Frequent Miler on the Air - Will the points game survive? | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep359 | 5-22-26

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

As more and more people get into the points & miles game, we're seeing an acceleration of devaluations. Opportunities to earn points disappear. Point prices go up. Transfer ratios go down. Is this the beginning of the end?Will the points game survive?Giant Mailbag(00:46) - Gil has a warning story about being Bonvoyed by Bonvoy... BoundlessMain Event: Will the points game survive?(06:28) - Devaluations keep hitting(14:14) - Positive trends that we're seeing at the time of this recording (May 1 2026).(15:15) - Doing this for 15 years(17:37) - Enjoying elite status(21:10) - Earning points getting easier(27:54) - New opportunities to earn transferable points keep appearing(29:00) - Point transfer opportunities are often increasing(30:26) - Using points sometimes improves(31:28) - Airlines(38:37) - HotelsSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkVisit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Today's main event, will the points game survive? Frequent Miler on the air starts now. As more and more people get into the points and miles game, we're seeing an acceleration of devaluations. Opportunities to earn points disappear. Point prices go up.

Transfer ratios go down. Is this the beginning of the end? Yes, we'll talk about that in a few minutes. And remember, if you want to find the timestamps so you can jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, just expand the description box to find the show notes with those timestamps and links to more information about everything we're talking about. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Give it a thumbs up. Leave us your feedback.

We always appreciate hearing from you. Speaking of hearing from you, let's drag out this week's Giant Mail bike. All right. Today's giant mail comes from Gil. Gil was Bonvoid by Bonvoy Boundless. Here's what Gil has to say. This is as much a warning to your readers, listeners, as it is a gripe. I've been a Marriott Bonvoy titanium member for many years.

I've had the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card for all those years, and it's usually at the top of my Marriott cards for use at Marriott properties. It has many listed benefits, including 15 Bonvoy Elite Nights at the start. start of every calendar year, which helped me get to the 75 nights I need to maintain titanium status. And this benefit, and he quotes from Chase, you can also earn an additional credit towards elite status for every $5,000 you spend on the card, end quote. Gil goes on to say, what the statement doesn't specify is over what period this $5,000 has to be spent. By the annual card renewal date, the calendar year, what would you guess? Chase's website is fuzzy about this,

and mostly doesn't specify the period. But a Chase customer service rep told me on the phone that the spend was calculated by calendar year. Still, I wanted to confirm this for myself, and after a lot of looking, I found the following. And again, he quotes from Chase's website. With Select Marriott-Bondvoy Chase credit cards, you can earn more elite night credits based on the dollar amount you spend on your card in a calendar year, including your everyday purchases. And end quote. So it's calendar year, January 1st through December 31st, right? Well, not really. It's actually through the last statement date of the calendar year. If your statement

issues on December 2nd, it's December 2nd. If your statement issues on December 25th, it's December 25th. I learned this the hard way. My last 2025 statement issued on December 18th. Between December 18th and December 31st, my spend on the card was in excess of $5,000. I did that intentionally as I was one night away from titanium status. When my Mariette elite status updated in February 26, My status remained at platinum. I lost my United mileage plus silver status, an important perk of titanium status at Marriott, and did not get the 40K free night certificate, which comes with titanium status. Ouch.

Yeah. Actually, so the 40K free night certificate is a milestone reward. It comes to 75 elite nights. I know it's effectively the same thing here. I just want to be clear about that because it's not a status benefit. Either way, though, I understand Gil didn't get it here. this, this stinks. This is rough. And it's something that, honestly, I've never put much thought into. If you had asked me how it worked, I think I would have guessed correctly because this is how the

Hyatt Spend works, right? It's just cumulative. And no, it's not. It goes through the end of the year. See, I would have had that wrong then. Go ahead. So Hyatt Spend is is even more confusing because it depends on whether you have the consumer or the business card. The consumer card is rolling 5K forever. it doesn't cut off at the end of any calendar year. But you get the elite nights when your statement cuts, right? So do they, how do they, like the elite nights don't post to my Hyatt account until after my statement cuts and I get the points from my statement.

So I don't know. I see what you're saying. Not sure. Not sure about that. Yeah. Yeah. So I would, my guess would have been that the elite nights always post with my statement. So I would assume the elite nights post with the statement.

