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To many, it seems like loyalty programs are always devaluing. Point prices go up. The ability to book valuable awards goes down. Sometimes the ability to earn lots of points goes down. But good things happen too. New transfer partners can make points more valuable. New partnerships (such as between Hilton and Small Luxury Hotels of the World) can make points more useful. New award charts can lead to great new sweet-spot awards. You get the idea.
In this post I’ve summarized the trends that are top-of-mind to me. I didn’t try to cover every program out there — just the ones where my opinion of them has changed for better or worse in recent months. And, please, please, please note that when I say a program is trending down, it does not mean that I dislike that program — it just means that I feel like the program’s value is headed in the wrong direction.
Airline Programs
Alaska (Trending Up)
- Ever since Alaska moved to unified oneworld award charts I’ve seen more and more great uses for their miles. This includes 45K awards from the east coast to Europe and 4,500 point awards for flying short distance AA flights within the U.S.
Avios — British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, etc (Mixed)
Since Avios can be moved between multiple airlines that share this currency, I can’t consider one program, such as British Airways Avios, without considering the others…
- Trending Down: British Airways keeps devaluing their Avios. But I don’t care too much about this since Qatar Avios were already a better option for booking the same flights (see: Regional first class starting at 12,500 points)
- Trending Up: Finnair recently adopted Avios and created new zone-based award charts. This addition adds new sweet-spot awards to the Avios ecosystem. That said, readers have written in saying that they’ve been unable to book partner awards through Finnair over the phone (and online partner bookings aren’t yet live). So, at this point, this is more of a theoretical trend up than a real one.
United (Trending Down)
- Repeated devaluations has made United’s miles less and less valuable over time.
Virgin Atlantic (Trending Down)
- One of my favorite uses of Virgin points was to book Air France or KLM awards. At the time of this writing, though, the ability to book these awards is still dead.
- One of Virgin’s greatest sweet-spots used to be the ability to book Delta One between the U.S. and Europe for only 50,000 points one-way and with very low taxes. Now, you’ll pay around $1,000 in fees for the same flights! Luckily Delta hardly ever releases Delta One award space to partners anyway.
Hotel Programs
Choice (Mixed)
- Trending Up: Choice finally added the ability to book Preferred Hotels & Resorts online!
- Trending Down: Choice increased the point prices for many Preferred Hotels.
- Trending Down: Choice removed the 35K cap from Choice Hotel award redemptions.
Hilton (Trending Way Up)
- Hilton’s new partnership with SLH (Small Luxury Hotels of the World) is a huge win. They quickly integrated far more properties than expected. They allow 5th Night Free awards and the use of free night certificates when booking these properties. Since this went live, I’ve already used free night certificates to book three nights at Grand Hotel Victoria Concept and Spa – Lago di Como, and three nights at the Hermitage Bay all-inclusive resort in Antigua.
- AutoCamp: Hilton has also partnered with AutoCamp, which offers RV (and tent) glamping in great locations, often near national parks. As with SLH, Hilton tightly integrated AutoCamp so that both 5th Night Free awards and free night certificates work with these properties. My only hesitation is that the value you’ll likely get here with points or free night certificates isn’t nearly as great as with SLH.
Hyatt (Trending Down)
- Hyatt broke my heart with the way they integrated Mr & Mrs Smith properties into their portfolio. Most awards get only around 1 to 1.4 cents per point value. That’s awful for Hyatt points which usually deliver much better value.
Sonesta (Trending Up)
- There was really nowhere else to go but up since Sonesta wasn’t even on my radar before, but with the current huge welcome bonus and the fact that points are worth much more than I previously thought, I’ve been seriously considering diving into this program.
Credit Card Rewards
Amex Membership Rewards (Mixed)
- Trending Down: Amex added “Family rules” to many of their cards (details here). This makes it more difficult to earn points through welcome bonuses.
