This is the moment you’ve been waiting for! On last week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, Greg and Nick announced their picks for the 2024 Bonvoyed Awards.
Now it’s your turn. In the poll below, you can give your take on most important award of all: the readers’ choice winner for loyalty Grinch of the year.
Read through the nominees and then vote for the loyalty program that you think was the most disloyal to its customers in 2024 – the program that Scrooged us so much that they out-Bonvoyed Marriott.
Who do you think deserves the nod for for the People’s Choice 2024 Bonvoyed Award?
2024 Disloyalty Nominees…
- Chase drops Priority Pass drops restaurants. Priority Pass memberships offered across a range of credit card issuers have dropped restaurant access in recent years. Unfortunately the list of cards offering this benefit got even small in 2024, as Chase dropped restaurant access from the Priority Pass memberships offered via the Sapphire Reserve, Ritz-Carlton and J.P. Morgan Reserve cards. For cardholders who fly from/through airports that have Priority Pass restaurants, this could be a huge loss, especially if those airports don’t have any actual lounges you can visit as an alternative.
- Virgin Atlantic moves to dynamic awards: In October Virgin Atlantic moved to a dynamic pricing model for award flights. After the change, things are actually looking pretty good, with some routes seeing a reduction in not only the number of miles required for an award flight but in the total taxes and fees too. What remains to be seen is how long this lasts. It’s not too surprising that Virgin Atlantic would offer some good pricing at first in order to gain positive coverage of the changes and give people a perception of dynamic award pricing being a decent value. However, with Delta owning 49% of Virgin Atlantic and their penchant for absurd dynamic awards when redeeming SkyMiles we wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some much less generous award pricing.
- Wyndham vacates high value Vacasa bookings: You can still book Vacasa vacation rentals with Wyndham points for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that you used to be able to book properties that cost up to $500 per bedroom per night for 15K, but now that cap has been lowered to $250. Anything between $250 – $500 per bedroom per night now costs 30K points (per bedroom/night) and properties over $500 are completely excluded. Ouch. While this is still a valuable use of Wyndham points, the lower cap removes many great options.
- Virgin devalues Delta One awards to Europe: One of Virgin Atlantic’s few remaining sweet spots was the ability to book one-way Delta business class flights to Europe for 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles + only $5.60 in taxes and fees. Unfortunately, in a no-notice overnight devaluation, Virgin turned it from sweet to sour. Delta flights to Europe in business class now require significantly more miles (in most cases), but the really bad news is massively increased taxes, fees and surcharges – which are now a whopping $1,000+.
- British Airways, Finnair and Qatar devalue North American awards:There once was a time where Avios were considered one of the best partner currencies with which to book domestic American Airlines awards – availability was great and pricing was often better than via AA itself, especially for shorter flights. That time has come and gone. First, British Airways rolled out a series of price-hikes specific to the domestic US awards, the latest of which has made the program completely non-competitive for most routes within the lower-48. Qatar Airways Avios then followed suit in August, bringing its pricing for domestic awards for AA and Alaska more or less in line with BA’s. Finnair was the latest, increasing its pricing as much as 50% for domestic American Airlines flights, pretty much putting the final nail in the coffin of using Avios in the US for short or medium-length flights on AA.
- Etihad nerfs cancellation and point expiration policies: In February of 2024, Etihad instituted some draconian award cancellation policies that were immediately among the worst in the industry. The “fee” varies based on when you cancel: if do it more than 21 days from departure, you lose 25% of the total fare; from 8-21 days that rises to 50%; within 7 days it’s 75% and if you cancel within 24 hours you lose the entire cost of the flight. In addition, Etihad made it hard to extend the life its points and now the only way to do it is by flying Etihad or a partner airline and crediting the flight to Etihad. Both policies make it much more unappealing to earn and burn Etihad points.
- Bilt reduces Rent Day earnings to 1K: In 2024, Bilt made a major change to the value proposition of its monthly Rent Day. Bilt cardholders now only earn double bonus on Rent Day up to 1,000 bonus points per month — down from up to 10,000 points per month previously. Worse yet, that change was communicated via a terms and conditions link buried at the bottom of a Friday afternoon email from Founder & CEO Ankur Jain that focused on Bilt benefits with no mention at all of this change in the body of the email.
- Wyndham kills free cruise perks with business card: While it sounds like a scam, it’s long been possible to turn elite status earned from the $95 Wyndham Business credit card into months worth of free cruises and free hotel nights if you play your cards right. The first, essential step of doing this is to match the Wyndham Diamond status that you get with the card to Caesars Diamond, after which all sorts of the possibilities await. Unfortunately, Wyndham’s tier match page has now posted terms saying that, starting 2/1/25, Wyndham Diamond earned from the Wyndham Business Earner card will no longer match to Caesars Diamond. Bon voyage, free cruising.
