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This year has seen a number of amazing deals that could stand up to the competition for the title Deal of the Year in almost any individual year. From massive transfer bonuses to free hotels and getting paid to shop, there was no shortage of big time opportunities to get incredible value with low effort. Which has been the best deal of 2023? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Deal of the Year 2022 winner
As a reminder, we crowned last year’s winner on our podcast and the 2022 Deal of the Year went to the “free” cruises by gaming casino status matches. If you’ve cruised for free in 2023 thanks to those deals, three cheers to you. Don’t think we forgot about those cruises in 2023 (I was out there on the seas with you multiple times this year!), but that was a deal we initially wrote about in 2021 and expanded upon in 2022 (and as such, it didn’t make the list for 2023 despite it being ongoing).
Deal of the Year 2023 Candidates
This year’s Deal of the Year Candidates are….
Virgin cruise deals
Read about this deal here and here.
Virgin Red offered the chance to book Virgin Voyages cruises, first in the Caribbean and later in Europe, for just 80,000 Virgin points (5 nights in the Caribbean or 7 nights in Europe) or 100,000 Virgin points (7 nights in the Caribbean). Several factors made this deal awesome:
- Both booking windows coincided with a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, which meant that you could book a cruise for two passengers for just 62,000 transferred points (as you would have 80K after the transfer bonus)
- Cruises booked on points included all taxes & fees and Wi-Fi, with no additional gratuities or other charges due
- Redemptions were for Sea Terrace or Limited View Sea Terrace cabins — in other words, you got a balcony cabin
These cruises were a fantastic value against the cash prices for the same ships. I found these offers intriguing and I might have been tempted if not for the fact that the cruises are adults-only and the fact that I’ve had so many “free” cruises to book that I couldn’t squeeze in another cruise even if I wanted to. Still, this worked out really well for those who could take advantage. If we didn’t have kids, we’d be keeping a close eye out for a future opportunity on one of these ships.
Bilt/Hyatt fast track plus Hyatt Q2 promo
Read more about this deal here.
Many World of Hyatt Globalists out there probably have this promotion to thank for their elite status because earlier this year Bilt and Hyatt partnered to offer a fast track to any Bilt Member whereby they could earn Hyatt Globalist status with just 20 nights in the (now long finished) window.
Many of us raced to Las Vegas (some in person, others in spirit) to pick up cheap Globalist status thanks to the now-dead partnership between Hyatt and MGM. Better yet, the dates of this fast track lined up with a Hyatt promotion good for 3K points with every two nights stayed. I had a couple of runs at Excalibur where I paid $3 per night and I earned 3K Hyatt points every two nights. With my Hyatt Globalist status, I’ve enjoyed things like free breakfast and/or lounge access at places like the Grand Hyatt Istanbul, Park Hyatt Vienna, and Tempe Mission Palms this year. Next year, we hope to leverage the benefits even further.
The timing on this promotion (coinciding with that Hyatt promo) along with the fact that it was a public fast track made this deal notable enough to make the list, but it’s worth noting that we have seen a similar Hyatt fast track offer targeted to those who work for certain companies as well as Founders Card members and occasionally others who have called in to ask for it.
Bilt 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue + Great Flying Blue Promo Awards
Read more about this deal here.
We see fairly regular transfer bonuses to various foreign airline programs, typically ranging from 15-25%. We sometimes see 30% transfer bonuses to a couple of partners and I recall a very small handful of times that we’ve seen a 40% transfer bonus to an airline program (you can check out both current and historical transfer bonuses on our Current point transfer bonuses page). If you had suggested the notion that a transferable currency could or would offer a 100% transfer bonus to any airline program, I can only imagine my laughter at such a preposterous suggestion prior to late April 2023.
So when Bilt Rewards came out of the gate with an unprecedented 100% transfer bonus from Bilt Rewards to Air France / KLM Flying Blue, it prompted us to declare that this was the rare instance where you should consider a speculative transfer even without an immediate use for the miles in mind. This deal was that good. Business class to Europe for 27.5K points one way on many routes given the bonus? Crazy.
