Frequent Miler on the Air - Transferring Points To Hotels Has Citi Eclipsed Chase And Bilt Coffee Break Ep79 11 25 25

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Tim wrote a post about which transferable points are most valuable for lodging, and his findings have us wondering: Is Citibank the new transferable points currency worth focusing on?  (Has Citibank now eclipsed Chase and Bilt?) See: Which transferable credit card points are most valuable for lodging?Transferring points to hotels. Has Citi eclipsed Chase and Bilt?(01:11) - Most hotel transfer opportunities are not very good...(02:14) - Fixed value opportunities(03:43) - RRVs (hotel programs with variable value and available as transfer partners)(04:43) - Better than 1:1 transfers...(06:58) - Summary of the average top 5 opportunities for transferring points to hotel programs(08:36) - 90th percentile, cherry-picking the top 5 opportunities for transferring points to hotel programsVisit 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 – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Regular listeners know that we love transferable points. And Billet has a terrific set of transfer partners. Hyatt, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Air France, and many more. You can earn Bilt Points paying rent and at restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, online shopping, and more. And now, starting in February, Bilt members can earn points on mortgage payments too.

Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com slash miles. That's j-o-in-b-l-t.com slash miles. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you. Welcome to Freakum-Milers coffee break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. On today's coffee break, we're going to be talking about transferring points to hotels. Has Citibank eclipsed, chase, and built? So our author, Tim, has written on the Frequent Myler blog a great post called Which Transferrable Points are Most Valuable for Lodging.

And we'll have a link to that post in the show notes, and you'll definitely want to check out the full details there. We're going to give a sort of an overview of some of the findings in Tim's post and talk about the bottom line. Like, is Citibank that? the new best game in town. Yeah, you know, a few years ago, we only would have been talking about transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt. That would have been the only type of hotel transfer that ordinarily would have made sense at the one-to-one rate that they offer. But things have changed a little bit over the last few years. So we're going to have to talk a little bit more about the different options here because city does have some strong opportunities.

So as Tim pointed out in his post, there are are a lot of opportunities to transfer points to hotel programs, but most of them are pretty lousy, actually, because hotel points are often worth much less than one cent per point each. And so if you're transferring your transferable points one-to-one to a hotel program, then, and you're getting less than one cent per point value, you'd be better off. Like, a lot of programs let you just cash out points for one cent each or do something else where you'd get at least one cent per point value. And normally, if you transfer to airline programs, you should be able to get like 1.5 cents per point value or much better than that. And so we don't like to look at those programs,

well, we'd like to look at them and say, don't do them. The programs where transferring to a hotel is going to give you really bad value. So there are, though, opportunities to get better than one cent per point value, right? Yeah, so let's talk about some of the fixed value opportunities out there. So, first of all, we've got leading hotels of the world, which has a relatively fixed value anyway, of about eight cents per point. Now, city points don't transfer one to one to leading hotels of the world. They transfer five to one. So essentially, this gives you the opportunity to get 1.6 cents per city point towards leading hotels of the world. So that's better than the 1.5 metric that Greg just laid out here. So leading hotels of the world can certainly be.

a good opportunity for fixed value. Another good opportunity for fixed value is a core. So a core, which is a chain that includes brands you probably know like Fairmont and Sofetel and Ibus and other brands like that, has a fixed value for their points. It's two euro cents per point. And with the exchange rate at the time that we're recording this, that's about 2.31 U.S. cents per a core point. Now, nobody transfers one to one to a core, but built Mesa and Roe, of all transfer three to two. So it turns out to be 1.54 cents per built point, miss a point, or rove point when you're booking a core hotels. And the nice thing about these fixed value programs, like leading hotels of the world and a core, is that you can use your points for a constant

value against any room type. So if you want to book a suite, for instance, then you're going to get the same value as if you book a standard room. You're going to pay more points, but it's going to have the same value against the cash rate, which is relatively rare. So those are a couple of good value opportunities, but of course, we love to get outsized value for our points. And there is at least one program that offers consistent opportunity to get outsized value for your transferable points. And that, of course, is Hyatt because our reasonable redemption value for Hyatt is 1.8 cents per point, but you can do much better at times. So that's a pretty good transfer at one to one. And of course, they transfer one to one from both built and Chase Ultimate Rewards. So that's a good opportunity for

transferring your points one to one. But apart from that, transferring your points one to one doesn't make a lot of sense because the second highest hotel program, reasonable redemption value, is Marriott Bonvoy at 0.76 cents per point. And number three is Wyndham at 0.7 cents per point. So you're getting far less than one cent per point in value, generally speaking with one-to-one transfers. So it just doesn't make sense to transfer one-to-one to most programs other than Hyatt. Yeah. Yeah. Any programs, really. Right. Yeah, exactly. Luckily, there are some opportunities to transfer it better than one to one. So, for example, from either city or Wells Fargo, you could transfer to choice privileges one to two.

