Frequent Miler on the Air - Which is the most rewarding hotel loyalty program? | Ep193 | 3-11-23

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

The margin between the most and least rewarding hotel loyalty programs is probably smaller than you expect -- and which one is best for you often depends on variables like your status or which card you use. This week, we discuss which programs offer you the most bang for your buck. 00:00 Intro 00:45 Giant Mailbag: Inking success 05:45 Card Talk: IHG Premier and IHG Premier Business cards https://frequentmiler.com/ihgprem/ https://frequentmiler.com/IHGBusiness/ 12:35 Award Talk 12:37 ANA First class awards via Virgin Atlantic devalued https://frequentmiler.com/ana-first-class-virgin-atlantic-devaluation/ 17:11 Etihad First Class apartments booked https://frequentmiler.com/etihad-first-apartment-review-simply-awesome/ 22:35 What crazy thing....did Amex do this week? The Points Parade marches on https://frequentmiler.com/now-150k-200-or-90k-200-awesome-offers-out-on-platinum-and-gold-cards/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-membership-rewards-sweet-spots/ https://frequentmiler.com/cross-brand-amex-referrals-possible/

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, which is the most rewarding hotel loyalty program?

We will get into that. We're gonna compare the Marriott to Hyatt to Hilton, etc. And we're going to tell you once and for all, which one is absolutely the single most rewarding. And it's not as obvious as it may sound to some longtime listeners, but we'll see. We'll see when we get into the full details. Anyway, let's dive into the giant mail bag. Today's giant mail comes from me. I wanted to report on... Sending it in today. Last week, our card talk segment was about the Chase Inc. business card and how great it is. And I took my own advice and had me, my wife, and my son all apply for the Chase Inc. card yesterday. And all three of us instantly approved.

So that was pretty exciting. That's awesome. The 90,000 point offer on a card with no annual fee. What? That's right. Awesome, awesome offer. And some interesting things came out of that. So for one thing, at least two of us, if not three of us,

well, all three of us already have Chase Inc. cards that are open. And at least two of us- The same Chase Ink card. Chase Ink cash cards. So the exact same card, already open. Chase does not have the same rules with the Ink cards that they do with most of their other cards. Most of the other cards, you can't get the same one again, or at least not without canceling the old one you had. And it usually has to be anywhere from 24 to 48 months since you last got a bonus, but the ink cards don't have those requirements. So we all have the ink

cash cards open and we got new ones approved for new ones. At least two of the three of us use the exact same business information. So it's not like we used a second business to open a second ink cash. We're able to do the same exact business. And then, so that's pretty interesting. And then the super interesting thing is I'm personally over 524, meaning I've signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months that show up on my credit report. And Chase usually won't approve you for new cards with that situation. For whatever reason, they seem to be inking more than the usual number of inks these days with this current offer. So pretty exciting stuff. And let me say too, the reason that I felt like it was a good time for me to apply was that if I got denied, I'm going to be dropping under 524 in a few months.

And I have some time to call later and reopen the application under the old signup bonus rules. And since we know that this 90K offer is ending soon, like really soon, I figured I might as well get in that application and tie it up so that I could reopen it later. Right. I thinking I'd get rejected, but I wasn't rejected. So I don't know if I'll reopening it later. That's awesome. That's also, I mean, within your household,

that's 270,000 bonus points, right? Because the 90 K on each. So within your household, that's a nice little haul, not even including the points earned from the spending requirement, which, you know, if you do that all at an office supply store, that's another 30,000 points on each card. So that's a nice little haul. If you could pull that in on no annual fee cards, there's really no downside that I can think of here. Like now's the time. Right. Yeah. It felt like I had a mini lottery yesterday. It was great. So no downside that I can think of here. Like now's the time.

Right. Yeah. It felt like I had a mini lottery yesterday. Oh yeah. It was great. So I have to say what, part of what motivated me too, was that on Frequent Miler Insiders, we've been seeing a number of posts from people who wrote about getting

multiple Chase Inc cards all at once once or being over 524 and getting approved and things like that, that just like, wow, it's time. It's time to go. Right. Well, and you know, in years past, instant approvals weren't that common on ink cards. And now we're suddenly seeing quite a few people getting instant approvals, at least on the no annual fee ones, the in cash and the ink business unlimited. I'm not sure if that's applied also to the ink business preferred, but but at the very least, there's a there's a shot and there really hadn't been much of a shot for a long time.

So it's worth taking a swing at that one. And remember that they have upped the referral bonus now to 40,000 points. So if you're in a two-player household and you have the Inc. Cash card and your partner would like to open a new one, notice how I said that. I didn't say your partner doesn't have one. I said your partner wants to open a new one. Then you can refer them and get 40,000 points. However, the referral offer is different. It's not the 90,000 point offer. It's only 75,000 points for the person opening the account. That's only on the referral offer. However, you still come out ahead in a two-player household. If you count all the points as being equal within your household, then you end up with more total points that way. So that's just something to keep in mind.

Yeah. No, great point. Okay. So that brings us, I i think to this week's card talk right i mean card talk that's correct it's card talk time it sounds like we were just doing card talk but it does sound this week this week's card talk is the ihg premier card and the uh almost identical premier business card so both of them them currently have a better than usual welcome bonus where the Premier, that's the personal IHG card, is at 175,000 points after 3K spend. And the Premier Business card's at 140,000 points.

So they have different bonuses right now, but otherwise most things about the cards are the same. And they're actually pretty interesting cards. For just under $100 a year, you earn three points per dollar as your base spending earnings, 10 points per dollar if you're actually spending on an IHG property. You get five points per dollar for various categories

like travel, dining, gas. There's some other business categories as well on the business card. And every year upon renewal, you get a free night certificate worth 40,000 points. And you can actually add points to make it more valuable. So let's say you want to stay somewhere that costs 50,000 points.

You can add 10,000 points and stay a night. The cards also give you fourth night free on awards days. It gives you platinum elite status with ihg gives you uh when you spend twenty thousand dollars in a calendar year gives you ten thousand bonus points and a hundred dollars cash and when you spend forty thousand points it gives you diamond status which will give you like free breakfast at ihg properties um and then you also get up to $50 in United Travel Bank funds each year, which is doled out six months at a time as $25 credit. And then that $25 disappears if you don't use it. So I don't value that piece all that much, but the rest of it is pretty nice.

Yeah, I think it's actually very interesting suddenly. And that's coming from somebody who's not really a big IHG fan. There are some nice IHG properties I've stayed at's not really a big IHG fan. There are some nice IHG properties I've stayed at. I don't dislike IHG. I just don't tend to like them as much as I do Hyatt and Marriott and Hilton. But I look at this and I say, well, man, there's a lot of value to be had there. The platinum status that it comes with doesn't give you any concrete benefits other than more points per dollar, I think, at properties. And when we're talking about on-property benefits.

However, I've often had good luck getting upgrades overseas at IHG properties with platinum status. So if you travel internationally, it can be useful for that. And really, we've seen opportunities come and go over this last year or two to get really good value out of IHG points, even just, you know, on one offs one or two nights here or there, but certainly with the fourth night free. So, you know, I just think that it's a program to keep an eye on. And now with diamond status, including free breakfast, suddenly this card is I don't know, I think it's pretty intriguing, actually. And again, that's coming from somebody who's not a huge IHG fan. But just the other day, I booked a new property in Washington, D.C. It's yours truly, D.C., I think is what it's called, the part of the Vignette collection. It's brand new. There's only like three of these properties. Yeah, there's only three of these properties in

the world. It's the first one in the United States. And it was a weekend when all of the hotels were three, four hundred400 a night, and this place was 25,000 points per night. So it was a great value, certainly a good value on the points. So I think this offer can be worth a good bit and is worth considering, especially if you like IHG properties. It's a good card to have. Right. So real quickly, if you were thinking of getting a new IHG card, would you go for the consumer card with the $175K bonus or the business card with the $140K bonus? It depends on whether or not you're concerned about adding to your 524 count, right?

