Frequent Miler on the Air - The end of the points & miles game? | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep307 | 5-23-25

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

This week we'll lean about the "ultimate life hack", we'll gripe about how we're being Bonvoyed every which way, and we'll debate: is the points and miles game dead?(01:14) - Listeners respond to our "Points for the next generation" podcast Ep306 with some great life hacks...You can find our "Points for the next generation" podcast Ep306 here.(08:53) - Nick's schedule change storyRead more about Nick's schedule change story here.(16:17) - The Blackjack Apprenticeship PodcastFind our guest appearance on the Blackjack Apprenticeship podcast "AP Life Skills: Maximizing Your Edge with Credit Card Rewards" on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here...(17:43) - Hilton 200K awards: See: Hashing out Hilton's Devaluation | Coffee Break Ep56 | 5-20-25 here(18:45) - Bonvoyed: Marriott elites shouldn't expect suites(22:02) - Marriott's Dearborn Inn Autograph Collection: No free breakfast for Platinum ElitesRead more about this here.(25:16) - Citi Strata Premier, Prestige cashout drops to 0.75 (but with easy work-around)(27:46) - Bilt: Reducing all non-Bilt cards to 0.5 pts/dollar (like Amex) when paying rent starting 6/21(31:21) - St Pancras Chambers Club permanently closed(33:57) - Virgin Atlantic award sale: Only 4,800 points to fly to/from UK through September 2025(38:50) - Air France / KLM Flying Blue cuts redemption rates for 2026 Delta flights(41:29) - Easy Money w/ ShopBack portalLearn more about our Shopback portal promo here: https://frequentmiler.com/shopback-portal-promo-for-frequent-miler-readers-20-signup-bonus-20-when-spending-20-in-may/(45:43) - New Kimpton Secret Password: “Social Sent Me”Main Event: The end of the points & miles game?(47:50) - Doomsday Events(50:15) - On the other hand, welcome bonuses higher than ever(51:58) - Category bonuses higher than ever(54:00) - More opportunities for transferable points than ever before(57:02) - Transfer bonuses very common(59:27) - New award sweet-spots keep popping up all the time(1:03:10) - Great tools make it easier to find awards(1:10:09) - Valuable promotions pop up randomly(1:17:45) - Do devaluations like Hilton's feel like a bigger deal to non-bloggers (who maybe have fewer points?)Visit 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 Yoder

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'll unveil the ultimate life hack, we'll discuss how we've been bonvoyed every which way, and finally we'll debate whether the game is dead. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event. Is this the end of the points and miles game? Programs keep devaluing, great sweets bought awards keep disappearing, opportunities to earn hundreds of thousands of points go away. Is this the end?

You know, the end, it always feels like it's nearer than it really is, right? And I will, we'll talk about it. Maybe that's not the truth, because it's easy to kind of, I think, celebrate the glory days and lose track of all the new opportunities that come around, but we'll see, maybe you'll convince me

that we have reached the beginning of the end. In the meantime, if you want to jump ahead to something, you want to come back to it later on, don't forget, you'll find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand that show description. That's also where you'll find links to a lot of the things that we've been talking about during today's episode. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the video or the podcast, leave us a rating, leave us a comment. We always appreciate that stuff. We also always appreciate when people send us giant mail. So let's drag out this week's giant mail back. All right. And today's giant mail, we've got three things to cover. First two are in reaction

to our show, Points for the Next Generation, where one of the things that we talked about during that show was how Nick and I create Gmail email addresses for the people in our life, our children, maybe spouses, where we manage their loyalty programs. And so we use those new email addresses to manage those things. And multiple people reached out and said, hey, you don't have to create new email addresses. If you're using Gmail, you can just stick a dot anywhere in the email address.

Looks like a different email address to the loyalty program, but all the mail will come to you. So what do you think about that, Nick? Well, it's a good tip. I mean, it's certainly one that I'm familiar with and I've used in many situations in the past. It's not one I usually use with loyalty programs. What about you?

Do you use this with the loyalty programs? I mean, you presumably, I imagine you knew that this existed, right? Yeah, sure. And just like you, I use it for a lot of things, but not for this. There's a few reasons why I like to have unique email addresses for each person.

One is just, it's easier to keep track of, like when email comes into g.reg instead of Greg, how do I know is that for my son or my wife or my cat or whatever? Um, and then if you're on the phone or something, you need to provide it to somebody. I remember which one you're supposed to remember. Right. Um, now I guess you could get around that by being really consistent, like maybe having the dot and the, after the first letter means your first child and after the second letter or something like that.

Anyway, the other reason, well, I guess there's probably a lot of reasons. I use Chrome and when you actually set up new identities for each person, you can... New profiles, Greg, you can. New profiles, Greg, new profiles. I'm not talking about setting up identities, okay?

Well, you know. So somebody's gonna comb, some AI is gonna comb our show. Sometimes. We're gonna end up on some FBI list here, Greg. If you're doing something kind of questionable, you might need to do it, get a new identity. Yeah, okay. So in Chrome, when you have these new Google profiles,

you can open like a unique browser instance for that person. And that way, when I want to look at my son's Alaska account, I let the browser save all the information. So I just can log right in. And yeah, I could use LastPass to do that. It just cuts out a step by having a unique browser instance for each person in it. It just, I don't know, it just makes things easier for me

the way I like to handle things. But if it's easier for you to just do one email address, I mean, that's great. That is an easier way to get started anyway. Yeah, it surely is. And it's a good tip that we probably should have mentioned. It's something that I didn't even think to mention. But yeah, for all the reasons that Greg just mentioned, I don't use it for this. The other reason is I have run into a situation. So sometimes I'll use this if I'm trying to like order something and it's like, you know, one per

person and I need to make another person show up. And so I've done that before, but then I've also had websites that have kind of caught onto that and like merge the accounts or whatever before when they reconcile things somehow. And I don't want a chance that's gonna happen with a loyalty program and mess with the miles that are in there.

So I want those email addresses totally separate because it's more valuable to me than if I, I've never done this with Kohl's, but if I wanted an additional Kohl's account and you know, someday they find, they catch up with that and kill off one of my Kohl's accounts, who cares? But if that happens with the mileage account, that can be more of a pain. So I avoid it for things like this that are more important. Yeah, yeah.

It also occurred to me like someday I might just turn over right my son's email address to him entirely and just right here. It's yours now instead of right now I selectively auto forward some stuff to him. Right, right, right. Absolutely. That's you. I've I've also had the same thought that I've passed those on eventually. All right. So good tip there though in response. So you said we had another one from the Generation. Yep. Yep. So Jonathan wrote in Saying hi folks. This is a little bit of a jest but you missed the ultimate life hacked life hack and Getting your kids in the points and miles game. I named one of my children the same name as myself

Although it won't work for frequent flyer miles, he now gets access to all of my hotel loyalty. He has status with IHG, Bonvoy Hilton, working on my way to Lifetime Platinum on Bonvoy, which he'll have for life. So just a step back. So yeah, by having the same name, So just a step back. So yeah, by having the same name, not only can Jonathan share his status with his son,

but his son can help him earn hotel status because his son can check into hotels as Jonathan, show his ID, I'm Jonathan, he really is Jonathan. And that will help re-up the elite status or get more elite status and everything. So I love that. He goes on to say some other things like priority pass. They only need one priority pass

and they could share that, they have the same name. So the only reason the airlines don't work is because they do need your birthdate on the reservation. But any type of loyalty thing that doesn't need a birthdate or proof of birthdate, this hack should work. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, as I thought about this, I was like, this will work with almost everything. I mean, it's basically just airlines. I'm sure there's something else, but mostly just airlines that require your birthday be entered for your loyalty account Yeah, so yeah, I mean this would work on tons of different levels, but yeah, I was like, oh wow, that's brilliant

How did I miss that because my next thought just like you is oh man when my kids are old enough We could be earning status together and like have the requirements. This would have been such a so yes, you're right. Absolutely It's a fantastic. I don't know if my wife would have been such a, so yes, you're right. Absolutely, it's a fantastic hack. I don't know if my wife would have gone for it, just for that, but I also don't know that she wouldn't have. So. We totally should have George Foreman this. Never, and I, that's exactly what I was thinking

of was George Foreman. I was like, oh, I wonder how many you could, well, George Foreman had like eight, right? And that was my next thought. That's so funny, we both thought of that. So yeah, you're just gonna have to have more kids next. Right, right. I mean, you messed up with the first two.