When you further consider that Bilt seemed to partner with Flying Blue to offer a customized set of cities for Promo Rewards, the deals were just incredible for those able to take advantage — and those who transferred speculatively might end up in even better shape given the way some Air France awards became a better value in recent months.
Bilt 150% transfer bonus to Virgin
Read more about this deal here.
As if a 100% transfer bonus to Air France / KLM Flying Blue wasn’t enough, Bilt Rewards kept bringing the heat and offered a jaw-dropping one hundred and fifty percent transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic for Bilt’s top-tier elite members, which was like nothing any of us had ever dreamed of from a transferable currency. Even ordinary members with no status at all still got a seventy-five percent transfer bonus. Absolute insanity.
Of course, the issue here is that Virgin Atlantic points have some great uses that are niche in the sense that you need to actually find availability. If you did manage to find availability or you were willing to gamble with your Bilt points on a speculative transfer, you were looking at stuff like business class to Europe in Delta One for about 29K Bilt points with no status or as few as 20K points for top-tier Bilt Platinum elites. In any normal year, or perhaps if Delta released more award availability to partners, this would have to be at the top of the list of contenders.
Marriott Homes & Villas 40K bonus points for 4+ night stay
Read more about this deal here.
Post-pandemic, every lodging program capable has leaned into ways to expand beyond hotels and reach the vacation rental market. While Marriott Homes & Villas have been around for a while now, earlier this year they launched a fantastic little promotion whereby it was possible to earn 40,000 bonus points for a stay of 4+ nights.
What made that promotion particularly special was the fact that, during the first time they ran the promo, there was no minimum cost for the vacation rental. Many people were able to make very cheap “mattress run” bookings where they paid perhaps $200 for a stay they didn’t intend to actually use in order to get the 40,000 bonus points. You won’t be too shocked to learn that the next several promotions imposed a minimum spending requirement of $1,500. Guess the promotion turned out to be more popular than the homes.
Choice Privileges College Gameday Experiences
Read more about this promotion here.
Choice Privileges came out this year with a few rounds of “College Gameday Experiences” that included tickets to college sports events coupled with some cool extras like running onto the field with the football team, a shootaround with the basketball coaches, or other meet-and-greet or autographed merchandise type things.
Some of the packages have included two $750 Visa Gift Cards to help cover travel expenses — and in some cases, the gift cards alone were worth more than the value of the points required to buy the packages without even considering the value of the tickets and everything else in the bundles.
I looked at a bunch of these and wished that my kids were old enough to be college sports fanatics because I thought it would be so cool to get some of these experiences like sitting on the bench for warm-ups or having a sideline pass. I also thought it was pretty cool that while the majority of offerings have been football and basketball, I’ve also seen some other sports mixed in like hockey and wrestling.
The prices of packages that come with the $750 gift cards have increased substantially with the most recent round of offers (and they sold out quickly), but I’m still going to keep my eye on future rounds of these experiences. Keep in mind that those transferring from Citi are turning 1 Citi point into 2 Choice Privileges points. If you snag one of the packages that comes with two $750 gift cards, you could be getting a slamming deal for the Citi points.
Capital One Travel sale
Capital One Travel ran an amazing deal this fall where numerous flights and hotels had discounts of $50 to $200 depending on the city and situation. Surprisingly, the discounts had no minimum spending requirements or other restrictions. In many cases, it was possible to book flights and hotels for literal pennies (see the flight above that cost seventy-three cents after the coupon) — or even for free if the flight or hotel cost less than the discount.
Some readers stacked this nicely by booking Capital One Premier Collection hotels, locking in free breakfast for two and a $100 hotel credit on a booking that (in some cases) only cost them pennies.
This deal was so much more widespread than I assumed it would be when I first saw it. We were able to take advantage and book a flight for a family member, saving $100 on a relatively inexpensive flight. Unfortunately, I couldn’t work out the finer details of a hotel booking before the deal died — but I have nobody to blame but myself. This deal was incredible and it lasted for at least 24 hours.