I mean, if you want to keep those slots open. And when we talk about 524, as Greg said, if you open five or more consumer cards that show up on your credit report in the last 24 months, Chase usually, I got to say usually now, right? Won't approve you for a new card, any of their cards. But the business cards generally do not, certainly the Chase business cards do not add to your 524 account. So it wouldn't prevent you from getting another card in the future. So if that's attractive to you because you want to pick up other chase cards in the future, then I guess I'd go with the business card. Otherwise, I like more points.

So I'd probably go with the consumer side. Is there a benefit I'm missing? It's different. Not really. I mean, the business card has some additional 5X categories, but 5X isn't that exciting with IHG. The points on average tend to be worth around 0.6 of a cent each. So 5X, I mean, is about 3% rewards, which is not bad, but it's just not exciting. And so the other thing is that the spend, if you're going to do big spend, so if you're going to spend to the $40,000, there are advantages and disadvantages. But with the business card, that spend won't affect your credit utilization ratio on your credit score. So it could be helpful sort of having it go to a business card as opposed to a personal card, depending on how you manage that, your credit and everything.

When you pay things off and whatnot. Of course, you want to pay everything off before you owe any interest on it. But we mean more so like how the balances get reported to credit bureaus. It gets a little complicated. But you're right. There is some advantage potentially there on the business side if you're going to be doing the big spend. Kind of minor. Yeah, but it is pretty minor, I think. I agree. But that extra 35,000 points on the consumer card, if we're valuing them at 0.6 cents per point, I don't know, make the math easier for me, half a cent per point,

that's another $175 worth of points on the consumer card. So, I mean, that's, I don't know, good enough reason for me to at least be pretty interested in the consumer card. Either way, though, you're talking about what, I mean, at 0.6, that's what six, I mean, hundreds of dollars, almost $1,000 worth of points on that 175K offer. So, it's a pretty hot offer. Right. And if you use it on a hotel that has good award rates like the one you described, and then especially if you do a fourth night free booking, you can do really, really well. So, right. Yeah. Those points can be worth quite a lot. So, all right. Cool. That's our card talk for the week. Okay. Let's talk about award talk awards. We booked this week or awards that have

changed this week or award charts that have devalued this week what's going on why don't you talk well why don't you talk about the virgin thing i got to be the guy i've got two updates okay personal bookings all right yeah i get to be the bearer of bad news and tell everybody that just last week i i'm pretty sure just last week i i think it was last very recently i mentioned that you know with virgin uh at Atlantic joining Sky Team, I feel like this this and a first class sweet spot is living on borrowed time. I'm pretty sure it was just last week that I said I could see that one ending sooner rather than later. I'm sorry that I predicted that because unfortunately, I was right about that. I didn't realize how quickly that would come true. That

stinks. But just this week, Virgin Atlantic supremely devalued the first class awards on ANA from the West Coast and East Coast that we've talked about a whole bunch this year already. So if you've been listening to the show, you know that they used to charge 55,000 points one way for first class between the West Coast and Japan or 60,000 points each way from the East Coast to Japan. Unfortunately, they increased rates about 42% on those. So now it's at 72.5K from the West Coast and 85,000 from the East Coast. Now that's really painful compared to the old award rates. Although in fairness, it's still an incredible value for first class awards. You're

not going to do much better than that for a first-class award to Asia. So it's one of those things where I'm disappointed, but at the same time, it's still a decent deal, just not the amazing deal it was. It is. But it's gone up enough to where if you do see that ANA first class award space, it's then worth doing the calculations of would it be better using miles that don't pass along fuel surcharges, even if you're spending didn't matter if you're paying $400 in fuel surcharges, it was still such a, you know, so much better of a deal than any other option. Yeah. Right, right. No, that's a great point. So that's unfortunate. And of course, the most unfortunate part to me is that Virgin Atlantic did this overnight without any advance notice. And more importantly, without any notification to members it's not even like they you know sent out an announcement after the fact and said hey we've changed award rates on this we've updated our award chart to provide you even more value they didn't they didn't tell me

they enhanced anything they just didn't say anything you know it's like they're just gonna leave you to figure it out on your own i think that's kind of shady and unfortunate that that's the way they do things of course that is just is just the way Virgin Atlantic appears to do things because they did the same with Delta a couple of years ago. So I also said last week that I wouldn't expect any advance notice out of Virgin Atlantic when they're going to change this. And sure enough, they didn't prove me wrong, which is unfortunate. I'd say the one surprising thing is that they still have an award chart for ANA. They haven't broken off that relationship. So I'm not really sure that it's related to the Sky Team thing. I mean, I just don't know.

It might have more to do with just because a lot of people booked that award recently. Someone might have finally taken a look at it and said, whoa, that's out of whack. Did you kill the deal, Gregreg are you a deal killer they were like some guy booked five people we can't let that happen again they're gonna instagram pictures of that yeah yeah boy yeah yeah all right i'm i mean i'm very grateful that we got in on it when we did and i'm very you know happy for all of our listeners and and that we got in on it when we did. And I'm very happy for all of our listeners and readers that got in on it beforehand. And for everyone else, sorry, it's an example of why it does pay to jump on things as soon

as possible. When these kind of outstanding deals become available, they don't last. I mean, that's just in general. If anything is sort of an out of whack, such a great deal, it's very unlikely to last long. This lasted many, many years actually, but part of the reason is probably

because ANA so rarely released first class award space before. Now they recently had a flood of award space and that's probably why some eyes got drawn to it i would guess yeah yeah that makes sense all right so that was virgin atlantic now you speaking of a and a first class you booked a totally different first class experience that is arguably even better than a and a this week am i right yeah yeah. So Etihad First Apartments is their first class.

They fly on the Airbus A380 jets. And it's recently come back in service just for the route between London and Abu Dhabi. And we got alerted by a reader that in January of 2024, awards were pretty wide open for up to two people per flight to book with partner Miles. So that meant it was possible to book with either Aeroplan or American Airlines. I mean, there's probably some other partners that I'm not thinking of, but those are the two main ones for Etihad. And I flew on that pretty much, I think it was pretty much right before the pandemic. And it just happened. It was just a chance thing that it happened to be that exact route. Like I had flown, I was leaving the Maldives going to catch up with my wife who was in London. And so I flew Etihad business class from the Maldives to Abu Dhabi and then first class apartments to London. And she, and mind blown by that experience. I mean, just to give you an idea, every seat is a fully enclosed suite with walls.

