Citi announced yesterday that as of August 23, 2026, there’ll be some changes to the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®. In news that won’t surprise anyone, one of those changes will be a higher annual fee. That higher annual fee will also come with some added benefits which may or may not be worth the extra $100 each year depending on your situation.
One of those benefits is an up to $250 credit twice per year for bookings through AA Vacations. While that credit might look somewhat worthless on the face of it, it could be a surprisingly good benefit that’ll make for a cheap—or even free—getaway.
You can find the full announcement here, but here’s a quick rundown of all the upcoming changes.
Increased annual fee
Through August 22, 2026, the card’s annual fee will be $595. From August 23, that’ll be increasing by $100 per year to $695.
The cost of authorized user cards will be remaining the same: $175 for the first three (i.e. it’s $175 whether you add one, two, or three authorized users), then $175 for each additional authorized user after that.
Whether that additional fee is worth it will depend on how you value the following new and/or increased benefits.
Up to $100 back on American Airlines in-flight & eligible Admiral’s Club purchases
This’ll potentially be the easiest benefit to max out and get your $100 back from the higher annual fee. That said, it’ll depend on how much you’d ordinarily spend in-flight or on things like premium drinks in Admiral’s Club lounges.
If you’re happy enough with the complimentary drink selection in the lounges and travel in a cabin class that means you don’t have to worry about purchasing food and drinks on board, this up to $100 benefit might be meaningless to you, especially now that American offers free Wi-Fi domestically and on some international flights. However, if you often travel longer distances domestically in economy and/or appreciate the premium drink selection in Admiral’s Clubs, I imagine you could max out the $100 benefit pretty easily.
Up to $500 back on American Airlines Vacations packages
For the right person, this could prove to be a valuable new benefit. When booking a travel package or experience through American Airlines Vacations and paying with your Citi / AAdvantage Executive card, you’ll get up to $250 back from January to June and up to $250 back from July through December each year.
If you’re paying cash for flights, accommodation, and/or a rental car, these packages can sometimes offer some very good savings even before the $250 you’d be getting back from this new card benefit. That said, I imagine the number of Citi / AAdvantage Executive cardholders who are booking packages such as these through AA Vacations isn’t going to be particularly high.
Interestingly, with many package sites you have to book your flight and a hotel or car; that’s certainly an option with AA Vacations, but you can also just book a hotel and a car in case you’re wanting to book award flights or flights with a different airline. Provided that type of booking qualifies—and the terms certainly make it sound like they do (“Eligible travel packages include a booking with two or more travel components, such as a flight, car reservation, or hotel booking”)—it’ll make it much easier to stick closer to the $250 threshold when booking a one or two night stay and renting a car, perhaps for a staycation or a weekend away somewhere.
For example, I checked AA Vacations for a hotel/rental car package for two nights over a weekend in October in Savannah, GA. There are all kinds of reasonably priced options, such as the Element Savannah Midtown for a total of $354.34, making it a net cost of $104.34 after accounting for the $250 credit.
Element is one of Marriott’s extended stay brands, so you’ll get a kitchen in your room, as well as free breakfast even if you don’t have any Marriott elite status. n.b. Marriott elite status would be meaningless anyway as this would be classed as an Online Travel Agency (OTA) booking, so you’d be ineligible for status benefits.
If you just need to book a rental car somewhere for a short period of time, it could be worth doing that through AA Vacations, picking the cheapest hotel you can find—even if you don’t want to stay there—and utilize this benefit for a free or almost free rental.
Increased hotel & rental car bonus mile earnings
At the moment, the Executive card awards 10X miles when booking hotels through AAdvantageHotels.com and rental cars through AAdvantageCars.com. That earning rate will increase to 12X for both sites.
Earn more Loyalty Points when hitting earning thresholds
The card currently earns 1 Loyalty Point per dollar spent on the card; that’s not changing. What is changing is the ability to earn more Loyalty Points as a cardholder when you earn a certain number of Loyalty Points.
At present, you earn 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points when earning 50,000 Loyalty Points in a status year, and another 10,000 when earning 90,000 Loyalty Points in a status year. Some, all, or none of those Loyalty Points can come from spend on your Executive card, but you do need to have an Executive card to earn them.
From August 23, 2026, there’ll be two more earning tiers where you’ll earn an additional 10,000 Loyalty Points: at 165,000 and 240,000 Loyalty Points. If you’re someone who racks up Loyalty Points with ease and so hit those higher tiers without a problem, earning even more of them from being an Executive cardholder will be a nice benefit to have.