Capital One Shopping $200 for both sides
Read more about this deal here.
Most shopping portals offer some sort of referral bonus, but those bonuses tend to only offer between $10-$40 for each side. Capital One Shopping, the public shopping portal that does not require a Capital One account of any sort, offered an absolutely insane targeted referral bonus earlier this month: $200 for both sides when a new customer signed up through a targeted referral link and spent at least $10 through the portal within 30 days.
In other words, if you signed up for this under that referral deal and spent $10, you would get $200 back. If you then also got targeted to share that deal, you could refer your Player 2 and when they made a $10 purchase, both Player 2 and Player 1 would get another $200. That’s a total of $600 back on two $10 purchases, which is a show-stopping deal.
It’s worth noting the limitations: first of all, rewards earned through Capital One Shopping can only be redeemed for gift cards like Hotels.com, DoorDash, Safeway, eBay, Lowe’s, StubHub, and a bunch of common retail stores. Second, not all users were targeted for the $200 referrals (though some were even after just signing up during the promotion).
It’s worth adding that while some users have reported tracking difficulties through the Capital One Shopping portal over the past couple of years, many many readers reported successfully getting both the $200 bonus and $200 referral bonuses from this promotion. I helped a couple of family members get up and running with Capital One Shopping and all of their $200 bonuses posted as expected, even when just placing a single $10 order from GiftCards.com.
Easy money deals like this always stand out for me because they make our hobby accessible: it’s objectively easy to see that two $10 purchases triggering $600 in gift cards for hotels or Ebay or whatever is downright amazingly outsized value without having to work out the number of cents per mile or deciding how to value a business class redemption if one normally would have paid for economy, etc.
30x Lufthansa Miles & More Miles with Booking.com
Read more about this deal here.
This deal wasn’t really on my radar at all because there just aren’t many ways to earn Lufthansa miles, so I didn’t think that earning 30 Lufthansa Miles & More miles per 1 Euro spent on hotel bookings would be worth chasing. Thankfully, Tim turned me on to this deal when our team conversation turned to Deal of the Year candidates.
Through December 31st (likely at midnight in Germany?), you can earn an incredible return on hotel bookings made via Booking.com. I rarely book hotels where I don’t care about hotel elite benefits, but then just last night I had an epiphany: We’re planning to book a stay at a safari lodge in Botswana next year. I had intended to cash out Capital One Shopping rewards for Hotels.com gift cards to cover the stay, but then as I examined this deal I realized that a booking of about $2100 earns enough miles for a one-way Star Alliance business class award to Europe (or a round trip “mileage bargain”). Getting both a hotel stay and enough miles for an award redemption like that could be a slamming deal if you’re able to make it work.
Keep in mind that you’re not going to get hotel elite benefits or elite night credit when making a reservation through Booking.com. Also keep in mind that Lufthansa has high surcharges on its own flights that they pass along on award redemptions. The miles have a hard expiration of 3 years. Finally, you can’t transfer any kind of points to Miles & More and buying more miles isn’t so straightforward, so proceed with caution.
Still, I’m considering making a (cancellable) reservation before the end of the year because the return in miles has so much potential upside.
Nick’s pick for Deal of the Year 2023
This was a tough call for me. The Capital One Travel deal that offered (at least in some cases) free flights and free hotels was amazing, though it was limited to one of each type of discount (so you needed to be playing in multi-player mode to get multiple free nights or flights in most situations). The Capital One Shopping deal was essentially $600 back on $20 spend for a lot of people. A net $580 profit made in your pajamas — or a bit less since you can only redeem for gift cards — makes a compelling case for deal of the year.
However, the reason I struggled to crown either of those Capital One options deal of the year is that both had capped upside. Neither could be stretched far beyond the bounds (sure, I guess you could have made a lot of Capital One Shopping accounts, but my point is that you aren’t going to get value that stretches beyond the face value of the rewards).
