Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Next month, many highly desirable Hyatt properties are set to move out of range for those booking with free night certificates. Some properties will see price increases of as much as 50% over the days before peak pricing, with premium suites jumping tens of thousands of points at top-tier properties that are moving from Category 7 to 8. Is it time to finally step off the Hyatt bandwagon? On this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air, we discuss what has changed, what hasn’t, and what to do now. We also tackle an excellent question of the week and Greg makes a surprising confession.
This week on the blog, we show you where to use those free night certificates now, compare the Capital One Travel portal head-to-head with Chase, tell you everything you need to know about the Dosh app for more cash back, and more. Watch or listen to the show or read on for more from this week at Frequent Miler.
00:32 Giant Mailbag: Confession Time
06:11 What crazy thing…..did Barclays do this week?
9:39 Mattress running the numbers: Which Sam’s Club deal is better?
16:58 Main Event: Is it time to step off the Hyatt bandwagon?
42:43 Post roast
45:24 Question of the Week: Does credit card rental car CDW cover loss of use?
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This week at Frequent Miler
Hyatt announces 2022 award category changes. It’s a doozy.
The 2022 Hyatt category changes provide the pin-prick to the balloon we’ve been holding for a couple of years (ever since Category 8 debuted and was followed by peak and off-peak pricing). While Category 8 was launched just for select SLH properties, I wondered from the beginning how long it would be until Hyatt would decide that they didn’t want their flagship properties held a category below the top end of the award chart. It now seems we have an answer: until Match 22nd, 2022. Truthfully, these award chart changes really aren’t that bad — yes, a number of great options for using either Category 1-4 free night certificates or Category 1-7 free night certificates are moving out of reach and yes some of the associated award prices will raise pretty drastically when you compare pricing before peak pricing to a mostly-peak-priced calendar, but the bottom line is that Hyatt points remain highly valuable even (for the most part) at the properties moving up.
Best Hyatt Category 1-4 Hotels & Resorts (⏱book before 3/22)
Speaking of those free night certificates, you’ll want to plan to use ’em if you’ve got ’em — at least if you want to stay at a property moving from Category 4 to 5 or 7 to 8. This post has the best properties at which to use your certificates now and also lists those properties dropping into free night certificate territory next month so you can consider whether you’re better off waiting. Just make sure you use those certificates before you lose them, particularly if they come from Chase (see Greg’s confession time on the show if you’re not sure why I emphasize that!).
What are Marriott Bonvoy points worth?
In other March Madness, Marriott will soon eliminate award charts. We don’t know exactly when this will happen, but we expect it in March (we don’t know whether the 1st or some other day), so it made sense for Greg to publish one final analysis of the value of Marriott points before they eliminate their award chart. This can serve as a comparison point of “where we were” before it all blows up. Hopefully Marriott will shock the world and increase the value of its points, but it might make sense to lock in your valuable award stays now just in case they don’t.
Ventana Big Sur vs. Miraval Arizona
Speaking of locking it in now, those interested in a stay at Ventana Big Sur may want to grab those few suites that are available before they jump way up in price thanks to the move to Category 8. In this post, Greg compares his stays at Ventana Big Sur and Miraval Arizona. Personally, I went from lukewarm on the idea of Miraval Arizona to completely uninterested after his previous review of that property (Dirty plates at the buffet? Trash that didn’t get picked up? A shower that didn’t get hot? At those award prices?!?. It’s a no from me, dawg.). In other words, it didn’t take much to convince me that Ventana Big Sur would be the obvious choice — and I don’t think that really changes for me when the award prices increase.
Capital One Travel vs Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel, head-to-head
If you’re a bigger fan of lower prices and you have a Capital One card, you should probably be checking out Capital One Travel when you’re booking paid hotel stays. I had previously found Capital One Travel priced surprisingly well — and with better-than-expected cancellation policies — but I wondered how it would work out compared directly with Chase. In 16 out of 18 example hotels (split over 5 markets including New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Miami Beach, and Hawaii), Capital One was cheaper than Chase and sometimes by a significant margin. When I need to book a paid stay, I may have to more carefully consider Capital One and the chance to earn 10 valuable transferable miles per dollar spent.
Nick’s Avianca LifeMiles expired. Avoid this rookie mistake.
Of course those miles will be a total waste if I transfer them to an airline program where miles expire after 12 months of inactivity and I wait until I’m one week in to month #13 to realize the error of my ways. Thankfully, now that I’ve added LifeMiles (and other programs) to Award Wallet, I (hopefully) won’t need to worry about repeating this mistake. I am thankful to have caught this before I lost even more miles in my wife’s account in another couple of months. After 2 years of laziness about tracking this stuff thanks to most major programs continuing to extend expiration deadlines, this was a cold reminder that it’s back to business as usual for some programs.
