Frequent Miler on the Air - The bright side of Hyatt's (potential) Globalist shake-up | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep351 | 3-27-26

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

In today's podcast episode, we'll talk about who we would want to buy JetBlue, how Amex missed the mark with its new business card, and the key to preserving our loyalty if Hyatt "mile-stone-ifies" elite benefits.Giant Mailbag(02:16) - Adam: Why does the Aviator Silver card list as $199 annual fee on other sites across the internet, except for yours?Learn more about the Aviator Silver card hereCard News(04:33) - New: American Express Graphite™ Business Cash Unlimited CardLearn more about the American Express Graphite™ Business Cash Unlimited Card hereAwards, Points, and More(09:03) - JetBlue is looking for a buyer that can clear regulatory approval: United, Alaska, or Southwest(16:16) - Bilt authorized user updates, transfer partner updates(22:31) - Bilt using Points Path Learn more about Bilt changes here(25:17) - Wyndham points sale: Buy Wyndham points for as low as 0.65 cents each thru May 1(25:51) - MealMaxxer, a cool map tool for finding stacks with Resy, inKind, Bilt Dining, and moreLearn more about MealMaxxer hereMain Event: The bright side of Hyatt's (potential) Globalist shake-up(28:59) - Learn more about Hyatt may be shaking up Globalist status here(33:40) - Greg's glass-half-full take: Not as bad as many fear & several positives(38:15) - Greg's 1 huge key assumption(40:37) - The potential negatives(46:38) - The potential positives(48:42) - Nick's reactionQuestion of the Week(56:56) - With more and more merchants adding additional fees for credit card processing, do you consider if it's best to use a debit card?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned 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. On today's show, we discuss who we want to buy JetBlue. Amex really misses the mark with their new business card, and we'll discuss the key to preserving our loyalty if Hyatt milestoneifies elite benefits. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the bright side of Hyatt's

potential globalist shakeup. Last week, Hyatt sent out surveys to some members asking about potential changes to their top elite tier, including a new higher elite tier. And most of the points in Miles world reacted with scorn. Thought it all looked really bad. But Nick has often accused me of always finding. the bright side of pretty much any situation. And I actually see a lot of bright side in the potential changes here.

So on today's main event, we'll walk you through what the potential changes are and where I see bright side to all of it. Yeah, I mean, you are. You are good at always seeing the bright side. And that's good. You need some of that because it's easy to see the doom and gloom, right? Kind of reminds me there was a song in a Broadway show. It was like, always look on the bright side of love.

Yeah. I don't sing anymore. That was featured heavily in Monty Python's. Oh, spam a lot, right? I forget which movie. But anyway, yeah, they're on a cross and singing. Oh, I haven't seen the movie. It won't surprise Greg that I haven't seen.

Life of Brian, I think. There you go. Anyway, you've never seen a Monty Python movie. Anyway, moving on, if you want to jump ahead. You've never seen Monty Python movie. Oh, my God. Every day we learn a new thing that Nick has, new movie, or TV show Nick has not seen. And anyway, that's fun for us on the Freakomiler team.

All right. So if you want to jump ahead to hear the bright side of potential high globalist changes, or you want to come back to something later on, don't forget, you can find the timestamps in the show notes. You can always find that by just expanding the description box. Wherever you're listening or watching the show here, please don't forget to give us a like, a thumbs up. Leave us a rating. We always appreciate hearing from you. Now let's drag out this week's giant mail bag.

All right. Today's giant mail comes from Adam. Adam writes in and says, I heard that Nick hasn't seen any money Python movies. Is that really true? No, no. I did see spam a lot, though, on Broadway. Okay, I'm making that up.

All right, what Adam really wrote is, on your recent episode, you mentioned that the Aviator Silver Card, whose annual fee was $195, is being increased by $4 when converted to the City Globe card. However, the annual fee has been $199 ever since I had it, including this past October when it came due. It also lists as $1.99 on most other sites across the Internet except for yours. As I believe both Greg and Nick have this card, I'm surprised that oversight has never been caught. So what's the word, Greg? Is it $199 or is it $195?

The word is we had it wrong. So yes, I went back through my statements and found I was like, last charge, 199. For some reason, for years, we've had it listed as 195 on our site, and we took that as gospel, but it was incorrect. By a weird coincidence on the day we recorded that show, that morning, I tried to double check the annual fee by logging at my Barclays account, but something was happening. The site was going through maintenance or something. I could not log in. And so I wasn't able to double check, but I figured, oh, we've had it up there for years. surely we would have heard if the price on there was incorrect. But no. So it's been fixed on our

site since Adam rode in. But yeah, unfortunately, we had that all wrong. And that makes a lot more sense. I mean, I couldn't understand why city would, you know, when it transfers from a Barclays card to City, why City would increase the price at all, let alone by $4. I mean, that doesn't make any sense at all. So us being wrong makes a lot more sense. It does. Crazy enough as it is, though. Like you said, none of us caught that for as long as it was up there. So thank you very much for pointing that out, though. We appreciate it at him because if you didn't, then we wouldn't have been able to correct it. So thank you very much for making sure we had that right. All right, that moves us into card news. So speaking of new cards, we've got a new American Express graphite

business cash unlimited card. So what's up with the new American Express, Graphite, Business Cash Unlimited, Craig. Yeah. Okay. So Amex is making a big splash with their new business card, which I think replaces the old plum card. But, you know, usually lately when Amex comes out with new card or refreshes a card, they seem to do a really good job of making it competitive. I'll let you be the judge here. So the new business card has a $2.95 annual fee, and it offers unlimited. 2% cash back. Also includes 5% back for flights and prepaid hotels, book through Amex.

And it has a welcome offer of $1,500 cash back after a mere $50,000 in spend in six months. So what do you think? Is this a great new card for businesses that want to earn 2% cashback everywhere? Yeah, I mean, if you're going to be competitive in the 2% cashback everywhere category, $295 a year is a little steep. Nobody's anywhere near that on a 2% like a flat 2% cash back card. That just doesn't make any sense at all. $295 a year.