Right, I know, I know, I know. I'm sure it would be much cheaper to get status by having another kid. That's a great idea though, Jonathan. I love it, I love that you did it. I assume you didn't do that intentionally and it was like an unintentional consequence, a byproduct and well done.

And if it was intentional, hats off to you. So well done there. I love it. You know, and just as an aside, if you could find a spouse with your same name too, you can really ramp this up. Anyway, all right, let's move on. All right, we got another one here.

Yeah, well, the last one, you know, let's let's move on. All right, we got another one here. Yeah, well, the last one, you know, it's not really giant mail, but I didn't know where else to put this. Nick wrote a great post about how he solved a infuriating problem with an award booking he had made. And I really want everyone to hear at least the solution to this. So if you could just tell the short version of the story, because I've never heard these, this word before. I was going to say in this context, but I've never heard it before in any context. I had neither. That's why I put, I copied and pasted and put it in directly from the chat into the post too, because I, I, and I copied and pasted exactly what it in directly from the chat into the post too, because I, I,

and I copied and pasted exactly what they told me and the Air France agent knew exactly what they needed to do. The silver bullet word that we'd never heard of, but now, now we've got to bookmark this and use it everywhere. That word is re protection. So, uh, so I, the short version of the story is that I had booked Air France flights with my Virgin Atlantic flying club points and Air France flights with my Virgin Atlantic flying club points and Air France had a schedule change and it broke the itinerary

because the departing, our connecting flight was landing after our connecting flight was departing. So I couldn't make the connection. That was the problem. So I needed something to change, whether it was the outbound flight or the connecting flight, something had to change so that I could still get to the destination. And I contacted Virgin Atlantic because it was a Virgin Atlantic ticket. I booked it through Virgin Atlantic.

So I contacted them numerous times. I was on the phone with them for hours over the course of this whole thing, trying to get that fixed. And one agent after another was telling me, I don't know, I don't know. I don't see anything you can do. And finally, a chat representative, uh, is who solved this because a number of Virgin Atlantic reps told me to talk to Air France.

And I knew that Air France was going to tell me to pound sand cause this is a Virgin Atlantic ticket and that's exactly what they did. And so I came back to Virgin Atlantic and I said, they told me they can't change it because it's on Virgin Atlantic ticket stock. And when I said that, then the Virgin Atlantic agents said, well, yeah, they're right, they can't change it. We don't need them to change it. We just need them to sell in a reprotection flight into your ticket and then we can reissue the ticket.

And I was like, okay, I don't know what that means, but I don't need to know what that means. If that's what I have to tell them, then that's what I have to tell them. But somehow the first eight agents that I spoke with or whatever didn't tell me that. They said you can call Air France and see if they can help you.

But without any of that, I was calling Air France, asking them to change it. And they were saying, we can't change it. It's not our ticket, we can't change it. And so anyway, that was the right terminology. You got that one person who told you the secret magic words. And I think either side should have been, you know, I mean, yeah, Virgin Atlantic says,

you gotta go talk to Air France, which was technically correct, but Air France, when saying, well, we can't change it, should have said, but we could do this reprotection thing. Right, right, you would think so, right? Yeah one and really it blew my mind a little bit with Virgin Atlantic too because that person who told me that Initially told me I had to they didn't even say I had to every person I talked to said that there was no alternative award availability available, you know

There was nothing else available and several people that I spoke with from Virgin Atlantic tried to call Air France and Air France said they couldn't do anything. And it was kind of like a, well, you could try calling Air France. It wasn't a, you need to call Air France, as it turns out, is apparently what I had to do until that last person who was like, oh no, you need to tell them to sell

in a reprotection flight so we can reissue the ticket. Like that was it. Cause then I went to Air France and chat, pulled it up and I explained, I got this broken connection. I need you to sell in a reprotection flight so that Virgin Atlantic can reissue the ticket. And I don't even totally understand what that means, but the agent did because it took less than five minutes. That might have gotten me out of a jam about a year ago when we had a British Airways flight

booked with Cathay Miles and British Airways did an equipment swap and they moved us from the nice new suites to the old 17 business class seats across the aisle kind of thing, exaggerating just a little bit. And yeah, I kept the same thing as you, I would call one and they'd say you have to talk to the other and so on back and forth and I didn't do it as many times as you did, which maybe was the problem. But maybe if I'd use those magic words, maybe I could have gotten somewhere. Who knows? Who knows? But anyway, that that did solve the problem. And like I said, within less than five minutes, Air France came back and said, OK, I've saved a new flight in there.

And you know, you can read the post if you want to hear all about the solution. But they said they already saved this flight into your itinerary. And sure enough, I pulled up the Air France app and boom, it was in the itinerary. Tickets still needed to get reissued. So I still had to go back to Virgin Atlantic, but again, that only took a few minutes. So we went from like hours of frustration to a few minutes solution is really what it came down to in the end, once I had the right terminology and you know, an unintended consequence side effect that I didn't mention in the post, but is that the, when they rebooked it, they actually rebooked my long haul flight from New York to depart earlier.

And that got booked into a different fare class. So I think that maybe I will get paid back for my hours of frustration in the form of possibly earning some miles on that. So yeah, that would be great. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, who knows? You know, the time that I convinced American Airlines to put my wife and I on a United flight, I thought it was a revenue fair. It was business class flight to London, and it was, but I earned about 300 miles. Yeah, well, and that may be the case.

I'm certainly not expecting, I'm just hopeful. Very, very different. Although interestingly, so, and this is getting perhaps more into the weeds than we really need to on this, but we're a party of eight and there's five people on one PNR and three on another. And the fare classes are different between the two resorts.

We got changed into two different flights is what it is. Oh, okay. That means you eat them one flight. So five of us are departing at 6.30 and the other three are departing at 530 an hour before. And so there are two different fare classes that they rebooked us into. So I don't know. We'll see what happens.

But I will let you know. Now I have to create all of the frequent flyer accounts for everybody because I wasn't intending for anybody to earn miles. So I didn't worry about it. But now I need to set up some more of those email addresses. Set them up. Yeah, yeah, or use the dots for, you could have like, like extended, you could have one email that's extended family and with dots in there. The solution is yeah, create one email with all the names you know like Bob, Jim, Mary, Sue,

Bubble and you just put the period after the name of the person, right? Or just rename everybody to that one name. Well, you could do that. You could try the, Jonathan might do it. They might not like being renamed, but. Right, they may not. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway, there you go.

Okay, so. Yeah, and if you read the post online, you'll see that I actually made a little cameo appearance in there, so I was happy to see that. Always fun, always fun. All right. So that brings us I think next to the FM podcast appearance. So recently we have been on a podcast or two, right? Yeah. So we were on the Blackjack apprenticeship podcast and we were on an episode called AP Life Skills,

maximizing your edge with credit card rewards. So we'll put a link in the show notes to that episode, but they interviewed Nick and I, and they're all about ways of kind of maximizing cash rewards that you could get playing games in casinos. And we're all about maximizing loyalty rewards. And so there was a lot of... It was a pretty interesting conversation because I think we share a lot of similar approaches to things,

or at least similar concepts. And yeah, I don't know. I think it was a good overview to to the game we play. It was it was and I think that there is like you said, a lot of overlap in the sort of skill sets and interests between people who attempt to anyway be advantage players as they call them gamblers that are trying to get an edge on the system. And I mean, it's essentially what we're all trying to do too,

right? So it's similar types of appeal, I think. so so maybe you'll also find some other stuff in there that interests you or maybe not but there you go there you have it you can check that one out. All right next section is Bonvoid let's talk about all the ways in which we've been Bonvoid lately. Yeah so first up here Hilton Bonvoyed us by increasing the cost of awards at some properties anyway to as many as 200,000 points per night for a standard room. Now not everything went up that high and and certainly it was only a few probably that went up to the full 200,000 points but a number of properties increased pretty significantly at the top end and otherwise

maybe not as significantly across the board. But anyway, we did a coffee break about this earlier this week. So you can check that one out coffee break episode number 56. So that was on May 20 2025. You can check that one out and hear our full thoughts about that devaluation and how that's all playing out. Yeah, yeah. Of course, Hilton wasn't the only one bon-voying us this week. Marriott always likes to, they like to own this category, really, is what it is. They try, they try.

