Frequent Miler on the Air - The Best Path to Priority Pass | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep248 | 3-29-24

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

A number of high end credit cards give you Priority Pass membership. Full Priority Pass offers access to airport lounges, restaurants, and experiences (e.g. Be Relax Spa, Minute suites, Game Space etc), which can be pretty useful. But which of the current pathways to this membership is the best, (especially if you'd still like access to those restaurants)? (01:52) - More feedback on the pronunciation of Qatar. (Mail Bag) (03:45) - Hilton Honors Business Card, which will be increasing its annual fee from $95 to $195, along with some other changes. (Card Talk) (14:03) - United Pooling appeared Friday, then disappeared hours later, then re-appeared (Crazy Thing) (19:19) - You can't use pooled United miles for partner redemptions, only United & United Express (Crazy Thing) (25:55) - National Car Rental double credit for registered users' weekend rentals between April 4 through June 8, 2024 (Mattress Running the Numbers) Read more about this National Car Rental deal here. (29:36) - Regional first class awards for 12.5K, 16.5K, 22K points thanks to Qatar Avios (Award Talk) (32:00) - Read more about this regional sweet spot here. (35:58) - Preferred Hotels bookable online Check out the Preferred Hotels Coffee Break episode here. (40:31) - Choice Privileges Experiences might be worth a look Main Event: The Best Path to Priority Pass (45:08) - Full Priority Pass offers access to airport lounges, restaurants, and experiences (e.g. Be Relax Spa, Minute suites, Game Space etc.) (47:43) - Chase Sapphire Reserve & Ritz lose restaurants (49:06) - Check out our Card Talk segment of last week's podcast episode 247 where we talked about the Ritz Card and its access to Priority Pass. (51:38) - Wack-a-mole Alternatives to still get restaurant access with your Priority Pass (52:48) - Venture X Biz (Read more about the Venture X Business card here. (53:55) - US Bank Altitude Reserve (8 visits) (Read more about the US Bank Altitude Reserve card here.) (55:43) - Business Altitude Connect (4 visits) (Read more about the Business Altitude Connect card here.) (56:16) - Bank Of America Premium Rewards Elite (4 memberships) (Read more about the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite card here.) (1:00:15) - UBS Visa Infinite Business (Read more about the UBS Visa Infinite Business card here.) (1:00:54) - UBS Visa Infinite (Read more about the UBS Visa Infinite card here.) (1:01:25) - Citi Prestige (no longer available if you don't already have it) (1:02:09) - Barclays Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard (Read more about the Barclays Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard here.) (1:07:06) -  Deciding between two hotels, one with cash (and therefore a Hilton points-earning opportunity) or paying Hyatt points. How do you make the choice? (Question of the Week) isit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city 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 the best path to priority pass we got some bad news this past week about the chase sapphire reserve and ritz carlton cards which have priority pass they still will have priority pass as a benefit of each of those cards but they will note those versions of priority pass will no longer let you get free meals at priority priority pass participating restaurants i'll try to say that three times fast.

See what I did there? Mouthful, Priority Pass restaurants. Oh, man. You know, our last coffee break, you were full of bad puns, and now it's just flowing right into today. I don't know what to make of that, but... But anyway, so there have been some big changes, is what you're saying, in Priority Pass,

and we're going to have to talk about your best ways to get into a Priority pass lounge right yeah exactly uh there are still ways to get into uh restaurant get free restaurant meals at at uh participating airport restaurants and uh priority pass activities and all that kind of stuff so we'll get into that in today's main event um but before we do don't forget that there will always be links to the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip ahead to something or you want to come back and revisit it, you can see the notes in the show notes wherever you're watching or listening. Expand the description and you can find that information. And speaking of wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this.

Give us a thumbs up. Leave a comment. We appreciate all of those things. But now it's time for Greg to drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail comes once again from Mitsu. Mitsu wrote in last week, you might remember, about how to pronounce Qatar. I thought Mitsu wrote in about how you're set in your ways.

That's right. He absolutely did. So Mitsu says, this time, occasionally I subject my wife to listening to Frequent Miler while we're driving, despite the fact she has zero interest in hearing it. Oh, come on, Mitsu's wife. We've got some good stuff here. You should like this. We're great puns. Right? Come for the puns, if nothing else. So Mitsu goes on to say, so I put it on and she goes, Mitsu, are they talking about you?

And we both ended up laughing like crazy as you responded to my giant mail last week. Thank you for the hilarious response. For what it's worth, I actually tend to agree with what you guys settled on, Qatar, since despite it being not that close to the correct pronunciation, I'm pretty sure it's the most common way we Americans pronounce it, and it's at least, very least, going to be very clear to most of us what you mean. By the way, your pronunciation of

my name was perfectly fine. It's also the most common way Americans pronounce my name and how I usually tell people to pronounce it in the U.S. So basically what you're saying is we can't pronounce that either. But thank you. You're going to let us slide with it. Is it Mitsu? See, now I want to know. I know. But okay. All right. We're setting our ways, though, so we're not going to change that. You're Mitsu from here on out. Right. So we're going to knowingly mispronounce, but in the American way, Qatar and Mitsu. So there you go. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you very much.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed that, and we enjoyed talking about it. Speaking of things we enjoy talking about, let's talk about this week's card talk. So this week for card talk, we have the Hilton Honors Business Card, which underwent some major changes this week. Out of the blue, out of left field, we found out that the annual fee is increasing from $95 to $195. So it's going up by $100 effective immediately or on your next renewal after, I believe, July 1st. I can't remember which month it is. Sometime this summer. And it's losing some things and sort of gaining something.

So it's losing the free night after $15,000 in spend. And, of course, right now you get a free night after you've spent $15,000 in a calendar year. And then again, if you spend $60,000 in a calendar year, you get another Hilton free night certificate. And those free night certificates are very valuable because you can use them at almost any Hilton property in the world, aside from some of the more timeshare-y, vacation-rentally type Hilton properties. So you can use that at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives, or I just used one at the Conrad New York Midtown. So they're very valuable free night certificates, but that's going away after June 30th of this year. You'll no longer be able to spend towards one of those.

You're going to lose the 10 free priority pass lounge visits per calendar year. That's kind of where it fits into today's episode. And we're going to lose the bonus categories, the six acts on select business and travel purchases. Those, again, are going to be valid through June 30th, but not after June 30th. So that sounds like pretty bad news to me. Yeah, I think so too.

