We’ve received word that one miles millionaire has been minted among the Frequent Miler family (with another mulling a mileage run to Mexico). If you’re looking for last-minute Delta MQDs, look no further — and if you thought you couldn’t find award availability at your favorite Hyatt, you might find a suite upgrade award more useful than you realized. All that and more in this Frequent Miler week in review.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
I’m a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire!
Congratulations to Greg! He was the first among us to receive confirmation from SAS EuroBonus that his quest to earn 1,000,000 miles by flying 15 qualifying SkyTeam partners by the end of 2024 has been successful! He won’t receive the miles until January, but now he at least knows that he will receive them. That’s awesome! I didn’t expect that we’d know until January whether or not we’d earned the miles; I’m really glad to see SAS reaching out to confirm with people that they’ll earn the million miles rather than leaving them in suspense until the new year.
Nick’s SAS Dilemma: Guess I’m going to Mexico?
I haven’t been quite as fortunate as Greg. Part of that is my own doing — the way I booked my Virgin Atlantic flight may have made it ineligible — and part of it is just the broken SAS system for requesting retroactive mileage credit, which isn’t recognizing my claims for Vietnam Airlines or Air Europa, either. Since I think I might not get credit for the Virgin Atlantic flight, I’m making a mileage run to Mexico this weekend to pick up Aeromexico. I’ll then have flown 16 qualifying airlines at be fairly confident that 15 will credit. I hope. The part that really stinks here is not knowing when I’ll know about the three I’m missing, but I couldn’t wait until the week of Christmas and New Year’s Eve to add some insurance.
Earn $2500 Delta MQDs without flying (Not too late for 2024)
Are you thinking about mileage running for Delta elite status? You might want to consider yourself the hassle and expense of trying to pick up Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs) the old-fashioned way and instead just pick up a new credit card or two to get MQD headstarts.
PSA – Hyatt Suite Upgrades can now be easily used when there’s no standard availability
Speaking of elite status benefits, Hyatt’s suite upgrades have long been one of my favorite benefits in the game (though note of course that these are really milestone benefits as opposed to elite benefits — you do need to complete the nights to get them). And Hyatt just made them arguably better than ever. You can now apply them online — which, on the one hand, will make it easier for everyone to use and perhaps harder to find availability to use them in some cases. But in other situations, where the property only has standard suites available and no standard rooms, this detail first noted by Miles Talk will be really useful: you can still apply your suite upgrade and drop the cost of the suite to that of a standard room! This is great news for properties with more suites than standard rooms.
Amex Business Platinum card now has $200 in annual Hilton credit
In other hotel-related news, the Amex Business Platinum card has a new benefit, and if you’re a cardholder, you’ll want to listen up now: You can now get up to $200 in Hilton credits per year, doled out as $50 per quarter. Keep in mind that there are 18 days left in this quarter. That means that you can theoretically use this credit up on all of your Business Platinum cards right now for this quarter and get a fresh $50 on each card in January, ensuring that you can get a total of $350 in credits between now and a year from now. I have a Business Platinum card that was about to be on the chopping block, but at the very least I’ll be looking to get $50 out of it as soon as possible.
Marriott Bonvoy Choice Benefits. Which to pick? (New: Feb 1 deadline & new 40K expiration)
If you are instead loyal to Marriott, you need to know that there’s a new deadline for picking your 50-night and 75-night choice benefits — and a new wrinkle regarding the expiration of the 40K fee night certificate if that’s what you choose at 70 nights. I think it kind of stinks to incentivize you to delay picking if you want an expiration date further out.
Nick’s 2025 casino status strategy (hoping for two more “free” cruises)
Casino status matching has been bananas for these past few years. Unfortunately, the gravy train is coming to an end, but what a ride it has been! Still, I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel entirely. This post lays out my 2025 strategy to match my way to what will hopefully be two more cruises at very low cost as things wind down.
Preferred Problems (issues booking Preferred Hotels with points)
Greg really hasn’t sold me on Preferred Hotels. I do get a kick out of the fact that he’s always found booking awards via Turkish Miles & Smiles not worth the hassle, but he’s willing to put up with a list of pitfalls for Preferred Hotels. The good news is that it is possible to get really good value with Preferred Hotels, but in my opinion this is not a beginning or intermediate-level play. You need to be an advanced user who is willing to put up with the many shortcomings, has enough points to drop back 10 yards and punt when things go wrong, and enough know-how to know when to go for it and when to cut and run.
ITC Mughal – Agra, India (Marriott Luxury Collection): Bottom Line Review
Tim’s review of his stay at a Marriott Luxury Collection property in India gave me a chuckle because of how it compares to my own experience in Agra. When I visited almost 15 years ago, I stayed at Sai Palace, which was notably less…palatial….than the ITC Mughal (in fairness, today’s rates run around $12 a night for Sai Palace….I remember paying around $4). Needless to say, if I ever travel to Agra again, I would be very happy to use ~20K Marriott points per night for ITC Mughal based on Tim’s review.
Delta One Suites Re-review. Detroit to Seoul and back
Greg recently re-reviewed Delta One Suites and I really appreciated the comparisons to his 2018 review. That really helps put things in perspective — oftentimes, it’s probably easy for folks who fly a new product early on to be “wowed” by things that may not be so wow-ie any more. It was great to see updates to things Greg didn’t like last time and his feelings after years of improvements on competitor airlines. I haven’t personally flown Delta One since I think 2019, but I do remember feeling like pictures didn’t do it justice — I hadn’t been blown away by the photos in early reviews, but I found the seat and experience more impressive in real life. That said, I’d probably have the same overall conclusion as Greg today — I’d be happy to fly Delta One Suites, but I wouldn’t choose it over other nice business class products. It’s on par and easily ahead of American Airlines in my opinion, but not industry-leading.
List of Current Hotel Promotions for December 2024
We republished this resource this week and I wanted to highlight it here to remind you that we keep this up to date when we post new hotel promotions. Whenever you have a paid stay coming up, it’s worth taking a look at the latest promotions.
How to pay taxes via credit card, 2024-2025 edition (updated)
Paying taxes via credit card can be an easy way to earn a big welcome bonus or boost your points balances if you have significant taxes to pay. This post lays out your options in terms of payment processors and costs. We briefly saw the IRS website remove one processor and reduce fees for the others before that processor came back and fees returned to normal. It’ll be interesting to see if that was a mistake or a sneak preview of changes coming soon.
Buy Wyndham points from 0.715c per point!
I don’t usually include points sales in week in review, but this one is so good that I think it deserves a highlight. If you’re targeted for the best rate, you could do really well buying points at just 0.715c per point. In fact, for my weekend trip to Mexico, I considered staying at the Wyndham Grand all-inclusive in Cancun for 30,000 points. Buying the points to book that with this sale would have cost me $214.50, which was significantly less than the going rate (which was $315 non-refundable or $373.60 flexible when i was looking yesterday). Vacasa rentals could be bought for $107.25 per bedroom per night for a property that would otherwise cost up to $250 per bedroom per night.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on last chance deals to be sure you get them before they’re gone.
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I got tired reading about this much flying. You’re lucky you love it.
It seemed that the better (easier) approach to Preferred Hotels was via Choice.