So tell us about how Marriott elites shouldn't expect suites. Well, because, so Marriott has elite benefits, like many other programs in their elite benefits. They include room upgrades and so members with elite status should get an upgrade based on a feel ability. And the way that used to be worded essentially said that elite members, platinum and higher, I think would be upgraded to the best available room, including standard suites. And so theoretically by the letter of the law, a platinum member checking in would get upgraded to the best room that's

available up to a suite, a standard suite. Probably not going to give you the presidential. I think it was just a standard level suite. Now in practice, I don't know if that's always the case. You shouldn't always expect that. There's a lot of platinum's and above out there too. So in fairness, you're probably competing with a lot of people. That's the way it used to be worded. Now it just says you're entitled to a complimentary upgrade and it doesn't specifically call out the suites. It doesn't say that you're entitled to a suite

if it's available or the best available room. It doesn't say you're entitled to the best available room. It just says a complimentary upgrade and anyone who's played this game for a while knows that an upgrade can be just about anything. It can be like, oh yeah, you're in the corner room. We upgraded you to a corner room with more space or we upgraded you to the parking lot view instead of the air conditioner view. We upgraded you to the room with the fax machine in it.

Right, right, correct, correct. You're no longer in the broom closet, so. We call it the executive room, because you do executive stuff, like faxing things. We upgraded you to a high floor. Yeah, so, yeah. So don't expect a suite, but I already didn't expect a suite,

so that really doesn't change much for me. 100%, so the terms have changed, the reality probably hasn't changed. The reality before was the chance of getting a suite was upgrade, a free suite upgrade was very, very low. It's still very, very low. Getting upgraded to the best available room was not honored. Like I don't know any place that, you know, it was like, oh, we have a better room available.

So I have to put you in it. Now that doesn't happen. It's just not the way it works. Yeah, well, and in the post I said, this seems less to me like a devaluation, so to speak, as much as it is changing the terms to reflect the reality. Yes. Because we know that they're not going to enforce,

even if they said platinum members are guaranteed a suite if there's one available, they're not gonna enforce it. Marriott's, I mean, pretty much established at this point that they will allow some properties to wiggle out of just about any requirement of the program. So, I mean, and they're not gonna do anything about it. So it was kind of senseless, I think, to have it in there. So around the same time, they removed language.

So there used to be language preventing platinum elites from getting upgraded to suites at Ritz properties. And so they removed that. So now platinum elites have just as little chance of getting upgraded to a Ritz suite as titaniums and whatever the concierge or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah.

All right, but that's not the only appearance Marriott's gonna make in the Bonvoy awards this week because you had the pleasure of experiencing a bonvoying at the hands of Marriott. Yeah, yeah, so I checked in this past, well, about a week ago as this publishes to the Dearborn Inn in Michigan, which has just reopened after a massive renovation. And it's an autograph collection hotel,

which is one of the ones where as a platinum elite or higher, you're guaranteed breakfast, but they don't agree that that's what you're guaranteed. So I was ultimately given breakfast, but as like a comp from the manager, they didn't confirm that they're gonna treat other elites that way. So.

Was this like a, do you know who I am moment? Or what was. No, I didn't tell them who I was. I just, just because I complained about it and said, hey, I'm supposed to as I mean, I, I, I said, I have titanium status, you know, and said, I just said, you said, Marriott's terms, say I should get breakfast. And so anyway, so every now and then

it makes the inner webs about like some hotel, like when the Ritz, not the Ritz, when the St. Regis Chicago opened, they didn't give free breakfast to Marriott. Platinum's are above, they're supposed to. Enough people complained publicly that they changed that. This hotel, I'm sure, doesn't have as much national draw as St. Regis Chicago, but I'm still hoping that some attention to this will lead them to change things. At the same time, I couldn't give them a bad review.

I had a great stay. I thought it was a pretty awesome hotel. But it's just really disappointing when hotels don't honor the terms of the loyalty program. But you do have to know, I do need to note that the terms are really confusing. It wouldn't surprise me if they misinterpreted the terms. That's I guess a generous way of looking at it.

But anyway, there it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it always annoys me when a hotel ownership group wants to benefit from the marketing reach of a chain, but then doesn't want to have to take on the expense of taking care of the members of that program. So that annoys me just at a base level because it shows management is looking at it as a one-way street and it ought to annoy somebody in the Marriott office. Of course, they want to keep owners happy. I get that.

But yeah, and that's the other thing that annoys me is that it used to be that Marriott, like if they heard about this, would go in and change it. They would force the hotel to change their policy. They seem to have backed off all of that kind of enforcement. And so that's really depressing. And now it's down to people like us to call out these hotels that aren't doing it and whether or not that changes anything, who knows. Yep. Yep. All right, but we're not done. There's a whole bunch of Bonvoyed stuff coming up this week. And so next up on the list is that the city Strata Premier is devaluing cash redemptions, which

is to say that many city Strata Premier card holders got an email this week indicating that starting on August 24th, if I remember correctly, the redemption rate, if you want to redeem for cash, you want to take your points and redeem them for cash is changing right now as we record this one. Thank you point is one cent, but starting August 24th, one thank you point will equal 0.75 cents. So three quarters of a cent.

So it's a devaluation in the sense if you want to redeem your points for cash, you're going to get far less cash starting in August. Yeah, yeah. And what we've learned is that this devaluation also hits Citi prestige card holders. But fortunately, Dan Steeles has confirmed with Citi that there's an easy workaround to this. As long as you also have a double cash card or custom cash card, you can pull your points together, which is something you'd want to do anyway to make your double cash or you know other points transferable, which is what the Strata Premiere or the Prestige card would do

for you. But this now works in the other direction. Having one of those cards pulled in makes all your points cashoutable at one cent per point. So really, if you have the Strata Premier, you ought to have the double cash as well. I mean, because that gets two points per dollar for all spend. So I don't see this as a huge deval, at least for people who are in the know of how to get around it. Right. Yeah, you know, my wife has had the strategy premiere for a couple of years,

and we haven't had a double cash in the household and actually recently broke down and just applied outright for the double cash, which I know sounds like heresy because I always advise people to apply for something else and product change to the double cash. But city's gotten tougher with product changes lately and we really wanted the double cash for a couple of specific use cases So so anyway, we went ahead and got it. And so this won't really affect us I don't anticipate probably cashing out city points at once then anyway I'd rather transfer to their partners and that's not changing at least as far as we know So as long as you can still

transfer one to one some of their better partners, I probably wouldn't want to be cashing them out anyway. But at least if I do decide that I need to at some point, we've now got a double cash will be okay. All right. Next up belt as the old saying goes, built, giveth and half taketh away. Giveth and half taketh away. The old saying. All right, so they're reducing the earnings on rent payments when you pay with a card other than the built card, correct? Other than the built card or the personal Alaska card.

Alaska card, true. Oh yeah, this is getting confusing. So the built card still earns one point per dollar with no fee for paying your rent. All other cards that you want to use to pay your rent still have a 3% fee. The Alaska card still earns three Alaska miles per dollar and no bill points when you do that, I believe. All other cards, when the announcement first came out about this capability to allow all other cards,

which feels like half a minute ago when the announcement came out, but it hasn't been long that you've been able to do this at all. When the announcement first came out, you could pay with any card and most cards you would earn, in addition to whatever your card's earning was, you would earn one built point per dollar. The exception was American Express cards where you'd earn one point per $2, or half a point per dollar, half a built point per dollar. So now they're moving all of the non-built,

non-Alaska consumer cards to this half a point per dollar model. Yeah, that's a bummer. I mean, it's a bummer to see that happen so quickly too, because like you said, it seems like it's been a hot minute since they launched this. So I would have expected that they had a decent idea as to what the cost was going to be and been prepared to offer this for more than a hot minute.

Does seem strange. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they also said, I think in the announcement that there's going to be other things coming. I mean, they kind of alluded to the fact that Alaska might not be the only one to offer some sort of an increased earning opportunity in the future. Right. Right.