But maybe I'm wrong in assuming that. Although the way this has worked with Marriott leads me to believe maybe it does happen that way with Hyatt. I'm sure somebody will jump in in the comments here. But it's important to know this. I mean, I think this is really key information. There's a few things like this with Chase that are a little quirky in the way that things post, but usually points and things like that, post with the statement. So, for instance, the Southwest companion pass. If you meet the spend after your December statement period, you're not going to typically earn that welcome bonus until the January statement cut.

And so there's a lot of things of that sort referrals are the same way. If you get referrals in late December after your December statement cuts, they count towards the previous year cap, but they post in the new calendar year. Yeah. So there's some weird things like that with Chase in general. So I'm not terribly surprised to hear that it posts with your statement, but man, what a bummer.

And how would somebody know? I have no idea how somebody would know that you'd call and you'd ask and you'd trust that the agent knows what they're talking about. And so I'd be super frustrated if I were Gill here as well. But it does sound like this is still rolling $5,000. It's just it posts with your statement each time. And it posts in the year in which your statement cuts essentially is my read of this, right? I'm not, I'm not sure. I think it's, I think it's, I think the 5,000 resets after your December statement. But good question. Don't know. Yeah. All right. Interesting. I mean, it's interesting. So if somebody else out there has experimented with before, we'd love to hear from you in the comments to today's show.

Either way, I guess I would recommend not cutting it that close into December now. I'm sure Gil would recommend the same thing. It would be just as frustrated. So sorry to hear that. Hopefully you hit titanium this year and make sure everybody out there you get that spend in earlier in the year, I suppose, and don't, because we don't know exactly how that will work in December. All right, let's get into today's main event. Main event time. Will the points game survive? Why are we talking about this, Nick? We've been enjoying the points game for quite a while. Yeah, but how can one enjoy it these days?

Devaluations just keep hitting left and right. I mean, we've seen devaluations on the earning side. Credit card sign-up rules are making it harder than ever to be eligible for a new card. You've got higher minimum spend requirements. We're seeing some cards requiring $12. $20,000 to $30,000 in purchases in the first few months. We've seen family rules. Amex has expanded those to all sorts of their own cards,

making you ineligible for certain cards if you've had other cards in the same family. And we've seen that same type of thing now spread to some other issuers as well. Capital One has done some of that with the venture cards, I think. And so that's made it more challenging. We've seen rules like 24-month rules that have historically applied. to many cards or many issuers where you wouldn't be eligible for the bonus on a card if you've gotten the bonus within the previous 24 months. But we've now seen that expanded to a longer period of time in several cases. It's become a 48-month rule, meaning you could earn the welcome

bonus once every four years, which is quite a long time to wait before earning it again. So that makes it harder. We've seen manufactured spending opportunities either start to disappear or disappear completely or become more expensive. So for instance, some cards exclude tax payments from earning points. That was always an easy way to earn points and welcome bonuses, but some cards and some issuers are now excluding those from earning points. Tax processors are increasingly charging more for small business cards and for Amex cards. We lost a payment processor within the last couple of years, so there's only two for federal payments now, whereas there used to be three. And so that's reduced the number of cards you could potentially use for payments, at least through the official processors

anyway. Transferring points has become more challenging recently. We've seen transfer ratios decreasing. So City just recently massively decreased transfer ratios to choice privileges, and I prefer. We've seen Emirates transfers devalue. They used to be one to one from all of the programs that transferred to Emirates, but Chase removed them entirely. Emmex and City have gone five to four. on those transfers, city four to three. But they weren't the only, capital one rather, I'm sorry, went four to three. They weren't the only issuers though,

or the only airline. That wasn't the only airline program to run into that problem. We've seen Cathay Pacific now, go five to four from Amex to Cathay Pacific. So again, you're not even getting one full airline mile per transferable point. And Amex is losing Etihad altogether as of June 30th of this year. I don't know whether that's a sign of Entehad,

disappearing from other programs, whether we may see them exit other transferable currencies or not. But that's certainly not a positive trend. And then when it comes to using points, you've got points prices increasing left and right. You've got airlines abandoning their award charts. The major U.S. airlines have abandoned award charts apart from Alaska. They've reduced availability in many cases to partner programs. Good luck trying to find a United Business class seat available through any partner program. I spent some time this week hunting just for an example to see pricing on a United Business Class flight,

and I couldn't find anything. And I was looking to multiple regions and from multiple airports. So that's become really difficult in many cases. So most programs, or I shouldn't say most, at least several of the major U.S. programs are reserving the best awards just for their own members and charging an ever-increasing number of miles for them. Speaking of abandoning award charts, you've got the hotel programs that have been doing that. So Marriott and Hilton and IHG have all abandoned award charts altogether. Hyatt is keeping an award chart, but they're taking a step towards no award chart.