On the other hand, someone who was prepared with Bilt Rewards points to transfer to Air France / KLM Flying Blue could have made out like a bandit and gotten hundreds more in value out of their points (or even thousands more depending on their Bilt balance). To be clear, I was not one of those people — and to some extent, I regretted it. Someone who earned 1x on rent and 2x on some “everywhere else” purchases on Rent Day and either 3x on dining or 6x on dining on the first of the month could have then doubled the output of those returns. Air France continues to offer solid value for a lot of people. I don’t love the surcharges, but they aren’t outrageous and certainly wouldn’t bother me at all if I were getting half off on my award redemptions.
For that reason, I have to give the nod to the Bilt 100% transfer bonus to Flying Blue. I’m sure that top-tier Bilt elites who have a use for Virgin Atlantic points will argue for that — and if you were in that spot and took advantage of a 150% transfer bonus, you’d be sitting pretty if you redeemed for a business class sweet spot or a cruise should Virgin Red bring those back. But I think Flying Blue is more broadly applicable and the 100% bonus even for those without Bilt status was phenomenal and marked the first time we’ve ever seen anything like it. That’s a sentence (“we’ve never seen anything like it) that I’ve said a few times about Bilt — and whether you like them or hate them (if the latter, I refer you to this comment), you have to appreciate a competitor being outside the box. That stimulates better deals for all of us in the long run.
Vote for your 2023 Deal of the Year
Vote below and tell me in the comments what your pick for Deal of the Year was. Let us know if you think we missed any of the best deals of 2023.
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The Bilt/Hyatt fast track plus Hyatt Q2 2023 promo should also be considered again for 2024 single best deals. Globalist status achieved runs through February 2025.
Just gotta say that our free Virgin Mediterranean cruise takes the cake for me. It gave us the opportunity to see how Virgin cruises are really a new paradigm. Here’s hoping they repeat it.
2023 was definitely the year for cruise folks. I’m not but did sign up for some of those freebies just to see if they worked as advertised & did so in every case!
I don’t get the churners in many of the comments who are so vehemently against the Bilt card! If they aren’t concerned about 5/24, shutdowns, RAT teams, etc. why not then go ahead & get Bilt & chance getting a secret 50k SUB? To me those would be the VERY folks to add the Bilt notch to their belt because there is no restraint in app submissions. At the end of the day, Bilt couldn’t be any worse than some of the dregs they must eventually be applying for after countless new cards.
Sorry Pam, many of us are homeowners so we just have to ignore all the Bilt excitement. If Bilt has another way of earning huge points and a substantial SUB, I’d hop right aboard the bandwagon, but I haven’t rented in over 50 years.
We pay large HOA fees & those, too, earn 2x on Rent Day. I’ve got Lyft & Dining linked & those rewards alone roll in monthly/passively. My husband & I play Trivia monthly, 2 minutes earns us 200-300 points depending. We were targeted to spend at 5 different phone stores (we spent $1 on employee bills!) & earned 10,000 points! Bilt is fun, unique, & profitable. Am shelving for most of 2024 to spend on the new CFU double points promo but after that we plan on going right back to Rent Day earnings!
For me it’s the double points CFU released in Oct – 6x dining/drugstores & 3x everything else (also well into next year) is a gift from heaven for our family spend
+1 That’s a great candidate Pam. My civilian P3 sees that as a godsend. 🙂
The status matches that @Larry S. mentioned below are another good candidate.
Yes…my husband is elated with only 3 cards necessary in his wallet for an entire year for a change! We pulled so many URs back in 2018 with this same type CFU offer but much better now with key 3x multipliers added.
While he prefers things simple, we DO agree on not needing airline status. Just get us from Point A to B in reasonable comfort to our lovely upgraded Suite. It’s nice when we bumble into airline status (Hyatt matches on AA etc) but nothing we go way out of our way for like hotel status that takes care of the majority of our time away.
Thanks for your response!
Sure thing Pam.