Right. Right. So, you know, hopefully a card you have, if you're interested in paying rent with your card, hopefully a card you had will have some kind of promotion like the Alaska one where you can earn three points per dollar. We'll see. It'll be very interesting to see what comes of that. And you know what, if you were paying rent before through Plastique, that's still costing you about 3% and so this costs you 3% and you're still earning

some build points on top of that. So this is still a little bit better than Plastique, but it's gotten a little bit worse than it was before. Yeah, and it's not gonna make sense unless you're earning some sort of better return than the fee, essentially. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you're earning some sort of better return than the fee, essentially. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you're doing that if you're paying with some other card

that you're using a card where you're working on a welcome bonus or some sort of big spend bonus or something where you're earning better than like, you wouldn't wanna pay 3% for one point per dollar probably. Well, you're still earning, yeah, I mean- The half a point from built. I don't know, you very well might, the math isn't as good as before.

So before, let's say you're using a 2X card, like the double cash, you are getting two points per dollar from your Citi card and one point per dollar from built. So you're buying transferable points for one cent each, which is great. Now you're buying two and a half transferable points for three cents each.

And so you could do that. There you go. All right, there you have it. And finally, under the Bonvoy awards, well Bonvoy makes another appearance. So Marriott has a property that is near and dear to Greg's heart, the St. Pancras Renaissance. I think it's a Renaissance, right?

St. Pancras in London has some bad news coming. Yeah. St. Pancras is a beautiful hotel. It looks like an incredible castle or something from the outside. And within that building is the hotel and a train station. And there's an old, like nicely renovated part of the hotel that's called the Chambers Wing. And if you're staying in the Chambers Wing, you have automatic free access to the Chambers Club. Had, had is the right term here, which was a great club lounge. I mean, there's not, there's not that many, you know, great club lounges in London that I'm aware of, but this was one.

And now they're closing it. It's gone. As of June 3rd, the notice says it'll be permanently closed for future renovation, which I, I find those two words a little confusing going together, but I'm guessing, I'm guessing what they mean is that it is permanently closed and that they're just rent, you know, renovating that whole wing and, and there may or may not be a club in the new, in the new thing. They're also changing from a Renaissance, uh, wing and there may or may not be a club in the new thing.

They're also changing from a Renaissance brand to the autograph collection brand. So that's, I don't care about that one way or another, other than it's interesting. Cause I have had the feeling in recent years that the Renaissance brand seems to be like dying off. Undergoing a Renaissance? The opposite. The opposite of Renaissance.

Yeah, you're right, you're right. They have kind of been killing that one off. It opposite of a renaissance. Yeah, you're right. You're right. They have kind of been killing that one off, it does seem. Yeah, that's kind of odd. Yeah, so this is a bummer, I think, because I've only stayed there once, but that club lounge space, even if you just take away the food, it's just a really pretty space. I mean, the furniture was really nice. It was a cool looking club. And so it's disappointing that

public access to that presumably is going to end unless they turned into a restaurant or something, I guess. But I just, I thought it was a great space. So yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. Oh well. Oh well. Thank goodness. I think that's one of the reasons you got to take advantage of things while you can though, because you don't know what's going to go away. Absolutely. So glad we've been able to do that. Speaking of things we could do, let's talk about awards points and more. If you want to go to the UK, you can get there pretty cheaply perhaps. And maybe you can even get there before

they close the Chambers Club at the St. Pancras Renaissance. You have to hurry for that. June 3rd it's closing. It's possible. So if you do go by the way, if you don't stay in the chambers wing, you have to have titanium status or higher to get in. They don't let Platinum's in. Anyway, let's talk about the Virgin Atlantic award sale. They are starting economy flights to the UK from the US for 4800 points. Now that's during the sale. That's the off-peak rate, which you'll only find in September. And to get in on this deal, you have to book by May 27th. The eligible routes are between London Heathrow and Boston, JFK, Washington DC, Miami, Seattle and San Francisco. There's also one between Manchester and JFK.

And you could fly in either direction for the low price. In the summer, which is peak season for these flights. From the East Coast, we're seeing flights for only 9,600 points one way and from the West Coast only 12,000 points one way. But in September, when it's off peak, we're seeing 4,800 points from the East Coast and 7,200 points from the West Coast. When flying towards London the taxes are really low like around 75 bucks going the other way you might be paying you know about a $200 or something in that range. But no matter how you look at it these are fantastic prices to go to London. They really are and currently as we record this there's a 25% transfer bonus from Chase Altimer

or it's Divergent Atlantic, which means transferring 4,000 Chase points would give you more than enough for a one-way flight to London. I mean, 4,000 points and 75 bucks. That's pretty hard to be. I mean, you couldn't fly somewhere domestically for that. Well, I know, that's what I was just gonna say.

Like that would be a great price for me to fly from like Detroit to Chicago, which is a 40 minute flight. But I can't do that. Right. That would cost me 7500 Virgin points. But I can fly to London for less. Now the taxes would be less on on that domestic. That's true. That's true. But yes, that is true. Certainly, though, when you look at the distance covered here for the number of miles and the amount of cash copay. And I let me be clear, I don't usually get wildly excited about economy class flights to Europe because as somebody based in the Northeast, it's often possible to get relatively

cheap or relatively inexpensive economy class flights to and from Europe. And so like from New York, for instance. So I don't get wildly excited about economy class awards, especially the ones that charge higher taxes and fees, because by the time you've accounted for the fees and the miles, then I often feel like it's not that great of a deal compared to just buying a ticket. Now, of course, that's not universally true.

But this is like at that point where you say, okay, now it really is. 4,800 points and $75. That's hard to beat, Even if you found a fantastic air fair sale, it would be hard to feel like you've beaten this. That's right. That's right. Great, great price. I do want to say, so I flew, if you're not a fan of flying economy, this does not apply to premium economy or business class. We, me, Nick and Stephen all flew Virgin Atlantic economy from JFK to London during the million mile madness challenge. And I have to say, I was not a fan. I was

practicing like sardines into that plane. Yeah, it was pretty tight. And I've got short little legs, but my knees were right up there, I got short little legs, but my knees were right up there, right up near the pocket of the seat in front of me. And so, yeah. That's the hard part. If you think about how cheap it is, then just spend all your time in the Chambers Club until June 3rd and enjoy that.

Just don't leave, stay there. Stay there, forward the mill. Use as much as you can, but then unfortunately, you are gonna have to squeeze back into that little economy seat on the way home. I don't know, those seats were really cramped. Like you said, I have short legs and I felt super cramped. But one thing I gotta mention is at least,

out of New York, I don't know if this is true out of Boston, there is a daytime flight, and sometimes that's available for the low number of points. I've looked a few times before and found it available for the 6000 points that it's the pre discounted price So so, you know if you can get that daytime flight the 8 a.m Flight, maybe it won't bother you so much setting an economy class for a few hours be hard overnight But it was hard overnight, but but there you go. There you have it. All right, and then so let's see

That's all that Air France KLM flying blue is in the news this week because they have cut redemption rates for Delta flights Now I fly Delta so rarely that I saw this and I said, oh, that's cool to know and I kind of moved on So you're gonna have to tell me more about it. Yeah. Yeah So, you know, they share a loyalty program Air France and flying and KLM have their loyalty program called Flying Blue, and you could use those points to book partner airlines, like you can use them to fly Delta. And Thrifty Traveler discovered that for flights in 2026, the cost to fly the Delta routes they looked at in economy, the cost has gone down,

the number of points you need to use. Now Air France, KALEM flying blue is transferable from just about all the transferable points. So they're easy to get. And let me just give you a few examples of point prices, how they're changing. If you wanna fly between Atlanta and Chicago on Delta right now in 2025, that'll set you back 8,000 flying blue miles in 2026, 5,500. Maybe you want to fly from Minneapolis to Amsterdam right now, 28,000 points in economy. In 2026, 22,500 points.

Maybe I wanna fly Detroit to Honolulu. Right now, 30,000 points. Next year, it'll be 24,000. So, they're not like 50% off, but they're decent drops. I really like the one that sticks out to me, the 5,500 points to do that flight from Atlanta to Chicago tells me that there's a new game in town for booking short haul Delta flights. Because right now, the best deal is Virgin Atlantic for 7,500 points when Delta releases awards based to their partners.