I mean, if you have the capacity for spend to hit the welcome bonus and it's not going to stop you from hitting other welcome bonuses, but all right. I mean, it could be worth it for the first year. But I can't see why you would spend $295 a year for a 2% cash back card that, oh, by the way, it's an AMX, so it's not even going to be accepted everywhere. And you're going to pay more than what you would pay.

for a Visa or MasterCard that earns 2% back? That doesn't make any sense. Exactly, exactly. So even if you're not interested in points and miles at all, like Capital One has their Spark Cash card, which has a $0 introductory fee, and then is $95 a year, and that gives you 2% cash back.

If you want the potential for earning more than 2% with high spend, they have the Spark Cash Plus, which has $150 annual fee, so that's still a lot less, which gives you an unlimited 2% cash back, but then you can earn even more cash back, at least in the first year with very, very high spend. But really, you know, look to Chase. They've got their Inc. Business Premier. So if you don't mind spending a little bit more than Capital One charges. You've got the Chase Inc.

Business Premier, which for $1.95 gives you the same 2% cash back on most things, but 2.5% cash back on purchase of $5,000 or more. I mean, that's obviously much better right there. It also gives you 5% back on travel purchase through Chase travel. By the way, the Capital One Spark cards also have 5% for certain travel book through Capital One. So really, you know, those three cards from Capital One and Chase are sort of unequivocally, in my mind, better than the, the new amex card. And so I'm just really surprised that

Amex would come out with such an uncompetitive offering. And that's to say nothing of like if you have enough business investments or reserves, then you could put money in Merrill Edge or Bank of America and end up with a base rate of like 2.65% on one of the business cards. I don't even know which one it is. But off the top of my head, but you could be earning even more there without an annual fee,

I think, on the base level. cashback card that they offer. And then then if you're like, well, it doesn't have to be a business card, well, then you've got all sorts of no annual fee consumer 2% cards. You have the double cash. You've got the Fidelity has a visa that earns 2%. I mean, there's tons of other options on the market that I just wouldn't. I don't know who the target market is on this card.

Target market is somebody who's after a good welcome bonus and has a lot of spend, I guess, because I can't see who else is giving it. And of course, if you're in a points in miles, which, I mean, you're listening to this podcast, come on. There's lots of 2X options where you earn 2x transferable points everywhere, which will have a lot more upside as well. Yep. Okay. Agreed. Okay. So that was that was this week's card news and kind of what crazy thing. What crazy thing did Amics do? They launched a $300, $200, $2% cash back card. All right. So let's move into awards, points and more. So for awards points and more, JetBlue is looking for a buyer that can, and they're hoping for a buyer.

of course they can clear regulatory approval. And so they've put out there the fact that they're interested in looking for a buyer. And word on the street is that they think that a merger is possible with United, Alaska, or Southwest. So out of those, which do you think would be best, and why are those the only ones? Why no AA or Delta or somebody else? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we can only guess about why Delta or AA isn't on there. I mean, AA, my guess is they're not there because they've already been denied any kind of, you know, relationship.

And so they probably think that even though it's a different administration, that there would be that precedent that would kind of block anything. That's my guess here. Also, AA isn't in the best financial position right now, potentially. United seems like really likely, you know, because they've made a lot of moves lately to partner up with JetBlue. But, and to me, like Alaska makes the most sense because what JetBlue gives us a very strong East Coast network. And Alaska has a very strong West Coast network, but they're completely missing, you know, flights that are exclusively. central and east coast-based. So JetBlue would really round out their domestic offerings anyway.

Southwest doesn't make any sense to me. I don't, I mean, I guess, you know, from the point of view of regulatory approval, I guess I think that would go through, but I just don't see an upside to either airline with that. What do you think? You know, that's what I've seen said elsewhere, too, but I think I see what the upside would be for South. I don't think Southwest will be it. So let me start with that and say, I agree. I don't think Southwest is going to be it. But in terms of the upside, I mean, Southwest would gain A, some additional different models of planes, which they've thus far expressed that they're not interested in. But over the last couple of years, they've been doing everything they can to be more like every other airline out there. So why not diversify the fleet at some point? And then what it gives them is it gives them some international routes, some routes to Europe and some some slots at JFK. And they don't currently serve New York all that well. And so it would give them, I think, a better presence

in New York. Now, do they want that? Do they care about that? Do they need that? I don't know. But if they want to be more like a regular airline, having a few international routes and then the ability to potentially partner with some more international airlines might help. But I don't actually think that'll happen. I think United is clearly the most likely. I mean, they've basically move their whole vacation booking platform over to JetBlue already. They've integrated so much with JetBlue. I just have to believe that the plan all along was to merge. And probably they don't love the fact that there's a lot of talk of other airlines now because they don't really want it to turn into a bidding war, I would bet. So I expect United to sound cool on JetBlue in the very near term, but I would imagine they

must be most likely. I think you're right, Alaska would stand to gain quite a bit. Though JetBlue's East Coast service is good if you live in New York or Boston. Otherwise, it gets a little less amazing. And so it does give them far more presence than the East Coast than they have right now. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it would really be, I mean, if you're flying from Los Angeles or San Francisco, do you want to have to transit New York or Boston to get to Florida? And obviously, they would have some direct routes and whatnot. But it just seems like I'm not sure that that's perfect. So I think United is most likely, I'd be happy if it were Alaska, though, by the way,

because I've got a lot of JetBlue points. And if they became Alaska, I'd be happy with that. So Alaska, if you're listening, go after JetBlue. I'd be fine with that. So you have 25 years of JetBlue elite status from that 25 for 25 challenge that JetBlue did. What do you think will happen to that if one of these airlines buys them? I think it probably depends somewhat on who buys them. I have more faith in Alaska to honor something like that than I would in United to honor it.

