutely perfectly. It had no issues whatsoever

with the showing up on our account. The edit with Chase, I'm not 100% sure. any experience with that because I've not worked any stays through that. So I'm not 100% sure if that's possible. But FHR, you definitely can. All right. And with a collection with MX you can as well. Anything else yet? I've done it with both Capital One and the edit. That said, both of those programs, provided that you have an actual Chase Sapphire card with the edit, they don't actually look at least in my experience they don't look to see if it's reserve or preferred they just want to

see a chase card and the same thing with capital one is they want you to be able to check out and check with a capital one card or check in a capital one card and i should add to what stephen was saying about amex the rule with fine hotels and resorts though is that the person checking in does need to present an amex card in their name and it does not have to be a platinum card there are some hotels or front desk agents that might think that it has to be a platinum card. But if you really got a lot of pushback there, I would call Amex because it's in the terms that it just has to be an amex card in their name, but it does have to be an Amex card. Now I say have to, and there was a time when I got away with using another card at the desk and got benefits. But I've also heard from people

who have said that they used another card and then didn't get their $100 credit or whatever. So if you're booking for somebody else, make sure they have an Amex card in their name and make an authorized user on something if you have to. That's the one safety tip. Is anybody used City, the reserve? to book for somebody else? Has anybody used city? Have you found the property? All five. We haven't had a chance

from those five hotels. Yeah, those five hotels. Okay. Just asking. Okay. Just going back to that MX card with someone's name on it, I haven't actually ever needed to try it myself,

but one possible option is if you go to amex gift card.com, you can buy American Express debit cards, a little bit like Visa and MasterCard gift cards, but it's an MX version. And you can get a name put on that. And so you could always like order a $25 MX gift card. And then that might possibly work because it has that person's name on it,

even though it's not an American Express credit card, it is still an American Express card. So that might work as a workaround. But that would be a like backup, backup, backup option. So because it would suck to get there. Nick looks do these. Well, the $25 card I'm thinking isn't going to work because they're going to want to run it for incidentals. But the idea, the idea would probably. the concept I suppose could work.

Yeah, my ask you a good point of that. All right. So moving on, I think this is now Nick. At what cash back rate do you prefer cash over miles and points, excluding when you are working on a sign-up bonus? So if you're not working on a current sign-up bonus, you get this kind of question a lot, but answer it again. Yeah, well, and it's always a tough one to answer.

So I'll take it as a question that was given to me for my scenario, but I would say that anybody listening to this or thinking about this, I think the answer depends on how many points you have. If you already have plenty of points to book all the travel you need for a long time, then the threshold becomes much lower. And if you don't have plenty of points or you're working on trying to amass the points for particularly valuable redemptions, then the pendulum's going to swing in the other direction. So even for my own situation, it varies some. depending on, do I all of a sudden, did I run through all of my chase and high at points? And now I need more high at points. And so I'm going to value that, even if I'm earning them at one and a half points per dollar on a freedom unlimited.

Maybe. I mean, this happened to me before. So I've been in that situation before. But if I've got plenty of points to book all the trips I'm going to take this year and next year, then, you know, I think the Bank of America, 2.625% back everywhere with a premium rewards or an unlimited cash rewards if you have 100k in cash or investments with Bank of America and Merrill. I mean, that starts to look pretty good. If you can get a 3% Robin Hood card, then you've got to look and say, well, if I'm earning two points per dollar, but I could be earning 3%. I'm giving up one and a half cents for each point that I earn. And so you've got to know, you're going to use

the points to better value to make that the better choice. So it's hard for me to pick a number out of the sky. There have definitely been times over the last few years where I focused on the 2.6 or 3%. However, I think I look at it more so in the opportunity cost sort of method. If it's costing me, so to speak, the opportunity to earn more than like that one and a half cents or more to choose points over cash, I'm probably going to choose cash. But when I think it's something like the grocery store where maybe I could be earning four points per dollar, or 3% back, well, I'll probably take the points in that case. If I could be earning 10% back, though, I'd be going cash back at that point because then it

would feel like I'm sort of paying two cents or more than two cents per point to use the points earning cards. So I know this is kind of equivocating and not giving you the answer that you're looking for, but I guess I would look at it as more than one and a half cents per point I'm out. And somewhere between the one and one and a half is the point where I'm like, I shouldn't be giving up the opportunity for cash back in that spot. I don't know, Tim, do you agree, disagree or Stephen? No.