It sounds like starting with flying in 2026, you can get those flights for 5500. So that's, that's great. Yeah. It could end up being fantastic news if that keeps up. I'll be curious to see whether that continues as schedule expands in 2026 or whether it's a certain amount of time in advance and then it goes up or what the story or is it some kind of secret sale that they didn't tell anyone about? You know, that's possible to who knows that's the trouble when you don't have an award chart. You don't know what what's going on with the pricing. Yeah. All right.

Next up, we've got some easy money. Anybody wants some easy money out there? If you do, we've got an opportunity with the shop back portal. Yeah, so this is a new to us portal, a shopping portal where you get cash back for clicking through to stores and buying stuff. And there's a deal going on right now where you could pretty easily get $40 back. As long as you do this by May 31st. The trick is we have a link to sign up for Shop Back which will give you a $20 bonus once you've earned $5 of cash back by shopping through the portal. But that's not all, because we also have this thing called a quest that we have our own private link we were given, which will give you $20 at any,

as long as you've spent $20 at any shop through the portal, you'll get an additional $20 back. any shop through the portal, you'll get an additional $20 back. So, in total basically, by signing up for this and doing this private quest, which is just clicking a link, you'll get $40 back on $20 of shopping that you do, which right there, that's a decent deal. Not enough to have made the show, in my opinion, but what makes this

really interesting is that your friends might be interested in this. And right now they're doing a great deal where when you refer friends, you get $40, they get 20, but they could also, I think they could join frequent milers private quest, even if they use your link to sign up for this. So it's an easy sell to say, hey, you want 40 bucks pretty easily. And then you'd get $40 for each of your friends that does this. Your friend just has to spend at least $5

for you to get your 40. And then your friends, your friends money depends on them earning at least $5 cash back, just as you would have to do in the first case. Very good. And a quick point of clarification, because I think maybe you misspoke on the first part of it,

because you said if you spend $20, you'd end up getting $40 back. But really you have to spend $20 at a retailer and you have to earn $5 cash back. That's right. I realized that towards the end that I messed up there. Yeah, you have to make sure you've earned at least $5 cash back.

Which is possible on $20 spend if you found someplace that's offering 25% back. But not a lock. Yeah, not a lock. So you may have to spend a little bit more. This portal has some interesting features. Like for example, if you use their browser extension you could get a dollar each time you shop at Amazon and

That's pretty interesting because a lot of dollars a lot of Amazon getting five dollars back should be a piece of cake, right? So, you know right there you've got something also we saw most portals that link to travel sites disallow cash back on flights because, you know, there's so little margin on flights. So, but we saw one this week as we're recording this where you can get 13% back at trip.com I think it was and for flights, you know? And so that's pretty special. So keep an eye on those kinds of things.

I haven't used ShopBack yet other than, you know, signing up in order to check all this out. So hopefully there'll be a reliable cash back portal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, surely. Yeah, getting the cash back on trip.com on flights particularly is pretty cool because that makes it really broadly applicable too. So if they do offer things like that, that'll be awesome.

I've seen some targeted offers through Capital One Shopping for individual airlines. I've seen 10% back at like, at Dihad and Qatar and Turkish and like a handful handful specific airlines, but nothing as broad as on flights booked via trip.com. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. All right. Next up new Kimpton secret password. What's the password for Kimpton properties? All right, valid through August 31 2025. When you go to check

into your Kimpton hotel, tell them, social sent me. Who's social? That's the secret password. And what will you get when you say that? Well, when you say that social sent you, you'll get some sort of a surprise. You never know what you're going to get when it's a Kim. It's going to vary by property, because they're

kind of unique boutique style places. But we have a couple of reports, I guess, from readers here who have told us what they got. So Scott went to the Kimpton River place in Portland, Oregon and they gave Scott apparently two pairs of Pendleton socks this past winter. Interesting. Two pairs of socks.

I mean, hey, the dryer eats the dryer eats socks, like nobody's business. So hopefully they were new socks and not like, Hey, we found, we found these in someone's room. Hopefully, hopefully it was about putting pairs together. They're like, I don't know what we're going to do with these, but someday we're going to find it. You know what? Got it guys. Anyway, Jerry went to the Kimpton Palladian, Palladian, Palladian in Seattle and got $50 food and beverage credit at the hotel bar. So he spun a wheel. Some properties do that where you spin a wheel to win a prize and $50 food and beverage credit.

Now that, that is a pretty nice little social surprise. Social sent me for that one. Yeah, that's really terrific. That's also unusual. I haven't heard many people report that big of a thing. I know Stephen talked about, he got a $30 food and beverage credit at one Kimpton. So yeah, pretty nice.

So I wouldn't necessarily go stay at a Kimpton just for that, but I have a Kimpton stay coming up actually in July. So hopefully I will remember. I'm gonna, you're gonna have to remind me, Nick, the show we record. Yeah. The show we record before I go to the Kempton, you have to remind me about this because I'm going to forget. I am reading your mind right now. So I know when that is. Okay. Got it. Got it. I will, I'll let you know. All right. That brings us, my friends, to this week's main event. Main event time. Is this the end of the points and miles game? There have been a number of doomsday events, many doomsday events,

in the points and miles world, and they range across all kinds of categories from opportunities to earn lots of points and miles, keep dying. So for example, I mean, this happened years ago, but Amex introduced the lifetime rule where you can't, couldn't sign up for the same card over and over again, keep getting a welcome bonus. Then more recently, they added family rules saying, because you have or had a card in this family of cards, you can't get any of the welcome bonuses. And just all kinds of miscellaneous ways to increase credit card spend and get your money back.

Those things die all the time. So name your poison. If you used to, do it a certain way and it no longer works, then join the club. That's happened to everybody and all the techniques that have sort of made their way to any kind of mass audience. And so, anyway, so earning points is harder in those ways.

Loyalty points keep devaluing. So we've seen devaluations from United, Marriott, Hilton. Delta Awards booked with Virgin Atlantic used to be a great deal, no longer. Hyatt going with Mr. and Mrs. Smith and going all dynamic on us, you know. So you could go on and on about that. And then elite programs getting stingier, like we just saw with Marriott saying, no longer get a best room, we'll upgrade you to the fax machine room instead. Yeah, I mean, that kind of thing happens all the time. And sometimes there are changes that are even perhaps more debatable. Like Hilton's food and beverage credit versus free breakfast is one that comes to mind where

people stand pretty firmly on one side or the other and some people say, oh, that was actually an improvement. And other people say, oh man, that was a huge devaluation. So there's all sorts of different things like that that have changed over time. But on the other hand, there are things that have arguably improved. For instance, welcome bonuses are higher than ever. We have seen some absolutely insane bananas. Welcome bonuses really ever since the pandemic.

I think in 2020, you and I were both saying, listen, I don't know where this is going to go, but I can't imagine the bonuses are going to get better than they are right now for at least a while. I remember we were feeling that way in 2020 and lo and behold, they have largely gotten better. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, there's a few like that we haven't seen again, but yes, they either have gotten better or they set the new like norm for what an enhanced bonus should look like, right? Like it was during the pandemic we first saw five free 50k nights from Marriott and now that's like if you're not doing at least that it's like it's not that interesting. Right, right. Well and the 100,000 point offer became pretty standard, whereas airline cards, I feel like most of them for a while, the normal welcome bonus is 50,000 miles.

And then maybe every now and then they'd increased to like 70,000 miles. And that would be the increased elevated offer. But now 100,000 is is pretty much table stakes. If you want to have any kind of a headline grabbing offer, it's gotta be like 100,000 points at least. And then we've seen some individual cards, you know, the business gold, business platinum cards offering 200, 250,000 points with a single new card offer. So really those welcome bonuses have exploded.

