For many years, Chase (and later Bilt) was the only transferable points program with valuable hotel options. Namely: Hyatt. But Citi changed that with Choice and I Prefer, offering high transfer rates that made these transfers worthwhile. Unfortunately, those transfer rates are going to change.
Citi devalues hotel transfers
Watch here:
Or listen here (or click “Follow” on the player below to select your preferred podcast app instead):
(01:55) – Hyatt’s announced award changes seemed to cement Citi as the best transferable points for hotels…
(02:13) – April 19, 2026 is Citi ThankYou Rewards hotel transfer doomsday. Transfer ratios to Choice and Preferred Hotels are dropping.
(03:36) – Examples
(05:50) – Questions: Will the new transfer ratios still be worthwhile?
(11:49) – Should we transfer before April 19th?
(17:47) – Is the Citi ecosystem dead to us?
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I love Frequent Miler, you all are the best. However, your Reasonable Redemption Values are an interesting attempt at something that is impossible. In this podcast, you mention The Londoner, an I Prefer hotel for 100k I Prefer points and a cash price about $750. At the existing transfer rate from Citi, you are getting 3 cents per Citi point. Which sounds great. But it’s completely relative. The true value of a hotel or airline point should be based on several factors.
What is you economic position? Do you make $80k a year? Do you have $250k in investments? Do you have $50k liquid cash saved/accessible? Do you have little or no savings? Do you make much less than $80k a year? Are you in debt?
If points and miles did not exist, how much, based on the above metrics, would YOU pay for a hotel or a flight? How much can you afford? Are you willing to go into debit for travel?
And then, how much points and miles do you accumulate regularly? If you cashed all your points and miles out, how much cash is that? How much of that would you use for travel?
Juggle all of these factors produces the true value per point/mile. I personally don’t have a high paying job, don’t have big savings, not willing to go into debt. Without points and miles, my travel goals would be much less/smaller, nothing I could do about that. With points and miles, I’m able to travel and stay in hotels and get nice flights for low or nearly no cost.
For someone like me, these Citi transfer devaluations are absolutely horrible. They essentially cut my value of these points at 25% and 50% and arguably worse because it just knocks out a bunch of options for me. I simply don’t have that many points and miles to absorb the cuts. Choice and I Prefer hotels I previously frequented will no longer be options.
I know banks, hotels and airlines are in the business of making money. Overall, they have been very profitable for most years. They are not hurting. They are squeezing their own value out of middle and upper middle class income customers, simple as that. Shareholders need to be fed. Is it legal? Yes. Is it moral, ethical? If you believe in totally unregulated capitalism and read Ayn Rand novels, sure it’s moral. For the rest of us, not really.
I don’t think anybody reported on the Choice devaluation about 6 months ago. Many of their hotels in Helsinki that used to be 15K are now 20-30k. The F1 is now 40k!
Glad this happened before I applied for the Strata Premier. Was waiting for a 75k sub. No more…