Your “simplicity factor” observation is an excellent point. How often can someone use one card for an entire year, and have such a large portion of their charges be optimized–with just a bit of help deploying those UR points? 🙂
That’s got my P3 happy and relieved…he doesn’t want to leave opportunity on the table, but doesn’t want to spend a lot of energy remembering which card to use all the time.
I’m recommending this offer to almost everyone who does lots of spend and doesn’t want to spend much time or effort fine-tuning their optimization.
The best deal of the year is absolutely free: the knowledge that the FM team gives us. I truly appreciate their honest and broad coverage of the hobby. Thanks for a great year.
An observation for this year – most of the “best” deals were very time limited or niche in applicability. Bilt transfers and the Capital One travel deal didn’t matter if you didn’t have their cards. Lufthansa and Marriott promos are only for their points so you need to have a use in mind. I was most excited about the Choice gameday experiences but unfortunately there were no (or few) options for West coast colleges.
The Hyatt promo was one of the few with wider appeal. I didn’t jump on it since we aren’t staying in Hyatts often enough to make the mattress run worth it but I would have if not constrained by work and school time off schedules.
The Capital One shopping deal was the best in my vote (if everything pays out) just because anyone could do it. But it does have the limited upside on how much to make from it.
It seems that none of the best deals this year compare with 2022 or 2021. The free cruises from status matching is hard to top – you could get into it multiple ways (from Hyatt or Wyndham status matching with casinos), it worked across many cruise lines and destinations, and it went on for a long time so you could somewhat easily find offer availability that worked. I wasn’t doing points & miles in 2021 but oh how I wish I had been able to join in on the Resy 15X offer or the SimplyMiles 240X AA promo!
Excellent comment Andrew, +1.
I agree about many of the nominees here being fleeting/niche.
And Cap One Shopping has a strong argument for being deal of the year. No portal has compared for many of us.
(And I hear you on the 240x AA miles promo! I spent $10K on that, and am down to my last few 100k miles!)
I also feel like the Cap1 Shopping was the deal of the year. My logic would be in addition to what Andrew wrote, for us churners this deal was really easy to churn!
With being relatively easy to create multiple accounts (with just some emails and burner phone numbers) the scalability of this deal was truly amazing. I can easily see people getting thousands of dollars in cap1 rewards, and being able to sell at 90% value to some gc resellers. Even with just using one or 2 accounts to refer family members with ease (no complicated stuff for them to do) , could easily get a thousand dollars in rewards and more. I know people who pushed over 5k with this promo.
Even if you were able to get only $1,500 in cash that goes a long way to compete with benefits the average person would get with globalist from the fast track. Not to mention the ease of being able to do from your couch.
So with the ease of access, ability to churn, and the potential for pure profit on this deal makes this my top deal of the year.
Anyone agree with me?
I consider a deal to be a case where the deal “giver” provides some value or discount to the receiver, whereby that value greatly exceeds what one can normally attain elsewhere. Subjectively, it could even mean this deal goes on for an extended period of time, compared to something like the Cap 1 deals where they were ended earlier than expected.
In that regard, I really consider the Ink train to be the most consistent “deal” out there today. For those who are under 5/24 and managing velocity, it’s been an easy 360K+ UR in 1P mode at a minimum with low friction. That’s excluding the referrals too. It’s no Biz Plat, but it also skips a lot of the hoops to jump for SUBs (incog, VPN, multiple browsers, back button, etc) while consistently providing ATH numbers (90K+). It’s also an opportunity with multiple end results (unlike a College GameDay or some other niche).
I personally hope the train continues, but I feel like there will be limitations on these eventually.
Are you realy giving deal of the year to the ability to buy marriot points at $0.05 …. and only by jumping through hoops?!
I don’t understand what you mean.
IINM paying $200 for a stay you are presumably not using and receiving 40,000 marriot points is buying marriot points at half a cent.
And considering many value marroit at .7 that’s good but not great.
BILT TRANSFER BONUSES ARE BOGUS!!!
there I said it.