Nowadays you can get one really good welcome bonus that's worth like the number of points you would previously earn from three or four bonuses, perhaps. So that's kind of nice. Category bonuses have gotten better than ever. Man, I have told this story before, but back when I got married, we paid our catering bill on the first Friday of the month over a couple of months, I think it was, because the Sapphire Preferred used to offer like an additional point per dollar

But only on the first Friday of the month on dining So we were like super excited to get 3x on dining and plan and it was specifically on dining, right? You couldn't get that on any other category. No, so that was a big deal So it was like all that and these days 3x on dining here like everybody's got 3x on dining on some one card or another Right. I mean, there's tons of different cards offering that much and some offering four or five and lots of other categories, too It's right. Right these days. I don't I rarely ever I'm earning less than two points per dollar Well, yeah, so that's what I was gonna say So so go back to the same time period Sapphire preferred was exciting

One of the exciting things about it was that it gave you like a 7% bonus or something on points earned. And so on your everyday spend, you were earning 1.07 X. And that was the best you could get outside of the Starwood card, which sort of earned 1.25. But anyway, the fact that we've gone from that to saying, I have to earn two transferable points per dollar minimum for all my spend, but I really wanna earn 4X or 5X

for a lot of categories. And then 3X for dining has gotta be like a minimum because every card does that. Right, or so it feels like anyway. Yeah, yeah. So I mean the category bonuses in general have gotten really good and wide too. every category, but many different categories. There is a standout card for these days. So, so I mean, I think that it's hard to ignore that. And then along those same lines, we've got more opportunities for transferable points than ever before. It wasn't that long ago that there was no Wells Fargo transferable points program. There was no built rewards at all. There was no capital one transfers to airlines. All of those things are things that came out over the last, I don't know, four, five, six years and or last even I think in the

case of the Wells Fargo transfers and built probably not even quite that long. So yeah, I mean those things are all relatively new in the overall scheme of things. So they're the points of miles game So you got lots of opportunities to earn transferable points and it's not slowing down. We're seeing emerging new Opportunities as well. So I don't think these are sort of fleshed out yet to where they're there are things we can say You know yay, they exist yet, but the Mesa homeowners card, which is one where you can earn points for paying your mortgage, transferable points. There's a website called Rove Miles, where you can earn transferable points for booking hotel stays. And each of these have their own kind of transferable points

currencies that we haven't seen before. And it wouldn't surprise me to see, you know, other things come like this as well. And of course, as you know, if you're listening to the show, transferable points are so important because every, you know, in order to get outsized value for your points, you need to be able to take advantage of the most valuable awards and which program has the most valuable awards changes all the time. We talked earlier in the show about how I said for short haul Delta flights, next year I may switch from using my 7,500 Virgin miles to

5,000, I think it was, Air France flying blue miles because of that new opportunity and transferable points gives me the ability to say well that's easy I'll just transfer my points to to flying blue instead. So love that and portals that you can earn transferable points through a portal too. Yeah I mean Rakuten the Rakuten shopping portal you can earn Amex membership rewards points if you're earning cash back you can change your earning preference to Amex membership rewards points and earn those 5X, 10X, 15X, whatever it might be at the store you want to shop at in the form of membership rewards points, which our reasonable redemption value for membership rewards points is 1.55 cents per point, but you can certainly do a lot better.

I tend to look at my Amex points as being worth two cents or better usually. And so, you know, earning 10 or 15 X is a really good return and Rakuten does pretty frequently offer a number of stores in that range. So they're not always the highest, but often they're competitive and they're they're really good about tracking. So that's great. You can earn a bunch of transferable points on shopping. Now, I mean, Chase has had a shopping portal for a long time, but they don't tend to offer anywhere near the return that Rakuten does. So that's pretty nice. And then on top of all these opportunities to earn lots of points, we're seeing transfer bonuses all the time.

I mean, there's just constant transfer bonuses. They become so common that our current point transfer bonus page has become one of our most visited pages over this last year because that's how frequently they're happening. Not only are people seeking it out, of course, and they're finding our page, which is great, but it's become something that people seek out because it happens all the time and they want to know, is there something on right now? So that's great. So you can get even more out of your points. You know, obviously you can earn and then leverage it for more. Right. Right. And I just want to mention one more portal that I forgot to put in the notes earlier. Capital One offers, which is the

one you see when you log into your Capital One account, not Capital One shopping, get one offers, you log into your Capital One account, you see there's offers. Those now earn Capital One miles. They used to earn cash back, now earns miles which are transferable. So yet another way through shopping to earn. Sometimes you see really good rates there too. Yeah, we should plug there. There are people in our Facebook group that are constantly posting when they see really

good ones. There have been a number over the last six or eight months where it's been kind of almost a no-brainer to do whatever the deal is because you're essentially buying points really cheaply even if you didn't care about whatever it was you were getting. So there's been quite a few really good ones over these last six or eight months. So if you're not in our Facebook group, it might be worth joining just to keep an eye out on that every now and then and or just take a look at your Capital One that every now and then and or just take a look at your Capital One offers every now and then and look through the whole list because sometimes there are some really good ones in there Yeah as an aside you just said and or which I just finished watching and or season two or whatever

I don't know what that is. It's a Star Wars series that It leads up to it ends right before the rogue one movie which ends right before Star Wars episode 4 which was the first ever Star Wars movie So I am much more like attuned to the original Star Wars movies. So the newer stuff I am Just lost. Yeah, that's why I put it in context for you. Thank you. I appreciate that proceed the original. Okay. Yes Yes, very good. Very well done. What's cool about is it like they proceed. They have direct connection to the whole Death Star adventure.

OK, direct. Yeah. All right. My kids are getting into Star Wars. We're going to have to get into that one of these days. But right now, let's get back to the topic in hand, which is OK. Got lots of transfer bonuses and new award chart sweet spots pop up all the time. And we see new things this year Virgin Atlantic we've seen business class awards to Europe sometimes as low as 29,000 points

one way and you know if you hear the words Virgin Atlantic business class award and you turn off because you're like oh I know that the taxes and fees are like eight or nine or a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or whatever but we've seen sometimes where they've been like $250 or so on those 29 or $350 or whatever it is on those 29 K awards, which is still a terrific deal. It really is that's Got to be one of the deals of the year right now And and I still see them like you don't see many of them available in the summertime, you know during peak flying season. But if you look out into the future, especially into January and February, there's actually quite a few of these 29k awards available. So it wasn't just like a one time thing that they

did that. Right. Hilton Hilton how they incorporated small luxury hotels of the world, yes, there's a negative mark right now around them increasing the prices, but it's still a super valuable use of your Hilton points, even if you do pay as much as 200,000, or a better way of saying it, it's an incredible use of your free night certificates to book these multi-thousand dollar a night hotels with your free night certificate or with your Hilton points.

Alaska. Yeah, Alaska. I mean, Alaska revamped their award chart and got rid of many of the sweet spots that people used to love. So you might say, oh, Alaska, they've devalued and it's not the same as it once was. And if you focus on that part, you're right. I mean, there are definitely some things that changed. However, there have been some really big bright spots too,

because we've seen a number of awards pricing at 45,000 miles one way in business class to Europe, and in some cases on awards that theoretically should cost more than that. It could cost more. But we've been seeing them price at 45K, and who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Thank you, Alaska.

So we've seen that and then even in other cases, 55K or whatever, it's still very good award pricing through Alaska mileage plan and domestically, the short haul flights are starting at 4,500 miles one way and there's been decent availability on a lot of American routes to Alaska and I say on a lot of routes because of course it's going to vary based on time and route and whatever else so you might not see anything that fits but the

moral of the story is sometimes you can pay very few Alaska miles. In fact, I my wife was just just yesterday asking me hey, you know, I kind of like do this thing. You get some friends together. Do you think it would be possible to get flights for people to to come and do this? And I said, well, maybe, let me take a look. And I took a look and sure enough, I was like, oh yeah, there's plenty of availability

for 4,500 Alaska miles each way. Yeah, if we wanna get some people together for this, we could probably make flights happen. And that's nice because that's something that I wouldn't have thought to do in the past. But anyway, good news there from Alaska. France, KLM, they have reduced award prices for flying Delta, as you've said. And so that's been good.