Though I would expect that in the short term, it will be, it will turn into something. And that's why I intend to go for a higher level of JetBlue elite status as sure, because if I earn it this year, it'll be valid all of this year, all of next year into January of the following year. And I feel like it's pretty likely we're going to see a merger in that time period. So the higher level of JetBlue status I can get now, at least for a short period of time, would probably translate into something useful with one of these other airlines. So will it be honored for 25 years? Boy, I don't know. They're integrating pretty closely with United, and obviously that promotion got a lot of attention. So I think everybody knows that it's out there.

It's not actually that many people. It's like maybe a thousand of us, right? So if you give a thousand people status for 25 years, how much does that really cost as an airline? I don't know. I'm hopeful that it will be honored. Let's put it that way. And so I think it's going to be worth having done, but right. One irony would be if it's Southwest, you've talked about how their elite status doesn't really give you much over what the credit card gives you. So if you got 25 years of basically credit card benefits, how would you feel about that? I'm super disappointed. And I and I guess I mean, I guess I'd save the annual well, except I wouldn't really save the annual fee because I'm probably going to keep one of the Southwest cards so I can refer friends and stuff and earn some points that way. So it wouldn't

even save me the annual fiannon. I'm one of the credit cards. So yeah, I would be very disappointed if it ended up being Southwest. I wouldn't really care if I got 25 years of Southwest out of that. I'll tell you why maybe you should care. So Southwest's, you know, approach into sort of being a regular airline and doing like regular elite stuff is brand new. So they could adopt, if they were to buy JetBlue, they could adopt some of JetBlue's policies for things. And so Maybe they would keep those mint upgrade certificates that you could get at, well, at higher levels of lead status and so on. Maybe some of that would translate into better benefits than what you would expect today from Southwest. Maybe, maybe.

Trying to help you out there. Yeah, well, also, I mean, I wouldn't be particularly excited about Southwest because there's not all that much upside. Really not much upside of any sort if my JetBlue points become Southwest points. I mean, we're long-term companion pass holders. so I guess there's that. But there's not many opportunities or any opportunities really for outsized value with Southwest, whereas there obviously are with United or Alaska. So I would be happier if the merger comes with United or Alaska.

And at least my million jet blue points become something relatively useful. Sure. All right. We'll see what happens there. Next up, we've got Built. So Built is out with the ability to allow authorized users to earn points. and I think credit towards elite status, right? Yeah, so, you know, this is interesting.

Not many, I can't think of really any other situation except maybe the city business card where the employee, which is sort of like an authorized user, can earn elite status, but the points go into a pool that may or may not go to them. In this case, the primary, a card holder can choose whether points and status go to themselves or to the authorized user for spend on the authorized user card. So I think for some people, for many people,

they'll be like, I don't really care, whatever, but I think for some people this could make a big difference, right? Yeah. I mean, I found this super intriguing in large part because it would probably be more useful in my household for me to have status. And, to earn the built points because I have the the rackaten account set up for this. I earn points through rackaten, through shopping, through referrals. And so having status to be more beneficial for me because then those points would maintain their one-to-one transfer ratio and the ability to take advantage of big transfer bonuses. And if there's a big transfer bonus to a particularly complicated program,

it's just a little bit easier to have those in my account so I can deal with loyalty program rather than my wife's account. But she's got the palladium card, not me. So it would potentially, I think, be useful to add me as an authorized user and then have those points and status earned under my name. Though, of course, it's not free. Authorized users cost something. So that's the downside that there is a cost involved in that. And that's kind of a bummer.

I don't know. What do you think, though? I mean, this is pretty unique. Like, should people be doing this? Does this make sense? Yeah. I mean, I think it solves like one potential problem where, a household wants to have both a obsidian card and a palladium card.

So you get, let's say you use the obsidian card to get 3x groceries and the palladium card to get 2x everywhere else. I mean, yes, you have to pay, what, something like $50 for authorized user. But by, you know, only using the authorized user card, you could potentially have all points and status earnings go to one person. And that's a big advantage because status is earned by how many points you earn each year and or how much you spend on your credit card each year. And so that way you could have one person in the household getting all the points, getting all the status, getting access to the best transfer bonuses because that's tied to status and getting other perks from like you get more built cash with every, what, 25,000. points you earn, things like that.

So, you know, I think, yeah, I think that if you're, especially if you're all in on built, earning built points, which can be incredibly valuable, then, you know, I could totally see it being worth doing. Yeah, as that point of clarification, the authorized user fee on the obsidian card is $50, and the palladium card is $95. So if you were to do that in a household with, you know,

both cards, then you'd be talking about an extra $145. a year to be authorized users on each other's cards. Now, whether or not that's exactly necessary, if you just want one person or in status, you may not need to add authorized users on both cards without getting into all the nitty gritty there. So it might be possible to kind of work around that. But at any rate, yeah, I think this is something that we may end up doing, and I didn't intend to have my wife add me as an authorized user. We have that card in Google Wallet. So both of us use it all the time just happening to pay. So it didn't seem to make sense to pay another $95 for that.

But this might make the difference and move the needle. So maybe you got me there, Bill. Speaking of Built and having us, they've got a new transfer partner for us this week. So they added Windham rewards as a transfer partner. You excited about that, Greg? I mean, more is always better than less. But Windham points are worth around, on average, around three quarters of a penny. So transferring one to one from a transferable points currency to Wyndham, you know, it could be valuable, but it usually isn't.

And so, no, I'm not very excited. You know, Chase also added a month ago, added Wyndham as a transfer partner. That sort of just tells me that Wyndham is selling their points for less to these programs and probably is also providing fewer outsized operations. opportunities to get value from your points is my guess of what's what's going on down the down the line. Also, you know, Wyndham points are frequently on sale for around 0.7 cents each. Right now you could get as low as 0.65 cents each with a sale that just started. So yeah, I mean, no, it's not it's not exciting. You know, there's still some chances to get great value.