Avis President’s Club Status
This is a new benefit which is set to be available for enrollment through August 31, 2028.
One of the card’s existing benefits is up to $120 back on Avis (and Budget) car rentals, so having President’s Club status to go with it is nice to have.
Increased Lyft credits
The card currently gives a $10 credit each month after taking three Lyft rides in a calendar month and paying for them with your Executive card. That credit will be increasing to $15 per month which is great for someone who’s actually using Lyft for at least four rides per month and paying with this card. I suspect the number of people who actually do that though is minimal, so for the majority of cardholders this’ll be a meaningless benefit change.
Complimentary Omni Hotels Champion Status
Citi AAdvantage Executive primary cardholders will also get Champion Status in Omni Hotels’ loyalty program. Benefits of Champion status include:
- Free upgrade by 1 room type level (subject to availability)
- Early check-in from 1pm (subject to availability)
- Late checkout as late as 3pm (subject to availability)
- Daily complimentary bottled water
- Daily beverage delivered each morning
- Four items pressed or four shoeshines for free
- Local market amenity upon arrival
- Increased earning of Omni credits
Omni Hotels free night award
Primary cardholders will also receive an Omni Hotels free night award each calendar year (which comes in the form of 100 Omni Credits), but only after completing a qualifying stay of two or more consecutive nights.
A slight catch to this is that you do have to pay for the 2+ night stay with your Executive card. That’s a shame because there are dozens of Omni properties in the US that are bookable through Amex’s The Hotel Collection and thus can be booked using the up to $300 hotel credit on American Express Platinum® and Business Platinum® cards, but those stays wouldn’t be eligible as you wouldn’t be paying with the Executive card. I guess there could potentially be a loophole where you prepay for your stay using an Amex hotel credit, then pay for a small amount of incidentals at checkout using your Citi AAdvantage Executive card. There’s probably a low likelihood that’ll work, but it might be worth a try.
It’ll also be interesting to see if this Omni partnership with Citi and American Airlines presages a larger partnership between Citi and the hotel chain, perhaps becoming a new transfer partner. Omni has displayed some element of willingness to becoming a transferable points partner after being a partner of Mesa for all of 11 seconds before Mesa went kaput, so fingers crossed that Citi is soon to expand its collection of hotel partners.
World Legend rather than World Elite
The card will also become a World Legend Mastercard rather than being a World Elite Mastercard like it is at present. That’ll offer some additional/increased miscellaneous benefits and coverage, although it’s unlikely to include a Priority Pass membership which some World Legend cards offer.
Final thoughts
When I first glanced at these changes, I thought that there wasn’t much there for Executive cardholders in exchange for paying an extra $100 per year by way of the increased annual fee. However, if you’re able to use the up to $500 AA Vacations credit each year to some extent, you could end up coming out ahead, even before taking into account the up to $100 credit for in-flight and Admiral’s Club purchases.
Considering this card gives complimentary Admiral’s Club membership and the price of Admiral’s Club entry is about to be going up when purchasing it, this card is becoming a little more enticing. If this card sounds interesting to you, it could be worth applying in the next couple of weeks in order to lock in the $595 annual fee before it increases on August 23.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Regarding comments: Comments posted at the bottom of Frequent Miler pages and posts are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
One thing I can’t find any mention of either in the official announcement or any of the blogs covering this – is the annual $120 credit for Avis prepaid reservations sticking around? Or will that be dropped like the Grubhub credits?
Why can’t I find where additional loyalty points that are offered on the 165 & 240K levels? Even your credit card link only shows the 10K awarded at 50 & 90K levels but no mention of the other levels.
Because, as the post says, changes aren’t live until 8/23.
Is the AVIS status valuable?
At airports, when choosing a car through the app, you can typically pick up some really nice upgrades.
You should include the price of AA lounge membership directly vs this card.
Also, does this card still include an actual lounge membership or do you show this card to enter AA lounges? If the former, that would get you into partner lounges like Qantas, too.
Yes, the primary cardholder still gets a full membership. The price for membership without the card has shot up to $1400 (from $850). Clearly they want people to get the card.
If one can swing it, lounge access via non-US One World tier status is the way to go.
If I were ever to go for AA status, I would want this card. But I don’t really see the point in status when status-based upgrades have become unicorns, and I have a cheaper AA card that gives free luggage and “priority” boarding.
IMO, biggest benefit of AA status is if you get Platinum Pro or Exec Platinum you have OneWorld Emerald, which means you can enter OneWorld First Class lounges anytime you’re flying a OneWorld airline outside the US. (Assuming your AA number is attached.) Some of the best lounge experiences I’ve ever had have been thanks to that benefit.
