This week, my wife and I redeemed over $2,000 worth of Capital One Shopping rewards for Hotels.com gift cards. The maximum Hotels.com gift card denomination available through Capital One Shopping is $500, so we redeemed for five separate gift cards and then used the combine cards function on the Hotels.com website to combine the value of our cards.
Unfortunately, since it has been a while since the last time I did this, I forgot that you need to merge all of the cards that you wish to merge at one time. Hotels.com gift cards can only be merged once. Once cards have been merged, you can’t merge them again.
Here’s what I mean: when you go to the balance merge tool seen above, you’ll enter your first card number and the number of a card you’d like to merge to it. If you have more than two gift cards to combine, resist the temptation to click the button to “confirm merge” on just two gift cards, or else you’ll end up with a merged card that can no longer be merged with another card (ask me how I know).
Silly me, I forgot that, so I ticked the box above and clicked the button to merge the first two $500 cards into a single $1,000 card. Then, I couldn’t merge my other Hotels.com gift cards with that one. The good news is that I had two bookings to make, and one booking was about $1,200, so I only ended up having to come out of pocket for about $200 to make up the difference. Then, I got smarter, and I combined three more Hotels.com gift cards into a single card worth ~$1,400 by entering all of the gift card numbers before combining them.
That ended up working out well enough since I was making two separate reservations, and the first two-card merge (for a single $1,000 card) nearly covered the first stay. But, had I been looking to make a single $2,000 booking, I’d have been really frustrated. While the merge tool does warn you that you will only be able to merge once, it isn’t as intuitive as I’d like. Hopefully, the next time I go to do this, I won’t forget.
A word to the wise: make sure that your chosen property accepts Hotels.com gift cards before you go to all this trouble. Not all properties can be booked with gift cards. If you go all the way to the checkout screen where you enter payment information, you’ll need to keep your eye out for a rather missable little link on the right side to use a gift card.
That link is so missable (and curiously separate from all of the other payment-related fields) that my heart sank when I first got to the checkout page above, thinking that I couldn’t use my gift card. I nearly gave up and entered a credit card before finding the link.
The good news is that I was able to redeem Capital One Shopping rewards to book a couple of non-chain-affiliated properties in Europe that will accommodate 5 people in one room, but Hotels.com did force me to shake some rust off to clear the bar and make it through their hoops.
On the blog this week, read about a loyalty program on the rise, a Hyatt trick that can be employed by anyone with Discoverist status or higher that you need to know about before May 20th, how to put your ThankYou points together by combining instead of sharing them, and more.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
Rove Miles adds Air Canada Aeroplan as its newest transfer partner
Rove Miles continues to be on a roll this week, adding Air Canada Aeroplan as its latest transfer partner and offering a 25% transfer bonus in the launch month. This really makes a difference in making Rove competitive with all of the other transferable currencies on the market. A sizable hole for them had been a widely useful Star Alliance transfer partner, and this fills that gap.
Do note that Air Canada Aeroplan is scheduled to make some award chart changes on June 1st, but it will still continue to be a solid program for booking Star Alliance awards without surcharges. Overall, this makes Rove Miles a really serious contender in terms of desirability. Rove has a number of unique partners that you can’t find anywhere else, and with the addition of Aeroplan, it now has a well-rounded set of partners that you can earn through other currencies as well and combine forces for a valuable award.
I’m just disappointed that I don’t have more paid hotel stays to book, because I would like to earn some more Rove miles.
A secret Rove superpower: Air India Maharaja Club for shorter Star Alliance awards
While the Rove Miles news this week was the addition of Star Alliance program Air Canada Aeroplan, Rove already had a partner with interesting pricing for short-distance domestic United Awards in Air India Maharaja Club. In fact, short-distance United Awards can be booked for just 3,500 miles in economy class or 7,000 miles in domestic first class. Even the medium-distance bands look pretty good, as does Denver to and from Hawaii for 13,500 points each way.