And by many measures, when we see their latest chart debut on May 20th of 20, 26, it feels less like an award chart than it has in the past. And we've seen award prices continue to increase. Hilton has really gone through the roof. We've seen, whereas there used to be a cap on Hilton properties, I can remember just a few years back when the most expensive Hilton properties were 95,000 points per night, and then it crept up to 110 and 120 and 140. And now we're seeing some properties that are like 240,000 points. I mean, it's a huge devaluation in just a few years at the top end. So that's obviously been bad news. And then if we want to just continue on the bad news drum here for a second,

I'll continue beating that drum with the airlines, making it maybe too easy. to get airline elite status. Like Delta, you just need a couple of credit cards in order to get the MQD waiver to have elite status. And you'll often hear people in this game say, if everybody's elite, nobody's elite, right? Good luck getting an upgrade when everybody has elite status. So those free upgrades to first class just get harder and harder

for more and more elite members, since there are just more and more elite members. And of course, you've got lots of airlines out there, very aggressively selling upgrades to business first class. And so they're trying to get cash for those and not give them away to elite members, at least not until the very last minute, if at all. Lounge has been getting overcrowded. If you've been in this hobby in the last couple of years, I can almost guarantee you've been turned away at a lounge at some point because there just wasn't enough space to allow any more people in.

That's been a continual problem. And because of that, we've seen programs reduce or limit lounge access in meaningful ways like Amex reducing the number of visits you can make to Delta Sky Clubs or removing the ability to bring guests when you go to Centurion Loungees, et cetera. So that's been a continual problem and the solutions to it haven't felt great. So that's bummer news right there. And then finally, hotels. Those meaningful upgrades can be harder as the elite ranks continue to swell as there's more and more people just buying elite status because at least with the case, as is the case with a

couple of hotel programs, you can just get the right credit card and have top tier, so to speak, elite status or high level elite status anyway, depending on the card and the program. And so that's becoming more and more competitive. Hotels in many cases are trying to get out of honoring elite benefits as best they can. Marriott doesn't seem to do much to enforce that. So we consistently hear each year of a new Marriott property or two that has come up with a creative way to try to get out of providing the elite benefits that elite members are entitled to. And in many cases, at least in Marriott, they're getting away with it. Some other chains will draw that back in and try to find a way to compromise.

But that's certainly been a kind of a game of whack-a-mole for guests anyway. And many hotel lounges have permanently closed or they're overcrowded in some. cases. I mean, we saw some clothes during COVID and never reopened. I'm sure that hotel owners thought, well, if I don't need to offer this and I can still get good prices for the rooms, why am I giving away this free stuff? And unfortunately, that's been bad news in a lot of cases. So, I mean, I just don't see what there is to be happy about. Greg, I see a smile on your face and I don't know why. It's all bad news. Yeah, I'm just shaking my head. Boy, that was a painful, painful. Painful list of things going wrong. But enough of that doom and gloom, we will be back after this

with the bright side of things. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmyler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific. resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back. All right. So yes, Nick listed a whole bunch of really bad things that have been happening. But of course, you know, I like to look at the bright side of things. And I will tell you the game does march on. The answer to the question is,

is this the end of the game? Is absolutely? Absolutely not. The game will march on. I'm going to give a lot of examples of why I firmly believe that, strongly, strongly believe that. And I do want to mention that we're recording this May 1st, 2026, and I'm not sure exactly when this will actually publish this show. So there may be some specific examples that Nick already gave or that I'll give that are no long. the case, but the general trends we're talking about, I think, are absolutely still in play, no matter when this publishes. Okay. So, big picture. Personally, I've been doing this game for 15 years, and from day one, I kid you not, the prevailing word on the street within this game was, the game is dead, that all the great

opportunities are lost. Everything is over. and, you know, just like Nick just gave a huge list of examples why, anyone back then could have given a huge list of examples why as well. The reality is that the game constantly changes. So, yes, whatever the people were doing 16 years ago that was so great, yes, those particular things died, but new things came along. And so those of us who continue to play the game kept adapt.