- Trending Up: We’ve seen more and more ridiculously huge welcome bonus offers for some of Amex’s Membership Rewards cards. The three of us in my family each tried for the amazing 200K Business Gold offer. My son and I got the pop-up saying that we weren’t eligible due to having had the same card, but my wife didn’t get a pop-up despite having a Business Gold card currently open. She applied and was approved. Sweet!
- Trending Up: Thanks to my newfound love affair with Hilton, the ability to transfer Membership Rewards points to Hilton is suddenly interesting. The usual transfer ratio is 1 to 2 — that’s not enough to get me interested, but when they next offer a 30% or higher transfer bonus, I may just bite.
Bilt Rewards (Trending Way Down)
- Bilt’s new 1K Rent Day cap (starting 10/1/24) means that my winning approach to Bilt Rewards will soon come to a screeching halt (see: What’s next for my post Rent Day Doomsday Bilt card).
- I’m livid about Bilt’s attempt to hide negative changes both with the Rent Day cap (details here) and with no longer awarding bonus points for tax payments (details here).
Citi ThankYou Rewards (Trending Up)
- Thanks to Hyatt’s disappointing approach to integrating Mr & Mrs Smith properties, Citi’s ability to transfer points to LHW (Leading Hotels of the World) has become more compelling. If you want to use points to book independent luxury hotels that are not available through Hilton’s partnership with SLH, you can get a meager 1 to 1.4 cents per point value with Hyatt or you can get 1.6 cents per point value with Citi by transferring points to LHW. Read about my experience with one LHW property here.
Chase Ultimate Rewards (Trending Down)
- I use Chase points primarily to transfer to Hyatt and to book valuable awards from there. And I still do that, but due to Hyatt’s disappointing approach to integrating Mr & Mrs Smith properties, there are fewer opportunities for great value than when they partnered with SLH.
Wells Fargo Rewards (Trending Up)
- Wells Fargo points weren’t on my radar before, but now that they’re transferable, I’m suddenly interested. It’s especially cool that Wells Fargo allows moving cash back rewards from other cards to transferable points cards. This makes Wells Fargo’s cash back cards suddenly very interesting as well.
- Wells Fargo needs to add some more transfer partners before I’ll get too excited about this, but they’re definitely headed in the right direction!
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Can you add Capital One miles the next time too? Thanks!
Don’t know what statute of limitations you’re using for a “trend” but going back just a bit further I think both Aeroplan and Flying Blue have been trending up.
Sigh, at some point I guess I will have to get over my aversion to WF. (Do they still throw in a savings account and a home mortgage with every credit card application?)
Excellent recap of the state of miles/points programs.
Regarding booking Air France & KLM through Virgin, people started reporting booking success about 2 days ago on Reddit (see awardtravel). Personally I have found Virgin more useful as of late. Yes, they killed DeltaOne redemptions, but those have not shown availability for years. In the past couple years, Air New Zealand has went from no availability to tons of availability (hint to Greg to update the Best uses of Virgin Points post). I just booked ANZ business class seats again (going to check out the South Island, including Eichardt’s–we went to the North Island last year). Not the greatest hard product, but getting a lie flat on a flight that long for less than 50k with transfer bonuses is a steal. Pro tip–they appear to start releasing space for a given flight 28 calendar days beforehand, around 1am Auckland Time.
VS also started having decent cruise redemptions.
What are your thoughts about NZ business class? I’ve heard mixed reviews.
The mixed reviews mostly come from the seat. And as a seat, it is…not good. No privacy, little storage, angled away from the window, not uncomfortable but old. However, as a bed, I found it to be pretty great (better than most seats IMO). It folds down into a flat surface, and they place a thick cushion on top of it. Given the orientation of the seat, there is no footwell, which for a 6’4″ guy like myself is greatly appreciated. The SFO and LAX flights both leave around 10pm and get in at 6am, and take about 13 hours. So for the 1.5 hours at the beginning and end of the flight, it is not up to par, but for the 10 hours in the middle, you’ll be happy. And the ability to lie down is the main reason I want to fly in business class. Seriously, if you watch the Youtube reviewers where they claim it is the worst business class seat ever, in the middle of the video they’ll admit they slept like a baby for 9.5 hours.