And imagine you're just walking down the aisle where there are doors to each suite on your left and right. So there's just a single aisle. Each suite takes up, you know, half the width of the jet other than the aisle. And so you go into your door and it's basically you've got sort of like a hallway walking along like a bench seating, which turns into a single bed later. And then on the left or on the other side of the bench seating is your big captain chair type of thing. And so that was awesome. And then the service was spectacular. I mean, like the purser came and greeted me and then the onboard chef came to ask what kind of things I like to eat, you know, and they brought, you know, top shelf champagne around, said, which would I like? How about both? Sure. You know,

this is the type of experience you get on Etihad first class. It's just over the top, amazing. If you want to shower on board, there is a shower. And, you know, it's incredible. And I've done one other sweets product in the past, which was Singapore sweets, which I also blew my mind back then. And my wife had been complaining a little bit, not hard, but that she's never gotten to go on one of those amazing ones. Now, don't feel too bad for, like she flies international business class all the time, thanks to what we do. It's just, she's only flown international first class once or twice, and that was Lufthansa, which was very nice, but it's not she's only flown international first class like once or twice and that was liftonza which was very nice uh but it's not these enclosed suite type of things so

so i was like she's like let's listen let's put her in a first class for five people and i was not one of them that's right that's right that was a discussion at home yeah so it was time so you saw i mean way to way to up the ante here at at you had first class apartments i mean that's that's the way to go i guess right i mean if you're gonna fly right that's the way to do it yeah so we're hoping to to marry this with a trip to uh south africa or maybe the maldives or we haven't decided really yet, but we've got that flight booked. So pretty exciting. Yeah, that's awesome. That'll be a lot of fun. I'm sure. All right. So that was this week's award talk. Oh, wait, did you mention how you booked it? Oh, well, I booked it with American Airlines miles. So, so the thing is, I don't, I don't

think I mentioned it that with American, you can't find Etihad award space online anymore. You used to be able to. And so I felt very speculative to me as to whether we'd really do it. So it was definitely worth me calling in to get that done. So yeah. Yeah, very good. And you said it was easy to call in too. You just called the US number and they had no problem. I just called the US number. It said there was like a 30 minute wait

and asked to do a callback. So I did that and that worked fine. Yeah, no, yeah. I meant more so that the agents were able to see it because we've heard in previous times that sometimes the US based agents aren't able to see it.

You had first class space, at least to and from the United States. So the workarounds have been like calling foreign call centers like in Australia and that sort of thing. But here you were able to just call the US number and get it done. So the workarounds have been like calling foreign call centers, like in Australia and that sort of thing. But here you were able to just call the U S number and get it done. So,

yeah. And luckily they were able to easily see it and book it very cheerfully too. I appreciate that. Very good. All right. What crazy thing did American express do this week? What did American express do this week?

Well, the points parade marches on and the beat is kicking up a notch this week with new offers out, new referral offers out on the Amex Gold and Amex Platinum cards. Now, you might remember that some cardholders have had the ability to refer to an offer on the Amex Gold card that's good for 90,000 points after 4,000 spend in the first six months. And some cardholders have had the ability to refer to an Amex Platinum card offer that includes 150,000 points after $6,000 spend, I think, in the first six months. And that's still true, but now they've kicked it up a notch. And some of those people

are now able to refer to those same offers with an additional $200 in statement credits for purchases that happened in the first three months. So they're adding 200 bucks on top of either of those offers, which is nutty, right? Yeah, it's so nutty. So first, if someone's not experienced with this stuff, you might say, well, why are those offers so exciting when you talked about 175K IHG offer earlier? Well, that's because IHG points can only be used for IHG hotels. And remember, we said IHG points are worth around 0.6 of a cent each, whereas with American Express points, the ability to transfer them to a huge number of airline programs makes them worth a lot, lot more. You can transfer to various airline programs and book incredible awards, like you could transfer to Air Canada and book Etihad First Class when it becomes available, that type of thing, and get incredible value.

So we sort of on average say they're worth about 1.55 cents each, but you can do much better than that. And so a 90K offer with American Express points is worth a lot more actually than a 175K offer from IHG, in my opinion. Oh, it sure is. I mean, just at a base level, you look at something like, you know, you can often fly business class one way to Europe with programs like Air France for about 55,000 miles one way. So you could transfer just over half of those points to Air France for a one-way business class award. It'll cost you about another 220-ish dollars on top in taxes and fees. And there are even better deals. I mean, you might be able to get Iberia business class from the East Coast for 34,000 miles one way. So that one 90K offer could more than cover a round-trip business class flight on Iberia between

the Eastern US and Madrid. And there are lots of other examples in that range between 35 and 50 or 60,000 points. And that's just to one continent in business class, but you got plenty of different options. So that's worth potentially a lot, a lot more if you value premium cabin international travel. So we've got an entire post on Amex membership reward sweet spot. So I'll link to that in the show notes on top of linking to these card offers. And I should mention that we talked about the IHG card earlier, and I'll have a link to that in the show notes on top of linking to these card offers. And I should mention that we talked about the IHG card earlier, and I'll have a link to that in the show notes. Also, anytime you're wondering, you have more questions about the stuff we've talked about on the show, look to the show notes for links to more information. And then obviously, also, you can reach out and, you

know, ask questions in our Frequent Miler Insiders group and that sort of thing. But I wasn't done with the MX Point Parade here. So those new offers, I mean, they were already great and we had talked about them before. And if you need to know why they're great, again, I'll link to some resources in the show notes, but those are fantastic offers on good cards. But now upping the ante even more is that if you have an MX card right now that earns membership rewards points, if you have a consumer card that earns membership rewards points, then you probably have the ability to refer new cardholders and earn both a points bonus. And that varies on the cards, depending on which card it is you're generating your referral link from. And also now, this started March 9th, you have the ability to generate a link and you'll see that you'll also earn five extra points per dollar at U.S. supermarkets for the next three months on up to $25,000 in spend when your friend

is approved. So let's say you've got a link to that Amex Gold 90K offer from your Amex Gold card and you refer a friend, they're going to get their awesome offer, the 90,000 points and the $200 statement credit, if that's what the offer shows. And you are going to get both your point bonus, maybe 20 or 25,000 points and an extra five points per dollar at U.S. supermarkets on top of the four points per dollar that card already earns at U.S. supermarkets on the first $25,000 and spend each year. So you're talking about earning nine X at supermarkets on your Amex gold card. If you refer somebody and they're approved. That's terrific. Yeah. So awesome. Yeah. So lots of things to be had. So, so, and if you can't refer to the, to the 90 K offer, you're,

you're not, uh, totally at a loss, right? Well, no, I mean, there's a, for a lot of reasons, number one, if you don't have a direct link to the 90k offer, then you might recommend that your friend try and some different browsers and see because sometimes people get lucky and get targeted for these offers, particularly if they're using a browser they've never used before a new device, that sort of thing. So you may actually be able to refer them to that offer, they may see that offer after they click through your link. You can't count on that every time. But that's certainly worth a shot. Also keep in mind that with Amex multi-referrals, you can refer someone to just about any Amex card and you earn the referral bonus. So let's say your Amex Gold card has this plus five offer and you have a friend

who wants to open the no annual fee Blue Business Plus card. You can generate your referral link from the Amex Gold card, give it to your friend, and they can click through that referral link and then click that they're interested in business cards instead and open a Blue Business Plus and they'll get whatever the offer is on the Blue Business Plus and you get your plus five at supermarkets and whatever the point bonus showed on your MX gold card. We have a post detailing how to do that. And I'll link to that in the show notes also. But that might make this worthwhile. If you're in a two player household, you might refer player two to a no annual fee card like the MX everyday card or the