and playing on and doing well. Now, I will admit, these days change does seem to be accelerating. We seem to see more and more things changing more quickly than in the past. So my approach to all that is not like, oh, it's over because it's accelerating, but we do need to adapt more quickly than before. So if you think you have a strategy to play the game that's like locked in place and you can keep doing this for three years, think again. You're going to have to reevaluate regularly, you know, what your approach is because some of the things you're doing now won't last. If I just look at my own situation, I'm still earning huge numbers of points every year, despite all of the things Nick talked about.

I'm still redeeming for more and more luxury trips than ever before. You know, as always, I love this game because it gives me the opportunity to do things that I would have never dreamed of paying cash for, you know, flying international first or business class, staying in these like multi-thousand-dollar-night hotels. And you know what? That hasn't changed. I'm still doing those kind of things. And as I said, I think more than ever before.

So from a personal point of view, I can say absolutely the game is not dead, and I still see a very bright path forward. But let me address some of the specific things that Nick mentioned. So about airline or elite status things. He mentioned some things that were negative about elite status. And I think everything he said is true, but there are other. sides to it as well. There's a general trend with airlines towards outfitting new planes with more premium seats, more premium economy, more business class seats than before. So the opportunities for free upgrades, therefore, should be higher and may counter to some extent. The fact that airlines

more and more are trying to upsell people to first class and are trying to, and are welcoming more and more elite members in through easy matches and credit card tricks to get them there. You know, will it fully make up for that? No, but it helps. I find even today that flying at off times can still lead to free upgrades. So, you know, again, that might not be an option for you, but when I flew to Toronto recently from Detroit, the first class was so empty that they were upgrading everybody with any kind of status at all. It didn't matter.

You know, so you do see that sometimes where everybody gets upgraded who can be. More and bigger lounges are being built out to counter the lounge overcrowding. Will it ever get to a point where, There's so much space that lounges aren't overcrowded. No, I don't think that will happen. But the flip side is, you know, again, when you travel during non-peak times, generally

lounges aren't too bad, or at least that's what I find. And there is also, there's a positive trend on the lounge side. When I look back to when I started this game, lounges, most, like, domestic airline lounges were terrible. Like, you'd go in and there'd be a few drinks and some nuts and. crackers or something like to eat. Like that'd be about it. Now more and more of the standard is you can easily get a full meal, you know, and often

some good drinks and things for free, you know, if you can enter the lounge. So while there's no doubt a negative trend about overcrowding, there are bright sides to where things are going. And as I said, lounges are getting nicer and nicer. On the hotel front, and this is still talking about elite status, many elite benefits are worth having, even if you go to a hotel that's overcrowded with elites. So, for example, if you're allowed free breakfast and if the hotel's actually honoring that perk, then, you know, you're getting free breakfast. It doesn't matter if 90% of the people in the restaurant are also getting free breakfast. breakfast, you still get free breakfast. So, you know, and the same thing can be said about things like

free parking, waived resort fees and so on. So not all of elite benefits are a competition, I guess, is a way to say that. So it's still good to get that elite status, especially when you could do it without, you know, spending a lot extra with a hotel chain. All right, let's get to the bigger points. So away from elite status and talk about earning points. In many ways, earning points has gotten easier than before. So yes, Nick listed a bunch of ways where it's gotten harder. Those are true. But on the flip side, welcome bonuses are getting bigger and bigger. I mean, we're seeing 200,000 and 300,000 point welcome offers out there, which is insane. Again, when I started this game, 50,000 was a good offer. Like, you know, that would be like an elevated offer. I remember when the

chase ink cards the no fee chase ink cards went to 40,000 points and that was huge because we'd never seen a no fee card offering 40,000 transferable points. That was insane. Today we would look at an offer like that and go, okay, they're not even trying. What is that? So things have changed, you know, for the better in a huge way towards bigger and bigger offers. The fact that, more cards are have a prevent you from signing up for the same card again and getting a new welcome off welcome bonus is really discouraging but do keep in mind that opportunities to sign up for cards with welcome bonuses that don't have language preventing um you from getting the bonus they they still come knocking every now and then especially with american express you'll get some kind of like

targeted offer and if you read the fine print and don't see anything about if you've had this card before, you're not, you're not eligible. Then you can sign up and you should be eligible for the offer. Yeah, actually, on that note, just this morning, I logged into my Amex card or my Amex account, I was looking at the card offers, new card offers. And within my new card offers, they're specifically targeted to me was add another to your account. And there was an ad for a business platinum and a business gold card, both of which I already have.