Different thoughts. Yeah. I think that's fair point. But something else that plays in my mind as well is other stuff that's not necessarily miles and points. So I might want to put spending on a higher card, even though it's at 1X. If I'm working towards the $15,000 spend to get the annual three-night certificate plus along the way I would then get six.

elite night credits and things like that, which are helpful. So that kind of factor comes into play a little bit like the Hilton surpass card as well. Again, $15,000 to spend and you get a Hilton free night certificate. So even though that might not be earning at an amazing rate, so either 3x, everywhere else, 4X online shopping, 6X, what's it, guests, dining and groceries, having then the free night certificate on top for the 15x. thousand spend makes it a little more doable even if it doesn't equate so well with kind of like cashback options yeah and that's a good point because that's a great example where i'll take a look at that and say okay

the free night certificate if i could buy one for 300 bucks i would probably buy one for 300 bucks and so if i look at that and i say okay that's worth 300 bucks to me and the return on spends about one and a half percent that's kind of to me sort of like three and a half percent back on that 15k spend so i might consider doing that over a three percent card. Obviously, it depends on how much you value those things as to whether you would agree with that statement or not agree with that statement. It's going to vary person to person. But all of those things come to mind. And the built palladium card comes to mind because if I had the choice between 3% cash back or effectively earning three points per dollar by using my built cash on the pladium card

with the points boost, I'm taking the points in that case over the 3% back. If I could be earning five or six, then it starts to become more of a question where I'm saying, okay, maybe I'll go the five or six percent. All right. I feel like that's a pretty thorough answer. Now we are at Tim. Yes. Do you think we'll finally see an ultimate rewards high at transfer bonus in the future?

So in the future, possibly. In the near future, not a chance. Why? In my opinion. And part of it is, and I'm going to have a big asterisk. So let me put a big ask. If you're listening to this,

I'm making an error. risk that's very large. But the primarily because I think Hyatt charges a lot of point a lot to programs for its points. And Hyatt has no need to incentivize programs to to buy its points, which I think is probably my guess. And I don't this is just completely my guess. I don't I don't know the way these things work on the back end is that the majority of time when you see transfer bonuses, that's at least partially or wholly subsidized by the actual rewards program as opposed by the bank. the bank doesn't care if you transfer its points to, you know, Aeroplan versus Best Western, for instance, Nick.

In fact, they might prefer you not transfer them at all, right? I mean, it would cost them less, probably. But so, I mean, all that to say, like, I don't, I don't know if there's any reason for Hyatt to have a transfer bonus at this point. The big asterisk is we've seen some, some surveys going around where Hyatt is considering some changes to its program that would make it look a lot more like other hotel programs. And one of the big ones is with its 120 tiered chart that it's coming up to now that is looking much or looking like they're trying to standardize the value

of their points much more tightly than they used to where, you know, you could get eight, traditionally and you get eight cents per point on some redemptions and some would be one cent. Seems like they're trying to narrow that a lot, which is kind of what other hotel programs have been doing. So within a couple of years, if world of Hyatt has changed dramatically, the points are not as valuable as they used to be, there is some sort of flagging interest in Hyatt.

Could there be a transfer bonus? Sure. Will it happen within the next, within the near future? I don't see how much. All right. Speaking of equivocating, that's a long answer. I mean, that's why we do these. That's a lot of speculation and equivocating.

That seems to be questions that people like. So, Stephen, this may be a quick, no idea, but we'll go for it anyway. Greg had mentioned a few times about being able to pay for the fees on British Airways with avios as a card benefit. I can't seem to see how to make that work. Any more details? This is for Stephen or anyone who possibly knows. So I'm a little confused by the question. Maybe Nick knows, like what Gregs talked about before in that respect.

I'm wondering, though, on the British Airways Avio's card, it does have a benefit where you can get up to $600 back each year when paying for taxes and fees on UBA flights, award flights. So I'm kind of assuming it's relating to that, but because it says about paying for them with Avio's, then I'm a little bit of fees. I think there's two things. Yeah, I think that this person's maybe conflating two different things because, yes, it says card benefit. And so that would make me think exactly as Stephen's saying British Airways card has that as a benefit. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, if it is that, the key thing to be aware of is that it's only for flights that originate in the US. So if you've tried paying for taxes and fees for flights from the UK back to the US or from something like that,

that's not going to work. So the flights do have to originate in the US in order for that to work because I've looked into getting the card for myself. And so that's a bit of a downside. But if you are going to be flying from the US to the UK, then it could certainly make sense because the annual fee is only $195 or something like that. One redemption makes that fee absolutely worth it. So that's one thing.