The food was definitely a step up from US carriers, they had a nice selection of NZ wines, the snacks were all from NZ, the staff were friendlier than most crews. I think an underrated component is getting into the spirit of your destination as you travel there. Hearing Kia Ora as you get on the plane, eating a nice plate of lamb and Whittaker’s chocolate, getting Maori inspired amenities, etc–it was a nice way to begin and end a trip to NZ.
I’m 6’6″ and loved my recent AirNZ flight for the same reasons. On an overnight flight I care more about being able to sleep comfortably than I do about elegance and I frankly had a more comfortable night of sleep on AirNZ than probably any other business class product I have flown because of the extra padding and lack of a confining footwell. I also found the flight attendants very friendly. You won’t “win” on social media with the pics you post of the seat, and for a daytime flight there are quite a few nicer/more elegant options, but for a nighttime flight I’d love to fly them again any time.
Greg, if had orphan miles in AmexExp and wanted to transfer them out, with no redemption in mind, where would YOU transfer them to?
Orphan miles are generally miles that are stuck in a loyalty program that offers no transferability. Transferable bank miles like Amex, Chase, Citi, etc are considered the ideal place to leave miles until you are ready to use them.
yes, you are typically right but i need to close p2’s account in amexp
Here are the options I’d consider, in order:
Thank you so much!
The “delta” between Wells Fargo and Citi seems pretty small, if you’re still into Choice and avios. (I think you said you don’t do LifeMiles, which is reasonable.)
Naw. Citi points are way more valuable/flexible & not just for 1:2 Choice transfers. WF will need to add some more & interesting transfer partners to move the needle.
Well yeah citi has more, I wouldn’t want just WF in my wallet – and I’ll grant that the value of transferable is having many choices… but in terms of value i don’t see much difference, esp for Greg in his normal transfer world
Avianca LM as you said, plus EVA, CX asia miles, jetBlue, Emirates, etihad, Singapore, qantas, wyndham, Leading hotels, virgin. Not all great options but in summation many more. Plus frequent bonuses(25%) to avianca, AF/KLM, and qatar.
Chase also allows transfers from cash back cards to miles cards.
The Ink Premier is an exception to this. Cashback earned via that card cannot be converted to regular old Ultimate Rewards.
Agreed.
Hyatt’s decline is palpable. It’s not just the loss of SLH and the awful addition of MMS (and the signal that sends for the future). The category changes are getting bad, where before they would have nearly as many going down as well as up, now it’s a very clear deval. In addition, oversight over individual properties is getting lax. There’s so many properties gaming availability, gaming peak/off-peak, gaming breakfast. Legit upgrades are extremely rare now as well.
I also disagree about AS trending up. Partner F/J awards which is all I used my miles for have skyrocketed. That loss can’t be compensated by short haul AA flights. But speaking of AA, no mention of AA Advantage? I think they’re kind of trending up. Status matches, ability to basically MS to status, with still solid OW benefits. I guess there was nowhere to go but up.
Ditto to AA? I’d say at least trending up by comparison (to Delta and United) – AA has publicly said they want to keep the value of their miles up, and I regularly see how I can get good value traveling in North America with AA miles, at least booking far out (which is low risk since you can cancel online without penalty). Maybe AA hasn’t made any changes recently, which is why Greg left them out, but I see that as a good thing.
Great post Greg! I agree with all your loyalty program directional changes. Any rental car programs or other loyalty programs (like One Key) worth adding to this post?
Also, it would be great if you did a similar post every 6 months or so with updates to the direction of these programs.
Thank you 🙂
I strongly disagree with the Alaska assessment. I used to use AS regularly for trans Pacific flights, especially via Cathay as well as JAL. There was no better sweet spot. Yes, there are fewer awards available bc of the lingering impact of the pandamic on China flights, but AS can no longer deliver the value that it used to for those of us who used it for Asia and Oceana premium flights.