Occasionally, we've seen good deals flying on Air France KLM flying blue, but overall that kind of fits into the bucket of devaluations in the sense that there's been very few good awards on Air France and KLM. Yeah, very. Very recently. That is true. So that sort of then brings us to the part of, you know, one of the downsides of things is like so many people in the game, so many people have so many points and miles that awards are impossible to find. Except balancing that out is that the tools available have gotten like really, really terrific

to where it's actually, to me personally, it seems easier to find good awards these days than it used to just because the tools do the work for me. Like so, you know, it helps me do a lot of searches all at once. It helps me to say, well, there's nothing I like right now, set an alert, let me know when something pops up. Those are things I wasn't able to do before

very effectively. I mean, there were some tools, but they just weren't very good. Yeah, you know, and I think that that's really the moral of the story. We just recently got a question from somebody essentially boiled down to, do you ever worry that this is becoming too popular?

Too many people are getting into miles and points. You kind of addressed this a second ago, and that all the opportunities are gonna be gone. I mean, is that something you concern yourself with? Do you think we're gonna reach too many people, too many people are gonna know about this, and we're not gonna have any more awards to book? Yes, Nick, I think that's gonna happen.

I caught some facetiousness in your tone there. And I think it's well placed because I mean, there's always gonna be some opportunity. Not everybody can travel all at the same time. There's always gonna be some seats on routes that are gonna be open that airlines are trying to get rid of. So I think there are always gonna be some advantages

to get in the game. And so yeah, you're competing with more people in some cases, but if you're competing with more people in some cases. But if you're competing smartly by looking at how to leverage those awards, you're still in the minority by such a huge margin. There's so few people that are actually attuned to the best ways to use miles and then fewer still who are aware of the various award tools you can use to find the best awards or set alerts. And then if you were still who are actually setting those alerts and following through on that.

So I mean, it makes up such a small percentage overall that I'm not particularly concerned about it. And even if everybody was looking to maximize this stuff, programs would have an incentive to make this valuable in order to compete. I mean, that's the reason that they created these programs. It wasn't so that the maximizers among us can get cheap business class flights, it was to compete for customers and so they're going to continue to have to compete for customers. So I'm not particularly

concerned about that. I think that we'll continue to be able to book awards and those tools make it much easier. Right, right. And a great trend we've seen lately is that there's some foreign airline programs that want to make more money by selling their miles to the American audience. I don't mean necessarily selling directly to the individual. I mean, making their points available through transferable points currencies, they get paid. The bank like Chase Ceramics or whoever pays them for those miles or other ways like that, having credit cards in the US is another way to sell their miles basically.

And in order to do that effectively, they have to make those miles attractive to the US audience, which is why I think when I look at like what happened with flying blue reducing the cost for flying Delta, I think that's exactly, I think someone was looking at it and saying, saying, how can we make our miles more relevant to the US audience? We have to, you know, make it look like a good deal to use those miles. And most of the US audience is looking at domestic flights more often than not and so that's what I think was behind that and so that creates opportunity that that desire for

these foreign programs to get in on the US market creates opportunity for all of us including they need to make award seats available if they want to say you can use these miles to fly our flights well let's see it happen. Yeah, yeah, and that's a great point. And I think a core point there that's sort of an aside, but very highly relevant is that if you are only focusing on the US based programs, then the news might not be as good because yeah, more and more people are competing for a,

I guess a smaller slice there when it comes to just the US programs. But you're absolutely right that this is all the more reason to focus on those foreign programs because they are really chopping at the bit in general and overall to get a piece of that pie in terms of selling miles to the banks. I mean, it comes up often enough that I think American Airlines, it's been reported numerous times earns more money selling miles to the banks than they do by selling airplane

tickets. And so it's obviously it's a huge, huge business. And so these foreign airlines have a lot of incentive to get involved in that. So I think looking to foreign programs and learning to master those foreign programs is going to yield good results for many years still because there's a lot of market share for those programs to try to gobble up a little piece of. Yeah, yeah.

And it's interesting that you mentioned American to me, because American is one where they have kept their partner award chart for many, many years. And we've been predicting the demise of that award chart for many, many years. I think've been predicting the demise of that award chart for many, many years. I think that the reason that they've kept it is that, or I hope, I guess, that the reason they've kept it is that they see the value in having loyal customers who value their miles.

It's just like I was saying about Air France and Virgin Atlantic wanting to sell their miles, American wants to too. And so that's a way that they can do it. And I have to assume that they did the math and said, well, these may be smashing good deals, but as a percentage, not that many Americans actually take advantage of these because Americans are more comfortable flying, you know, American airlines. And I don't mean American airlines. I mean US based airlines.

I've run into that before. I had to find a way to say it. That was a tough one. US based. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, it's essentially a carrot that they can use to sell more miles to the banks and the simply miles and the Advantage e-shopping and all the various opportunities out there that they can come up with to give you American Airlines miles

It creates that carrots like hey look our miles are really valuable for these uses that we know Not many of you are gonna use them for but you know, you could and so you're right Yeah, I hope I hope you're right. Yeah. Well and don't get me wrong. I'm not predicting that this is going to stay long-term. I'm more, you know, going back and if you go back in time, if you say, hey, we're so naive and thinking that these things like Virgin Atlantic 29K is going to stick around, go back in time, go back five years and see how many people said, you're an idiot if you think that American Airlines is going to keep that part in partner award chart more than 10 minutes. And we were all surprised by that.

And so there's always opportunity for surprise, both in things sticking around, that when you don't think they will, as well as new things showing up. Speaking of new things showing up, we've seen some really valuable promotions pop up randomly. You never know when something really hot is gonna come around.

Like, of course, we talked a lot last year about the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire Challenge where you had to fly 15 qualifying SkyTeam carriers because SAS joined SkyTeam, a new alliance. They had been in the Star Alliance previously, but they joined SkyTeam. And so they gave an incentive to fly their new SkyTeam partners.

If you flew 15 qualifying airlines by the end of last year, you'd earn one million SAS miles. I mean, a million miles. Yeah, Craig and I and Steven did, and many readers too, I should note, went ahead and did that because the carrot there, a million miles, was a pretty big one.

Pretty significant. And obviously most promotions aren't that big, but every now and then you see some really good ones. Like a couple of years ago, I took advantage of a Marriott Homes and Villas thing, where you could get 40,000 points for a, what was it, a four-night stay? At that time, they didn't have a max

on how expensive it was. So I found dirt cheap stays and was able to get, I think I racked in what, 120,000 Marriott points in addition to elite bonuses and things. Then there's really little ones, like Capital One having great deal on certain seats at baseball games where, you know, all of a sudden they release them and if you jump on fast enough, you can get this like terrific

deal on that. You know, there's countless things like that. I can only count on one hand, one finger, the number of million mile promos that have happened in recent years. But there's another really good ones here and there, you know, several years back, Iberia had that promotion where you could book a bunch of like $20 flights and for like 200 bucks, you could earn 90,000 obvious that you can move around.

And, you know, like those types of things pop up and we're like, Hey, take advantage while you can do this now now because this is a really good opportunity. And if you do enough of those things, I mean, the simply miles thing a couple of years ago, and they gave 224 points per dollar or something that you donated to charity or I was like more than that, I think whatever it was, it was a lot of points per dollar donated to charity. So it was essentially like buying American Airlines miles for like just over four tenths of a cent per point. And again, those are some past things and those are done and not things you could do every day. But if you keep your ear to the ground

and you see one of those opportunities and instead of saying that sounds too good to be true, I don't think it is or oh man, I bet they're gonna devalue the award chart in 10 minutes if I do that. Now, if you don't look at it that way, but rather look for the opportunity and commit yourself to taking advantage of it,

we do see really valuable things like that from time to time. Right, right, right. And, you know, I get the sense some people think, well, those things happen because the marketing people don't understand math and can't figure out that they're giving away more than they should. And then, you know, as soon as these companies figure this out, they'll, you know, these kind of things will not happen anymore. But look at it a different way.