and it was specifically the language said add another card with the welcome bonus. So, you know, not only might you get one of those mail offers or something with no lifetime language, sometimes Amex will be like, yeah, we know you've got one. Here, take another one. And so, you know, there are lots of opportunities like that if you keep your eyes open. Exactly. Exactly. Earning on base spend keeps growing.

When I started the game 15 years ago, the same. Sapphire preferred card had just come out or was just about to come out. I can't remember. And it offered a stunning two points per dollar for travel and dining at the time and one point per dollar everywhere else and a 7% annual like bonus on your points. And so it was a transferable points card that the base earning was basically 1.07 if I'm remembering the details right. And that was amazing. And And the ability to get 2x for travel and dining was amazing too because before that we were looking at things like airline cards where you could earn 2x, you know, just for Delta or just for United, whatever the airline card was and 1X everywhere else. And that was like the standard. Now that's like just laughable, right? So, so, yeah, so Chase bump things up way back then to that sort of 1.07 as a great base earning rate. But then we started seeing opportunities for 1.3.3. five everywhere and that was exciting and then um you know then about i don't know five or six years ago

two x everywhere with transferable points became fairly common and um so uh you know that alone has been a huge positive trend for how many points per dollar we can earn from our spend and now we're starting to see little in little pockets pushing that even further so for example built's palladium card, it has a base earning rate of 2x everywhere, but there are ways to earn with that card 3x everywhere, 3.3x everywhere, or more, depending on how you use the points and build cash and all that stuff. And, you know, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're going to see that from other quarters as well. People like kind of trying to figure out how they can make a workable card offering even better than 2x everywhere, which is just,

stunning. Category bonuses too are growing bigger. I mentioned 2x. Every, uh, 2x travel and dining was a big thing 15 years ago. Um, fast forward to about five years ago, six years ago, where 3x, um, became a common category bonus. And that was like the gold standard where, you know, cards that offered 3x for, um, travel and dining were fantastic. Um, just as an example. And, uh, but now what, three X, uh, for category bonus. Um, you know, uh, for category of is so common that we're beginning to see two trends there. We're beginning to see 3X on much broader categories than before. Like I already mentioned built. It's possible to get 3X everywhere. But also things like the Alaska Admos Summit card where you get 3X for all foreign transactions.

You know, it's just a, especially if you live outside the United States and can get a U.S.-based card, that's an amazing thing to be able to get that 3X for all of that. for everything you spend. But we also see 4x opportunities expanding rapidly. Chase's Sapphire Reserve now is giving 4x for airfare and hotels. And Wells Fargo, Atoon is an oddball, but it has 4X in a huge, huge selection of categories. And that cashback can be moved into a Wells Fargo autograph card

to make and to turn into transferable points. we're also seeing a trend with bank travel portals each each of the card issuers want you to book travel through their portal so they offer big point bonuses when you book travel through them and a couple years ago the trend was like let's offer 5x to anyone booking travel through our portal but now 5x is pesay right we're seeing like chase 8x everywhere but other other banks for not necessarily all travel book through them, but we're seeing 10x and even 12x for booking certain types of things through those travel portals. So we're seeing just amazing multiples with those. All right, that's with the traditional, you know, banks. But we're also finding new opportunities to earn transferable points that didn't even exist years ago. Rackettin a few years back, that's the Rackadin shopping portal. They used to offer only cash back, a few years. back, they added the ability to earn points in the form of Amex membership rewards. Now, more

recently, you have the option to earn built points as well. A new portal-like thing, Rove, came out very recently, and they offer their own transferable points. I'm constantly, as someone who's, who's, you know, a blogger and a podcaster regularly getting messages from new, you know, startup saying, we have a new transferable points currency, basically, you know. And so things are coming all the time. Some of those things are likely to survive and become useful, or at least survive long enough for us to get value from them before they disappear. So I'm excited about what the future holds in that area. Point transfer opportunities.