business plus card or a card that waives the annual fee in the first year just so you can earn five X on your, you you know on all your supermarket spend for three months i mean that could be worthwhile yeah yeah it's great um so yeah just you know make sure you're clear with your friend if you're hoping that they get a better offer than what's the default that clear with them to like keep trying different browsers try chrome incognito or or firefox private mode and things like that and bring up the offer in those things and just see whether it pops up and not to apply until they see the best offer because you don't want your friend to do that. Now, in your post about this, Nick, you guaranteed their

friend's undying gratitude, right? Well, I did mention that when your friend is approved, that's one of the things you'll get, their undying gratitude for the awesome offer that you helped them get. I can't guarantee that. I can't guarantee it. I put a little asterisk in there. If you missed that, Greg, there was a little asterisk saying I can't guarantee that part. Your friend should be grateful that you helped them get in on the MX point parade. That's for sure. I enjoyed you adding the terms and conditions for the gratitude to the post. was good very good all right okay so i think that's we're going to skip over mattress running the numbers this week

because you know we've gone along here already we're going to get right into this week's main event main event time which which is the most rewarding hotel loyalty program wow that's sort of awkward to say it looked fine when i wrote it but saying it out loud it's sort of awkward to say. It looked fine when I wrote it, but saying it out loud is kind of awkward. Anyway, we're going to look at Hyatt, Wyndham, Marriott, IHG, and Hilton and compare and contrast which one's most rewarding. Not just rewarding as far as like points earned, but also things like elite benefits and whatnot. So let's start, though, with points earned. So suppose you're going to suppose you frequently travel and book paid stays at hotels. Which one should you book to get the most rewards for the for those stays? for each hotel chain. And what that means is we looked at what's the sort of average value you get per point when booking hotels in the United States with these points. And we said, the median value you get, that's a, reasonable redemption value, which means if you if if you use your points to book a hotel, you have about a 50 percent chance of getting that much value or better. And sometimes it could be a lot better from your points. reasonable redemption values, I'm going to call them RRVs from now on, to calculate what is the

sort of cashback equivalent reward you get when you stay somewhere. So for example, like when you stay at a Marriott, most Marriotts give you 10 points per dollar for your stay. And so with Marriott being, their RRV is 0.8, getting 10 points per dollar, that's an 8% return, right? Right. In the form of Marriott points, right? In the form of Marriott points. Exactly. Exactly. So looking at it that way and not accounting for elite status, which can give you more points. It's actually very easy to compare. So Hyatt gives you an 11% return. Wyndham gives you 9%. Marriott, 8%.

IHD, 6%. Hilton, 5%. Wow. Only 5%. Doesn't that seem really low? It does. And there's two things going on there. One is that Hilton points have the lowest RV of anyone in this comparison. They're at about half a cent each. And the other thing

going on is this is not including bonuses. So hotel chains run various bonuses all the time. Some are really complicated. We made fun of Hyatt's last week, I think it was, where you have to... I'm not even going to repeat it, but it's very complicated figuring it out. Whereas Hilton frequently runs very simple. It's like double points on weekdays or triple on weekends, something like that. And so you can do much better than 5% back with Hilton, but it requires there being some kind of, you know, bonus going on at the time. Yeah. You know, I want to jump in really quickly just to mention that when you mentioned the reasonable redemption values, what we figure you can reasonably get without a lot of effort to maximize and bears repeating, if you said this, I missed it if you did,

but our reasonable redemption values are as scientific as they can be. And I say that because, well, maybe not as much as they could be, but I'd say more scientific than most because you go through all the very, well, not all the various, you go through a number of cities in the United States looking for the redemptions at hotels that are well-reviewed that you would actually want to stay at. And you look at a few different dates and figure out how much the points are worth, right? So it's not like we're not just sticking a finger in the air and deciding how much points are worth. That's actually based on some semi-scientific analysis, right? That's a very good way of putting it. Semi-scientific analysis and purely

objective analysis, whether or not it's like correct, you know, that you could argue whether the methodology is exactly right, but there's no subjective component to it at all. It's a hundred percent, whatever the numbers say is what we, what we produce here. Right. Yeah. So, so that's, if you're, if you're staying somewhere and you have no status, so this is like, let's say you're a, you know, you're a consultant and you travel a lot for work. And so company is going to pay for your stay. So you might as well stay somewhere rewarding. It looks like Hyatt's the place to go if, if you can find them.

I mean, is that a surprise? So that's going to be true, not only because of the return, but I mean, also, of course, we've talked lots of times about how great Hyatt Elite status is. So, you know, if you can get a lot of Hyatt stays and enough to get Elite status, then not only will you get a good return on the dollars spent, but you also will get a great experience. Well, potentially, anyway, I guess if you're staying mostly at Hyatt places and Hyatt houses, I guess it may not make much of a difference, but certainly if you're staying at the full service properties, it'll make a difference. But we'll get there. So that's no status, no card. You're just showing up off the street.

Right. So if you take that advice and you start staying at lots and lots of heights, pretty soon you're going to have top tier status. And so let's look at by hotel chain. If you have top tier status, what's the return? Because some chains, if you have top tier status, they give you double points, whereas Hyatt only gives you, what is it, 30% additional points being top tier. So that can shuffle things around, except Hyatt still stays at the top with a 14% return if you have top tier Hyatt status. But Marriott catches up. They're not alone there. They're not alone. They're not alone. Marriott catches up with also 14% because they do double your points.

IHG also doubles your points. And so they almost catch up with 13% return. Wyndham, who was second, now is dropping down to 11%. So they're next to last. And Hilton isn't looking as awful as before with 10% return, but they're still at the bottom of our list but they're still at the bottom. They're still at the bottom, but it's worth mentioning here that now if they have one of those double point promotions where you earn two X points, suddenly they'll go from last to first. And so, right? Because I mean, if you had double base points- Yeah, but not by as much as you're saying though, right?

Right. Because like, so you're just doubling the base points, not the elite bonus points. So you'd go from 10% to 15%. Right. So only 1% better. Right, right. So, yeah, but if Hyatt's running an even, like, reasonably good promotion,

they probably would still come out ahead. It depends. It depends. Because, I mean, Hilton will do double points. They'll also do sometimes triple points. And so, you know, it depends on the promos. You can definitely do really well. Yeah. You can do really well during their promos for sure they can suddenly be competitive so but that's it's interesting to me that everybody is like

pretty clustered here it's closer i think than i would have expected at top tier status with no credit card because you know if hilton is running a double points promotion then you're talking about four out of the five programs here being separated by a total of two percentage points, usually top tier, but sometimes. And they give you more points per dollar for using that credit card at their hotel than others. So I combined those two things. I said, what if you had a hotel credit card that gave you elite status? So now you've got your elite status bonus when you stay at this hotel but you also pay for your stay with the card and uh how many what would be your return on your spend at at these chains so with hyatt you you get uh with the hyatt world of hyatt card you get bottom tier

discoverer status so i shouldn't say bottom tier. If you know status is, is, you know, the first, this is the bottom tier, I guess, then the next is discoverist. And then you go up from there. Discoverist doesn't give you many benefits, but it gives you a little bit extra points. Um, and, uh, the credit card gives you four points per dollar at Hyatt stays. And overall you end up with a 20% return on your spend. I mean, that's pretty good. After you talk about all these, I'm going to have a point to add. But okay, so 20% Hyatt is at the top still. Yep, pretty good. Now Wyndham recovers here because the Wyndham earner business card, which we've talked about many, many times, gives you top tier