- Hyatt breaks our hearts with Mr & Mrs Smith: When Hyatt announced their purchase of Mr & Mrs Smith (MMS), we were very excited. After all, Mr & Mrs Smith’s collection of independent hotels includes incredible properties and brands like the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur California; Virgin Limited Edition properties including the luxury safari properties Mahali Mzuri and Ulusaba; Six Senses Resorts; Aman Hotels & Resorts; Belmond Hotels; Rosewood Hotels; and many more. We hoped and expected Hyatt to cram these hotels into its existing award chart, which would have given us the opportunity to get incredible value with our points. Alas, it was not to be. Hyatt is dynamically pricing MMS award stays instead of relying on an award chart and most awards get a paltry 1 to 1.4 cents per point value. That’s terrible compared to getting between 1.7-2.0 cents per point value on most average Hyatt hotel stays. In addition, MMS offers little in way of guaranteed elite benefits to customers that book throught Hyatt. Taken together, this means that the highest-priced hotels cost absurd numbers of points and we recommend against using your Hyatt points to book Mr & Mrs Smith hotels in most cases.
- Chase drops referral bonuses on Ink cards: Chase made two major downgrades to the popular referral offers for the Chase Ink Business Preferred, Ink Business Unlimited and Ink Business Cash cards in 2024. The first limited the referrer to only 20K Ultimate Rewards points per referral, which was 20,000 points below the previous offer of 40K. In addition, the yearly maximum that you can earn for for referrals from each card will be going down. Until 12/31/24, it’s still possible to earn a total of 200K points per year from referrals. As of 1/1/25, that yearly max will be 100K. Household Ink referrals will still be appealing with the lower bonus thresholds, but man that 40K/200K is a train that we’re sad to see depart. This nominee was not discussed in the Bonvoyed Awards podcast. Thanks to Ralph for reminding us of this one.
Reader Dis-Loyalty Picks…
Drumroll please… The 2024 People’s Choice Bonvoyed award goes to… Please pick your choice below.
Who deserves to win the 2024 People's Choice Bonvoyed Award?
- Hyatt breaks our hearts with Mr & Mrs Smith (23%, 268 Votes)
- Bilt reduces Rent Day earnings to 1K max/month (19%, 215 Votes)
- Chase Priority Pass drops restaurants (15%, 169 Votes)
- British Airways, Finnair and Qatar devalue North American awards (12%, 140 Votes)
- Wyndham kills free cruise perks with business card (9%, 109 Votes)
- Wyndham vacates high value Vacasa bookings (7%, 80 Votes)
- Chase drops referral bonuses on Ink cards (5%, 62 Votes)
- Virgin devalues Delta One awards to Europe (3%, 38 Votes)
- Etihad nerfs cancellation and point expiration policies (3%, 37 Votes)
- Virgin Atlantic moves to dynamic awards (3%, 34 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,152
Loading ...Greg & Nick’s Picks
On the 2024 Bonvoyed Awards Podcast, the winners were as follows:
Greg and Nick’s pick: Hyatt breaks our hearts with Mr & Mrs Smith
Somewhat surprisingly, both Greg and Nick both picked Hyatt’s deflating integration of Mr & Mrs Smith into World of Hyatt. On the heels of losing Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH), each one of them had high expectations for the value that Hyatt would bring to MMS…and both were sorely disappointed. In addition, it created a precedent for “off-the-chart” pricing that Hyatt has since used with other new additions to World of Hyatt.
2023 Winners
In case you’re wondering, here were the winners in 2023:
- Nick’s pick: Aeroplan’s Etihad alliance goes astray
- Greg’s pick: Hotels.com becomes 5x less rewarding
- Reader’s Choice: Amex family rules limit access to points parade
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BA comms team can pat themselves on their back. They dropped this massive devaluation while you’re out and about celebrating…
All these ten choices are nothing. The winner is BA and it’s not even close!
I voted for Hyatt/MMS, not because it was that painful in that they only added something new that turned out to be useless. It’s more about what this signals from Hyatt. The pendulum clearly swung too far, and now it’s swinging back. Perhaps Hyatt realized that Marriott can get away with offering complete garbage to elites, and so can airlines, so perhaps they were being too generous. In any case, I’m not requalifying for Globalist this year, and I don’t really think I’ll miss it all that much.
I think Wyndham can get more votes if
the heading were about losing the ability to match to Caesars Diamond, instead of the “free” cruise perks which is a small part of Caesars Diamond benefit.
There’s an argument that the M/M Smith disappointment might foreshadow a Hyatt transition to dynamic pricing systemwide. Maybe not all at once but gradually.
Hyatt is already doing it slowly by pulling certain brands out of their award chart like their vacation rental program and now MMS. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miraval or Allia got pulled out next. I’d definitely take advantage of those specific properties sooner than later if they’re on your bucket list.
It didn’t impact me at all because I don’t use the program, but Etihad’s change feels the most downright punitive to me. A lot of these other changes are whittling away at value which is kind of to be expected in this game, but Etihad’s change feels like them saying “oh you want to use our points? Well F—- you if your plans change!”