There are all inclusives in the Caribbean where you can get good value. Brand and our frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group just posted a property in Hawaii on the big island the other day. That's only 15,000 points a night, I think, for a two-bedroom condos. So, I mean, there are some opportunities to get out of those values. So with the right transfer bonus, it might be interesting that day. But the other 364 days a year, it probably won't be. Right, right. Definitely won't be.

Yeah. But, you know, if points were on sale for 0.75 cents each and they and built had 100% transfer bonus, it's like cashing out your built points for one and a half cents each, which is fine, but it's not close to the best value you could get for your points. Yep. All right. But there's more built news. Built has, you know, in Built's interface, when you search for flights,

there's long been the option to see award prices next to the flights. and they used to use a tool called PointMe to provide those results. They've now switched to PointsPath, which PointsPath is a tool we've talked about a lot, which integrates with Google Flights and shows right next to the cash prices in Google Flights. It shows the point prices. So now PointsPath is doing something very similar within Bilt's interface and showing the point prices for the flights, but it's limited to the points.

that are, that you could transfer from built two. So, for example, you know, you can't transfer directly to American Airlines or directly to Delta. So, I don't think. So you can, you know, so you're not going to see the point, the American Airlines or the Delta point prices, but you will see, you know, United's point prices and most of the other partners that build has. Yeah, that's great. Points Path works really well.

We've talked about it, as Greg said, many times. I use it all the time because I don't have to try. It's just integrated in Google Flights, and that becomes really useful on a regular basis. So it's nice to see that. Although personally, I'm still happy using it in Google Flights. I'm probably not going to the Bilt app very often to search for award pricing and cash pricing.

But if you are, then it's great to know that you'll be able to see opportunities to use your points for good value there. A little bit more about points path within built. As we're recording this, it's not yet showing partner awards. So, you know, if you see an American Airlines flight and you think, and that's bookable with Alaska miles, and Alaska is a transfer partner with built, you're not right now going to see it. I've been told in a few weeks that that should be enabled.

So right now, I wouldn't rely so much on those results until that's available. But there is a place where it seems to be better than using it in Google Flights, which is British Airways. Within built, you're seeing the British Airways point prices for flights, whereas in Google Flights, a Ponce Path isn't yet able to do that. Wow, yeah, that's interesting and that's useful for sure. So good to know that and to have that as something to keep in your pocket to remember when you're doing your award searches. All right. We just mentioned wind and points are on sale.

We mentioned from 0.65 cents per point. That runs through May 1st. So if you're interested in buying Wyndham points or something, you've got some time. It's on for quite a while here until May 1st anyway. So that's something good to keep in mind also if we do see. Sometimes when Bill launches a new transfer partner, they also launch a transfer bonus. I don't know whether we'll see that or not. But if we do, keep in mind that the math there, even if it's 100%, you're getting like now

1.3 cents per point as compared to what you could buy them for. So keep that in mind if we do see something like that. Next up meal maxers. So I wrote about this tool meal maxer this week that is a map tool for finding stacks with resi, in kind, built dining, and more. Now before I get into it, have you played around with the map much yet, Greg? Not much, no. Yeah, that's right.

I thought maybe not yet. You need to. You got to because it's really used. useful if you're looking for restaurants that are on the various dining platforms. And they've added more since I wrote about it. I just got an email last night about the ones that they've added and they've added a more prominent display of when it was last updated. And I'll come back to why that's important. But this is a tool where you can look at a map and you can move around the map, you know, use your fingers and kind of scroll around if you're looking at a phone or a mouse. If you're on the

computer, you can search for a city, but it only populates the biggest cities in the search box. Otherwise, you are going to have to kind of zoom and scroll around the map in order to find wherever you want to look at. But then there are pins for all of the restaurants that are in the various dining programs. And you can filter out. You can say, I just want to see resi restaurants. Or I want to see resi restaurants that are also in kind so that maybe I can stack and pay through the in kind app and also trigger a resi credit.

That won't always work, by the way, but I have had it work in some places. So you can look for those potential stacks because you're going to find some of those with the dining portals that a restaurant may be on or with something like a Chase Saffire Reserve Tables Credit or like I said, the Resi and Inkind thing. So it's got all the most popular dining programs. And just scrolling around the map, I found some places that I didn't know had restaurants that were on these platforms just as I moved around the map. I was like, oh, look at that, a little town in the middle of nowhere. That's got a place. And, you know, maybe I would use that at some point. And so I was actually pretty surprised. I found this really

useful. The reason I mentioned that they have made the last updated date more prominent. Why that's important is because you have to keep in mind that the restaurants on these platforms do sometimes change. And we've written about how specifically the Chase Sapphire Reserve tables restaurants, like they've dropped restaurants and added restaurants and there's no notice, no notification, and we had at least one reader reach out towards the end of last year about how they went to a restaurant that had been on the platform, only to find out after they didn't get the credit they expected that that restaurant had dropped off of the

platform. And so you do want to check when it was last updated and then maybe double check and make sure that the restaurant you're looking at is indeed still on the platform that's listed because whoever's running this meal maxer has no way to know when those restaurants are going to get added or subtracted. So you do want to double check. However, this was way faster than going to all the dining par. I'm going to, I'm going to be in San Jose soon. I'm going to be in Sacramento for a day. I'm going to be at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a day. And I have no idea which restaurants are on the various platforms in those places. But I wouldn't mind the chance to use some resi credits or some in-kind credits, et cetera.

So super useful for me to take a look at the maps on those. Yeah, cool. Cool. I love it when useful new tools come out. So that's great to see. Yep. All right. We'll be right back after this with our main event.

We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a web, site. At frequentmiler.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 post sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back with today's main event, the bright side of Hyatt's potential globalist shakeup. So as we said at the outset of the show, Hyatt had surveyed a number of members with ideas about changes to their elite program, specifically changes to globalist benefits.