Dosh App Complete Guide: How It Works & Why It’s Worth It
I have been a big fan of the Dosh app over the past few years, earning a nice chunk of change back on purchases I would have made with or without the app’s rewards. I was disappointed this week when reports came in about accounts being suspended (you can read more about why here), but I have otherwise been a happy customer as it has mostly worked well and given me rewards on purchases in situations where I didn’t even know to expect it them.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Don’t forget to check out this week’s last chance deals to make sure you don’t miss out on the next big thing.
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FYI been using the Uber Eats credits from Sams Club (which also apply to Uber rides) and they do stack with promo codes
Was starting to switch my loyalty from Marriott to Hyatt and now this. Now I’m hearing to check out Hilton’s. So many choices. Would be interesting to do a survey to see what your readers prefer currently.
Just started listening to the podcast and heard about the rejection to convert the FN cert to points…i had 3 certs from chase hyatt and only lower tier status and they had no trouble converting my certs to points…however i did do it a few days before expiration.
@Greg @Nick Reyes What are you thoughts in terms of points pricing/benefits for the 120ish all inclusives that Hyatt bought from ALG? They said that they would be added in 2022. Copypasta of Ziva/Zilara? New chart exclusively for all inclusives? DSU eligible or ineligible? Eligible for certs? Better upgrades or enhanced benefits to replace free breakfast? At 8-12 properties no certs was okay, but at 10% of the portfolio I think it’s not longer acceptable. I put this on Tim’s post when the changes were announced but I’d love to hear your feedback on it.
My guess is that they’ll copy the Ziva/Zilara pricing. We’ll see!
In January I stacked the $35 Dosh Sam’s Club offer with the Amex offer and a Sam’s Club $45 e-gift card deal. I actually gave up on the Amex offer but it finally posted after 15 days. That’s the longest I can remember an Amex offer taking to post.
RE: Amex Sam’s Club offer – mine hasn’t posted yet either, so I called. The terms are the credit will post within 90 days of the offer expiration April 30.
This morning Rakuten sent an email $45 off your first purchase with a new in-club membership.
I used the offer to get $10 Uber Eats voucher in December, so only 2 vouchers so far. 1 worked when ordering from home. I’m at my daughter’s in NYC. The voucher didn’t work here. I think because the delivery person biked instead of driving.
Chase doesn’t gave to pay Hyatt for the certificates until you use them. That is why Hyatt doesn’t reimburse expired Chase Certs.
I recently had a minor accident while covered by the AMEX premium rental coverage. Loss of use and diminished value were not covered but at least Hertz didn’t have me arrested…
I had to laugh a little when Nick said that breakfast was guaranteed with Hyatt Globalist status. While that is almost always true, I recently checked out of the Hyatt Centric Waikiki, which has still not opened their restaurant since closing early in the pandemic. While other properties early in the pandemic offered some catered breakfast options or delivery app credit, they offered points. There is even a Starbucks on the first floor they could try to work something out with, but chose not to. Originally they offered 500 points per person per night (so 1000 points/night based on double occupancy), but supposedly based on guidance from their corporate office decreased that to 500 points per room per night. They have no current opening date for their restaurant. I am disappointed with Hyatt, because I do not think 500 points per night is an adequate substitute for “guaranteed” breakfast. I am also surprised that a Hyatt Centric without a restaurant serving breakfast meets brand standards at this point.
This is obviously the exception, not the rule with Hyatt. And the rest of the property was great. I was able to burn a stack of category 1-4 certs, got a suite upgrade (city view, but very happy with the room), got free parking, etc. Honestly I would probably stay here again, even knowing the breakfast situation, but the guaranteed part is a little YMMV.
Hopefully Marriott keeps points to miles conversions. That may be the route to go for many in case they devalue that
I’ve got three 50K Bonvoy FNC and was expecting that Marriott would roll out the FNC + Points feature “in early 2022” BEFORE they roll out Dynamic Awards in “March 2022”. Shocking that FNC + Points hasn’t been mentioned lately and we’re running out of time…I’m getting ready to be BONVOYED yet again!
Disappointed, yes, but I’m not very surprised at all. I was *hopeful* that they’d launch it before elimination of the award chart, but I definitely didn’t expect it before dynamic awards, particularly since March is still “early 2022”. I figured that wasn’t a coincidence.
If you had a 100k ultimate rewards points and you only had 50k of Hyatt points would you transfer more now with the devaluation or use ultimate rewards for travel at the 1.25 or 1.25 cpm . Or transfer to another airline?
I wouldn’t transfer anything until I were ready to book something. No sense in a speculative transfer. Pick what gives you the best value when you’re ready to redeem.
If Hyatt eliminates an award chart I might transfer to more “stable ” currencies. I agree that Hyatt points can routinely get 2 cpm on the end and like the other Marriott perhaps points are better used overseas.. Dynamic pricing can be a blessing or a curse and with sold-out hotels this weekend it doesn’t really matter .
Hoe much do you value full priority pass vs select priority pass when comparing annual fee credit cards. 200-300 per card seems fare as the card costs 400 per year .