At least FM has not devalued. If anything, it’s more valuable than ever.
What about the cases where their niche sweet spot takes have resulted in subsequent devaluation of the associated program a la Wyndham vacasa?
How could you possibly know THEY caused it?
I honestly don’t think FM is big enough to kill any deal, but even if they are, someone will report on these deals and kill them eventually if FM doesn’t. Thinking you can keep a deal secret to a limited number of people forever is pissing in the wind. No really good deal stays secret forever. The internet is too broad and there are too many people in existence now. Everything will get killed or devalued eventually. That’s why Nick and Greg constantly say to strike while the iron’s hot.
Take advantages of all the deals that you can, where you can, for as long as you can, and when something gets killed, move on to the next thing. If you can’t deal with that reality of the travel rewards game, then you shouldn’t be playing the game. At the very least, you shouldn’t be following a website that brings you deals that you would have never known about and then complaining that the same site killed the deal.
As they say, if you’re sitting in traffic complaining about traffic, you are traffic.
I’ve never heard that traffic saying before, but I’m certainly going to repeat it. That’s a good one.
Bilt’s 1k Rent Day cap is just one facet of the card’s overall drop in utility.
Regarding the Wyndham Diamond to Caesar’s match – can you still match before the Feb 1st deadline and enjoy status for the year? Or will your Caesar’s status end feb 1st?
It’ll end Feb 1
I used to use Avios a lot on AA flights in the US. Looks like I will not be doing so anymore once I burn off the AVIOS I have left.
I don’t think this gets enough attention, especially the impact it has on the utility of Chase UR and Wells Fargo points. For those two point systems, Avios are basically the only way to book AA flights other than cash fares (Chase will at least give you a portal bonus). Other programs still have Qantas, Cathay, or Etihad (yikes) for some stuff. Given the VS devaluation of DL awards and UA’s decision to severely restrict reward access, it is increasingly difficult to book domestic awards using international programs.
Bilt’s change definitely has the biggest effect on me. I am not staying at luxury Mr and Mrs Smith properties anyway. But I pay rent every month and earn a fair amount of points, and Bilt status used to be worth pursuing. Now it is just a slog. .
Avios prices for first class domestic flights on AA have nearly tripled on the routes I travel, in less than 2 years.
Not looking forward to using Mr & Mrs Smith GC at any of their locations.
Not just the cap on Bilt Rent Day. Also no bonus on taxes, no trivia points and no worthwhile promotions anymore (or if there is one, the cap makes it meaningless). For those who don’t rent, they kind of killed the usefulness of the credit card. For an extra maximum 500 points per month compared with CFU, is it really worth putting five transactions per month on this card?
My thoughts exactly. They made Bilt less fun and exciting which means less spending on their CC. It was a good run…
I agree. The cumulative negative changes that Bilt has made this year (not just the 1000 cap) definitely took the prize this year. It went from one of my most used cards, to the bottom of my sock drawer. I don’t even bother with rent day anymore. What a shame!
Fully agree about Bilt. Their primary pitch from the start was they are the only card that earns points on rent. For them to monkey with this specific feature of their card is not only disappointing, but almost a full reversal from the original message that attracted so many to sign up.
Bilt may not win reader’s choice because most FM readers in our hobby do not have the card (due to no SUB) but devaluing the primary feature of the card that caused most of the customers to signup SHOULD earn massive amounts of negative attention.
But they haven’t monkeyed with the card earning points from rent, just the amount of bonus points you can get for rent day spend. Your rent still earns the same number of points as before.
Bilt got my vote too. They were partly a victim of their own success, because the program had so much value previously. But Bilt lowered the 10k Rent Day limit less than a year after raising the loyalty tier thresholds, which is low for a company that’s plugged into the points & miles world. Probably would have gone Hyatt/Mr & Mrs Smith if the Bilt changes were effective Jan 2025
I agree. I was excited about Mr. and Mrs.Smith since I was hoping to use free night awards and suite upgrade awards as well as receiving Globalist benefits. Instead we got no loyalty benefits and a dynamic award chart at generally bad point values. The reason this is particularly significant is that I am actually running out of Hyatt hotels in places I want to stay. MMS would have really helped with that and I had already chosen hotels where I wanted to stay before finding out Hyatt basically lied to Greg. It also means absent some significant change, I will almost certainly give up on earning Globalist after 2025. So, I was particularly upset that Bilt nuked their program for me, but MMS would have definitely been my second choice this year.
I hear ya. MMS is a little easier to swallow for me because I didn’t get much value when they were with IHG, and SLH has made Hilton much more useful. I’ve found HH to be the easiest program to be my 2nd choice after Hyatt (multiple Aspires, hit the $15k on the Surpass, buying points, signing up for the lower tier cards when they offered a FNC, MR transfer when bonused, 30% back from C1 shopping, almost constant bonus on paid stays, etc). 2024 definitely made reaching Globalist harder/more expensive and a thumbs down on the MMS integration. But a bigger thumbs down to Bilt