Lots of negative stuff there. Not unexpected as far as Priority Pass because we had similar changes happen with the Consumer Hilton Surpass card where both the annual fee went up and the Priority Pass went away. But the free night going away, that was a real big surprise because that did not happen with the surpass card. No, it wasn't on my radar at all. I did not have on my bingo card that they're going to get rid of the free night certificate. That just seems like a good carrot to dangle to get people to use the card. It gives them something to shoot for. And I'm kind of surprised they're getting rid of that because it seems like a way to encourage spend. But we'll talk about what they're going to do

to encourage spend in the future in a second. So we're losing those things. We're not losing a couple of key things. We're not losing the free gold status. So the card still comes with Hilton gold status, which is valuable for the breakfast credits you get in the United States or the free breakfast abroad, or I should say the food and beverage credits you get within the United States and the free breakfast you get abroad. You're still going to be able to spend your way to diamond status. $40,000 in spend will get you Hilton diamond status, and you'll still earn 12x at Hilton properties. So those things are unchanged. So what are they giving us to compensate for the fact that we're losing the free night certificate and priority pass and the bonus categories. Yeah. So big headline new benefit is 5X

everywhere on up to $100,000 of calendar year spend. So on the surface, that sounds pretty impressive. We'll talk in a minute about why maybe as you think about it more, it's not as exciting as you might have thought. $240 Hilton credit. So that's broken up quarterly in $60 chunks. And you also will get national car rental executive status, which I think we find really useful. Gives you the ability to pick from the sort of nicer cars on the uh on the lot uh rather than the the base level emerald isle cars yeah yeah i love national executive status so nice to see that on this card um so okay the 240 hilton credit it's doled out to 60 a quarter and that's good if you are going to stay at a Hilton property every quarter,

or if you have a way to be able to lock in that spend every quarter. So that's kind of nice for $95 a year, you could end up with $240 in Hilton credit. I'm not super pumped about that. Maybe we'll talk about it in a second, but it could be an okay deal. So the 5x everywhere, I mean, our reasonable redemption value for Hilton honors points is 0.48 cents per point. So we'll call it half a penny a point to keep the math easy. So 5X is like two and a half percent back everywhere. Why are you lukewarm on that, Greg? Yeah. Well, first of all, there are some ways to earn more than two and a half percent back on all your spend in cash. And so, you know, as I thought about it,

I'm like, oh man, these other opportunities mean getting more than 5x Hilton points if you wait to buy your Hilton points when they're on sale for half a cent each, which happens quite a lot. And if you're earning cash back like that and you allocate it like, I'm going to use these for points, you also have the option of buying IHG points when they're on sale for half a cent each. So a cash back card that earns over 2.5% cash back everywhere is doing better than 5X, not just Hilton, but IHG as well. And of course, it's just much more flexible for what you do with that cashback in general. So that's my main thing. Just real briefly off the top of my head, the main cards that earn better than 2.5% are the, there's several Bank of America cards where if you have something called preferred platinum honors status with Bank of America,

then you get a 75% bonus in the earning rate. And so a 1.5% cashback rate goes up to 2.62%. There's also this new Robinhood card that's coming out that will, the gold card, I guess, that will give you 3% everywhere. Who knows how long that'll last, but that's what they're advertising right now. So that would be a 6x everywhere card. Right, right, right. And like you said, who knows how long that'll last.

But the point is that there are opportunities out there anyway to get better return. And even if you accepted slightly less return, then I would still probably value the flexibility of cashback to decide whether you want Hilton points or not versus locking yourself into only being able to use your points at Hilton properties. So Greg's point is that you can do better. Even if you do worse, though, it's not necessarily that much worse, in my opinion. If you were to earn 2% cashback, you could buy yourself four Hilton points per dollar. So you know, this 5x everywhere is an extra one Hilton point per dollar over what you could earn with 2% card you can get from a bunch of different banks, you know, it's widely available and more flexible. So yeah,

this isn't wildly exciting to me. And it's quite a downgrade, in my opinion, over having the $15,000 free night certificate. Now, I kind of understand it because they want to get people in the habit of using the card all the time. And I'm sure that Hilton is figuring that if you give people 5x everywhere, then that seems like a nice multiplier, people get in the habit of using the card, I just wouldn't recommend it. And it's a big downgrade. And here's why previously with $15,000 in spend, you would have earned at least three points per dollar. So you'd have earned 45,000 points and a free night certificate that you could use for a value of up to 95,000, 120,000 at some properties, you know, points. So you're getting both of those things.

Now you're going to get 75,000 points. So 30,000 more points than you would have gotten, but no free night certificate. To me, the free night certificate was worth significantly more than 30,000 points, which I could ordinarily buy for $150. The certificate was worth well over 150 bucks. In fact, I just used one a couple of nights ago in New York City for a night that would have cost $600, got upgraded to a suite that would have cost even more. So losing the ability to spend to that, I think, is a big hit to this card. Yeah. And now I think there's a short-term play, right? Which is that if you spend

up to 15K or 60K before the end of June, you'll still get those free night certificates. So earning 5X on all that spend, if you can accomplish that much spend that quickly, is a really good deal. I would totally be willing to go for that. One other thing to consider. And I do intend to pursue that for the record. 5X, of course, yeah.

Like Greg said, if I can get, I have most of the 15K spend still to do. So if I can get the 75,000 points and the free night certificate, I'll take that one time. So thank you, Hilton. But long term, obviously, when that goes away, it's not going to be exciting anymore. One other thing to consider is that Amex membership rewards points transfer one to two to Hilton. So if you have a card like the Blue Business Plus, which earns 2X everywhere on the first $50,000 spend each calendar year, then you're essentially earning 4x that way. But even better, they occasionally have transfer

bonuses to Hilton. And so you'd be earning more than 4x if you wait for a transfer bonus to transfer to Hilton, if that's what you want. So yeah, you can do better elsewhere is our short answer. The moral of the story. Yeah. And the Hilton credits are, again, are nice if you're going to stay at Hilton's regularly. If you're not going to use all four of them over the course of a year, it doesn't make up for the annual fee. If you only stay three times, then it saves you a maximum $180. And we've talked before about how you shouldn't value credits like that at full face value. So you should be valuing that less than $180 and the card's going to cost $195. It just doesn't seem worth it to me. So that's a bummer. It's too bad to see those changes happen to the card because I think it was an okay card

to have. And I just picked it up last year. I'm disappointed that they're getting rid of the ability to spend to a free night certificate in the middle of the year. In some cases on people who probably just opened the card recently, that seems nutty to me. Yeah, that would have been a good candidate for our crazy thing segment. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It would have been, but we had other candidates this week. So let's talk about what crazy thing did United Airlines do this week? Yeah. So United had an impeccable rollout of their points pooling. I think you could peck that actually, Greg. You can peck this impeccable rollout. All right. So've got crazy thing we've got thing one and thing two

uh from united this week and uh crazy thing one on friday their website for point pooling uh appeared they had a you know nice announcement on there about the ability. And then a few hours later, it's gone. Into the ether. Now you see me, now you don't. Yeah. So, yeah, apparently it didn't work out the way they expected it to. So maybe there were a couple of deficiencies in the testing or something. Because, yeah, I mean, wow, it lasted a few hours before they pulled it.