All that said, two readers in the comments mentioned being unable to book awards unless they first fly Air India two times on separate PNRs and credit those flights to Air India Maharaja Club. I’ve not heard data points like that before (and we had another reader report booking tickets on United for a few passengers with no such requirement). I’ve read posts from other sites dating back over the last year about the ability to book United flights with Air India Maharaja Club without mention of that restriction, so I’m not sure how commonly enforced the restriction is or whether there is a way to avoid it. I haven’t yet had occasion to book one of these, but I’ll certainly try the next time I have an opportunity.
Transferable Points Changing Fortunes | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep357 | 5-8-26
All this talk of Rove makes one wonder how they now stack up against other currencies. Conversely, with Citi recently having devalued transfers to a couple of key hotel programs and set to end Points Sharing next weekend, ThankYou seems headed in the opposite direction. Where does everything else shake out? On this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, we go “trendy”, discussing which programs are trending upward and which are trending downward.
Can I save points on a Hyatt award with a date change trick? | Question of the Week Ep2 | 5-4-26
With the coming Hyatt category changes and the launch of the new award chart on May 20th, a reader or podcast listener wrote in to ask about trying to save points on a future reservation by booking now and changing dates later. Unfortunately, that won’t work the way that they intended. Howwever, as you’ll see in the next post below, there may be a way to lock in the award price now, even if you don’t have enough points to make a booking.
Hyatt Points Advance: The Globalist perk you didn’t know about (Lock in current award pricing)
Take note: if you want to book a Hyatt property before the May 20th award chart implosion and category changes, it might be possible to call and make a reservation even though you don’t yet have the points in your account to cover the booking. Contrary to what I said on the original version of this week’s coffee break episode, making a points advance reservation does indeed lock in the current award pricing. If you’re eyeing a trip sometime over the next year that you don’t yet have the points to plan, it can be worth making a reservation now to lock in the current price.
Which Premium Cards are Keepers?
The credit card landscape is always changing, and along with those big changes, you have to be aware of how the value proposition has changed when it comes to the cards currently in your collection. Our spreadsheet for determining which premium cards are keepers has been fully updated to account for a number of card changes and launches that have happened in recent months. If you’re trying to determine which of your cards are keepers, you’ll want to make a copy of this spreadsheet and create your own valuations.
As Greg advises in the post, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of being conservative with the values you assign to perks. Think of them in terms of how much you would pay to subscribe to those benefits, not in terms of how much you might save if you’re able to take advantage of them. There’s a big difference between the amount of money I would pre-pay in advance for a product or service that I may or may not use versus the price to just pay for that product when and if I need it. If you’re subscribing up front, which is effectively what you’re doing when you pay the annual fee on your credit card, you should be getting a sizable discount.
How to combine Citi ThankYou accounts (and what might be getting in your way)
Citi has made waves recently with the announcement that it will no longer allow points sharing, which means that you’ll soon no longer be able to transfer points from one Citi ThankYou account to another Citi ThankYou account. However, it continues to be possible to combine your own ThankYou accounts. In other words, if you have multiple Citi credit cards that earn ThankYou points, it is possible to combine the points from all of your ThankYou points-earning cards. It will continue to be possible to do that even after points sharing ends.
This post explains the difference between points sharing and combining ThankYou accounts, along with how to get your ThankYou accounts combined. Note that, beyond the tips in the post, a reader in the comments reports that there are some profile fields that are not visible to the user, so it’s possible that you will need to call even after you get your ThankYou profile information matching. To be clear, the key tip in this post is to make sure your ThankYou profile information matches, not your Citi profile information. More info is in the post.
American Express® Gold Card changes: Minor tweaks, good limited-time offers
American Express has very lightly touched up the Gold card, though you would be forgiven if you looked and weren’t sure what was new. In my opinion, the changes here are a nothing burger, but, in my opinion, that’s a tasty dish as compared to the increase I expected to see in the annual fee. I’m glad that there will be no change to the annual fee, and the small additions are kind of nice to have if not wildly exciting.
Amex Gold gets a slight touch-up | Coffee Break Ep104 | 5-5-26
On this week’s coffee break, Greg and I discuss those light touch-ups to the Gold card and what we think it all means in terms of the ongoing value proposition of the card.