As things stand today, globalist status is the top tier public status you can get. And, you know, they listed a bunch of things that may have. change and we're getting reactions to those things. And most people, including our own site, Frequent Myler, reported it as being mostly negative. But let's go over what was surveyed. And then I'll talk through why I think there's potentially more upside than downside here. Okay. So again, this is all a survey. So this was asking for feedback. This is not like, they haven't announced any of these changes. They're just trying to gather. what people think about them, but that gives us some insight, at least, into what they might be

considering. And keep in mind, sometimes in surveys, you present options that you know you aren't going to do just to gauge people's reactions to various things. So we don't know any of this is going to happen. But one of the things mentioned in the survey was potential for a new top tier status above globalist. Now, other programs have something like that. Marriott's got their ambassador and, you know, a different program. IHG has an ambassador or they also have some other higher tier that's an invite only. So that's relatively common. They asked about or they suggested that there may be an end to free parking on award stays and waived resort fees on all stays for globalists. So I don't know whether that'll mean you'll still get waived resort fees on awards, but not on paid stays.

That's kind of what I interpreted that to be. But potentially anyway, we may lose those benefits. They may end the globalist concierge benefit. If you hit 60 nights, you reach 60 nights, one of the milestone rewards is getting access to a My Hyatt concierge. Some people find that really useful, and I haven't. That saves them some money, by all means, and that service, because I haven't found it useful at all. But we'll talk more about what we think in a minute. Supposedly, there may be coming the ability to top off free night certificates with some amount of points so that you could use a free night certificate to stay at a higher category property.

We've long requested that and wanted that. that could be interesting. And milestone rewards are going to potentially be changing. Hyatt has floated some changes to the milestone rewards, such as introducing an award that waives the new peak level award pricing. Now, I don't know if it'll wave peak, like, because remember, there are different levels. So there's lowest low. Does it just drop at one level down? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just going to drop from upper to or top to upper or is it going to Put it in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to give you the lowest. Who knows? But anyway, potentially you'll get an award that waives some amount of the peak pricing, an award that forces availability when there isn't a standard award available. So the potential to be able to still book a room for a standard award price, even when there isn't a standard room available. Potentially, milestone rewards that give things like free parking and waived resort fees. Right now, those are every stay benefits for Hayek Globalist,

or at least every award stay is free parking for globalists and resort fees are waived on all stays. But it sounds like those may become milestone benefits that you can only apply to some stays. There is talk of an ability to redeem points for certain milestone rewards. So if you really wanted that free parking certificate, for instance, you might be able to redeem points for it in the future. And a premium sweet upgrade award. Right now, if you reach 40, 50, 60 nights, you can get a sweet upgrade award. that you can apply in order to be upgraded to a standard suite. But if you want a premium suite, you either need to pay for it or pay the number of points

for a premium suite if that's available. But there would potentially be this milestone reward that you could use for an upgrade to a premium suite. Yeah. And I'll just remind you again, as Nick did at the outset, this was just a survey. This was not an announcement of what changes are coming. They're floating different ideas looks like. So I think it's pretty unlikely.

that they would all come to pass as written. But it does give us some sense of the direction that things may be going in. So I'm gonna talk about why I think this is potentially a good thing. First, what, a little bit of background, I guess, is that it appears from this survey that Hyatt is continuing a trend of moving perks from status benefits to milestone rewards.

Now, that's something they started several years ago when they, for example, guest of honor awards used to be something that a globalist got to use as many times as they wanted because it was a perk of having globalist status. They changed it to a guest of honor award. And so you earn a guest of honor, you earn a guest of honor certificate at 40 nights, and you earn two more at 60 nights, and then one more every 10 nights after that. So, you know, that's an example of how they've moved perks out of the status and into milestones. The, while there are downsides to it, there's, there's upsides for, for the members.

So milestones offer more frequent carrots for your stays. So, for example, you know, it used to be you had to get to 60 nights in order to get, you know, anything like globalist benefits. but now some of those like really great benefits that we love start at 40 nights because of the milestone rewards. And so that kind of thing makes it possible to get some good stuff earlier on. It also means that as they put more interesting milestone rewards out there, you know, there's the potential to have more carrots after 60 nights. So at 70 nights and 8 nights, so on, there could be more interesting things happening. From Hyatt's point of view, it might help reduce the sort of expensive overuse by certain members, right? Like, so if you take the idea that free parking might be taken away as a status benefit and turned into a milestone reward, that would mean that elite members are limited to a certain number of stays per year where they can get free parking.

and that presumably would stop, you know, there might be people who are really abusing that. I mean, I shouldn't really use the word abusing because it's in the terms and condition. You're allowed to, but, you know, maybe there's- Take advantage of the benefit, using the benefit. They're just taking advantage of it so much that it's very, very expensive to high it. Or more importantly, perhaps, it's very expensive to the property that is providing it. And, you know, I've seen a number of nice Hyatt's in recent, in the past year, I think, switch over to, for example, Marriott or whatever. And I just wonder how often, you know, some properties are looking at how expensive it is to provide great benefits to their members.

And if Hyatt might be trying to stop that bleeding by saying, you know, no, it's going to be limited going forward to only, you know, select times. they won't be able to do it every time kind of thing. Something along those lines to prevent hotels from defecting to Marriott where they don't really have to provide any benefits if they don't want to because Marriott's not going to enforce it. So even though my point is that even though the advantage is to Hyatt or to the hotels, there's sort of another advantage to the member if it means being able to keep these hotels as Hyatt's and keep these benefits going at all is better than losing them all together.

If you're worried, like, I don't know how many people are Lifetime Globalists, but it sounds like they would be losing a lot, but last time Hyatt did this, what they did is they said, okay, Lifetime Globalists automatically get a certain number of milestone rewards. For example, as things stand right now, every year you get four Sweet Upgrade Awards, you get five guest of honor awards and you get one category one to seven award. Those are things that most people have to earn from a certain number of nights as milestone rewards, but Lifetime Globalists still get them. So presumably as they do this, they will give some kind of carrots like that to Lifetime Globalists as well. All right. Now, my bright side has one major, major, major,

your condition. Read the terms and conditions, Hyatt. This is key. This is essential to my giving any of these changes a Greg's certificate of this is okay. You have to change the policy. Right now, Hyatt does not allow applying multiple awards to one stay. So you can choose. You're going to do a guest of honor or a sweet upgrade award, but you're not doing both. as they move more and more benefits out of your elite status and into awards, you have to allow us to apply multiple. I mean, I don't want to have to choose between my free parking or my suite upgrade or my, you know, waived resort fee or whatever it is. I want to be able to use my certificates to get all of those on a meaningful stay, right? So I can't stress that enough.