Nick mentioned a bunch of ways in which point transfers are getting worse, but they're also getting better. So there's two sides of that coin. Until recently, we didn't have any way to transfer points anywhere near one-to-one to Japan Airlines, but now you can transfer one-to-one or close to one-to-one from several programs to Japan Airlines, which has some great sweet spots in their award charts. City gained the ability to transfer to American Airlines. We didn't have any way to transfer to American Airlines at that time until City took it up. Wells Fargo is regularly introducing new transfer partners,

including recently adding Wyndham as a one to two partner. Rove, which I mentioned a few seconds ago, has transfer partners like Japan Airlines and Air India. Now Air India, you'd be like, why do we care about that? Well, for very short flights, they have an unbelievable award chart where you could pay just a few thousand points to book, for example, a short United flight. And so they're definitely worth considering for those kind of things. And, you know, I could go on and on. So yes, well, things get worse, other things get better. using points. Let's talk about using points. So this is probably the biggest most visible thing that

everybody sees point prices rising and they do. No debating that. That point inflation is real. Of course, cash inflation is real too. And cash inflation tends to happen just all the time. Point inflation tends to be more jagged. And so, like, you know, a program might go a year, two years, four years before suddenly raising prices. And so when they do, it seems like a huge devaluation because, you know, they've gone up by 20% or 40%. But if you look all along at how cash prices have raised over that time, it probably is not really a inflation compared to what price. were, you know, at the beginning of that timeline, what cash prices were at the beginning. With airlines adding more and more premium seats to their new flights, which I mentioned earlier,

the award availability, if you're interested in business and first class type of seats, award availability on those type of flights should get better. So that's some good news. another thing is, you know, yes, it's harder than before to get first class awards, international first class awards. But business class is getting better and better, sweeter and sweeter. You know, as they build out new planes. See what you did there with sweeter and did there. You know, so maybe getting first class awards doesn't really matter when business class is getting

super lux. You know, the standard for what a business class, and they're in there, international business class seat needs to have has has gotten so much better than before. You know, when I started in the game, like the standard had had finally become that, that they need to have live flat seats and direct aisle access. And that didn't mean that they all had it. It was just more like to be competitive, you had to have that at that time. Now that's not enough.

You need, you know, giant inflate entertainment screen. You need a suite with doors. You need to have, for long-haul flights, you need to have mattress pads. Some are offering pajamas. You need higher-end food and drink. So this race towards more and more luxury and business class is a positive thing, if that's what floats your boat. And, you know, it certainly makes traveling long distances a lot more pleasant.

The other thing we're seeing about point prices is that programs, do every now and then change how they, how they, you know, price awards. And when that happens, often new Sweet Spot Awards appear. So, for example, when Alaska redid their rewards program to become Atmos, they, you know, they introduced brand new award charts. And then suddenly we're seeing amazing deals like short haul American airily. lines flights for only 4,500 points one way, or longer haul business class, like East Coast U.S. to Europe for only 45,000 points in business class. You know, those kind of things, what I'm

saying now might not last. Maybe by the time you're listening to this, they've changed that. But the point is new opportunities are often arising, especially when there's change of any sort. All right. Another thing Nick mentioned is that the opportunity. to book through partner programs have been decreasing. And that's, that is, that's a really unfortunate trend. And he pointed out United and is really bad about this. Delta has been bad about this for years. That is, they don't release a lot of premium cabin award space to their partners. And that's a big problem for us, because often the best point deals are by using a different program to book the airline you want to fly.

