Why Nick chose Amex points for 100KVacay

With Greg “setting the bar” for our latest Frequent Miler team challenge by using Chase Ultimate Rewards points, you might wonder why I chose Amex Membership Rewards points as my currency to out-Vacay Greg by using 100,000 Amex points. I didn’t fight Tim a bit for Citi points despite the clear lodging advantages, and despite my love of a good Vacasa vacation rental, I didn’t try to take Stephen’s Capital One points. Arguably, I already demonstrated what one can do with about 100K Amex points after having heavily leveraged them for a big Air Canada Aeroplan redemption en route to winning our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge. Why, then, did I want to lean on Amex again, particularly in what is purported to be a more lodging-focused challenge?

What is the 100K Vacay challenge? This fall, Nick, Stephen, and Tim have each picked a different transferable points currency they think can compete with Greg’s 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points, each trying to beat Greg’s 100K Vacay with one of their own. In the end, we’ll find out who can book the most amazing 100K point vacation!

I love Amex points because they are relatively easy to accumulate

In recent years, we have frequently referred to the Amex points parade, which has marched on and on with numerous opportunities to earn big welcome bonuses, authorized user bonuses, and more. Beyond that, it is possible to earn American Express Membership Rewards points through shopping portal Rakuten as well as via some very useful bonus categories on several Amex cards. Cumulatively, it all adds up to Amex points being easier to accumulate en masse than other transferable currencies. That alone makes whatever I do for the challenge pretty widely applicable in the sense that there are so many ways to earn 100,000 of my points.

All that said, in this case, while I expect the ease of accumulation to help me in terms of applicability, it is otherwise of no use to me. I can’t get more points for this challenge. I need to work within an artificial budget, but I love that it is one so easily accessible.

Amex has great airline partners

I know what you’re thinking: this is a competition that you expect to be about lodging. But I don’t think that needs to be as focal a point as Greg made it sound in his announcement post. After all, I still wanna get away. I love using these challenges as an excuse to get to some far-flung destination that might not have ever otherwise been on my radar and to show how easily it can be done. During 40K to Far Away, I ended up in Niue and joined the yacht club; in 3 Cards 3 Continents I ended up in the Arctic Circle in Finland to visit Santa and see the Northern Lights after snorkeling with whale sharks in Oman (and more). To me, an exciting vacation for one (just me) takes me somewhere I may not have considered were it not for miles and points.

And the good news is that Amex has the hands-down best set of airline transfer partners. They have almost every good partner that anyone else can access — and more. That gives me a multitude of ways to get away.

I typically love the combination of the relative ease of Amex points accumulation and its wide range of airline partners because that often makes it possible for me to make great use of partnerships for business class award tickets. In this case, since we are limited to 100K points, it feels like I will likely be limited to traveling in economy class, particularly if I want to go far.

The good news is that I think it is possible to get farther from home than many think despite the budgetary limitations.

Amex isn’t actually as weak for lodging as you think they are

Another reason I wanted Amex here is because a lot of people believe that Amex doesn’t offer good opportunities to use points for lodging. And that’s not as true as some think it is. I can’t wait to show just how well you can do.

In fact, I think many would be surprised at how much value can be had at the lower end of the spectrum with both Hilton and Marriott. While Hyatt certainly dominates the mid-tier hotel market and has much lower award pricing at the top end than competitors do, the disparity at the bottom end isn’t as big as it sounds. Sure, Greg could get a Category 1 Hyatt for as few as 3,500 points per night…..but I doubt he will! I don’t think Greg is very likely to stay at a Category 1 Hyatt and he is even less likely to do it during off-peak dates. I think it is far more likely that Greg will spend 8,000 to 12,000 points per night on lodging. Given the Amex-to-Hilton transfer ratio of 1:2, transferring 8K to 12K Amex points to Hilton would give me a budget of 16K to 24K per night with Hilton. While there aren’t necessarily tons of great properties in that pricing band, options do exist — even before accounting for something like a 5th night free redemption.

Furthermore, you can’t count out Marriott. While I typically advise strongly against transferring Amex points to Marriott, the fact is that there are at least some properties priced around 12.5K points per night that offer more than 1c per point in value.

Transfer bonuses are common

Another thing to absolutely love about this competition is that Amex frequently offers transfer bonuses, and they are often among the most generous in the industry outside of Bilt. I expect to see monthly transfer bonuses between now and when the competition kicks off. In fact, for the past two Septembers, Amex has launched around a dozen transfer bonuses near the beginning of September. That could make things tight in terms of transferring and booking if I waited for early September bonuses, but nonetheless there are likely to be at least a few great transfer bonus opportunities between now and “go” time.

The frequency of Amex transfer bonuses make them a superpower of this particular currency. I feel like I need to leverage at least one good transfer bonus.

My strategy

As I said above, I feel like the applicability of my strategy should naturally be high given the fact that I have what I feel is the easiest currency in which to earn 100,000 points.

However, Amex has some unique transfer partners that could give me a distinct advantage over my competitors. Nobody else could leverage ANA for round-the-world flights to connect multiple destinations, and one-way awards will soon make it possible to get some terrific deals on long-haul flights. Further, I am the only competitor who can transfer to Hilton Honors and I think it would be really fun to demonstrate great value from a transfer to Hilton for a lower-tier property, perhaps in a really interesting destination.

On the one hand, it makes the most sense to leverage those partners that make Amex Membership Rewards points stand apart from competitors. Wouldn’t it be great if I could demonstrate an outstanding vacation using Delta and Hilton?

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be neat if I beat everybody else by using partners that they all could have accessed? Wouldn’t that both demonstrate the strength of Membership Rewards as a currency and an above-average skill in using points and miles?

We have many partners that we all share: Avios, Air France / KLM Flying Blue, Emirates Skywards, JetBlue TrueBlue, Singapore Krisflyer, and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club are the notable examples.

To be clear, beating everyone with points that they could all access would be really, really hard from a lodging standpoint. In fact, it may not be possible at all. While Greg & I share Marriott and Stephen, Tim and I share Choice Privileges, there are no universal hotel partners. And we agreed that hotels need to be booked with points (or perhaps cash & points in the right scenario), not cash. I may not end up with a choice here: I may need to stick with beating their flights with points they could have (or arguably should have!) used.

Of course, as an audience member, I wouldn’t want to see one of us spend the whole “Vacay” on a plane. A big part of the point here is the destination(s). If I do manage to double up on destinations, I’ll likely need to make sure that there is some bit of local flair that demonstrates why I’m there.

Still, it’s hard for me to imagine a big trip that doesn’t include at least two stops. I have mentioned many times before that my wife loves to travel but hates to fly. When we begin thinking about a trip to a far-off place, she almost always wonders what else we could see if we’ll already be in a particular far away destination. I am rarely ever planning a trip to just one place. I might have to adjust my thinking on that here in favor of a 5th night free booking of some sort, but I feel like I might get stir crazy if I spent 5 nights in the same hotel, so the jury is still out on this.

Bottom line

I chose Amex Membership Rewards because I love how easy they are to accumulate, their excellent slate of transfer partners, and because I think they are under-appreciated when it comes to strength for booking hotels. Furthermore, frequent transfer bonuses should make it easy to stretch the value of my points further. While they have some excellent unique transfer partners, I am more tempted to use transfer partners available to at least some of my competitors in order to demonstrate just how useful any of the transferable currencies can be  — and, ultimately, why I’ll (hopefully) deserve your vote to win.

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