Like it's already been a pain point not being able to combine them, but it's going to become like 10 times worse. The more you pull perks out of status and into milestones, you have to allow multiple milestone awards to be applied at once. Full stop. All right. So now that I've said that, the rest of everything I say is based on the assumption that they will do that.

Do it for me, Hyatt? Do you think they will, though? I mean, I don't know. Well, yeah. Because they want me to keep fan-boying them, right? I see. I see. Is that what it is?

Okay. Well, I mean, my understanding has long been, the limitation there is that on the back end, it's kind of applied as a promo code and they don't have it set up to allow the stacking of multiple promo codes on a single stay. So they would need to do some tech upgrade, it seems, in order to make that. I mean, they did a lot of big tech upgrades last time around to make, like, perk shareable, which was, you know, very welcome change. and to, you know, in a lot of ways, they made big tech upgrades.

They can do this. I have faith that they will put the IT back into Hyatt somehow in order to make this happen. We can help. We can help. All right. So assuming that that is correct, that that happens. So we're able to stack, then where's the bright side here? All right.

All right. So first, the idea of there being a higher level elite status, I'm not really going to say much about that because we don't know much about it. we can surmise that there might be a Hyatt spend requirement each year to get there. Sort of like, just like when Hilton added their diamond reserve top tier status, you have to spend a lot with Hilton each year to get there. You know, it's not just nights. You could surmise that it might be that. But my thinking is that, and so it might put it out of reach for most of us is the point.

My thinking, though, is that the more they move benefits away from status and towards milestone rewards, maybe that's less important to have the top tier status at all. Let's talk about ending unlimited free parking. So I already talked about how I think if they were going to do this, they would almost certainly replace it with milestone rewards. And hopefully, just as they did with a guest of honor, hopefully it would be automatic. Meaning, so, so guest, milestone rewards, there's two types. When you hit 20 nights, 30 nights, 40 nights, 50 nights, 60 nights, there's two types of awards at each 10 nights.

There's automatic awards that you get just reaching that 10, and then there are choices. And I don't really want to have to choose free parking or sweet upgrade, for example. example, you know, with guests of honor, it's an automatic. And I would love for something like this. If you're taking it away from status, make it automatic ideally. That's more my request to hi it than a. Okay. And then my thinking is that, you know, with guests of honor, they made sure people with 60 nights had three of them each year. if they do something similar here, the question is how many globalists use free parking more than three times a year? I don't know the answer to that. I know I never have. I don't think I've ever, I don't know if I've ever used it twice in a year, let alone three times, but I may have used it. I do just for the record. Nick does. However, I have occasionally wanted it on paid stays. And that's another thing they change.

with guest of honor is guest of honor used to be exclusively for award stays. They changed it when they made it a milestone reward to allow it for paid stays as well. This presumably would also do that. They would let you pick free parking on a paid stay. Okay, let's move on to talking about unlimited waived resort fees. This one, I mean, it's hard to spend this as a good thing because I hate resort fees no matter what. So as things stand today, everybody gets waived resort fees on award stays. Please,

please keep that, Hyatt. Assuming they keep that, what we're losing is the unlimited waive resort fees on paid stays. You know, again, just like with free parking, hopefully we would get enough of these for

stays that matter with, you know, and that have resorts. We can use them. I think this particular change, if they make it a milestone benefit that we can selectively apply as opposed to an automatic perk, could be really smart for Hyatt because when people are on business on paid stays, you know, if they don't care how much the business is spending, right now, globalists are getting those waived resort fees. So the hotel's not earning those resort fees, even when the member isn't really benefiting because it's their company paying for it. So with this change, the member will be able to say, well, no, I'm not going to apply my

wave resort fee to this day because this is a, you know, my business is paying for it. I'm going to keep that for when I'm traveling on vacation, right? And that is, I think that's just smart for for hiat's bottom line and or the property owner to be able to earn that earn the money from those resort and destination fees you know it's it's tough because both of these the parking the wave resort fees it really depends on two things to make us feel good about this change one is getting enough of these automatically so that we don't feel like we're you know deprived when we want them and the other thing which i said it before I really stressed, but I have to say again, it's so critical that we can combine awards on one stay.

I don't want to pick whether I waive the resort fee or get, you know, this, that, or the other thing. I want to be able to have, use as many of my perks as I can. And by having it part of status, all that stuff happens on one every stay. And so, you know, I want to at least be able to pick which stays matter to me by Pires. on all those goodies at once. All right. Ending globalist concierge, Nick already pointed out. For many people, it's a nothing burger today, having that.

For some people, like, I like having it, but it's not a big deal. So, I mean, I email my concierge with things, like, can you change this reservation to a guest of honor for this person? And she does it, which is very convenient. But at the same time, you know, the social media team seems. really good at responding to requests as well. So I would just switch to going through, you know, Facebook Messenger or whatever, whatever social media seems the most convenient for contacting Hyatt's support team for those kind of things. Okay. So I think I've addressed the negatives,

but now, you know, there's some really good stuff being floated here. The free night certificate top-offs, we've begged for that for years. to be able to use a category one to four certificate at a higher level hotel by adding points. If they add that, that's fantastic. It makes our certs so much more useful if we can do that. An award that waves the new peak level award pricing, we don't really know how that will work. So I'm not going to say much about that, but it sounds like a way to save some points. So that's good.