Yeah, yeah. So that was kind of crazy. But at the same time, I mean, that kind of thing does happen. All right, let's talk about the details of what this fooling is before we go into crazy thing number two here. You can pull. So what it is, it's basically a way to share United Miles across people. And wait wait we should

probably mention because i don't think we mentioned otherwise that it came back again so it went away on friday i don't think we did and then yeah i don't think we did anyway reappeared a few days later so it is live now even though it was live for a few hours and they pulled it they decided okay actually guys we really did mean to launch that. So it is back out. So you can pull points now. So yes, it's a good, or miles rather. It's a good way to, no, it's not a good way. It's a way to pull your United miles together. So let's talk about what that, what that is. Like you said, what that means. So, you know, this is a, this is a problem. A lot of like families of families have where maybe you have miles in multiple different accounts. Maybe you travel together.

And so the couple and their kids are each individually earning miles, but you can't normally put them together to book meaningful awards. So this is intended to solve that. You could have a maximum of five people in a points pool. Only the pool leader can redeem pooled miles. So the idea is that one person would be in control, would create the pool and be in control of those miles once they're there. And as you invite each participant, each participant picks how many miles to contribute to the pool. So it's not like all of their miles automatically go in there, not at all. And if you change your mind, you have 24 hours to back out of that pool and get your

miles back. But if you don't, then you're kind of stuck because if you leave the pool after those 24 hours, you don't get your miles back. They stay in the pool. And if you or someone leaves the pool, there's a 90-day wait period in two ways. One is that, let's say you leave the pool, you cannot join another pool for 90 days. The other thing is the pool cannot add someone else for 90 days. And so there's this. No quick trades here. What's that?

No quick trades here. You can't make a trade. Get somebody better in your pool. I actually think this part was really smart of United. We talked about last week, I believe, that one of the problems with all of these points, when airlines and hotel programs make it easy to share miles and points, that's great for the consumer. But unfortunately, it's also been great for miles brokers who sell Miles. And there's a lot of reasons why Miles Brokers, that business is problematic for the rewards industry and in my opinion. And so I think that United did this to try to slow down that kind of activity because someone who makes a business out of miles brokering isn't going to

be able to wait 90 days every time they make a change. So that makes a lot of sense. If you dissolve the pool altogether, miles are distributed equally across the people in the pool. So that's kind of weird because, so, you know, let's say, let's say you have a hundred thousand miles in the pool and each of your family members contributed 5000 and then you later dissolve the pool. Then everyone ends up with an equal amount. So you end up with, you know, far fewer or less. Yeah, far fewer. Exactly.

And everybody else ends up with far more. Yeah. And that's the odd thing, too. Like if you leave the pool, like you said, you don't get your miles back that you put into the pool. So if I put my 100,000 in and then I leave the pool, I'm not going to get those back and they're going to get distributed someday equally among whoever's still in that pool when it dissolves, assuming that it dissolves. Yeah. All right, Nick, what is crazy thing number two? Crazy thing number two is, okay, you may say, all right, great. Well, I can pull my miles together in order to make a meaningful redemption, but that meaningful redemption can only be on United or United

Express, not on any of their partners. You cannot use pooled miles for partner award redemptions. So once you put them in the pool, they are United's and United's only until you dissolve that pool and divide the miles equally among the people that are in the pool. Then they could use them again for partner redemptions. But once they're in the pool and as long as they're in the pool, you can only use them to redeem on United flights. Yeah, that's a real bummer. But there you go. That's that's that's one of the rules there.

And so, you know, I think for people who use their miles primarily for United anyway, that's not going to be an issue. But for those of us, especially if you're flying internationally, it's kind of hard to avoid having at least part of your award involve partners. And no joy anymore with that. I mean, that limits the utility significantly, you know, in my opinion, because, you know, if you're looking to pull the miles, it's that you can have a large enough number to do something with. And there are so many opportunities to earn more miles and points that domestic flights, for instance, I think probably it's doable to earn enough miles and points in other ways if you're maximizing credit cards and category bonuses and things like that. It's the international awards where I think it's

more likely, at least in my opinion, that people would need to pool their miles together in order to make a meaningful redemption. And those are the ones, like you said, where it's hard to avoid their partners. I mean, all that said, if you're traveling at peak times when using United Miles is the only option and they're charging an exorbitant number of miles. And like Greg said, if you've got a family and the kids are flying and earning miles, it does make those more useful if you're going to be redeeming in those ways. it makes those miles so much less flexible and creates so much more complication in terms of trying to get them back into the accounts they came from, you know, if we ever wanted to do that. So, cause you can't, it's not simple. You're going to divide them evenly amongst the people that are in the pool

when you dissolve it. So there's no perfect way to undo what you've done there. And I don't like making my miles and points less flexible. The value is in flexibility. So yeah, not a fan. So theoretically, you can move all the miles to one person by having several people join the pool and then have them back out one at a time. And then when it's just you or whoever it is that wants to have all the miles, then you dissolve the pool. And theoretically, since you're the only one in the is that wants to have all the miles, then you dissolve the pool.

And theoretically, since you're the only one in the pool at that point, all the miles should go to you. And theoretically, those miles should then be usable for everything, not just United flights. You know, that's the theory. There's a lot of theoretical there. There's a lot of theoretical there. And that's, yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

You'd have to test that theory out. And what happens if it doesn't work the right way? It's yeah, I'm skeptical, too, as to maybe I'll try it with like a thousand or something. Yeah. Thousand per person. Just see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck to you. So, yeah, that's that's the craziness for this week, United. It's complex. And I understand why it kind of needs to be, like Greg said, because of the mileage brokering. But at the same time, it's disappointingly complex and restrictive there. All right. Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. This week's Mattress Running the Numbers is National Car Rental. They are out with a promotion to earn double credit, double rental credit for your weekend rentals if you register and then rent between April 4th and June 8th, 2024. You got to return that last rental no later than June 9th,

2024. So does it make sense to get out there and rent a bunch of cars in order to earn free nights? Because, of course, that's the benefit of earning your national rental credits is the path to free rental days. Yeah. So the idea is this. You could make sure first you have at least executive status with national, which is easy to do. A lot of credit cards offer free national executive status, including the Hilton business card that we talked about earlier in this episode. And the reason for that is then it'll take you just six completed rental days, no, six completed rentals to earn a free rental day. So the idea then, since you'd be getting double credits with this promo, is to book three cheap one-day weekend rentals. And then you'd earn that free rental day from those three cheap rentals. And then you could use that free day on an expensive rental. For example, maybe you want to do an expensive one-day, one-way rental.