The fact that you get an amazing transfer bonus on a miniscule points balence is in no way noteworthy, and definitely not deal-of-the-year-worthy.
But, what if someone has had the card for two years, saved up all of their points, and has 500k to transfer? That’s 1.25m. that person might have a different perspective.
Would you mind walking me through how he earned 500k in 2 years (rent earnings are capped at 100k annually) ?
By giving up millions in sign-up bonuses on other cards lol.
The Bilt/Hyatt deal was great for us. My wife and I are both retired so we did 20 nights easily last year to places we wanted to go to anyway (Ireland, Niagara Falls, Key West, Washington DC). As a Globalist, we gave out daughter Guest of Honor for her honeymoon at Park Hyatt Chicago. Although she didn’t get upgraded to a suite we were for the one night we stayed there and it was awesome. Also did Guest of Honor for my brother and his wife for Grand Hyatt in Washington DC and they did get a suite for two of the three night. In a couple of weeks we are spending three nights at the Park Hyatt New York and looking forward to that. Should be a good year for Hyatt and us. Planning on Munich or somewhere in Germany this summer. I love this hobby and web sites like this!
Took advantage of the first two deals posted here. Awesome deals!
I only participated in 1.5 out of 9 deals, but I got some great deals during Capital One travel sale around Amazon Prime Day. $205 flights for $5 after the discount.
Still waiting for Capital One shopping sign up bonus and referrals to post, but not holding my breath.
Would love to jump on a virgin voyages deal if it comes around again next year.
Nick, what about AMEX referral offers and NLL offers?
I agree with other comments and I think the continued NLL Amex Hilton Biz, Biz Plat, and Biz Gold, along with 20k AU offers could be deal of the year. Or the continuation of 90k Chase Biz Card offers with 40k referrals. But maybe those don’t count as a unique deal.
Those NLL offers are a good one!
For some, the door has closed. Both NLL and referrals.
I’d argue you’re not looking well enough. The 20k per AU was a public link. That’s 100k points per biz card, now it’s down to 15k. Ink 40k referral is also public for all inks. NLL are hit or miss, but hilton was definitely public link
Wait? There is still a public link for that floating around (at the lower number)? What about for the Business Gold?
https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/campaigns/employee-cards/business-gold/offer-incentive/
Chris,
Where did you get the $15K per AU? Would love to know since the $20K link is gone.
https://www.americanexpress .com/en-us/business/campaigns/ employee-cards/business-gold/offer-incentive/
Thank you so much, Chris! What a great new year surprise. The link works.
Using your link, I just added one authorized user on my AMEX blue business plus card to see if I get 15K bonus points plus 8K spend points with only $4K spend. If it works, I will focus only on the blue business plus cards that my wife and I both have. I also truncated the link to end at the “employee cards/” and saw the 20K bonus for authorized user after $4K spend, but when i tried to click on “add a card”, the page recycled with a “employee cards/#” on the URL. Maybe its a good sign that they may restart this 20K bonus offer again in the near future.
Hands down the 30x miles and more
I booked Tokyo FHR for 4 nights using booking.com The rest 6 nights ( 2 rooms for 5 nights) were Amex FHR Tje 3 night booking.com gives me enough miles for one way first class sfo to Frankfurt these tickets cost 12k$$
Amex 30k referral bonus — netting 90k for referring a no-fee card to P2, 3, and 4.
That’s awesome! Amex referrals certainly are a fantastic deal, though on the flip side they’ve been around for years and have at times been even better (we’ve seen as high as 35K and sometimes they have come with 30K AND something like +4x on travel on up to $25K spend or something like that), so I didn’t even think of that for Deal of the Year. Good point though that they have been a boon. On a similar wavelength, the 40K bonus some of us have had for referring someone to a 90K offer on a Chase Ink card with no annual fee has also been an awesome deal for those in multiplayer mode.
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Nick, remember the Amex uncapped 3x referral bonus back in 2020? Dad gum! Seven figures baby!