If you're a business that wants to get a lot of advertising out there, you have an advertising budget, it's often very, very big. What if instead of spending a cent on advertising, you have a promotion like this where you're giving away a million miles to everyone who does something or other, then businesses like us, frequent miler, will happily advertise for you ad nauseam because it's such a great deal for our listeners, our viewers, our readers. And it's great for them. It's great for everybody when when you do the spend your ad money that way your marketing money that way instead of getting that that

Super Bowl you know 15 second slot right you know the subway ad or whatever you know yeah there's all of those little things or the ad the New York Times or whatever I mean there's times when those types of things probably pay off for a company but you're right I think we have seen some of those things where companies have pretty intentionally said this is an opportunity to kind of grab some viral coverage that's going to reach beyond because even if SAS had said, okay, we're going to take this year's marketing budget, we're going to put it all on whatever. And New York Times on a billboard and Times Square or whatever, they might not have reached

as many people as they did because we might, you know, if that was all they were doing is a billboard in Times Square, we wouldn't have been talking about SAS at all. What we have known about Scandinavian Airlines, they switched alliances and it would have been one post one day and that would have been it. And instead, they got tons of coverage out of us. We have no affiliation with them. And well, tons of coverage in national newspapers and television shows, everything.

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times. Yeah. It was. Yeah. So, so I think you're totally right. I think that there is some, some stretch, some strategy going on there with some companies. I love it.

Yes. That, that good old strategy. All right. So let's get down to the question then let's answer the question. Is the game dead? And I'm going to answer it. Yes, it's dead. The game that you learned five years ago, that you learned to play to perfection, how

you bought these vanilla reload cards and you use them to pay your credit card bill. You earn points that way. And then you redeemed your points for A&A round the world trips, that is dead. You're right, it's dead. It's gone, it's never coming back. Sorry, see you later, bye bye. But no, but to your point, this reminds me so much of the movie Moneyball.

We've seen Moneyball years ago, Brad Pitt. Love that movie. Like you're the Billy Beane here, I think, because there's a room full of these old baseball scouts that wanna do it the years ago, Brad Pitt, right? Love that movie. Like you're the Billy Beane here, I think, because there's a room full of these old baseball scouts that wanna do it the old way. And I totally get that because it's worked for a long time, but things change. And so I think you have to have that sort of

Billy Beane perspective on it and say, okay, well, how do we get what it is we want? And what we want is to win, right? And so where can we find the ability, where can we find the runs, right? If you've seen the movie, how do we find the runs? Who gets on base, to win, right? And so where can we find the ability? Where can we find the runs, right? If you've seen the movie, how do we find the runs? Who gets on base, whatever else, right? It's the same kind of thing here.

You just have to look for the opportunities. And you're totally right. The things that you want to lament from the past, those are gone and they probably aren't going to come back in exactly the same form. But if you've learned how to find them, hopefully you can find some other new ones as time goes on.

And I think that what we've talked about here is a lot of opportunities that have continued to come around. So yeah, I started playing this game in 2011 and I've been hearing about how the game is dead from the get-go and yet, you know, millions and millions and millions of points and not millions of trips, but dozens of trips maybe. Later it's still going. We're still earning points. We're still using them for great, great value. We're still getting messages from our listeners and readers every day that says how thankful they are because they just did this incredible trip.

And it's going, it's going. It's just not what you thought it was. Not the same way as it was once before. But like you say, you just have to adjust to the new different way. That's really all it comes down to. And if you love playing the game for the love of the game, then I think that it's still fun to play,

even when it changes, right? You just gotta change your strategy a little bit. Yeah, exactly. The rules are constantly in flux, and that's part of the game itself. Yeah, it is. All right, my friends, that brings us to this week's question of the week,

which I think is kind of ironic to include in this one, but it fits. So we did a coffee break earlier this week about Hilton's devaluation, increasing award rates as much as 200,000 points per night for a standard room in some places. And we got a comment on YouTube on that video. So TJ said, before starting the video,

I already knew as always that Greg was gonna say, this isn't that big of a deal, which if you just keep stating that these devaluations small or large are not a big deal, then you're just enabling and encouraging programs to keep doing this. Not using your platform to call out these clearly anti-consumer practices that keep producing point values across the board is continuing this trend. And there was a response to that from another person who said, it's not that big of a deal to him because he has an unlimited amount of points. He's not thinking about the audience.

So Greg, my question for you is, A, do you have an unlimited amount of points? And B, are you not thinking of the audience? Are you out of touch saying that all of these things that we just said are not a big deal or not a big deal? Are they really a big deal? Are you out of touch? What's's wrong what's the story here um no and no i think are the answers to your questions um so yeah i mean obviously i don't have an unlimited number of points i mean yes

i have a lot of points and that's what they really meant um yeah no doubt i don't think i said it so yes tj predicted i would say it's not a big deal. I'm pretty sure I said it's a big deal. I did, you know, lay out, you know, sort of that how it's unlikely to change our reasonable redemption value of Hilton points, but that's a math thing, not a not a subjective opinion. And what was the other one was? Yeah, whether I'm not thinking about the yeah I mean we got that's all I do Right, right

We're thinking about most of the time I suppose right but but I think the point here that Came out of it for me was yeah exactly that they know I mean we are trying to think about it from the audience perspective in general and when I say the audience I mean all the good we're in the audience too, so to speak, right? This is a game that we're all playing also. And so, you know, when we say that a devaluation like that one, like Greg said, I don't know the interpretation of saying it's not a big deal is exactly the way we meant it. Although to some extent, I think we kind of did say that in the sense that most properties,

most ordinary properties we saw, had only increased a little bit. And so it wasn't, they've seen huge 50% evaluation on most properties. It was really just affecting a limited number of properties, which that limited number of properties are the really super aspirational ones that only a limited number of people are going to be able to go to in any individual year.

So while that really stinks for folks like me and you, I mean, you and I enjoy going to those types of places, right? I mean, that's how I like to use my points is those super high end joints at the top end of the chart, so to speak. So if anything, it almost disproportionately probably affects those of us who primarily redeem our points for that type of thing. Whereas for the average person probably who is not traveling to the Waldorf Astoria Maldives in any given year, which is most of us, right? Most of us are not traveling to that particular property or the other handful of properties at the top end.

It was less of a big deal or less of a deal anyway, I'm not gonna say less of a big deal, than the 50% increase that we saw at Waldorf Astoria in Los Cabos. That again, such a few number of people overall are going to redeem for that as compared to Hilton properties on the whole, which we thought probably had only increased by a small amount. We still haven't yet redone our reasonable redemption value to confirm that, but that was our assumption based on anecdotal evidence. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. that but that was our that was our assumption based on yeah yeah okay so

anyway I I remember no we did talk about how big of a deal it is that they broke the 150k ceiling I mean we are used to programs increasing award rates all the time you know how it changes the categories upward all the time. So that's not something that, you know, it would be useless to publicly shame a business about something like that. And in this case, breaking the 150K barrier was, it's difficult. It's something I did want to call out at the same time,

because they don't have an award chart, you can't point to it and say, look, you broke the rules. There are no written rules to point at. But you also, we as frequent miler have to pick our battles. We can't, well, we don't want to Well, we don't want to go, you know, banging the drums, you know, oh no, you raise prices for everything. What we have to do is reserve where it really is a big problem. And to me, that was like Hyatt's treatment of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We banged some serious drums about that. That didn't help, but we did. Right. If I believe me, if Hilton changes their free night award to not be uncapped, you know, get ready for the drum line. That's right.

We're gonna be drumming without gloves on. Watch out. Right. Right. Cause that'll be a huge deal. Right. I mean, prices in general are always going to rise. What price? Anything. You look at the price of a car 10 years ago and the price of a car today? Probably a decent increase in the price of it over time. So the price of almost everything so I don't get wildly Upset about small price increases because that's sort of the way of life in our society It's those really big ones and the sneaky ones that you know without any sort of notice notice or notification That I hate like you said breaking the ceiling that was rough. That I hate. Like you said, breaking the ceiling, that was rough.

Yeah, yeah. All right, well I'd be curious to see what TJ thought after he listened, because he wrote in what he thought I was gonna say. Did I actually say that? I don't know. I don't think I did. You're gonna have to go back and listen, Greg.

Maybe he thinks so. Well, I think it's subject to interpretation. Okay, well that my friends brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of it in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media, join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group so you can ask and answer questions.

And if you would like to ask us a question or send in a piece of mail that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week, you can send those to send us a mail bag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Hi I'm David Brody co-host of the Travel in 10 podcast. Together, myself and my co-host Tim Johnson have travelled over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favourite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travel in 10. Join us at Foyascape.com.