You know, for example, I had just mentioned using Alaska miles to book American Airlines. So that's, you know, that in the past has been true with Delta and United, for example, where you could use some foreign program points to get much better deals. So that is harder now than ever before, no question. But we are seeing some trends that help push. things back towards better pricing. I'm not going to say as good as it used to be. No way that's gone, but we do see things like, so for example, United has made it so that if you have one of their credit cards, you get a discount off of award pricing when flying United itself. Plus, you get

better access to their Polaris business class award space. And so just by having a card with a particular airline or hotel, you might be able to get better awards and cheaper or better availability than you'd get without that. So, you know, it's not, again, it's not countering the devaluation. It's giving us another path to find good awards that didn't necessarily exist before. The other thing that we see every now and then, or increasingly, I should say, is that foreign airlines are eager to sell their points to the U.S. market. And they do that often by making themselves available to transferable points programs or by introducing U.S. credit cards to the U.S. market. But regardless, they get paid for their miles when they do those things. And in order to be

successful at doing that, in order to get a lot of programs paying them for their miles, they need to have attractive awards. And so they often target the U.S. market with awards that look really attractive to us. So an example is, you know, Flying Blue, making business class between U.S. and Europe available for as low as 60,000 points one way is a very solid good deal. Virgin Atlantic. They're offering flights to London for as low as 29,000 points in business class one way. So we see things like that where, you know, it may be that, and it is the case, that these awards can be hard to find when you want and need them. But they are out there.

And so you could think of them as like, almost like sales that, you know, the airlines are trying to drive business their way. and so they need to make these available with some regularity in order to entice us. And the difference is the sale, they win when we're attracted to their miles. And so we buy more of their miles, and I put that in quotes, because we don't feel like we're buying miles when we transfer our transferable points to Flying Blue, for example. But that's what's happening in the back end. Finally, with regards to flights, award search tools have gotten so much better, have made it so much easier to find good awards than ever before.

So even with increased competition, I actually find it easier to find good international business class, for example, awards than I used to be able to do before the word search tools got so good, especially because of the ability to set up alerts so that you can just tell the tool what routes you're looking for and let it alert you when things become available because award availability changes all the time. All right. Lastly, let's talk a little bit about hotels. So even though hotels have, many hotel chains have abandoned award charts or made their award charts less exciting, less useful, yes, less valuable, I guess. You know, there are some that are still at least maintaining fixed prices. You know, Hyatt, Choice, and Wyndham all have fixed prices for their hotels. And even dynamic programs tend to have caps on standard room awards of some sort. Like they don't necessarily publish what those caps are. But if you look at Marriott hotels, for example, there's a category that they don't publish that's like behind the scenes for any given hotel that limits what the upper bound of the point pricing is. And so, you know, when you're looking for hotels in prime season and a prime location,

you're going to see cash prices through the roof and you see point prices, yeah, higher than usual, but not matching the high cash price. And so that's when you get some amazing deals. Another trend that's really good that, well, good for us as points consumers, is that more and more independent hotels are becoming available to book with points. And that's happening in a couple ways. One is there's these collections of independent hotels. like preferred hotels, like small luxury hotels that have made their hotels available through booking with points in various ways. But another way that's happening is that more and more, every major hotel chain, Marriott, Hilton,

even choice, they all have a collection, a brand, or multiple brands in some cases, of independent hotels. And basically what that means is they, They don't really impose any brand standards on these independent hotels that are out there. They just basically make themselves available to that hotel as a booking channel. And so the hotel gains because someone's searching through the Marriott website for where to stay and in some location is going to find them, these independent hotels. and that person will also be able to book those independent hotels using their hotel points.

So, you know, it's kind of a win-win for both the points consumer and the hotel itself. Does it end up driving prices higher, probably? But, you know, that's true, sort of across the travel space that prices have been going up up in recent years. Phew, okay. So a whole lot of optimism. What do you think, Nick, did I convince you that the points game marches on?

All right. So truth be told, you didn't have to do very much convincing because I, you know, as just has been the case for you, I've been playing the game for, you know, more than two or three years now. And as you said, exactly as you said, ever since I first got into this, people were lamenting what was gone and what was, you know, no longer. or how the game was over or dying or going to be over soon. And you nailed it when you said that the game just changes. And so you have to adapt your approach. And change is uncomfortable.