Also, whether or not complimentary upgrades are a “unicorn” really depends on your status and where/when you’re flying to/from. As an Exec Plat based in Orlando, I still get upgraded on the vast majority of my AA flights.
Do you still get a discount on the fee if you have CitiGold status?
Yes. And it’s totally free with Citigold Private Client.
Curious whether it will still be free for first year for private client. Or $595 reimbursement toward $695 fee? Either way, if they add a good SUB, I might go for it.
Note that they are also removing the $10/mo Grubhub benefit. Not that I value that anywhere near $120, but I do use it for something for pick up each month (and can stack it with Bilt Cash for $20 off).
Granted, I also have 2 Amex Golds, so having 2x orders per month instead of 3x is just fine.
Not a deal breaker, but still lame of them to remove it. Speaking of combining with BILT Cash $10 redemption, can still use for Amex Gold monthly $10, if using that on Grubhub.
Oh, and, because we’re talking BILT… Ankur, “open the gates, man!” and allow more than five Accelerators! (Yes, that was a Titanic reference.)
I seriously wonder who designs these credit cards. The thought that someone is going to book an aa vacation package twice a year to get a $250 credit is pretty laughable. Plus at least for every hotel and car rental I priced on AA vacations it was listed as restrictive which meant if I didn’t purchase the protection plan from them the purchase was non-refundable and the vacation plan on a 1 night hotel and car rental booking that is about $250 is $50 per person. This is a non-starter for me. Had they made the credit a 1 time $500 AA vacations credit or even better yet a flat $250 per 6 months through aa.com/hotels then I would have considered it to be of some value. Also, you can’t book 1 way airfare through AA vacations or multi-city airfare in my experience at least not online.
For me the card has lost all value. I used to get value out of the Avis/Budget $120 credit when it was on any booking as I used auto slash booking through Priceline and paying at avis/budget for the best price. When they switched to non-refundable fares I lost that $120 is value. Now they are eliminating Grubhub as a $10/month credit which while not my favorite credit I did find a use for it at least. The lyft credit is laughable. Both Delta’s and United’s premium cards offer far more value for the annual fee. I will likely be cancelling when my annual fee renews in September unless they give me a good retention offer as I’m not paying $695 for this pile of garbage. It was clearly designed by a team that doesn’t understand how most people travel and were looking to minimize their cost.
There’s a team at 388 Greenwich (Citi) and their counterparts in Fort Worth, TX (AA). Oh, was that merely a rhetorical question? *whoosh*
Yeah, we, the cardmembers are the product. The airline is selling points (and other benefits) to the bank to offer to us in exchange for us paying those annual fees and them earning a portion of the fees on every swipe. Their goal is for them to make as much as possible and offer as little to us in return. Just set those expectations accordingly, and churn this sucker (every 48 months).
So when does the removal of Grubhub take effect?
If you’ve already passed 165k loyalty points, I wonder if you’ll get the 10k later this month?
If you sign up for the card new after surpassing LP thresholds for that loyalty year, you will still be awarded the bonus LPs, so I would imagine this will work similarly.
I have this card only because it’s a cheaper way to get Admiral’s Club membership although honestly Admiral’s Clubs are awful. Bad decor, horrible food. But, still kind of useful for Alaska lounges. In a way this is an upgrade because before there weren’t really any useful credits to offset the annual fee so I was thinking of canceling this card.
But it would kind of be ridiculous if you can’t use the Vacations credit when booking an Omni hotel and get elite benefits.
Glad my annual fee just hit a week or two ago. Was thinking about canceling this but I might give it a whirl and see if I can use those vacation credits.
My good man, do be a gentleman, don’t pay that AF too fast, and at least attempt a *retention offer* first. You are possibly leaving mun-muns (and pointies) on the table. (Now, if you’ll join me in the parlor, we’ll be serving h’white cake…)
“If you were to spend $6,250 on hotels and/or rental cars through those sites and pay with your Executive card, you’d earn 75,000 miles and 75,000 Loyalty Points” is incorrect. You’d earn the miles, but the LP earnings would be different. AA Hotels tells you up front how many LPs you’d earn, and it’s not correlated to the credit card spend.
Thank you – for some reason I thought that it was 12X miles + 12X Loyalty Points, but I guess not. I’ve removed that paragraph.
The card itself earns 1 LP per dollar spent plus the milestone LPs. The hotel portal separately awards LPs, which will be earned irrespective of the card one uses.