Just to give one example is maybe you're flying out of an airport that is not that close to your home but within driving distance, and you have a way to national close to you, you could theoretically get to the airport by using your free one-way rental and then drop it off at that wherever the airport is that you're flying from is just one of many examples of how you could use a free one-way for a lot of value. Yeah, that's how I've almost always used my national free days in the past is for one-way for a lot of value. Yeah. That's how I've almost always used my national free days in the past is for one-way rentals of some sort, because one-way rentals are usually expensive. But the nice thing with national is that the equivalent of a one-way rental drop fee is baked into the daily rental rate when you book a one-way rental. And because

your free day takes away that daily rental rate, that means that you save tons of money on a one-way rental. And because your free day takes away that daily rental rate, that means that you save tons of money on a one-way rental in many cases anyway. So, all right, you mentioned book three cheap one-day weekend rentals to get a free night. It's worth mentioning, though, that they do need to be midsize or larger. So you can't book three of the cheapest possible rental cars. You need to be midsize or larger. So you can't book three of the cheapest possible rental cars. You need to book midsize or bigger. So is it worth it, Greg? I mean, do you think you can legitimately book three separate rentals for cheap enough to make that one day, free day worth it? That's the question. But there's more to it in my mind of whether it could be cheap enough, but also is it worth the effort? So first of all, there are rules in the terms against stacking them all up.

Like you can't just rent three cars on the same day. So that means that you're going to be going three separate times to the rental car company to rent a car just to earn one free one. I mean, that seems like a lot of work in my mind to do this. Maybe theoretically you could go do it all in one long weekend. I'm trying to remember what their rules are for what it means to one long weekend? I try to remember what their rules are for what it means to be a weekend. But could you rent one, come back the next day to return it,

and then rent the next one? So I don't know. But even doing that, that just seems like a lot of work to save a few dollars. So I'm not in for this one at all. No, I mean, I don't have a specific need where it would make sense. I mean,

there's times where I have, I remember not that long ago, in the last couple of years, I was looking at a one-way rental from Tahoe to somewhere in California and to get a minivan, I think it was something like three or $400 for the rental I was looking at. Now, if I were in that spot and I was looking at a very specific, expensive rental like that, then OK, maybe it would be worth the three weekend days. But it would have to be a significant savings because, like you said, it's not just the fact that you got to spend the money on the three weekend days, but the time doing it. So I'd have to be saving a substantial amount. I wouldn't be doing this to save 20 or 30 or 40 dollars. I don don't think. Like Greg said, probably not worth it in the vast majority of cases.

Right. What if you're just two rental days away from a free rental? with national which you get one rental credit for a rental of i think it's up to four days don't quote me on that so a two-day rental does not give you two no no i'm not saying that what i'm saying is you're okay you're two you're two rentals away from a free okay day what i do too so you too? So you do a one-day weekend rental using this promo to earn double, which would be two. Oh, right. So that gets you to the six needed

for your free rental day. Yeah. So it could be worth it in that case, I think. Yeah, in that case, I think I might do it. I mean, it depends whether I think I'm going to have a need for it. I do, because of my personal circumstances, I do tend to have a use for this at least once a year. So I would probably do that because I do one way rentals to get to

New York City airports at least a couple of times a year. So I would probably consider that. On the flip side, I don't have a national right near me. So it's not super convenient. It's still a little bit inconvenient for me to have to get the national car, but the savings is usually pretty significant over my next best option. So I might consider it in that case, but that's going to be situational. I think if you just need the one rental, it could be worth it. Depends on how much hassle there is involved for you and picking up that one cheap rental. So there you have it. We think probably not worth mattress running entirely, and maybe it's worth it if you only need like one. There you go.

All right. This week's award talk. We got several things up for award talk. First off, this week is something that you discovered and wrote about using Qatar Avios to book some regional first class awards. Yeah, yeah. So I was looking at flying from Detroit to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I was using various award booking tools to see what was available. And it looked like the best deal was to book American Airlines economy using Qantas, not Qatar, but Qantas miles for, I don't remember,

8,000 miles or something like that. Maybe it was less, but it seemed like a good deal. But I was curious whether there were other options that would be better. Because the tools showed me the price using Qantas, showed me the price using American, Alaska. Yeah, I can't remember which other partners that it showed. But they're all partners with American. And so you can, when awards are available to partners, you could use the American Airlines partner miles to book. And sometimes those, those give you much better pricing anyway. So I jumped onto Qatar's website to price the same thing. Cause I know they're a one world

partner with AA and I saw not only was the economy flight cheaper, only 6,000 miles one way for this short flight, but first class was only 12,500 miles. I have so many Avios, I figured, oh, that's so cheap. I'm just going to book us in a first class, why not? And I ended up doing the same for our return flight as well. And so I wanted to show this is a really good deal in general for regional flights. Now, this only works with short nonstop flights on a one world carrier like American or Alaska Airlines. And as you get to longer distances, the price goes up a bit and the pricing is really good up to around 2000 miles distance, somewhere around in that range. And you know what? Check out my post. I wrote a detailed post.

It was supposed to be, it was supposed to be this like really short post saying, Hey, look, you could get a cheap short distance first class for 12,500 miles. I really thought this was going to be like a one paragraph post turned into a few more, a few more paragraphs. It turned into like the, the the the bible for booking a regional first class with gutter avios um so you'll find a lot of good information in there about um what tools to use to search for awards what what um well what programs to use to search for awards, how to know which airline, which, sorry, which airports will be within which pricing points. There's even a little tutorial in there about how to create your own distance map

around your local airport to see at a glance which airports will cost 12,500 miles for first class or 16,500 miles for first class or 22,000 miles for first class. And you'll be surprised at how far you can go for 22,000 miles one way in regional first class. So a lot of good stuff. Yeah. And like you said, I think the nice thing is that it's really easy to collect Avios, just transfer from all the various major transferable currency programs. And there are frequently transfer bonuses. So when you say 22,000 Avios, for instance, it doesn't necessarily feel that expensive to those of us with a decent balance of Avios, since we are able to fairly regularly replenish those if we need to with

transfer bonuses or you may just catch a transfer bonus at the right time so even with a 25 transfer bonus that becomes a really good deal compared to your other options probably for booking those types of awards so yeah i thought that was a great find a great little piece of intel and i learned that detroit to Detroit to Charlotte is shorter distance than Albany to Charlotte, which surprised me. I guess I just didn't have the map in my mind as to how much closer Detroit was to Charlotte. I have in my mind that Detroit is like way out there somewhere, but clearly I was wrong. Did you check whether Albany to Charlotte, you told me that that's 650 miles, which is exactly the distance band that is in Qatar's first lowest distance band. Did you check whether it prices that way?

I didn't check. No, it was. It's 646 miles. So yeah, it was very close to the, yeah, right under the wire there. But no, I didn't double check to make sure. I just assumed that Greg the Freak O'Malley was right. Well, you know, not everyone measures airport distances the same way. So sometimes when it's that close, it could go either way as to as to which band it'll price in.