diamond sets just by having the card. And it gives you a whole bunch of points, I think eight points per dollar at Wyndham hotels. So you're getting just tons and tons of points from Wyndham. That ends up with an 18% return on your spend at Wyndham. maria the bonvoy brilliant card gives you platinum status with a 75 bonus on points earned and um so that ends you end up with a 70 17 return on spend so that's just under when i'm like really close sort of uh although just under one would we say that yes it is it's one percentage point under windham but you probably also ought to consider at that point that the wyndham card costs 95 dollars per year and the marriott card costs 650 dollars per year so there's a slight difference in the annual fee of course you know obviously the benefits also are

quite different i'm not saying that the brilliant card isn't worth it, just that there are other points to compare there. But I got other points to make too. So, okay, so they're at 17%. And Hilton and IHG are what, somewhere in the trash? No, they're right below Marriott with 16% each. So with Hilton, the Aspire card gives you diamond status. And you'll get 16% return between earning 14x by using your card at a Hilton property plus the diamond bonus that you get. And IHG Platinum status, which you get with the Premier card which we talked about at the in the intro to the show um will give you a total 16 percent return so actually any of these cards give you very solid

returns if you're using them for uh your your hotel stays yeah i mean i think these are all good rebates so that's and those are all again before any promotions and all of the different chains really i mean mentioned hilton because they seem to be running one almost constantly, or at least for a long time they were. But everybody runs promotions. So then you've got to crunch the numbers on the promotions because these are all so close. There's only a couple of percentage points differentiating them

that you've got to look at the promos and see, okay, well, how many more points can I earn from the promo? But I struggle with this category a little bit because this is determining, like Greg said, if you've got elite status and you're using the credit card to pay for your stay, which is a useful metric to have on the one hand. On the other hand, man, we see so many Amex offers and Chase offers for hotel chains that it often changes the calculus as to which card I would use to pay anyway. And so then it becomes a little murky. Well, am I going to use that card to pay for

every stay? Because I know there's going to be an Amex offer out that I'm going to use for IHG or Hyatt or whatever it might be. And so I actually don't end up, hardly, I don't end up using the chains credit card all that often at the hotel, although I'm not paying for that many stays. If you're paying for stays on like a weekly basis or a couple of times a month, there probably won't be enough new Amex and Chase offers for you to be constantly using one of those to pay for your stays. But if you're like me and you don't pay for a lot of cash stays, then you may not end up using the card every time to pay for them. Yeah. Yeah. I'll buy that. That's probably true. And boy, it seems to me like there's a million

variations of that same concept or similar concept. For example, cashback portals, you could go through a cashback portal and with IHG, maybe you can usually find anywhere from eight to 12% cash back. So whereas the other chains, not so much, you know, you might be lucky to find 4% with some of the other chains. And so that alone could change the calculation as well. Totally. Because Hilton typically doesn't offer any cash back for diamond members through portals. But yeah, but whereas you'll see IHG pretty frequently and every now and then you'll see a good return for Marriott. I don't think Hyatt is on any of the shopping portals at all. So that certainly could make the difference all in one.

And with Marriott and IHG, at least, we should mention that Capital One Shopping has had some great targeted offers. I got targeted for 18% back at Marriott not that long ago. So if you're looking at this, you're talking about 17% between elite status and the card and then 18% back from Capital One shopping. I mean, you're talking about a 35% return on the stay. So that will alone right there blow everything else out of the water with one of those targeted offers. So keep that in mind

also. Totally would. All right. So all we've talked about so far though, is the rewards from the points you get. But there's other types of rewards because as you earn elite status, you get goodies for being a special customer of this brand. So let's start with our favorite topic, which is breakfast. Which chain offers their top tier elites the best breakfast benefit? The candidates are IHG, Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton. Wyndham doesn't, to my knowledge, have a breakfast benefit. So they're not in contention here. What do you think?

You know, I'm going to surprise you and I'm going to say IHG. And the reason I'm going to say they have the best breakfast benefit, and I've got to add the caveat here that this whole IHG diamond thing is so new that I feel like it's a little bit bold to call it the best because I'd like to see how it plays out. But the reason I'm saying I to call it the best because I'd like to see how it plays out. But the reason I'm saying IHG is the best is because you get free breakfast everywhere. So there's no consulting a chart, number one, to see do I get free breakfast there or not, which is the case with Marriott. There's no worry about a property credit not fully covering breakfast like there is with Hilton. And there's no super light pastries lounge breakfast like you might end up with at a Hyatt

that's got an open lounge. And many Hyatts have great lounges, but some, of course, are gonna have weaker lounge offerings. So if that's your only breakfast option, then IHG's full breakfast at an IHG property probably beats it. So I'd say IHG.

I actually totally agree. I think IHG and probably beats it. So I'd say IHG. I actually totally agree. I think IHG and Hyatt are really close. But for the exact reason you said, that with Hyatt, if you're at a hotel that has a lounge that's open, then you don't get free breakfast in the restaurant. You get it in the lounge. And that is often a lesser type of breakfast

than you get as a hot breakfast in the hotel's restaurant. Yeah, no, that's a surprise. I mean, it was a huge surprise when IHG rolled out their new elite benefits, and free breakfast was one of them. And it was a huge surprise to actually go to some IHG properties and experience that they were actually delivering on that. Right, right. Good for IHG there. But we do have to say, if you like to stay at high-end properties,

I mean, like a lot of Andaz and Park Hyatt type properties, none of those are gonna have a lounge and they're gonna have really good breakfasts usually. And I haven't stayed in enough IHG properties at the high end of the chain, I guess, to say, wow, there was an amazing breakfast at this one or that one. I've had good breakfasts, but I haven't had the same level that I have at some

of the higher end Hyatt properties, I guess. So we'll see. Maybe IHG will continue to knock it out of the park. But that's, I think, the best breakfast benefit for now. Right. And I'll also mention that IHG top tier status is much more easily gamed than Hyatt is. So with IHG, if you have the Premier card or the Premier business card, just spend $40,000 on that card in a calendar year, you get diamond status. And that'll be good for the rest of that calendar year and all of the next. And then we don't know if this will keep going in the future, but it has been the case that if you spend the $200 or so to get ambassador,

intercontinental ambassador status, intercontinental ambassador status, that that causes your diamond status to renew. And so then like each year, if you time it right and renew your ambassador status, you should be renewing your diamonds test. Point is that it's theoretically possible that you could avoid even having to pay $40,000 on the card after the first year you do it just by plunking down some money each year instead as another option.

So I like that IHG is- Because they let you buy that with points also. That's good. Yep. True. A good point. Is that what you're about to say? It is a good point.