And especially if you've gotten into a groove with something that you liked having to change, it's uncomfortable, it's difficult. It can be frustrating. I mean, that's all natural stuff. But it's also inevitable. And so everything is going to change all the time. And so you can either spend your time being upset about what's gone or you can learn how to adapt. And I think, I mean, that's the case just in life in general, right? I mean, I have to teach that to my kids all the time. So I think that that's just a great takeaway to have that you got to look at it and problem solve a little bit and say, okay, well, I can't do this thing. But if I sit here all day long thinking about what I can't do, I still can't do it. So I better think instead about, okay, well,

what can I do? And how can I do it? That's the more effective approach. So, yeah, I mean, like you said, I'm earning lots and lots of points in miles every year. And I think that it's easy maybe as a listener or the show or reader of a blog to think that bloggers have some magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow where we just pick up piles of free points every day. But that's not typically the case. I mean, not to say that we sometimes there's referral opportunities. And we do earn some points that way. But you and I both earn lots of points from spending on credit cards and opening new credit cards. And we, we're able to kind of maintain quite a bit of travel that way. Luckily, we both have the flexibility to travel quite a bit. So we're able to travel more often than probably most people would be able to. But it's not just the flexibility. It's also that we keep earning the points. And so there are a lot of points out there to earn. But again, approach has to change over time. I think you made some fantastic points in terms of some of the positive changes that have happened, too. I mean, you mentioned airline lounges, for instance. And I think it's really interesting

that we're seeing airlines like JetBlue and Southwest that have never had lounges that are now opening lounges. And why are they doing that? Not because they want to give us free food, because they need to be competitive in the environment out there. And they know that to compete, they need to offer that. And I think that that's kind of at the heart of all of this, right? Everything that we've had, all the nice things we've had over time have been the result of programs competing for our business. I mean, that's true. Absolutely. Very much like capitalism 101, right? So programs are still going to continue to have to compete. And yeah, maybe they'll make some mistakes along the way.

And maybe they'll, you know, one program will devalue itself out of relevance for a while. But then if they want to continue to be competitive, they're going to make adjustments later on at some point or maybe not adjust when somebody else does in order to maintain whatever advantage it gives them. So I think that we'll continue to see programs compete in some way. It won't look exactly like it did before, but nothing else does either, you know, and nothing else will. So I'm excited.

I mean, I think that we continue to find new opportunities. And yes, award pricing is going up. But yes, we're still earning lots of points. I mean, if I look at how many points in miles I earned last year versus the year that I got into this game, I would guarantee you that I earned far more last year. Despite there being, quote unquote, easier ways or more ways to earn points years ago, just the points output has been much higher. So that's made it possible to stomach some of the devaluation sort of things. But no, I agree with you. I think you got me convinced that there's plenty of good news.

And if you're willing to adapt and change, the other thing that I want to point out that I meant to point out to is that, you know, if you're somebody who this is your hobby, this is what you enjoy doing, then you probably spend a fair amount of time, maybe listening to podcasts like this one, maybe reading blogs, maybe participating in internet forums with other people who are really into this hobby. And it can become really easy to forget that. those of us this attuned to the game are the super, super, super, super, super minority of people. And so, you know, you might feel like everybody's got elite status and everybody's doing this and

everybody's doing that. But in reality, we represent a really small slice of people still. And so the overall competition there, even though it might feel wider than it once was. And of course, that is the case. It's still not nearly as big as you might imagine it to be if you kind of get stuck in the echo chamber. So I think we'll continue to. to find great opportunities. And Greg, you've always been so good at looking on the bright side of things. I am particularly confident that you will continue to find all the great stuff you've found. Every time that we look at the doom and gloom, you come out with the bright side of things. And you're usually right. So I'm confident that we'll continue to see that.

Oh, there's no doubt. We will keep going. And just as Nick said, I like to look for the bright side of things. Nick is particularly good at finding the bright side in those complex award charts or wherever or by searching for awards and finding some quirk in a program. So we will continue finding those things and reporting them here. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media, join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs

up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Hey guys, Aaron Miller here from Armchair Explorer. And I just wanted to let you know that our new series is out now. We've got kiteski across Antarctica, Aboriginal storyteller, and the craziest whitewater race in the world. We're going on a bucket list hike across Italy. We're going to the fjords of Norway

in search of the Northern Lights and lots, lots more. Our goal is to take you on the trip of a lifetime every single week. You can find Armchair Explorer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now and at voyescape.com. The New York Times named the Fromer's Travel podcast one of the 13 Best for Travel. Why did they like it? Well, they said, and I quote, with charisma and candor, Pauline Fromer,

discusses the charms and ongoing transformations of places near and far, whether on the islands of Hawaii or on safari in Tanzania. Pretty nice, huh? We post new podcasts weekly, talking about travel from every angle. I hope you'll tune in.