That's true. So I should probably. It'll probably probably probably work. Assuming you don't stop American Air flight yes we do we do and that's that's why I was intrigued by this because I said oh you know that's that's kind of an interesting one I would consider that for a weekend trip if we can find uh you know some of that availability so that was a good tip yeah we should mention too that uh with cutter um award flights you can cancel or change the flight as long as it's more than 24 hours from

departure for only $25. So that's not as good as American Airlines where it's free, but it's better than many programs. So that was another thing that attracted me to it. Yeah. But worth mentioning that it's not good for a backup flight because within 24 hours, that goes up to $100 to change or cancel. And within three hours of departure, it's just non-refundable. So keep in mind that that's not your ideal program talked about this week in terms of award talk. We talked a couple of days ago on our coffee break, our latest coffee break, which I don't know which coffee break number that is, number three, number four. It's a relatively new series. We've been doing our 20-minute coffee break episodes. If you haven't checked those out yet, you'll want to check those out in the podcast feed as well, where we do a shorter form segment and talk about one thing. And this week's one thing was talking about preferred hotels and being able to book preferred hotels online using choice privileges points, which was great news. And you explained that there are ways to search for that.

And then you wrote a post about how to find those. And it was a little complicated, wasn't it? Yeah. So this almost belongs in the what crazy thing segment. So we're excited that you could book preferred hotels online with choice points. In fact, I have a trip to Lisbon coming up in the summer where I was able to book. There are two hotels in Lisbon, and I booked both of them for different days. And the value is incredible. These are hotels that would be over $500 a night, and I'm booking for one hotel for 25,000 points a night, the other for 35,000. So getting around two cents per choice point, which, because I transfer one to two from city thank you points or from Wells Fargo points, that's like getting around four cents per point of value from those programs.

Anyway, amazing value. But back to the crazy story here is that initially when we found out they're bookable online, we noted that if you didn't have enough points for at least one night in your choice account, the website that shows you the preferred hotels and lets you book them did not let you click in to see the availability calendar for a hotel you're interested in. And so I wrote a complicated post with three ways to check award availability if you don't have enough points in your choice account. And in fact, Kerry made a video showing how to do the most complex of them. And then we got a reader tip that, oh, all you have to do is switch to map view when you're looking at the preferred hotels. And then when you click on a hotel, even if you don't have any choice points at all, it'll get you to the award booking calendar and

you can see exactly when it's available. One tip that people might not have noticed, I've added it to all the posts, but if you read early on, you might not have caught this. When you're looking at the award calendar, just because it looks like days are available does not mean they necessarily are. You have to actually click on the dates you're interested in, and then it will actually show a little thing really quickly. It'll say, checking with the hotel, something like that, or checking availability with hotel. And sometimes it'll say, no, sorry, that's not available despite the calendar indicating it is. So make sure you go in there, click the dates of interest and see if it then, as long as it doesn't show an error message at that point, it should be, you should be good to

go to then transfer points to choice or buy points for choice and book that thing. Yeah. Well, that's a great safety tip because you don't want to think that it's available and transfer over your flexible transferable currency points only to get a bad surprise. So that's a great safety tip there to double check and make sure. And a great tip, great reader tip in terms of how to check for availability, because I'll admit that I read your post about how to do it. And I was like, I don't know if I really want to book one of these things badly enough to take the time to figure all that out.

Even though I understood it, it's actually not that tough if you just follow the directions that Greg laid out. But at the same time, I was like, it's not that tough, but I don't know that I have enough desire to book one of these places to make it difficult on myself. And then I saw that tip and I was like, oh, wow, that's not that tough, but I don't know that I have enough desire to book one of these places to make it difficult on myself. And then I saw that tip and I was like, oh, wow, that's actually way easier. So that was a fantastic tip. It's a really easy way to do it.

Who would have expected that that would do it? I mean, I don't know. I'm curious how they even figured that out. But probably accidentally. But yeah, I mean, if you start start on map view it would be obvious and so yeah yeah yeah there you go all right so that's how to find your preferred hotels with choice points speaking of choice points though choice privileges also launched something somewhat interesting this week they have experiences now choice privileges experiences that you can book

with choice points and i wanted to call this out because they're doing auction style stuff now. So whereas in the past, we've seen Choice occasionally offer some interesting sports experiences, they've done a bunch of college sports experiences, and some professional sports experiences that you could buy outright with Choice Points. Now they're doing some auction style experiences. And I find that interesting because number one, some of the packages are pretty good. Number two, I think it's likely that this is going to fly under the radar. I don't know Choices core customers that well, but I imagine that many of them are not laser focused on their Choice Privileges points and what you can do with them and following the

auctions. And if you're mostly earning your points from choice privileges stays, you probably have access to fewer points than somebody who's collecting a lot of City Thank You points anyway. So I think that there could end up being some interesting values here. And one of the things I sort of insinuated, but I didn't actually spell out completely in the post, was that there were some interesting auctions. There was one in particular, it was tickets for an upcoming country concert for a singer I'm actually not familiar with, Kane Brown was the name of the singer. But there was an auction style for the highest level of tickets that was starting at the fewest number of points out of the various packages that they

had available for this concert. And what made it interesting is the inclusions. You wouldn't have known if you just saw tickets to Kane Brown and like me, you didn't know who Kane Brown was. You might have scrolled past that, which is what I did at first. And then I went back and I was like, let me check out each of these packages because I know that in the past, Choice Privileges has sometimes included things that just I wouldn't have expected in the package. And sure enough, when I clicked through this auction that at least at the time was going for 19,000 points and it had days left. So I'm sure it's going to end up quite a bit higher. It might be over by the time this publishes.

But this package that was at 19,000 came not only with tickets to a concert. And actually, they were tickets for, I think, a meet and greet and like, you know, stage side seats. And so if you were interested in the concert, I think it would have been a cool concert experience with merchandise and all sorts of bells and whistles. But beyond all that, it also came with a two night stay at a choice privileges property in the city where the concert was and $1,500 in visa gift cards in order to cover your travel expenses, presumably your flights, in order to get to wherever this concert was. I think it was in Indiana. And so I don't know where that one will

end, but I think it's conceivable that auctions like that may end at few enough points that it could be worth one of those just for the $1,500 in Visa gift cards if it's coming with something like that. The thing is, though, you got to click on the listings to see what they come with, because some of them don't come with anything interesting at all beyond the event itself, which is great if you're interested in the event. But some of them come with inclusions like those where you might be like, oh, wow, well, I can get a free weekend trip to this place that maybe I'm interested in visiting, essentially, you know, or way more value than what the points are worth just out of, you know, this package, even if I'm not interested in the core items. So anyway, it's worth taking a look at those, I think that's a great tip because like, you know, I'm sure that, you know, people in California would have never thought of looking at like the details of Toledo Mudhens game or something like that. They would never in a million years think of going to.

But that package might actually be worth getting without even going to the game at all. So that's a really cool tip. Yeah. Yeah. So let's take a look at those. And again, right now, as we publish this, I don't know that there'll be something interesting today, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on because I would bet more likely than not, there are going to be some opportunities coming there because people will forget about it. And

like I said, I think just fewer, there's fewer competition than if it was like Marriott auctions or Hilton auctions where there's tons of people with billions of those points. I think you're going to run into far less competition for these. So I think there's going to be potentially opportunities. So that's that. That's my tip of the week to keep an eye on that. And if nothing interesting comes of it, don't blame me. Blame Chris. So that wraps up award talk, I think, and brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. The best path to Priority Pass. So, all right. Full Priority Pass.