To add on to this, a transPacific flight is way more important than a transAtlantic flight. I live in DC and downgrading to a 7 hour economy flight to Madrid is no big deal. It’s not a huge upgrade to get biz class for that shorter flight. However, for a 15 hr flight to Hong Kong (and on to Vietnam), it makes a much, much bigger difference. So in addition to the money savings being much more, the intangible benefits for Asia flights was much more than it can ever be for Europe flight.
I have to agree with Jeff. For the redemptions that I seek, recent changes have led to a Delta-like pattern. That is, wholly domestic flights are fine . . . flights wholly outside the US are fine . . . but, international to/from the US is prohibitive.
Domestic flights are fine but not great. They now charge based on distance flown, which is a real devaluation. Being SEA based, I used to be able to fly SAN-SEA, have a “stopover” for a few weeks, then fly SEA-PHX. Since they viewed it as a flight from SAN-PHX, they would charge very few miles (less than either flight by itself). Nowadays, most of my domestic flights from SEA cost fewer miles with Delta (versus AS or AA).
Flights to Europe from the West Coast also went up. Overall Alaska has seen a big devaluation.
Two very nice sweet spots for SEA-Europe are the non-stops on Aer Lingus to DUB and, even more so, SEA-CDG on Air Tahiti Nui (because of availability). Both have gone down to 55k one way and I’ve been able to book SEA-CDG a few times already.
Is either one an industry-leading product? No, not at all. Is either one a great deal for non-stop lie-flat from SEA-Europe in under 10 hours for 55k + tax? Definitely.
I have flown the Air Tahiti CDG flight, and would do it again. But the reason both of those options are sort of “meh” is that they are not that much better than booking through other partners. I would probably still book the Air Tahiti flight through AA, even though it is 57.5k, because there is no partner booking fee that is non refundable. Yeah, it is only $12.50 per ticket, but I have a tendency to book something like that, and continue watching in case something better comes along. And AA miles are way easier to accrue. And the Aer Lingus flight booked through Aer Lingus Avios would be 60k (or less Amex MR given the current transfer bonus), though with higher fees.
Alaska miles are more difficult to accumulate, but they use to have sweet spots that were tens of thousands of miles less than the competition. Now they are still difficult to accumulate, with sweet spots that are 2.5k miles better than the competition? That is a huge devaluation.
Sorry it’s felt that way to you, I can appreciate why you’d think of it that way if you were primarily using it for Cathay, Fiji and Qantas redemptions.
I’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve been using more Alaska miles than before, both to Asia and Europe (as well as taking advantage of the excellent availability on short AA flights that Greg mentioned). I’ve loved the wide-open availability for JAL premium economy as a placeholder until close-in availability biz availability opens up (at the same 60k to/from Seattle that it used to be). I’ve already booked Starlux to TPE, Air Tahiti Nui to Auckland and both of the euro-awards that were already mentioned.
I’ve personally found more availability for less or equivalent prices since the unified chart came out and once multi-partner awards go live I imagine will be much better. But I also had a terrible time booking those old “super sweet spots” for the last 6-7 years, so I actually find it easier to use the program more often now (and I do have a ton of AS miles).
That said, for those who collected Alaska miles specifically for Qantas, Cathay and Fiji, and who were able to find available awards, I completely understand why it leaves a bad taste.
Oh, and btw, you probably already know this, but if you change a partner award after booking, you don’t pay the fee again…even if you change the flight to a different partner. Doesn’t help if you want to book on another alliance, but I rarely cancel partner awards, I almost always change them to/from previously-existing speculative bookings.
That’s because you live in SEA. The only TPAC J that did not get devalued were YVR/SEA-TYO. And even then, if you want to add on a connection past TYO, the price went up due to the distance band.
For the rest of us west coasters, the price increased 60k to 75k. When AA is still offering 60k, it sure doesn’t feel like AS miles are trending up.