Also, when you're booking award flights, British Airways, does give you the option to pay a little bit more in taxes and fees and reduce how many avios you redeem. And that can actually be fairly good value. So I've done that a few times recently where you need to double check all of the different tiers because usually the first or second tier where you increase how much you pay, it's not a good redemption. But then there's usually a fairly big jump. I think it's either the third or the fourth tier where it makes it much more worthwhile. So I've booked a few award flights on British Airways recently, like in Europe and stuff, and done that and paid a little bit more in taxes and fees because the number of

aviosits saved has made that much more worthwhile. And when doing that, what I've done is I paid with a Hilton Aspire card because then that has $50 each quarter that you can use towards airfare and all kinds of things. And it's a lot more flexible than the MX Platinum airline fee credits. so you can use it for purchases like that. And so that's ended up helping wipe away a fair bit of that cost too. So that's what I'm assuming they're referring to unless you guys have any other. Well, I was a little confused when you talked about paying more in taxes and fees and less than obvious. Because what I was recalling, and maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong,

is that you maybe additionally sometimes have the opportunity to pay more and obvious and less in taxes. I think you can. Yeah. So I feel like a business class award from like New York to London. Don't quote me. Something like 60,000 obvious and a ton of taxes and fees or you could pay like 80,000, at least in the past the way it was to pay less in taxes and fees. And it's a decent enough trade anyway for what you used to get off of the taxes and fees. I don't remember because I haven't looked at the specifics on that in a while. I don't travel to the UK very often myself. So it's not often that I'm searching those specific things. But I believe that's probably what he's talking about. I want to say no, it's like 80 or 88,000, like coming from the U.S. to the UK, I think it was 80 or 88,000 AVOS and about $400 or something like that now, one way in business class. And that shows up at the bottom. Like, if you scroll below the price, then you might have to expand something. And it's like four or five different boxes and you can choose how much you want to pay in Avio and how much in Texas.

hopefully we have read Greg's mind properly on that one I said just to be clear that's not a card benefit we're talking about in terms of that slide that's anybody who makes an obvious exemption it's not related to having a credit card okay thank you yes all right hopefully we got them on Greg will let us know when he's back um okay so that leaves Nick um for airlines that allow stopover on an award flight has your experience required a phone call reservation or have you booked a stopover online Yes. So both. Both. It depends on which program you're using. So Alaska, it's relatively easy to book Stopover Awards online. I actually have one book that I know I have the reminder. I need to remember to cancel. But I booked a flight from either New York or Boston to Frankfurt with about a week in Frankfurt and then continuing on to Bangkok on Condor. And that was 75,000 miles one way, which is a pretty slamming good deal since it's 55K, just a to Frankfurt. So for an additional 20K, you get that stopover and continue to Asia. It's a pretty awesome deal. Unfortunately, we decided not to do that particular trip, but that can be booked online. So you can do that on Alaska's website with all their partners that are book online. As far as I know anyway, there might be some limitations there. And Tim can probably speak more to that with Alaska. With Air Canada Aeroplane, you can book stopovers online. It can kind of be a pain. And in my experience in the past, it was in any kind of complicated situation. It was necessary to call. My understanding,

I haven't booked a stopover award with Aeroplan in a while. My understanding is that agents are less and less able to do anything that you can't do online for a while anyway. It was possible to book much more complicated itineraries via phone agent than what the website allows. But my understanding is that their capabilities have reduced. So I don't know. I haven't done it in a while. Again, you can book stopovers with their plan online. It was just much more limiting using their online booking tool in my experience. Air France, KLM, if you want to do a stopover with them, you have to call. There's no way to book that online. So it's another program that allows a stopover. Then there are a couple of other programs that allow stopovers that I think you have to call. Cathay Pacific, I think, still maybe allows

stopovers in some situations. A&A. In A, you can actually book the stopover online. In Singapore, I think, allows stopovers still, but I think you have to call for that. I'm not exactly sure. So it's going to vary from one airline to another is the shortest version of the answer to that question. All right. That's helpful. Okay, Tim, you're up. Can I apply corporate codes when booking hotels through Roeve? Can Roe act like a shopping portal? Get corporate rates and Roe Miles? Can Roe act like a shopping portal? Yes, it can. In fact, it is a shopping portal in many ways. in terms of the corporate codes, I believe you can. I think that they have enabled it, but I'm going to defer to Nick, because I think he's used