Priority Pass is like a membership thing that several number of credit cards, high-end credit cards, give you re-membership to Priority Pass. And the main thing about Priority Pass is airport lounge access. There are Priority Pass participating lounges across the world. Not every airport has them, but lots of airports have them. And having a Priority Pass membership usually gives you free entry and usually including a free guest or two. And I'm saying usually because there are some versions of Priority Pass where it just gives you the ability to pay for your access, which is obviously less desirable. So that's the main thing that Priority Pass is about. But in the last few years, they've added some additional things that are worth knowing about. One is airport restaurants. Certain airport restaurants participate in Priority Pass. And so you can

actually pay for your meal up to something like $27 per person or something like that. 28, I think but yeah yeah yeah um with your just with your priority pass card and so you don't have to actually pay for it except for paying for the tip another thing they've added are what they're loosely calling experiences which is random other stuff is a better description than experiences i I think. But so for example, there are within airports, these things called Be Relaxed Spas, many of which participate and you can get a free like 10 minute massage

or a 30 minute chair massage. There are minute suites where sort of relaxation rooms. There's something called Game Space. And so there's just miscellaneous stuff that you get into for free with Priority Pass. And so the three categories of things that Priority Pass could potentially give you are airport lounges, restaurants, and experiences.

And a while ago, we learned that, a while ago that Amex stopped offering anything but airport lounges with their version of Priority Pass. Then Capital One Venture X, Sapphire Reserve, and Ritz-Carlton will no longer be offering restaurants as part of their Priority Pass benefit. When does that end? It ends in… July 1st, I believe. July 1st, 2024. Yeah. But at this point, it appears that they're going to keep the ability to do experiences. So I'm a little unsure about that because what's clear is that they're losing restaurants anyway. Yeah. I guess we should be clear that there wasn't an official communication to like bloggers about the change. It wasn't like a press release like, oh, we're changing this.

It was something kind of snuck into the statements, the most recent statement, credit card statements that people have received. It was like, oh, yeah, by the way, we're taking away the restaurant access. It was sort of at the bottom of your statement somewhere. So we're going off of our best understanding anyway. So it looks like it's just the restaurants going away, but it's possible that they'll take away all of the experiences too. It certainly wouldn't be unprecedented. So right now we're hopeful that they're going to keep the title of that episode. And we describe the Ritz card as being the best card for having the best priority pass available because it gives you the Ritz card for $450 a year. It gives you a lot of great benefits that more than make up for the fee. But one of the many benefits is Priority Pass with unlimited guests. And at the time,

that it was not limited to just lounges or experiences, but offered restaurants as well. And even better, and this is still absolutely true, you can add free authorized users to your Ritz card and ask for Priority Pass memberships for each of your free authorized users. So you can give a lot of people in your family, friends, Priority Pass for no additional fee than the one annual fee for the Ritz card. So it's still a good way to get Priority Pass for you and your family. But it's, it's, um, if you're interested in priority pass restaurants, it's no longer the best way. Right. Right. And I can't imagine why they're not allowing that anymore. Now they,

you know, when you, when you say it that way, when you mentioned that, you know, you, you, we've talked for a long time about how you can add free authorized users and they all get their own free priority pass. I have to imagine that the cost of the restaurants just started to add up for someone along the lines. Obviously, Chase lasted a long time here with it, but other issuers dropped the restaurant access or Amex at least dropped the restaurant access relatively quickly. And Capital One also did. So, yeah, I mean, that, that's a huge bummer. I'm really bummed because there are more restaurants now participating in places that I fly through now

and then. And so I've been using that now and then, and I'm disappointed that I'm probably not even going to get a chance between now and when it ends to use one of those restaurant accesses again. So yeah, I wish they had just like limited it to, you know, maybe four restaurant visits a year or something like that would have been plenty for most people, I think. But yeah, anyway. Yeah. But yeah. What can you do? Those are the breaks, but, but I, there are, I think there's more to talk about here in terms of how you might still be

able to get into restaurants. What can you do if you want to have a priority pass that has that includes restaurants, includes activities? Then we're going to go through what I'm going to call the whack-a-mole alternatives. I'm calling it that because we don't know how long these alternative options will last. Will we get an announcement next week? Will we get it five minutes after we finish recording this episode? Has it already come into our email box while we're recording the episode? I'm literally checking my email as you're talking. Wouldn't be the first time. All right. So we're going to list a whole bunch of alternatives from roughly from best to worst, roughly, because the details will

really matter and your circumstances will really matter as to what is best. But what I think is probably the best current option for many, many people is the VentureX business card. Unlike the consumer VentureX card, the business card does allow restaurants with their priority pass. The card has a $395 fee, but it comes with annual $300 travel credits for travel book through the Capital One portal.

And it's really like travel discount, really, the way they implement it. And 10,000 point anniversary bonus. So the net cost for this, if you use that full travel discount and uh value the 10k points at only a hundred dollars the net cost is zero or even minus five dollars if you want to call it that for having this card and you get a you get a great version of priority pass yeah yeah it's essentially a very similar value proposition to the consumer card but a better better priority pass. So yeah, I think that's unquestionably at this point, the best option. But like Greg said, who knows when we're going to find out that that changes if it does. So that's one option, but not the only one.

So there are a number of other cards that offer you some opportunities here. The US Bank Altitude Reserve card, which is a card that we've both talked about before and I think has a spot in both of our digital wallets. That card offers eight priority pass visits a year, and those do include restaurant access. Now, that card costs $400 a year. That's the annual fee, but it has $325 in automatic travel and dining credits. So those credits just post again automatically when you make qualifying travel or dining purchases anywhere. So really, that card to me truly feels like a $75 net cost because I mentioned earlier that you, in general, should not value statement credits at full face value because you normally wouldn't prepay for something at full face value. This one's pretty close to me, though, because I know I'm going to spend more than $325 on dining alone or travel alone. Yeah, no less both of those two categories every year. So it's just an automatic for me to earn that. So it really does feel like a $75 net cost to me. And you get eight visits that could include restaurants. Right. And it's worth noting that those eight visits

count against you if you have guests. So if you have one guest with you, then it's like four visits with two people because each of the eight is for one person one visit kind of thing. Wait,

I didn't follow your math. If you have one guest with you and the two of you go in you could go into a lounge four times a year because you're going to use two of those passes each visit if you go with two if there's two people going

okay I understand yeah I'm sorry I misunderstood what you said there okay yeah so that's true so there you go that's one option but there are others too right yep so another one, Business Altitude Connect card gives you four visits a year. So it's similar to the eight visits, I guess, from the Altitude Reserve, but you only get four. And that's a $95 card. So if you're not into getting those, I guess, travel credits from the Altitude Reserve, then that's a cheaper way to start, I guess. Although I still think the Altitude Reserve is a better option for most people.