So there you go. IHG is a winner there. What about the best credit card tier breakfast benefit? And what I mean by that is a elite status that you get just by having a credit card. The two candidates that I know of is with almost any Hilton card, except for the free one, you get Hilton Gold status, which gives you, in quotes, free breakfast um and then um the uh marriott bonvoy brilliant which you pointed out earlier is is a 650 card but that gives you platinum status which gives you breakfast and a big chart to try to figureriott ever so slightly

here. But man, I have a hard time picking between these two. Both of them can be quite good. So, you know, if especially if you're staying overseas a lot, the Hilton one can then be worthwhile because I think you still get free breakfast overseas. I don't think they changed that. Did they? Am I forgetting something? I think you do. So you still get free breakfast, I think, at foreign properties. In the United States, you get a food and beverage credit, and that's going to vary by property. And I just think it's not going to end up covering breakfast at a lot of places entirely anyway. And so that's what kind of annoys me about Hilton Gold. It used to be free breakfast, and now it's a food and beverage credit. But if

you're not actually that interested in breakfast and you'd rather use the food and beverage credit for drinks or appetizers or something like that, well, I mean, hey, you may really like the way that Hilton handles it. With Marriott, you're going to get free breakfast at a lot of places, and then you'll get lounge access at most places that have a lounge. So I think it's pretty good. As long as you don't have your heart set on staying at Ritz-Carlton lounge. So that's, I think it's pretty good. As long as you aren't, you don't have your heart set on staying at Ritz Carlton and Addition Properties where you're not going to get free breakfast

or you're not going to get, yeah, you're not going to get free breakfast or lounge access. Or lounge access, correct. You know, or at like courtyards where you're going to get $10 a person towards the little marketplace. If you even get that,

because I stayed at a courtyard this last weekend and they told me, no, they don't have that. It's only for items from their marketplace, like their little residence in sort of marketplace, not from the place that makes breakfast. So who knows? So there's some ins and outs and what have yous when it comes to Marriott. But overall, I tend to like to stay at places like St. Regis or, you know, Weston or full service Marriott and stuff like and those places your breakfast benefit is going to be better. I think at Marriott because you'll get free breakfast or free lounge access. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I agree with everything you said, but I'm going to personally just call it a tie. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I, I agree with everything you said, but I, I'm going to personally just call it a tie because, yeah, because, because, uh, you know, the fact that you could stumble into a Marriott that either is not the right brand or is one of the hotels that's on the list of exceptions or is not on the list of exceptions, but it's just not adhering to the policy yeah

those those things all happen with marriott hotels yeah that's true i i think that dilutes the benefit whereas yeah i don't like that hilton went to this food and beverage credit but i think the delivery is more um consistent uh consistent yeah yeah yeah it is. All right. Let's move on to the next category. So the best elite suite upgrade benefit. There are three contenders here. So with Hyatt, when you reach 50 nights, you get a milestone reward of two suite upgrade certificates. And at 60 nights, I think you get two more.

And each one can be used to upgrade a stay, a whole stay that's up to seven nights long. IHG has something similar at 20 nights, and I think it's 40 nights. You can pick a milestone benefit of a suite upgrade. And in this case, it's pretty pretty similar you could do an advance but with ihd you have to wait till it's 14 days before your stay so you can't can't do it a year in advance like you could with hyatt um marriott when you reach 50 nights and again at 75 nights you can choose a choice benefit of five suite night awards. So these are unlike Hyatt and IHD. They don't upgrade the whole stay. You have to use an individual certificate for each

night of your stay. So if you have a five night stay, you can upgrade the whole thing theoretically, but the way it works is very challenging in that um first of all many many many hotels opt out of this altogether so you don't get the choice to apply them to many hotels uh and many brands um those that do opt in uh you're you don't even have a chance of getting upgraded to the suite until five days before your stay. And then each day your reservation goes into some kind of lottery where it may or may not get upgraded. And until the last day, then it checks one more time. And so you may or may not get into a suite at all. So that's how those three work. What do you think? Is Marriott the best one?

Right. No, clearly not based on the description you just gave. And the other thing you left out is that you have to have enough to cover all of the nights of your stay. So if you've got five of these and you have a seven night stay, you can't apply any of them. So yeah, there's just too many restrictions on the Marriott ones, and they clear too rarely, and there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to figuring out whether they're going to clear or not clear. And so Marriott ones, just throw those out.

They might work. I had one work out great last year for a staircase suite at the London Renaissance St. Pancras there. So they can work out great. That was sweet. Sweet, sweet. Sweet, sweet, yes. But you can't count on it. Maybe itras there. So they can work out great. That was sweet. Sweet, sweet. Sweet, sweet, yes. But you can't count on it. Like, maybe it'll happen.

No. With Hyatt and IHG, though, I think it's interesting because Hyatt seems like the clear winner from the get-go, right? Because you could confirm a suite at the time of booking. And remember, you can use these on awards days or paid stays. So either way, if there's a standard suite available, it doesn't have to be available for points. If there's a standard suite available for sale, then you should be able to apply your suite upgrade if you've got one of these suite

upgrade awards for up to seven nights, which could save you a ton when you look at, you know, if it were available with points, the number of points it might require to stay in a suite at a higher tier property. So that can be a really valuable benefit. I think it's great, but it does require 50 nights to get two of these. So that's a tall order, whereas IHG starts giving them at 20 nights. That's a big difference. 20 nights is really generous. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know. I mean, I- 20 nights is within reach of a lot of people. It really generous. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I... 20 nights is within reach of a lot of people. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, you know, based on the title of this section, which was, which is the best suite upgrade benefit?

I think we have to say the best benefit is Hyatt, but IHG is a strong contender because the benefit kicks in at only 20 nights, which is amazing because both Marriott and Hyatt, 50 nights before you get any kind of suite. Right. And I think that that's really the thing that the big thing here. It only clears 14 days in advance, so you won't know until a couple of weeks before your stay that you've got a suite, but you will know at least a couple of weeks in advance. But I think the biggest thing, like you said, is that that bar of 20 nights is within reach for so many more people than 50 or

more nights. So it's certainly something that's realistic, whereas for a lot of people, 50 nights in a Hyatt just won't be realistic because either A, you're not spending 50 nights a year in hotels or B, Hyatt just isn't everywhere you need to be, whereas IHG is likely to be most places you need to be and, you know, much lower bar. So that's a great one. All right. So I'm going to do one more thing about that, which is a shout out. One shout out to Marriott about this, which is if you have both the Bonvoy Brilliant card and a Bonvoy Business card, you'll start each year with, I think, 40 elite knights. And so you'll only need 10

to get five sweet knight awards with Marriott. You only need 10 actual knights at Marriott hotels each year. That said, they still don't win for me. Right. Well, yeah, because there's still such a gamble as to whether you're actually going to be able to use them or not. So. So, yeah, that's I still I still think I'd take IHG is over

Marriott's even with that difference. But that's probably clear at this point. So let's talk about elite status, because if you got elite status, then you want to get your elite benefits. Right. And so if you are staying, you know, 50 nights a year at a hotel or something along those lines, which chain has the best elite recognition? Yeah. So people will argue passionately about this. And my personal experience has been really great with Hyatt in general. On the other hand, there are specific, for example, Marriott properties where elite recognition is fantastic. So for example, Ritz-Carlton, which doesn't even normally, doesn't require their hotels to do much for elites. The one I stayed at in Charlotte brought us an incredible, one of the best cheese and meat platters I've ever had as a welcome gift, a bottle of wine,

and they were just very welcoming overall. I don't think you can say which chain has the best elite recognition because I think it's really a hotel by hotel thing. Well, okay. Yes. I think that that's true. It's going to vary from hotel to hotel. But I think that, for instance, there aren't any on-property benefits that I know of with Wyndham, right? I mean, maybe you get a couple of bottles of water. You know what? I think you can get upgraded to a suite with Wyndham now

that I think about it, but I don't think there's any sort of a guarantee. And with IHG, I know in the past anyway, the upgrades were typically not to suites, although now maybe they are upgrading suites more. I know with Hilton, for instance, they totally exclude some brands. I think Hampton Inn doesn't have to give you a sweet, even if they've got one and you're a Hilton Diamond member. So I think there are certain things that are coded into the program when it comes to elite recognition. And I think Hyatt has the best of that in the sense that you got guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout for globalists when you're not at a resort anyway, anywhere that's not a resort, you got a guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout. I've rarely ever had pushback on that. I have had it a couple of times, but rarely had pushback on that. And,

you know, your free breakfast benefit and lounge access and or lounge access. I've never had any issues with that either. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, I think you're right about that. As far as what's codified into the program and sort of, I think there's a management oversight too, that seems to maybe be better with Hyatt than like Marriott, for example, but it seems like more Marriott properties go rogue, but there are Hyatt properties that go rogue too. For sure. So you just don't know for sure. Yep. Okay. Here's one that I think is a really fun category.