An award that forces availability when there isn't a standard award available, available, that sounds fantastic. I'm not really sure in practice what this will mean, because as things stand today, standard rooms, if they're available for sale, they're supposed to be available for award booking. So if you don't see any awards available, does that mean, I think that means there's no standard rooms available. So does that mean you're getting a higher level of room for the price of a standard room? If that's true, great. just not really sure what that'll mean. Ability of redeem points for certain milestone rewards. I don't know. I'll reserve judgment on that to see what the prices are. My guess is that they're going to be mostly unattractive, but we'll see. And then a premium suite upgrade award.

I mean, I don't know how many nights you'd have to get to to get this, but that sounds fantastic to me. I would love to be able to apply a suite upgrade to a premium suite. I have at times, like, wanted to apply a suite upgrade, and there wasn't even a regular suite available. So I couldn't, but I could have, you know, but there was a premium suite available. So that would be really great as long as they don't make it like 150 nights to get there, as they did with that. Ultimate free night award.

Exactly. Ultimate free night award. Thank you for filling in the blank there. You're welcome. You're welcome. Right. So let me work my way. backwards through a couple of these things. So I think you're right about some of the good stuff there,

although it's still, it's obviously hard to judge, like to take it, for instance here, the free night certificate top off is something we've long been asking for and would love to see. But it'll kind of depend on how that works in practice, right? Like, will you get credit for the peak level pricing of the category at which it is and get that as a discount? Or will they just give you credit for the standard award price? So like a category one to four, will they just give you credit for like the standard price and get that as a discount on whatever, you know, or you have to bridge the gap to whatever it is you need, or will you get credit for peak pricing a category for and how will that work for the time? So it's kind of complicated with the five

different levels of pricing at each category as to how that gets implemented. So maybe that'll be good. We'll have to see. And that's kind of the way that a lot of those good things are, we'll just have to see how much the waived peak award pricing takes off and whatnot. So they could be good. I think that, you know, or the ability to redeem points from milestone rewards, again, could be good. But it's really hard to judge those, I think. If we go back through the other stuff, so I think separating things into milestone rewards

does probably financially make sense. I mean, you pulled out just one thing, the resort fees. But really, it's a lot more than just that. Like there are times when if you're traveling for business, probably your company's giving you a per diem that would cover breakfast and you don't really need free breakfast. Right. And you know, so, so there are situations like that where, yeah, the hotel could be collecting more money and you could separate out maybe some of those benefits so that people could like you said apply them when they're traveling on vacation and someone else isn't footing the bill for those things. So it's not necessarily all doom and gloom, but it does heavily rely on the ability to use more than one. Because when you go on vacation. That's when you want the benefits. That's the whole idea of getting status with with one of these chains for most people. We're a little bit different, but for most people, it's you travel with the same chain when you're traveling for business all year long so that when you go on vacation, you can treat your family and they can enjoy the perks of all this time.

You've had to spend away all year long. So separating things out as separate things will really stink if you have to pick and choose. If you've got to say, okay, well, I'm going to take the free breakfast this time and the parking next time. And and this other thing the time after that, that would just be awful. Absolutely. So we're in agreement on that. If I'm a betting,

man, I would bet that the things like if they do introduce like a free parking award and those types of things that they separate out, I bet we'll see that maybe in between current milestones. Because right now the milestones are at tens, they're like, you know, 10, or 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Maybe we'll see a free parking award introduced at 45.9. and something like that at 55 nights, because that might actually get somebody to stretch.

You know, if I'm one or two nights short of a free parking award, and I might be able to save a lot on parking because I'm going to go to New York for a week and I want to drive, then I might stretch that extra night or two. So I think it might make sense to build some carrots in between the current status levels. And so if they're going to separate stuff out, I would think we might see it going between like that rather than it being automatic at the 40-night level. Maybe it'll be automatic at an in-between level. I'd love to see it automatic at 40, 50, 60 as it is, but I bet that'll get separated out a little bit, which might be a bad thing for people who just wanted to hit 40-nights and didn't want to go after 45 or whatever the case may be with where

those shake out. But overall, that's how I would structure it if I were deciding them anyway. And, you know, some of these things will be more painful for some folks than others. I mean, you brought up the fact that you rarely use free parking at higher properties and we use it all the time on awards days. So and oftentimes I'll use a guest of honor awards specifically so that the second person can get free parking too. So, you know, that's a benefit that I'll be disappointed to see go when it goes. And, you know, everybody's different. Maybe I'm unique in that regard. Maybe not a lot of people are using that. And you make great points about that's another thing that if you're traveling for

business, maybe you don't need that. Like maybe the company will pay for your parking. So I, I think that there are reasons why I can understand why they might do this, and it might not be all doom and gloom if we can stack multiples on an individual stay. I am less confident that that will become possible. I feel like separating these out will be in part to make people choose so that it doesn't cost those super popular properties as much. Because if your point is right about some properties leaving because it's too expensive to provide good benefits, those are the properties where people are going to want all of the things.

That's true. Allow people to stack all of the things at those places. You're not getting any of that benefit, really, or at least not enough of that benefit, or maybe it's still costing them too much. So I'm less optimistic that we'll be able to stack multiples. But if we don't, then between the award chart increases and the separation of all that stuff and the need to pick and choose which ones you're going to use, I'll be pretty disappointed. and if that's how it shakes out.

But if it shakes out the way you're predicting here, it could, then I look forward to Hyatt surprising me and making it not so bad. Yeah, yeah. One little detail thing, if they don't move to in between milestone rewards, as you were suggesting, as a possibility, I noticed that at 50 nights,

there are no automatic benefits right now. So I could easily imagine them, you know. I mean, of course, they could load up additional, automatic ones at any period, but that's a sort of a ready waiting area to throw in some parking and other stuff. If they go that way. Here's sort of the big picture in my mind. I do trust that Hyatt understands how important their elite program is to their members, to the free press they get from sites like ours and from potty. like ours, I do believe that they understand that and want to keep that goodwill.