I agree. I agree. The Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite Card, which that word elite I emphasized because it's not the premium rewards card, but the premium rewards elite card. The premium rewards elite card costs $550 a year. That's a pretty steep annual fee. It comes with $300 in airline incidental credits and $150 lifestyle conveniences reimbursement. What does that mean? So it includes anything you spend on rideshare, food delivery, video streaming services, and fitness, which is sort of an odd one in there. But they actually list out all the what are called MCC codes that qualify on the website.

So if you know what you're doing, you can figure out which of the things you buy qualify for that. Well, okay. So that card, $550 annual fee, but it comes with $300 in airline and snow credits and 150 in your lifestyle stuff. So assuming you used all that and valued it all at face value, then it's sort of like $100 net cost. And that card also comes with four visits a year, right? Or is it four? No. No, unlimited visits, you get four memberships. So this is really interesting in that if what you want is to have priority pass not just for yourself, but for other family members, other friends, you get four full memberships. You don't have to set them up as authorized users. So it's not like the Ritz card. This is just flat out. I have this card. I want my wife to have a priority pass membership of her own. Okay, great. I've got four memberships, so I'll give myself one, I'll give my wife one, I'll give my son one, so on.

So that's pretty- You could give your employee one. You could give your employee one. Yeah, that's true. I don't have this card currently, so I can't, but theoretically I could. Theoretically. The reason this card was not at the top of the list is that the credits are much harder to earn than the U.S. or the or the Venture X business credits in my opinion like so $300 in airline incidental credits this is meant to be you know where there are airline fees of some sort it's not it's not meant to be like airline just buying airline tickets. And then lifestyle conveniences. I mean, that's pretty broad, but you still, you have to think about making sure that you

use the card to get those. So they're not that hard to use, but they're not, you know, you have to think about it. Not slam dunks necessarily. Although I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think the way airlines incidental credits work with Bank of America is they are automatic. And I think that most airline purchases, at least in my experience, have triggered the premium rewards cards, airline and incidental credits. I can't think of a time I bought anything airline related that didn't trigger that. But so I don't know if they'll necessarily be super challenging, but I agree with Greg that that set of credits is not as easy to me as the altitude reserves. So all right. Yeah. I mean, that's one other note about this card.

I want to point out is that the terms for their priority pass explicitly list lounges and experiences, but they don't list restaurants. That doesn't mean that they don't allow restaurants, but it's not listed. And because they listed experiences, that concerns me. Now, I'm saying that because like for years, these things only listed lounges, even though restaurants were an option. But the fact that it also lists experiences makes me wonder. But anyway, that's OK. We just don't know. Yeah, there you go. There you go. All right. We also have a couple other cards, the UBS Visa Infinite Business, which I'm not particularly familiar with this card. It costs five hundred and fifty dollars a year and has three

hundred and fifty dollars in airline incidental credits. So sort of a net fee of $200. I don't have the card, so I don't know how easy it is to use those airline incidentals, but that comes with a priority pass membership. Yeah. Let me mention it's not airline incidentals. It's actually airline credit. So you can buy a full ticket and you'll get $350 back. So I think the $350 is pretty easy to earn, but it's still $200 net. And you get priority pass with that. And theoretically, that would include restaurants and everything. So another one also from UBS is the personal Visa Infinite card. So previously, we were talking about the business version of the Visa Infinite. The personal one, $495 annual fee and $250 airline credit.

So whereas the business card was $200 net after credits, this one is $245 net after credits. So yeah, I mean, not too bad, but not the best out there. I'm going to go ahead and mention the Citi Prestige card. You can't get this if you don't already have it. It's a discontinued card, but still available for those who have it. It has a $495 annual fee and a $250 easy-to-earn travel rebate and just general whatever you spent on travel. So $245 net cost to that card. And it has a good version of priority pass. Unfortunately, though, you can no longer get that card.

You can't even product change to it. So that card is only going to be relevant for you if you have it. But if you still have it, then it's potentially a deal on getting a Priority Pass that includes restaurant access. Right. And then finally, the Barclays Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite MasterCard. So this one has a $499 annual fee. So I'm not really sure that I could recommend anyone ever. I listed it here because they advertise the Priority Pass benefit, but I do not really sure that I could recommend. I listed it here because they advertise the priority pass benefit, but I do not see.

I mean, you have to be an Emirates fan for this one. Yeah, a big Emirates fan probably for that one. Very big. So not a fan of collecting their miles through transferable currencies, I guess, or something. I don't know. Yeah. There's some benefits, but not $500 worth. Right. Right. So. All right. So there you go. You get into some restaurants still.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So what's your what's your plan, Nick? What are you going to do to get in restaurants once your Ritz one. That'll be the one I carry most of the time in my wallet because I don't always visit restaurants. But I guess what I'm going to have to do is figure out how to request or find or reissue a priority pass for my altitude reserve card. If I got one in the mail, I don't know what I did with it. I don't know if I have to enroll in that, but I'm going to have to call U.S. Bank because I have an altitude reserve. And so I have a family of four that would get me two restaurant visits a year that would probably come close to meeting my needs. So that's not horrible because I'm going to keep that card no matter what, because of course, that card earns 3x on mobile payments everywhere. And so because you can use the points at one and a half cents per point, it's kind of like a four and a half percent back card for in-person payments of any sort.

So I'm going to keep the altitude reserve long term. So for now, that will be the way that I get restaurant access anyway. I assume probably similar answer for you. No, I still have the city prestige card. So my answer will be to, yeah, you know uh dig out the long buried bird pass card if i can find it otherwise as just like you said request a new one um and then set up a uh online account uh with party pass for that one so i have an my my online account is specifically the one i have right now is specifically for my Ritz card.

I'll create a second one for the Prestige card so that I can log into either one. And the reason that's important, at least one restaurant, the one I went to in Detroit, is they require you showing the QR code from the app. They do not take the physical Cardi Pass app. They do not take the physical. They don't take the physical card at all? Nope. Really? Oh, wow. I missed that.

That's a pain because I created a login years ago for my Ritz card one, and I don't know what email address I used with it because I set up an online login for a couple of them. And so I've tried resetting the password, and I can't figure out how to do it. And I'm sure if I contact Priority Pass customer support, eventually somehow, some way we can get it figured out. But it hasn't been worth the hassle to me. I just carry the card in my wallet and figure it's not worth the time to figure that out. But if you're telling me that some restaurants may require the QR code, man, I guess I might have

to get on figuring out how to get that set up. Or at least when I get my US Bank Altitude Reserve priority pass in the mail, I'll set that one up and try to remember the login information. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, backing up a bit, I still think the VentureX business is the best option for someone sort of starting from scratch. If you already have Priority Pass from some other card and you intend to keep that other card, I think a great option is to get the Altitude Reserve card because it's a great card to have anyway, earning 3x for mobile wallet payments. So anytime you use your Apple Pay or Samsung Pay or whatever, you get three points per dollar. That's sort of like four and a half

percent back towards travel. And because of the travel and dining credits, it only costs net $75 a year, which is less than most. There's many $95 a year cards on the market and they don't have nearly the benefits that the altitude reserve does. So I think that's a really good option. And so my point is like, use your, your other priority pass for everything that it can do, you know, anytime you're going into a lounge, but use your altitude reserve for your restaurants. And then that's a good combo. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think it makes a lot of sense. Very good.