Rove more than I have because I've never, I've used Rove twice. I'm not aware of being able to use corporate codes, but I could be wrong on that. So Tim's right. There's a shopping portal section. So when you go to the Roe of Miles website up at the top, you get the ability to book flights, the ability to book hotels, and there's a shopping tab. And if you hit that, it's like a shopping portal. So presumably, I haven't checked to see if like Marriott and IHG are on their portal,

but I would assume that those types of chains are on there. And presumably you could click through then and go book at the hotel website and still use your corporate code, presumably. But what I think you're asking about and what Tim's mentioning is like through the Rove hotel booking tool, which is where you earn far more in miles for your stay than through the shopping portal probably. I don't know of any way to use a corporate code there. I know that there have been times where there have been seemingly corporate codes available through there, but I don't know of the ability to enter your code. So if it's possible, maybe somebody else will answer in the comments, but to my knowledge,

I just ran a quick search. I didn't notice anyone anywhere in there where you can enter any kind of code. But like you said, there do seem to have been cases in the past where they do have access to certain pricing and codes, it seems. So it's worth running a search and comparing it to your corporate code because you may end up being lessenedly surprised, but absolutely no guarantee on that. All right.

Okay, Stephen, this one's for you. Is it possible to product change the old Aviator if I've had it for less than a year now that it was product changed? I know banks frown upon this before first annual fee posts. What are your thoughts? Interesting. I mean, I'm guessing no just because in theory the same rule should still apply in that you can't oh no you

can't be charged more yeah I don't know actually how that would I don't know how city would be regarding that now that they've got the Berkeley's portfolio I guess there's no harm in asking to see if you can downgrade because worse that they can say is no and then but yeah I'm not sure the only data points I've seen seen so far from people who have asked about product changing aviator cards is that no, it's not available yet. So I don't think it's available yet at all. Will you be able to before your next annual few posts? I don't know. I don't know when that's going to become an available thing. So you don't like Stephen said, no harm in calling and asking. And hey, if you are able to product change your aviator card,

let us know. Because as soon as that becomes available, we'd love to be able to tell people that they can do it. But so far, the only data points I've seen have been negative. I'm surprised you didn't say your classic Nick, Nick phrase, you miss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You miss 100% of the balls at which you do not swing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's always worth taking a swing. Yeah. And I mean, it might be. But it's so new. I mean, those cards just converted to City like, what, a week ago, a little more than a week ago as we record this. So I can't imagine. I imagine City just from a tech standpoint.

Just wants to make sure everything's running and working. first and like mail out the cards, the physical cards, before they start getting into more complicated tack of product changing and everything else. So I would expect it might be a couple of months before that becomes a thing. All right. So we got to kind of wait and see. All right, Nick, Barclays American Airlines? Barclays American Airlines card transferred to city. What would be the best course of action to get the sign-up bonus on the city American Airlines card now that I have one, but haven't previously gotten the sign-up bonus. You know, I am going to punt this one over to Tim to see if Tim is more familiar with the

bank application rules, since you've written all the application rules posts, because I can't remember off the top of my head the rules on the American Airlines cards. So first of all, the reason why I write the post is so that I don't have remember the information. So to my knowledge and again, check out our. full application rules post for full details, but city still goes by when you got a welcome bonus. So they don't necessarily care if you've had the same card before. They care when you've gotten the welcome bonus. And it's 48 months. My memory is that it's 48 months for all of the individual products for the AA cards. So each AA card counts as a separate product. You cannot have had a

gotten a welcome bonus on that card within the last 48 months in order to be eligible for the new welcome bonus. In this case, since you have never gotten a welcome bonus on the card as far as the city is concerned, I would assume that you would be able to do it. City does allow you to have multiple of the same cards. You may want to, I mean, I don't, depending on if you want to AAA cards. In this case, whatever A.A. card you have, you may want to cancel it to not have to beforehand. I would probably wait to cancel until after. But my, I don't think that the product change, although they added some product change language to the AA stuff recently, where you can't have product changed to that card from another card. So I'm not sure since you were, technically,

but you didn't product change, you bank changed. So I'm not 100% sure on how that will work now that I think about it. Now, yeah, I remember that coming up when the whole transition was happening. That was a question people had now that you say that. And I don't think we know the answer yet. It's just, yeah. And that's, we don't know. Like, so if you had changed, like, so for instance, if you had gotten the bonus on a more

expensive card, downgraded that card to a lower card, they would not let you, get that bonus is my understanding. However, you didn't necessarily downgraded on this. You just changed banks. So I'm not sure how they're going to count that. That's a good question. Interesting question, but we don't know. And maybe you can product change to a mile up card that has no annual fee and then

possibly do it. Yeah. But absolutely no guarantee on that. Card games. All right. Tim, this one is yours. if I make a reservation with the 25K Atmos Summit Companion Certificate and later cancel the reservation before the original expiration

if the certificate is returned can it be reused? Yes. Ah, that was nice and easy. Any side notes or? No, I mean, that's it. As long as all of the Alaska Awards are long, I shouldn't say that, actually, I'm not going to make a sweeping statement because that's not true.