Yep, that’s correct. I was specifically responding to the previous commenter who was from Seattle as well and talking about fares from there.
No doubt about it, folks in California (and in some cases PDX) got the short end of the stick when it comes to Asia. I actually called that one of the worst-hit redemptions when I wrote my initial post about the changes.
You make a lot of good points, but I think the key sentence here (which puts you in a different position from >90% of people, even on this site) is “I do have a ton of AS miles.” If you are a frequent AS flyer, you have a steady stream of miles coming in, especially with their still generous earnings. That is awesome! But for the rest of us, AS miles are pretty hard to come by. Every few years you can sign up for their one personal and one business card. By comparison, AA has a number of different credit cards, a (usually) more generous shopping portal, SimplyMiles, Bask Bank, etc. Between P2 and I, we have about 100k AS miles and 700k AA miles right now. So if the awards are ever in the same ballpark, we are always going to book through AA (like the JAL business class award you mention, or Air Tahiti Nui, etc).
Despite how difficult it is to accumulate AS miles, we did so in the past because one of the unicorn awards came up about as often as we could get a credit card bonus (every few years). While those are mostly gone, I still see value in collecting their miles (even as a SEA resident who does not fly AS), namely for their unique partnerships with Starlux and Condor. Outside of that, I have more or less written them off.
The 4.5k economy pricing on shorter AA flights is a hugely valuable sweet spot. 2.5, 3 cpp easy on these short routes. But yes, the long-haul J devals have been bad. Oddly enough, the AS chart changes are mostly beneficial for actual Alaska residents, as those short haul flights within Alaska are now cash expensive, points cheap.
Let’s not forget about Bilt also making tax payments ineligible for the Rent Day bonus. I sense Bilt has already established a plan of specific devaluations over the next two years.
Just wait . . . Hyatt will ultimately go to dynamic pricing systemwide.
For sure, Hyatt is going to devalue because of the all UR points from all the Chase INK CCs. That flood of points is causing many transfer partners to have 2nd thoughts.
@Greg @Nick Reyes If citi added aeroplan would either of you but particularly Nick consider jumping ship from Amex?
There’s really no scenario where we “jump ship”. As long as Amex points continue to be much easier to earn in large quantities than Citi points, we’ll keep earning them. I think the real question is if there’s a situation where we have to choose to earn one or the other, which would we pick? For example: earn 2x Citi or 2x Amex on spend? For me, my pick is already Citi. that’s partially because I have a much larger collection of Amex points and partially because Citi has some great unique transfer partners like EVA and LHW. And Citi has 10% back with Rewards+
Let’s not forget your favorite 1:2 on Choice hotels 🙂
Greg,
What stays at SLH made you such a fan? My one time using it with Hyatt was awful. I wasn’t impressed at all. You talk highly of it, but I never saw the value when i could stay in a Hyatt property with all the perks plus better value/service. My one time didn’t meet expectations and I was said to see that MMS was implemented at a 1-1.4. I imagine Hyatt will continue to devalue as they grow.
SLH hotels are completely independent of each other so one bad stay doesn’t tell you anything about the nearly 400 other hotels that can be booked.
A few stays I really enjoyed (and that come readily to mind) were:
And of course Nick loved his stays at the Grand Hotel Victoria on Lake Como:
I didn’t say it did tell me anything about the other 399. It did leave me with a negative enough view of the situation to wonder why you talk it up so much here. I didn’t find it a good enough experience to look for SLH over a Hyatt property if I could choose between the two. I do believe one bad experience can do damage to a brand, which SLH is. They maybe independent of each other, but the brand is SLH and my one experience wasn’t that awful, but it was negative enough I won’t immediately rush to spend Hilton points because they have them now. Yours were good enough you’re looking to earn Hilton to book at SLH. I would give SLH another shot if I was looking for somewhere and they had a lovely hotel there especially if I had Hilton points. I didn’t find my visit as enjoyable as yours under the SLH banner so I was curious why you kept promoting them so heavily.