All right. So you got some opportunities, some options, some things you can do. We gave you some good suggestions there to consider if you are bummed that your Sapphire Reserve and Ritz card are losing restaurant access in July of 2024. So enjoy it while you've got it and then come up with your backup plan for what you're going to do after that. Speaking of plans, that brings us, I think, to this week's question of the week. And so for this week's question of the week, we had a question come in in Frequent Miler Insiders that you're not necessarily going to

have a complete answer to in a couple of minutes. I feel like this is the sort of complex topic, but I thought it was an interesting one to figure out how you would go about thinking through it, not necessarily the perfect answer, but how you would go about thinking through it. Not necessarily the perfect answer, but how you would think through it. So Andrew and our frequent Mylar insiders said, stuck on deciding between two hotels, the Trafalgar St. James London using cash, which would be $1,000 total and earn 34X as a Hilton Diamond member with the Aspire card. So between the points earned from being a Hilton Elite member and the points earned on the. So between the points earned from being a Hilton elite member and the points earned on the card earned 34 points per dollar. So 34,000 Hilton points.

Or stay at the Fleming's Mayfair London using Hyatt points, which would cost 60,000 Hyatt points total. So help me decide. So how do you determine when you're looking at paying a cash rate and like, oh, I can earn X number of points. And if I pay this cash rate and earn elite status versus using points and saying, OK, well, there's so 60K I could use and not have to pay anything or I could pay a thousand and end up with thirty four thousand Hilton points. Which what things do you consider? How do you make a decision like that? Yeah. Oh, that's that's a great question. And as you said, it's not like I have a solid answer off the top of my head, but I'm going to try to work through a sort of half answer here, which is personally, because I earned so many points from new credit card bonuses, from referring friends, from portals, you name it, things that have nothing to do with actual travel, I tend with most travel to

look at first and foremost, just are there good opportunities to spend my points? I'm not usually paying much attention to earning, the earning side from the point of view of travel. It's sort of this blanket thing in my head that ironically, travel is not a particularly good way usually to earn points. There's lots of other ways. That said, there are definitely situations like that with Hilton where the points earned are fantastic rebate, especially Hilton so often does like double, triple point promos that maybe if you book it now, maybe they'll have a promo running during the time of your actual stay and you do even better than 34 points per dollar. So it could be really meaningful. But how you determine, I guess you could logically, you could figure out your net cost

of your stay after the points rebate, basically like decide, okay, Hilton points are worth about half a cent each. So I would get back, you know, this many points, uh, or in that case, it would be what, something like, um, 17%. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred and seven hundred and seventy dollars. Yeah, exactly. 17% back. So, so your net cost on that thousand dollars stay, if you value the 34,000 points and half a cent each is going to be $830. Yeah. And then you could, then you could look at the Hyatt stay and say, well, I value my Hyatt points at X amount. And so if I spend this many, it's going to cost me this much. And then, then you have like an apples to apples comparison.

Yeah. And in that case, you'd say, okay, well, if I, let's say I value the Hyatt points at one and a half cents each to keep the math relatively simple. So 60,000 points is worth about $900, let's say in that case. And so your options are to use $900 worth of Hyatt points or spend $830 in cash. Which is the better answer? I mean, that's going to be very highly variable from person to person as to which one is the better answer. I think to Greg's point, one of the things that I think you should be considering is how many points do you have? consider myself super points rich, but I've got enough points where I personally wouldn't want to part with the $830 because I have a bunch of points and I know I'm going to earn more points in the future. So that's not a resource that is close to drying up and it's also not a resource that's going to grow or appreciate in value in general. So I'd rather hold the cash if it was close like that. If my value for Hyatt points was close to the cash price, then I would lean towards using the points because I have

plenty of points and I continue to earn plenty of points. Now, if I didn't have plenty of points and I didn't continue to earn them at a fast clip, then I might be more cautious about, is this the best opportunity for me to use them? Are there other opportunities where I'm going to get more value than this? And then maybe I would spend the money. So it's going to be an individual calculation there. But I think that that's the right way to go about doing it to say, okay, well, first of all, how many points do I have? Because if I got 3 million points in that spot, I'm using the 60,000 points all day long. And then on the flip side once i figure out okay well that's not the case for me then i got to figure out okay well how much is the hilton costing me after the rebate and

points and and what kind of a value is that comparatively to the hyatt points so right i'd probably personally in that case use the points but that's going to be an individual of course we oversimplify things like suppose you didn't have Hyatt status, but you do because you said you have the Spire card, you have top tier Hilton, so you're getting free breakfast at the Hilton. What if you're not at the Hyatt? And if that's important to you, then that's additional cost. Or another way of looking at it, maybe you're chasing Hyatt elite status or you want to re-up your high elite status. So the benefit of staying there is not just that you're using your points for a certain value, it's also you're adding some number of nights to how many nights you spent at high towards elite status.

Whereas that does not matter with Hilton because again, you already have top tier Hilton status because you're a credit card. So anyway, so more factors that are harder to turn into a mathematical formula. For sure. Yeah. And hard to answer in two or three minutes, but I thought it was worth discussing that those are some things that you should probably be thinking about when you're trying to decide, because we do face, many of us face those types of dilemmas that is this the right time to use points or is it not the right time to use points? And I think you have to, again, consider your total points, how quickly you're replenishing your points and how much value you're getting for your points, which includes things like

free breakfast. Actually, let me point out one other thing, which I think is probably the most important is which one do you really want to stay at? I mean, the decision in terms of points or cash, it's pretty close, you know, but is your heart set on one or the other? Go to that one. Yeah, true. And enjoy your joy of free and, you know, pick the one that's more conveniently located. And that's actually another thing that I enjoy about this game that, you know, years ago, if I were, in fact, I remember going to Paris and staying at some holiday inn that was like, I don't know, an hour and change by train outside of central Paris, because that's where it was,

you know, cheap and within my budget to stay. And one of the things I love about Miles and Points is that I don't have to do that now. I can't stay at that place that's centrally located, that's convenient for me. And so that also plays into the equation and sort of the value because we were talking about cash before, but also if that Hyatt property is located much better than the Hilton property for whatever it is that I want to do in London, well, that's going to play into my decision then too. Then I'm even more interested in using the points. And of course, vice versa, you could tip the scales the other way. So consider that too. A lot of things to think about. So it's not an easy question to answer, but a good question nonetheless. If you have questions like that, and you'd like to get them answered, you might want to join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And so if you

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