Let's talk about what are the most valuable elite perks besides points, breakfasts, and upgrades. So some of these chains have really interesting sort of miscellaneous benefits that you could get as usually a top tier elite. And I figured, well, I'll just read through them and then we could talk about which of these are the most valuable. So for example, just starting with Hyatt, free parking on award stays. Hyatt also gives you waived resort fees on paid stays. So they waive resort fees on all awards days, regardless of status, but no resort fees on paid stays.

When you spend enough nights there, you get a category one to seven free nights. So a free night for almost top tier. Hi, it's here. You also get something called a, my concierge when you get it to 60 nights, which is a single individual person that you can call or email with to ask

them to do things for you. And you have guests of honor, which is the ability to book nights, book award nights in someone else's name as like a gift. And they get all the top tier benefits during their stay as if they were you. IHG. IHG has a really interesting, potentially really valuable one, which is when you hit 40 nights, and again, I think it was at 70 nights, you get a choice of a full year of lounge access. So literally all your stays, you could go to that intercontinental lounge and eat all you want for

breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And you can actually, it's for the rest of the current year and all the next. So you can kind of game it by, if you get to 40 nights late in a calendar year, you could wait until January 1st of the next year to pick this. And then you get two full years of lounge access with that benefit.

Marriott, once you get to titanium status, that's 75 nights, you get United Silver status. You get to pick a 40K free night. You get at very top tier, you get ambassador service, which is kind of like the My Concierge thing. And you also get at the very top tier something called Your 24, where you can request that your stay, maybe you're arriving somewhere at 9 in the morning, you could request that your stay, the 24 hour starts at 9 a.m. So you can check in at 9 a.m. And that seems pretty good. And both Hyatt and Marriott have guaranteed 4pm late checkout at non-resort stays. So that's an interesting,

an interesting list of perks. So you're going to ask me what? Which one is most valuable? Which is the single most valuable one on this list? Oh, that totally depends on how you use it, of course, and what matters to you. But I think that the fact of the matter is Hyatt has a pretty killer set of benefits here. When you look at the waived parking on awards days and waived resort fee on awards days, those can really add up. And waived resort fee on paid stays also for globalist members. I mean, those things are potentially worth a lot if you stay at properties that would charge them. I mean,

just last week, I was staying at a Hyatt property where I got those for free. And I think the resort fee would have been something like $45. And then valet parking would have been another 45. So that was 90 bucks a day right there times five days. So that was a nice, valuable benefit. And it didn't take me long to see how valuable that benefit was, because at the end of my stay, I needed to switch hotels. And I considered the JW Marriott in Orlando and looked at it. And I thought, oh, wow, this looks awesome. And I can use a free night certificate to stay there. But then I looked and I was like, oh, but I'm gonna have to pay a $45 resort fee and $30 in parking. It's my free night is going to cost me 100 bucks to use. And am I going to get enough

time in order to make that worthwhile? So right away, I saw how valuable Hyatt Globalist status is in that type of situation. So I think the suite of benefits there from Hyatt are great. If I had to pick one, it's hard. I think for me, the free parking is big because I do tend to go to New York City a couple of times a year. And so that adds up really quickly in a city like that. If you get free parking, it certainly makes it a lot easier for me to be able to drive right to the hotel. I know most people, if you're flying to New York, you're not going to rent a car. You're not going to need a car while you're there. So that benefit won't matter much to you. But for those of us within drivable distance of a city like New York or DC or Philadelphia, that free parking can really add up. Yeah, yeah, no, really good point. And it's also a good point when you said the bundle

with Hyatt is most valuable, like clearly it is. And it doesn't really make sense to say, you know, look at them one by one, because it's not that way. They're not them one by one because it's not that way. They're not delivered one by one. You get them all if you get top tier Hyatt status. I do want to just shout out that the IHG full year lounge access thing has a potential to be maybe the single most valuable if you stay at a lot of intercontinentals that have lounges, those lounges, I'm told, I haven't been to them, are more special than your average hotel lounge. And so you're probably going to be getting actual table service and real meals at every meal. And so the potential there is very big. But as far as what sort of a

average traveler is likely to do, I think things like free parking, waived resort fees, way, way more valuable. And, you know, it bears mentioning here too, that you mentioned a couple of perks at the end, the Marriott ambassador service, the Your24. Those are things that you get with ambassador status. And ambassador status with Marriott is like a whole different ballgame because unlike Hyatt, where you need just 60 nights to get globalist status, for Marriott's ambassador, you need not only 75 nights, but also you need to have spent $20,000 with Marriott, right? No. 100 nights. You need 100 nights. And they've raised the price to something like $23,000. Oh, $22,000. $23,000 with Marriott, right? No, you need a hundred nights and they've raised the, the, the price. Oh, 22, 23, 23. Yeah. So it's a weird number. That's right. I remember that.

It's a number we've forgotten because it's so laughable. Like we're, we're never going to do it. So it doesn't really matter to me. Yeah, exactly. So, so your 24th thing, I mean, unless you work for a company that's paying for, you know, lots and lots of stays at fairly nice Marriott properties because you have to be spending almost two grand a month at Marriott in order for that to work out, then probably you're not going to have that benefit anyway. I would like that benefit, the year 24 benefit, the 24-hour check-in. That's something I'd love to see Hyatt Institute. Now, I've often had very good luck with early check-in, but there's been a few times where I haven't been able to get it where it really would have been valuable to me. So I would love to see that instituted. Although the hard part with Hyatt, if you've got elite status, is that you're probably hoping for a suite. And in fact, that happened to me just last week where I was checking in and I still had globalist status and I saw there were

suites available in the app. So I asked about getting upgraded to one. And of course I was there early. So I'm sure there was some globalist in that room the night before that wasn't going to check out until two or three o'clock in the afternoon. So I had to wait for it. And I'd probably still have to wait for it, no matter what, because you got to wait for them to check out for it to get clean. So I don't know if the year 24 would work out all the time, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to check at it you know for sure morning oh absolutely absolutely all right very good so that's that's so what's the best what do you if you've got a paid stay do what do you look to first and what's your backup yeah 100 high it um you know they they won almost every category we talked about. They almost tied with the breakfast benefit. It's just not even close. Hyatt is obviously the winner there. They're not everywhere though.

They have great presence in some cities. They're all over London and New York. So there's different places where they have a large presence, but there's many places where they're not there at all. So I like, even though Marriott, like, didn't win anything, I like them as my backup. So that's interesting. Why? Why do you like Marriott as your backup? Because I think that's important. It is obviously far and away the winner here. But why Marriott? Right, because Marriott really is everywhere. And not only are they everywhere, but unlike, well, no, let me say,

unlike IHG where everywhere probably means things like a Holiday Inn Express, Marriott, you're likely to find, if you want a more upscale property wherever you are, you're probably going to find one in addition to the lower end thing. So, you know, IHG just doesn't have that footprint either on the mid to high tier yet. I mean, they've been growing, but they're not there yet. Yeah, I think that's the big differentiator. I think that's it. Because IHG, I think like the moment that they get to Marriott's level of mid to high

tier property coverage, then I think I would be switching to IHG as the secondary, you know, choice, but it's like, I want to be able to stay. The whole reason I play this game is because I want to be able to stay at places that I wouldn't ordinarily pay for.