Eat out, earn more: Guide to card-linked dining programs for airlines, hotels & more
All this talk about the Amex Gold card makes me hungry. If you’re looking for the best ways to stack good dining rewards, you’ll want to check the latest updates to Stephen’s post about all of the various card-linked dining programs and ways to save while going out to eat.
New JetBlue Premier card benefits are live, now with 100K welcome offer
I’m including this post in this week-in-review to make regular readers aware that these previously announced benefits on the JetBlue Premier Card are finally live. We recently published a Coffee Break episode all about Barclays and JetBlue polishing the Premier Card with new benefits, so it’s good to see those benefits live and the introductory bonus increased. However, it is worth noting that the 25 tile benefit won’t post in the first year of card membership.
Domes Noruz Chania, Crete hotel review (Marriott & Fine Hotels + Resorts® property)
Stephen and his wife recently visited Crete, Greece. I was particularly curious about their review of this particular property, as I stayed at a different Domes property on the opposite end of Crete several years ago (Domes of Elounda) and had a terrific stay and one of the most amazing upgrades I’ve ever seen. After reading Stephen’s review, I would probably look elsewhere if going to the Chania side of Crete unless I were simply looking to burn FHR credits. I will say that I tend to enjoy traveling in shoulder season when prices are lower for high-quality places, but I wonder if traveling during peak season might have changed Stephen’s perspective at least a little bit on this property.
Resource posts updated
We make an effort to keep our various guides and key resources up to date with the latest program details. The following guides were fully updated and republished this week. These are always worth checking out if you are new to the guides, and it can be worth bookmarking those resources which you may be likely to need for easy reference.
- United MileagePlus Complete Guide (2026)
- What are IHG points worth?
- Best ways to get to Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific using miles (2026)
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on this week’s last chance deals to make sure you grab things ending this week before they’re gone.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I strongly warn against getting hotels.com gift cards unless it is for a stay that is nonrefundable. On multiple occasions I have canceled stays and they have not refunded my gift cards. Getting them to do so was a huge pain as I would be bounced back and forth between the gift card company and hotels. I had done it successfully but it took pleading and multiple phone calls and explaining of how I was being bounced. Finally, the last time, I didn’t complete it and lost a couple hundred bucks of gift cards. I got bounced two times and didn’t follow up a third time as I kept having reasons to put it off until I finally wrote it off. Will never use them again.
BTW, I used to use them a lot bc of the good loyalty program and the discounted gift cards. Loyalty program is now terrible and the gift card problems are reason to stay away from that second lure.
Small note about the hotel.com gift cards. You can book a hotel with a gift card and then cancel. It will generate a new hotel.com gift card which you can then combine with your remaining gift cards. Also I was told you can reach out to support and they can combine more then 2k but they require receipts for all gift card you want to combine.
Am I missing something with the hotels.com gift cards? Couldn’t you just book hotels with the C1 card and then use the travel reimbursement function to erase the charge and get the points?
Capital One Shopping is a public shopping portal that has nothing to do with Capital One apart from being owned by Capital One. You can only redeem those rewards for gift cards. We’ve written a lot about the Capital One Shopping portal because it often has incredible targeted rates. For instance we got 90% back on a bunch of bedding from Tuft and Needle, I got 70% back on the Ray-Ban Metas I bought, etc. Those percentages back can only be redeemed for gift cards.
Again, it’s a public shopping portal that’s totally separate from their whole credit card ecosystem. Yes you could use Capital One miles to erase the purchase if you were paying and looking to use your Capital One miles that way. I’d rather use my Capital One miles to transfer to partners, but Capital One shopping rewards can only be redeemed for gift cards. Again, we’ve written pretty extensively about that separately.
Ah got it thanks!
Isn’t points advance only available to Globalists? I don’t think Discoverists and Explorists get this perk.
See the update to the post. Back when Greg originally published it in 2021 he said the only mention he could find in the term just made it sound like Discoverist and Explorist could use it but he wasn’t sure. This week we’ve heard from several people with Discoverist or Explorist who have made Points Advance reservations. That’s why we updated the post.
Whoa! I had no idea.
It always amazes me every week when I read the week in review post that shows how many quality posts the FM team writes and updates every week. Keep up the great work!
Thanks, Grant!