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Last night, I felt a sudden wave of panic when I read this headline from View from the Wing, “Citi Prestige Limits Access to Good Hotel Rates for 4th Night Free Over Two Months Early. Thankfully, this was a case of mistaken identity as it sounds like the readers reporting this problem simply called the wrong number. If you call the number on the back of your card and say you want to book travel, you’ll end up speaking with a ThankYou travel agent. Those agents can only book (inflated) rates as you’d seem them on thankyou.com. However, if you book via the Prestige Concierge / Aspire Lifestyles, you’ll still have access to normal direct hotel rates / AAA / some corporate codes, hotel special rates, etc. Those Prestige Concierge agents maintain that you will continue to be able to book via the Prestige Concierge until September 1, 2019 as we had previously been told with no imminent or early change.
As a reminder, you can find direct contact information (to book via phone or email) for the Prestige Concierge along will the answers to all of your other questions about this benefit in our complete guide. See that guide here:
Complete Guide to the Citi Prestige 4th Night Free.
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If i book a 4th night now for September but downgrade my card in october, will i still be reimbursed? In the past i was being reimbursed within a month but now its taking almost 3 months.
Good question. I don’t know.
[…] There was some back and forth this week about the fourth-night free benefit from the Citi Prestige card. While the benefit is supposed to last in its present form until September, some websites were saying it has already changed. Nick from Frequent Miler reports that the problem is with how the people were making the booking with Citi. […]
I appreciate your thoughtful response, Nick. And even though this benefit, program, & TYPs are already pretty much dead to me, Greg’s posting today doesn’t sound too favorable, either!
“When booking hotels through the Citi ThankYou portal, you can expect to pay, on average, almost 10% more than you would when booking through other online travel agencies. This diminishes the value of ThankYou points when applied to hotel stays. Chase and Hotels.com, meanwhile, seem to offer competitive pricing in most cases.”
I book hotels thru the Chase portal when I don’t like what’s on Hyatt, Hilton, or Marriott or only need 4 nights. And their rates are usually discounted for Chase program members (beyond the 33% discount for having my CSR). And it’s easy & straightforward. Why go thru convoluted Citi transactions when you simply don’t have to?!
Yeah, I’ve never booked a hotel through the ThankYou portal because it’s almost always a bad deal as Greg showed.
The point of this post is that you don’t have to. VFTW had mistakenly reported that Citi pulled the ability to book through the Prestige concierge early, but they didn’t. Until Sept 1st, you can still book through the Prestige concierge via email or phone (simple process — nothing convoluted about it).
In terms of portal bookings, here’s the thing: I’ve never seen a rate through Chase or Citi that I couldn’t beat with a rate like AAA, AARP, corporate rate, hotel-specific promo, best rate guarantee — or some sort of combination of the those things (I don’t always compare against the rates offered via Chase or Citi, but the times I have those rates haven’t ever been the best I could do). The nice thing about Prestige Concierge 4th night free bookings is that you can stack those things with the 4th night free.
If you’re happy booking through the Chase portal, that’s great. There are times when I’m flush with points and I’d rather take 1.5c per point than use cash and times when I’m staying at an independent hotel and don’t care about elite status benefits, etc. But when I can get a deal like 4 nights of hotel + enough points for a fifth night for $400 (my example above), I’d rather do that than use 60K+ Ultimate Rewards points (for the four nights alone, no points earning for a 5th night). In that spot, I’d rather keep those points for a more valuable use. Further, unlike when you book through Chase, nights booked through the Prestige concierge (again, not through the ThankYou portal), qualify for hotel points and towards elite status and receive elite benefits. That might not matter in some scenarios — but sometimes access to free breakfast and/or a hotel lounge can be a huge value. In the example I’m referencing from Zurich, free breakfast daily at the hotel (which I wouldn’t have gotten had I booked through Chase) saved me a significant chunk since dining in Switzerland is pricey (and because I’m traveling with a baby, access to breakfast in the hotel — without having to go hunt around for a place — is more valuable to me than it was before I had a baby).
Again, the Prestige isn’t for everyone, but 4th night free bookings made through the concierge can still be a very good deal for a little while longer.
My understanding is that reservations made through the Prestige Concierge, until September 1st, will still qualify for the 4th night rebate. When do you think the furthest date out would be for this reimbursement?
If our community goal is to travel for free, how good really was/is for a ltd time, this benefit anyway? TY points for that matter are inferior to URs unless you fly constantly on obscure airlines or are Greg who knows (& isn’t fully posting because he acknowledges the complexity & changes in doing so) how to use them elsewhere. I guess Citi & its “premium” offerings are doable for avg credit scores but using them as an anchor with excellent scores is short sighted. I mean, Garuda Airlines…really??!
Not everyone has exactly the same goals, so I certainly understand that this benefit may not have been useful for you.
With regards to the benefit, it’s been great for people who can take advantage. For example, I recently had a 4-night stay that cost $500 before the 4th night free. After the rebate, that’s $400. I earned enough Marriott points from that to get a free Cat 2 stay (12,500 points), which I already used on a night where cash rates were high ($200+). I also got 4 nights towards requalifying for Platinum / possibly going towards Titanium. Three hundred bucks for four nights in Zurich plus a fifth night I needed elsewhere seemed like a better deal than using 25,000 Marriott points per night. Since the $125 nightly rate was a AAA rate, I couldn’t have booked it through the Chase portal – the hotel would have cost about 15K per night through Chase with the Sapphire Reserve.
People whose travel is reimbursed surely found this benefit huge.
I’ve previously written some posts about stacking this benefit with Best Rate Guarantees so save around 50% off of the advertised rates. Again, that might make sense when points prices are too high to justify using points and when you still want to book directly for elite benefits / credit.
This benefit can also be useful when you either don’t have enough points or the right points or just can’t use points for the hotel you need.
Again, everyone has different goals. But for anyone who occasionally pays for a 4-night stay for one reason or another, this benefit has been pretty big.
In terms of Thank You points and their relative value, you may want to check out the sweet spots post I wrote about Thank You points. I’d say they’re pretty valuable, actually. You don’t at all need to fly on obscure airlines – their partners give you access to all three major airline alliances, and at great rates in some cases. I’ll agree that their partners are less mainstream, but sometimes that’s where you find great value.
Here’s that sweet spots post:
https://frequentmiler.com/citi-thank-you-points-sweet-spots/