And that brings up the reasonable redemption value of city or Wells Fargo points for that use up to 1.34. Not super exciting, but at least it's better than a one. another one is city transferring to preferred hotels and resorts to the I Preferfer program, one to four. That turns the 0.5, it's actually 0.53 median value of preferred points up to over 2 cents per point, which is fabulous. Capital One also transfers to I prefer, but only 1 to 2. So that brings it the value of capital one points

and just barely over one cent. And then you have Amex transfers to Hilton one to two. But Hilton points, the average value we see is 0.41 cents per point. So even when you double, you're still getting considerably less than one cent per point value. So that is not one that we're particularly excited about. Yeah. And we should mention, by the way, when it comes to, you know, I mentioned before that you can get outsized value with Hyatt and you might say, well, you could also get

outsized value sometimes with Marriott points or Wyndham points. So maybe we should consider transferring to those. But the thing I didn't mention that I should have is that it's often possible to buy points in most programs other than Hyatt for around one cent or less than one cent per point. So rather than transferring one to one, you just cash out your points at one cent per point and buy points when they're on sale. If you really want those points, you do even better. So that's why we talk about these few programs that really make a lot more sense. So speaking of those cents, as Greg just laid out, the city to Wells Fargo or city of Wells Fargo to choice gives you about 1.34 cents per point. City, I prefer two cents per point. And everybody else is kind of not that exciting when

it comes to even those multiple point transfer points, the multiples of one. All right. So now let's look at the big picture. If we summarize, we talked about fixed value points. We talked about points. We talked about points that have variable value and what kind of average value could get. Here's a summary of the top five opportunities for transferring points to hotel programs. You've got preferred hotels one to four from city, which gives you an average value of 2.12 cents per point. You've got Hyatt transferring one to one from Chase or built at 1.8 cents per point. you've got a city to leading hotels of the world, which gives you 1.6 cents per point value.

Coming in at number four, you have the programs that transfer three to two to a core that's built, Rove, and Mesa all do that. That gives you, with current conversion rates between the dollar and euro, that gives you 1.55 U.S. cents per point value. Coming in last at number five, you have choice one to two transfers from City or Wells Fargo, giving you about a 1.34. When I say average, I actually mean sort of a median observed value of those points. Now, what I should say, though, these are all based on when we can, when we calculate our reasonable redemption values, what we're looking at is the median observed value. So we're looking at hotels across a bunch of different time points, across a bunch of different locations and saying, on average, what's the median value of your points in those cases? Well, a lot of hotel programs, the value varies a lot from situation to situation, and a lot of people will hold on to their points until they find an opportunity to get great value for them. And we call that cherry picking your awards. So Tim also ran the number on cherry numbers for cherry picking hotel awards to see which of these transfer opportunities are best.

And if we look just at the 90th percentile, so you're only going to look at the best 10 percent of redemptions, then, and if we just look at the top five transfer opportunities, what do we have? We still have preferred hotels transferred one to four from city as the number one option, because that'll give you $3.88 cents per point median value. Hyatt still comes in at number two with 2.8 cents per point. These are fabulous numbers. Choice now suddenly makes it from the bottom of the top five list to number three because of cherry picking, you can get 2.08 cents per point there.

Now here comes one we hadn't talked much about yet. Capital One lets you transfer to preferred hotels one to two. So that's half the value you get from city, but by cherry picking awards, you could still get as high as 1.94 cents per capital one mile by transferring to preferred hotels. And then rounding off the top five, we've got the fixed value leading hotels of the world, transferring five to one from city, gives you that 1.6 cents per point value. So what we're seeing here is of the top five in the in the, in the, in the, cherry-picking example, City is in three of them. And sort of four of them because preferred hotels shows up twice. So anyway, that's kind of complicated. And then in the, where we were just looking at the medians, not the 90th percentile, city shows up, again, three out of five

times. So that's pretty spectacular. And if you think back to what Nick said, early in the show that Hyatt used to be the only game in town, like you'd expect that Chase and built, the two programs that could transfer to Hyatt would do really well here. And they did, they show up in both lists in the number two spot. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's interesting. You know, that second list, the 90th percentile,

the place where many of us save our points to try to get those crazy deals. I would actually argue that he has three of the top four, really is what it is, right? Because the out of the top five preferred hotels is in there twice. So they've got three of the top four. That's a better way to put in it. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's really interesting because it seems like you said, like City has mathematically the best hotel transfer options.

You've got the widest range of opportunities in terms of number of programs that you can transfer to. I mean, because that's really what it comes down to. You can get great value for your city points, whether you transfer to preferred hotels, choice privileges, or leading hotels of the world. So what say you, Greg, the frequent miler, is City the new hotel point king. has Chase and Belt been dethroned? Has Hyatt been thrown, cast aside in favor of transfers from city?

What do you think? With this analysis, it sure looks that way. But I think in reality, like if you're talking about, can you do away with the transfers to Hyatt and do better by just accumulating city points and transferring to the programs where it has good value, there are problems with that. So, for example, the best option with city is transferring to preferred hotels. Well, there are only 200-ish preferred hotels that accept I prefer points. Now, that said, there are over 300 that accept choice points.