But in this case, if you cancel it before the expiration date, you can still re-book it afterwards. Okay. All right. Very good. Stephen, can I use Hyatt Points for Sweet Upgrades with a cash booking through FHR? I've not actually tried that before. I'm guessing that it might be possible if you, like, called in. I have tried.

Oh, you have tried. Oh, let's hear from Nickniz. I wrote about it. Yeah, I saw your face at the beginning. You were like, well, I don't know. Yeah, so my experience was no, you cannot, and I did push pretty hard with it. So during our passing the Guck trip that we did, Greg and I did several years back, we stayed at the Grand Hyatt, Dubai, and did use Hyatt points to upgrade a booking there. And then, but originally, I had

tried to book through FHR and, and use the points to upgrade like that. And several agents, I tried a few times said no that that couldn't be upgraded with points that it needed to be like a certain kind of a rate code on the back end in order to be able to be upgraded with points and and not to say there's only one rate code that works but the FHR code would not work with that so I wasn't able to do it. All right. Okay so this is an all play. We're going to start with Nick. What is each team member's biggest regret in their points and miles journey? Nick. Gosh, not starting sooner, you know, I guess. I mean, because I ignored credit cards for a lot of years because I grew up, you know, I'm going to blame my parents here. But I grew up with parents that said, don't ever pay an annual fee for a credit card, that you should never pay a fee to use your money. And that advice is not necessarily terrible advice. I can understand why they gave it. But I think I ignored credit cards for far too long because I thought that they just didn't make sense to pay a fee for a card.

I had never done the math to look and say, okay, well, what are the benefits and are they worth it? In some cases, it's not worth paying the fee to keep a car. I've got some cards right now that I'm going to be canceled because it's not worth continuing to pay for them. But I wish I had started with that math a little bit sooner. Now I say that. I don't really regret much. I did a lot of traveling even before credit cards.

So that's a pretty tiny regret. And I would say along those lines of not getting started sooner, I did not. get into Starwood preferred guest until way too close to the end of that. And so I missed, I missed lots of good redemptions because I just didn't understand, didn't know and hadn't done the math. And so that would probably be my biggest regret, not getting to SPG sooner back when that was the thing. And it's gone now. But the reason I bring that up is because, you know, when you see a good opportunity, you know, maybe leading hotels of the world or the previous preferred hotels and choice transfers from city, when you see those opportunities, it makes sense to jump.

on them because they don't last forever. And so you want to jump on them all you can and strike while the iron is hot. Yeah. Tim, how about you? Any regrets like that? I mean, I would have similar, yeah, I mean, like everything that Nick said. And I think what everything that Nick said is is completely valid. And especially the strike while the iron is hot. I, I see a lot of times where people are very, they're like, oh, well, this seems too good to be true. Oh, well, this and a lot of time and it's like I in the past and I see so many people miss stuff based on that. Now rather than trying to figure out what the biggest regret is, I have a very specific regret that I'll talk to that that I can bring up, which is, and I can't remember what exactly it was, but the old city prestige card,

rest in peace, was, was a marvelous and without, I'm not going to go through all this stuff, But in its original incarnation, it was an incredible card. The kind of card that wouldn't be created anymore now with the interest in points of miles. But there was some benefit that it reduced. So there was something that I didn't like about. There was something that happened. And I got irritated with City.

And I got irritated with a rep. And I said, I'm just going to cancel my car. I canceled the card because I was going to show them. And you did. Did you? Well, I showed myself. I showed myself. because then 90 days later, the 180,000 points or whatever it was that I had earned on that card suddenly disappeared from my account.

And I called back and said, and I got big again and said, I nobody ever told me this. And then they literally, this is so embarrassing. It was very humbling. It was a good humble though. They actually had it recorded. Yeah. They had it recorded. They had actually recorded that specific call.