So my thinking is that they would either do, you know, the ability to combine these perks or maybe back off on taking some of the stuff away from status or, you know, or something in between the two, which I can't imagine what. But they'll do something because they don't want to lose that that luster. I mean, it's one of the few things they have left because, I mean, you know, with the award chart changes, they're now not that different from others as far as the, you know, having an award chart. I mean, it's hard to call an award chart when, when each category ranges so much. But what still at this moment makes them really stand out is the strength of their elite program. So they really need to keep, keep it.

it looking really strong. And so I do have faith that they'll do that exactly how it will happen. I don't know. But I'm excited to find out. You know, and the last point I want to make is, please, Hyatt, don't make me choose between a free parking award and a waived resort fee award. Like make those available, like Greg said, at some interval automatically, whatever it might be, I don't want to be forced to pick which one I'm going to.

I'm going to talk about it. I got you. Yeah. You're not talking about choosing at the time of booking. You're talking about choosing which one. Choosing your milestone reward. Yeah, that's why I said these need to be automatic. Yeah, I agree.

Like guest of honor awards are. Yep, totally agree. All right. So there you have it. There's the potential good news and some of my skepticism mixed in there with Greg's optimism. So you decide and let us know what you think. Let's go into this week's question of the week. So Andrew wrote in and said, with seemingly more and more merchants,

adding an additional fee to use credit cards? What do you do when you see the dreaded 3% fee for credit card payments at checkout? Do you just assume it's the cost of doing business, maybe weighing the value of the protections you gain by using a credit card to offset the 3% fee? Or do you do some mental math to calculate whether it's worth using debit instead to save the 3% fee or whatever the fee might be at a business that's charging an upcharge there? So how do you think about it? Do you think about it when you see an additional fee to use a credit card. Yeah, I mean, I've been seeing that a lot at restaurants lately where they don't mention it. You just see it on the bill when you're paying. And it's all over the map how they describe it. So just last night, I ate a place. It just said

surcharge, 3%. And I was thinking, oh, God, this is like booking a British Airways flight with points. Dinner surcharge. Now we have meal surcharges. So I hate it, but, you know, in the case of restaurants, I mean, most many credit cards offer rewards that exceed 3%. So I still am going to pay with credit card. I'm lucky. I still have the old city prestige card. So I'm getting five points per dollar at restaurants. So it's a no-brainer. Um, it's a, um, it. It does mean that, you know, it makes me annoyed with that restaurant. So I don't know that I would, you know, consciously choose to go somewhere else because of it. But when I'm looking at restaurants to go to, there's going to be that slight little negativeness when I think about that restaurant, as opposed to when I think about other ones.

I have more than one said there's 100% surcharge on my return business for a place that's going to charge me and make it more, less convenient for me. to pay for whatever it is that I'm buying. Like, don't. So what about you? How has that affected you or have you run into it much? Yeah, you know, more at restaurants and other types of businesses. So like you said, and I actively don't dine at those restaurants more often. Now, there is there's a pizzeria not far from me that charges an additional fee. And I would get pizza more often if not for that fee.

And it's not that the cost. It's not the 3% itself really makes a difference in my life. life one way or another. It's the annoyance over don't make me have to use cash or get a debit card. Like, I'm willing to spend money at your business. And there's a cost of accepting cash and not accepting credit cards, you know, or taking on more cash as well. And no business wants to recognize that, I guess. I know there's a cost to taking the card, but it's also costing them more of a business because I buy pizza more often if, if not for that because it kind of annoys me every time. Now, when it comes to other, but, you know, and I know that there are business owners

it'll say, yeah, but the card networks are charging us, blah, blah, blah. And I get that. I get that. To me, it's part of the cost of doing business and you have to just build it in. Now, what you might argue on the flip side is that a place that isn't charging a surcharge is charging the surcharge. They're just charging everybody, the people who pay in cash and the people who pay in credit. And I get that. You're not wrong about that.

Just do it that way, though. I'd much rather have that way. Like, show us the price on the menu. Right. Don't add, you know, junk fees after the fact. That's ridiculous. Just show us the full price on the menu. Three cheers to that.

Three cheers. I hate that. That to me is kind of like I've said before. Don't charge me a gas surcharge because you had to use fuel in the stove to cook my steak. You know, like, come on. Just charge the price that you need to charge in order to make a profit on the steak. And I don't really eat steak. So it's just an example, guys.

Anyway. So, but when it comes to other types of businesses, I think it's also kind of interesting because I have seen this at places like a mechanic or, you know, a place where I might be buying something, usually smaller merchants, that will add a surcharge. And most of the time, like Greg described, I figure that I'm probably earning rewards that are worth roughly what the surcharge is. Though would I pay, you know, if there's a 3% surcharge and I'm using a 2x card, would I actually pay one and a half cents per point to buy the points? Not really.

Am I going to carry a debit card to be ready for those scenarios? Also, not really. and mostly because there's not enough of them that it matters much to me, at least not enough to me to A, carry the debit card and then B, accept whatever lesser protections there might be. So I'm still paying by credit, but I do. There are times when I have meant to buy something, but there's a surcharge and I've said, all right, never mind because I find it kind of annoying, especially if I'm going to spend a large sum of money, that you're going to make it more difficult for me or more expensive for me.

to pay however it is I'd like to pay. So it tends to be my perspective on it, which I'm sure if I owned a small business, I would probably have a different perspective. So I understand that there are different perspectives on that. But it doesn't actually change my behavior at the moment, which is probably problematic because it means more and more businesses will continue to do it if I don't stop paying it, right? So I don't know. But I don't think about it usually, though, to be honest. I think you're in the same same boat there. So there you have. It may not be a satisfying answer, but that's the answer. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode and you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox

each day or each week, you want to go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions about this stuff all the time. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag. You can send that to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. If you love travel, but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10, and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world.

We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, and what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for travel intent wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at boyescape.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel hosted the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian who's been touring the world for years, and when I'm not traveling for work, I'm traveling for fun. And when I'm not traveling at all, I'm talking with friends, influencers, expats, and other people from all walks of life about the thing I'm most passionate about, travel. So if you want to hear a fun conversation

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