So there are more options from City again to book preferred hotels. But that's not, either way, that's not a huge number. And so the chance of finding these hotels, like where you want to go, is slim in the first place. Secondly, unlike Hyatt and a number of other hotel chains, they don't require that every standard room be available to book with points. So you might not find availability when you want to go. And third, there are aspects to programs like Hyatt that are that make those redemptions like really valuable to you, aside from the numbers we've looked at. You know, like, for example, when I think about it, if a suite is really important to me,

Hyatt lets me spend more points to book into a suite. Or if I have elite status, I could use various things to get into a suite. You know, and if I have a lease status, I can get things like they're great free breakfast benefit, they're free parking on awards days, there's no resort. Actually, anyone who books with points doesn't have to pay a resort fee. And those kind of things are not true of most of these other programs that city transfers to. So there's a number of reasons that, like, even though I'm very high on the city, I'm very high on the opportunities to transfer city to various hotel programs to get great value.

I still covet, you know, my Hyatt points for more practical redemptions. Like, you know, looking for a hotel in a particular place, it's not that Hyatt has a huge footprint, but it's much bigger than what's available through these programs that city has. Yeah, I mean, that's really my point. The drawback of Hyatt has long been that it has a more limited footprint than, say, Hilton or Marriott or IHG. But my perspective on this is that if Hyatt's footprint doesn't work for you and the leading hotels of the world or preferred hotels footprint does work for you, then I'd like a picture with you because I've never met a unicorn in my life.

It's just too small. And exciting, yes. Does it make city points interesting for lodging? Absolutely. In fact, at this point, would I transfer my city points to an airline program? program? Probably not because I have plenty of Amex points that I can transfer to airline programs in Capital One, Miles that I can transfer to airline programs, and not many good ways apart from Hyatt to get great value for hotel points. So I am definitely looking at our city points now as a pile of hotel points because it's hard to get hotel points at good value these days. So I am certainly considering city first for its hotels, but the limited footprint just is not something that could replace having transfers to Hyatt, in my opinion. I've been searching for an opportunity to use one

of these. And I did book a couple of choice privileges properties this year when we did the JetBlue thing that I had transferred from city to choice privileges. So I did get some good value out of choice points a couple of times. But I haven't yet found an opportunity to book a preferred hotel or leading hotels of the world. And I've been looking for them. And I can't find one that just matches up with my travel plans. And then like Greg said, there's all the other little things. Like, you know, obviously we're both fans of Hyatt elite status and I got a stay coming up for a weekend in New York City. And there is a preferred hotel that I could book. But then I'd give up free breakfast and free parking that I can get with my globalist status and free parking. I mean, that alone for the weekend in New York City is worth a significant chunk. And so I couldn't give up the transfers to Hyatt either.

I still think that that's probably the king because it has a more, a wider footprint than anybody else that offers good value. However, City is coming on strong. Definitely, there's no doubt about it. I think that looking at City as an alternative hotel pile of points, an alternative sort of hotel transfer program makes a ton of sense. I don't think anybody can compete with City apart from Chase and built and only because of transfers to Hyatt. If either of those programs lost transfers to Hyatt, I don't think it would be nearly so competitive. I do think Bill having a core at three to two is a strength, though. I will say that.

And also, for that matter, Roe and Mesa having that is nice. I've found some situations lately where that would be pretty appealing at the 1.55 cents per point. Yeah, outside of the U.S. anyway, Accor has a great footprint. So if you're traveling internationally, you have a really good chance of finding something nice with Accur. I do want to say one thing in sort of partial rebuttal. Nick said he wouldn't probably consider transferring city points. to an airline program. But if you're not flush with American Airlines miles and you're looking at booking a

one world partner of theirs, they have some great rates, especially for business class awards internationally and some first class awards internationally that can't be beat. So I absolutely, if you need American Airlines miles, definitely think that's a great opportunity. Also, there's probably others I'm going to free up, but I'm going to mention EVA has a great award availability for its own flights and city transfers one to one to them. Great points. Excellent points. And it's very true.

And I did think of EVA when you were saying that. Funny enough, well, I know everybody has always said that they have better availability on their own flights. I have yet to find a situation where I found availability on a day when I was searching UVA. I don't know what it is about me. Interesting. I always heard that they have good availability for their own members.

So worth, maybe it's just that I'm looking for four seats usually when I'm looking. I don't know. But at any rate, American great point. there and certainly AVA is there are a lot of fans there. So you're right. Those are certainly airline transfers worth considering. So City's got some strengths here. There's no doubt city has come back from sort of a and also ran to a really competitive program at this point. Yeah. I mean, it's astounding to me that when we're talking about what are the best transferable points programs, we have to include City in the in the top two or three when we're talking about

it. Amazing. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast. Every Monday, I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking tips, epic adventures, and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it at voicegate.com.