And they could play back when the rep had told me to. my points were going to expire in 90 days. Wow. And so I got some good, cheapish sort of, you know, hanging around. But I think with that taught me as well, and I see this a lot, is something, some change happens and people are, I'm going to cancel my card right now. I'm going to. And it's like, you know what?

I understand why we get emotionally connected to these programs and cards and how we think, but this is super transactional. This whole game is super transactional. These are companies. They see you as numbers. they see you as potential customers or customers now, they don't really care about your emotional state. Yeah.

And you shouldn't either, you know? Right. And I shouldn't either. And so it don't make rash decisions based on like being irritated or being emotion. Use it. Continue to optimize regardless of what the situation is, I guess is my great. Yeah, that is a good one. Stephen, let's hear from you about yours.

I'm probably going to surprise the. entire team with this one. So I think I was probably a bit too frugal with some of my redemptions. No. No. I don't believe that. Stephen Pepper, no. Wait, when you were picking three point five-star properties.

So to give some context. Wait, did your recent stays in Crete kind of make you realize that? Is that? I'm sorry. So it's like thinking more about like our vote trip. So in case you're people watching out familiar, my wife and I went on a seven-year road trip all around the US to see all 50 states. And especially for the first few years of the road trip, I was dedicated to getting the best possible value. So we would stay in category one properties where possible.

This was back when most of the hotel trains actually had categories. So, hi, it was always category one. Maria usually category one, I would sometimes push it to category two. IHG, I try to keep it to like 10,000 points a night. This was before like all of the like points inflation and things like that. And like Hilton, like ideally 20,000 points at night, max maybe 25,000 points a night. But we ended up starting the road trip with about a million points

and we finished the road trip with about a million points. Oh my. And I probably could have splashed out a little bit more along the way. and it would have had a material impact on our enjoyment and stuff. So when we visited Atlanta, we stayed in, I think it was like peach tree corn or something like that. So it was like outside of the like main metro area. So anytime we wanted to actually go into Atlanta, it was a long-house drive in there in Atlanta traffic. And so that wasn't particularly fun.

And our dog was sick while we were there. And so we didn't want to because we just couldn't leave her because she had to like go out. like pretty often and stuff so um and back then there was um there were i think like at least one or two high properties that were a category two um but i wouldn't have been deemed for eight thousand points um splash out for a category two and those were like and those were like downtown months they would have been a fantastic location but it's like no that that that's too rich for my blood well i kind of wish that i had done that i'm kind of thing a little bit more because whenever we did stay downtown somewhere rather than in the suburbs or the outskirts of a city, it did have

an effect on how much we enjoyed that city, just because being able to just step out your hotel, walk around and like see the life there. It is just more enjoyable for the most part than having to have like a 20, 30 minute drive in from just outside. So yeah, it's hard. It's hard to like get your brain out of like sustainable pricing mode when you're doing the like long term nomad version. Like, you know, you stop thinking of it as travel and you start thinking of it as like life and life budgeting.

So I get that. Yeah, so I started realizing that towards the last year or two of our way trip, at which point it was starting to become a little bit too late. I did splash out a little bit more. Good. That's because a year or two of splashing out.

Yeah. I have one that's more of a little anecdote, but it kind of fits early on in travel stayed at the Bali Hyatt in a club room not realizing what a club room was and I remember we were like

looking over the balcony at this beautiful like courtyard there were literally Komodo dragons walking around and we were like who gets to go to that courtyard it looks private like kind of like frustrated about like man

there's like a zone we can't go to just totally ignorant of the fact that we were in a club room and could have gone to the club lounge and hung out with the comotos. The lessons we learned in this game. Yeah, that sort of fits the theme. All right. So we are coming to the end of our hour. Nick, can you take it away with a few reminders for our listeners to like the video and all that stuff?

I was going to say, sure can, but only if everybody watching promises to like this video. That's right. So like it if you're watching right now on YouTube. Like it if you're watching later on. on YouTube. And if you're listening in podcast form, don't forget to give us a rating, give us some stars, leave a review there. We appreciate that. Thank you for that. Wherever you're watching,

you're listening, also don't forget to go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group to connect with lots of other folks who are into this hobby and we will see you again soon. Hey guys, Aaron Miller here from Armchair Explorer and I just wanted to let you know that our new series is out now. We've got kiteski across Antarctica, Aboriginal storytellers, and the craziest whitewater race in the world. We're going on a bucketless hike across Italy. We're going to the Fjords of Norway in search of the Northern Lights and lots, lots more. Our goal is to take you on the trip of a lifetime every single week.

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