And in most places I probably could pay for a holiday and express, you know, it's probably a valuable or a decent value, you know, something I could afford to pay for. And in most places, I probably could pay for a Holiday Inn Express. It's probably a valuable or a decent value, something I could afford to pay for. Whereas I might not choose to pay for the autograph collection property or luxury collection, whatever it is that I can use my Marriott points or free night certificates for. So that's why Marriott's number two for me also. But I'm rooting for you, IHG. You got a good suite of benefits. So if you just get more of those types of properties, then I'd be happy to stay in a holiday and express now and then so that I can enjoy benefits, great benefits when I am in a city where you've got all of those mid and upper tier properties. Yeah. And as we're asking IHG to do things, one more thing for us. Wave the resort fees on awards days.

Hyatt does it. Hilton does it. Wyndham does it. Wyndham does it. Come on, IHG. IHG and Marriott do not do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, come on. If Wyndham can do it, you can do it. Yeah, for sure. Right? I mean, come on. Look at the cash rates at lots of Wyndhams. If they can afford to not charge that fee on the awards,

come on, IHG. Get with the program. Right. All right. We got that out there. That brings us, I think, my friends, to this week's question of the week. I think that wraps up the awards come on ihg get with the program right all right we got that out there that brings us i think my friends to this week's question of the week i think that wraps up the main event right so the question of the week this week came in from our facebook group and so uh sherry in our facebook group our facebook group is the frequent miler insiders if you haven't joined

it you can join that group in order to ask and answer lots of questions so sherry said we are currently in spain and i'm using my Chase card for everything to avoid foreign transaction fees. Now, I should mention, I don't know which Chase card she's using, but not all Chase cards have no foreign transaction fees. So be sure you're checking that. But anyway, Sherry goes on to say, in several places, I've been given the choice of whether I want the charge to be in U.S. dollars or euros. What are your thoughts to the best answer on this? So that's part one. And part two is a reader chimed in and said,

this would be a great topic for the podcast. Also, which card to have in your wallet for withdrawal abroad in terms of ATMs. But let's go back. Let's answer Sherry's question. So do you want the charge to be in US dollars or local currency, Greg? Always, always, always local currency.

If you ask for it in U.S. dollars, which sometimes they'll try to suggest, you're going to be given a very poor, basically, exchange rate, not the current agreed upon international exchange rate. So you're going to be wasting money by paying in U.S. dollars. Don't do that. Doesn't save you from foreign transaction fees either. So like if you have a card that charges foreign transaction fees, you might think, oh, if I'm charging US dollars, I won't get that foreign transaction fee. No, you'll get two things. You'll get the conversion fee and the foreign transaction fee. So yeah, you don't want either of those things. So pay with a card like the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve, which is probably what this person was talking about. And yeah, ask for it in local currency. So Euro in that example. Yeah. And that example, definitely. And like Greg said, a lot of places will not only suggest,

but I've had merchants go ahead and select the US dollars and then hand me the terminal. And like Greg said, a lot of places will not only suggest, but I've had merchants go ahead and select the US dollars and then hand me the terminal. And I've had to say, no, no, no, I want to pay in local currency because I'm sure that there's a little bit of a moneymaker in there in terms of charging you in US dollars because of the high conversion fees, they must get some sort of a kickback. So yeah, make sure you watch out for that, that you say, oh no, I like to play in local currency. And I'll usually, even if they quote me in US dollars, the price, I'll say, well, what is it in euro or whatever it might be that's local? So definitely local currency there.

And then the second piece of that, what card or cards or what do you have in your wallet to withdraw cash when you're abroad? Yeah. What I recommend everybody get is the Schwab debit card. So Schwab has a free checking account that includes a debit card, which not only doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, but it actually, and doesn't charge any ATM fees, but it actually pays you back refunds, any ATM fees charged by the ATM operator. So you could get out of having any of those fees, just go to whatever country, use your Schwab debit card to withdraw money. You're golden. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's also, I'm going to add to that, that I don't usually exchange any foreign currency either ahead of time or at the airport, because the airport foreign currency exchange usually is a horrible rate. You're going to get ripped off there. And I've heard of people doing it at their bank in advance and that sort of thing. And I don't do that either because I can just go to the ATM and pull out a small amount of local cash. I don't always do that anymore either.

I used to always, when I arrived, withdraw like the equivalent of 20 or 50 bucks or something so I'd have enough for an emergency. I don't even always do that anymore because cards are so prevalent these days that I just don't often end up needing the cash. Right, right. I guess the one exception would be

if you're in a place that where tipping is expected, which luckily is not usually the case outside of the U.S. Right. But yeah, I mean, to your point, I love in New Zealand, like tipping's like almost never expected. The only place where it is is on things like free walking tours where that's how they get paid. And you know what? They usually stop their tour near an ATM. So you can just go get on the tour, wait till you see an ATM, withdraw the equivalent of 10 or 20 bucks

in local currency, and then boom, then you don't have to worry about are you going home with cash that you can't use at home. Right, right. And the advantage of having a Schwab card is that like Greg said, they rebate the local ATM fees. So unlike a lot of ATM cards, if you only take out 10 or $20,

it doesn't matter, you're not getting hit with a fee, that's a huge percentage of the transaction, because you're not going to pay that fee anyway. So, so that's definitely a good card to have in your wallet there. And the other thing I want to mention with this that's relevant, but not exactly this, I just recently read, I didn't know about this, so I wanted to mention it because I imagine there are readers who don't either. Many people who are familiar with travel to Argentina might know that for years now, the way to go to Argentina is to bring $100 bills with you, U.S. currency, because the official exchange rate is horrible or has been horrible when using a credit card. Whereas if you exchange your dollars,

you get basically double the value on the street with the blue dollar. But that changed at the end of last year. And I didn't know that until just the other day that there was a new law that took effect. And so now foreigners using foreign credit cards in Argentina are getting a rate that's almost identical anyway to the blue dollar rate. So if you're going to Argentina, nowadays you can bring your credit cards and not worry about bringing as much cash. Now, I don't know, there may still be places that don't take credit cards. I haven't been to Argentina. So don't go to Argentina without any cash in your pocket and say, but Nick told me I could use my card everywhere because I didn't tell you that. I told you that if you use your card, you're no longer going to get ripped off in the same

way as before. But I think it's only for MasterCards and Visa issued outside of Argentina. So I don't know if they take Amex anywhere in Argentina anyway. But if they do, you're not going to get that good rate. You're going to get the awful official rate, so to speak. So that's just something to mention that goes along with the foreign currency thing. If a grocery store in Argentina does accept American Express, should you use your gold card there and get your grocery bonus? Definitely shouldn't, since the grocery bonus on the Amex cards that have one is for U.S. supermarkets, not abroad. Whereas if you have

the city premier card, for instance, that earns three X grocery, then you would presumably still get your three X grocery in Argentina or wherever else it makes its grocery. So, yeah. All right. That brings us to the end. So as you teed that one right up for me, thank you very much. If you've enjoyed today's episode, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week. Go to frequent miler dot com slash subscribe again. That's frequent miler dot com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media

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