Points earned with the CNB Crystal Visa Infinite card used to be great for purchasing expensive flights. With expensive flights, it was possible to get up to 1.31 cents per point value. Sadly, that’s no longer the case. As pointed out by Danny the Deal Guru, 1.2 cents per point is now the best you can get. Unfortunately, the CNB website adds an automatic booking fee (explained below), so the real maximum value is 1.16 cents per point. Most flights will get less value.
So, how much are points worth usually? To figure this out, I first identified the CNB formula and then calculated point values for various flight prices…
Formula Hunting
I checked a whole bunch of real world flight prices ranging from less than $100 to over $10K and compared them to CNB prices. Thanks to a little spreadsheet magic, I found the formula. It seems that CNB adds on a booking fee of 3% the actual fare plus $15. Here’s the formula with the booking fee:
- CNB Airfare Price = Actual Fare x 1.03 + $15
I found a couple of exceptions to the above rule, but it held perfectly across the vast majority of flights that I looked at. Flights on Spirit were notably even more expensive with CNB, so don’t plan to use points on Spirit. That way, we can ignore that outlier in our formula. Given the above, we can accurately determine CNB point values:
In general, points are worth: Actual Fare / Points Required. For example, many other bank rewards programs charge 10,000 points for $100 of airfare. In those cases, points are worth $100 / 10,000 = $0.01 each (e.g. 1 cent each).
So, let’s start with the formula for the number of points required for CNB award flights:
- CNB Airfare Points Required = (Actual Fare x 1.03 + $15) / .012
For example, with an actual $100 fare, CNB adds a $18 booking fee and charges the following number of points: $118 / .012 = 9,833 points.
So, now we know how to calculate point values:
- CNB Point Value for Airfare = Actual Fare / ((Actual Fare * 1.03 + $15) / .012)
Formula details
I found that the formula works under all of these conditions:
- one-way and round-trip fares
- basic economy, regular economy, and business class fares
- domestic and international fares
When adding additional passengers, the formula must be calculated separately for each passenger (i.e. the $15 surcharge is assessed per passenger).
Using the formula
I realize that the point value formula isn’t very useful on its own for most readers, so here’s a chart that will help:
| Actual Airfare (not CNB’s price) | Predicted CNB Point Value (cents per point value) |
|---|---|
| $50 | 0.90 |
| $100 | 1.02 |
| $150 | 1.06 |
| $200 | 1.09 |
| $300 | 1.11 |
| $500 | 1.13 |
| $1,000 | 1.15 |
| $5,000 | 1.16 |
| $10,000 | 1.16 |
As you can see above, the point value rises with increased airfare prices. 1.16 cents per point appears to be the theoretical best you can do. For the purpose of this blog, we’ll use 1.11 as the Reasonable Redemption Value for CNB points since $300 is close to the average for domestic airfare.
How to get the best value from your CNB points
It’s pretty clear that the best way to get good value from your CNB points is to redeem for expensive airfare. If you plan to purchase a $50 flight, don’t use your points for that flight since you’ll get less than 1 cent per point value. If you plan to purchase a $500 flight, though, you can see above that you’ll get 1.13 cents per point value by redeeming CNB points. That’s much better.
Additional tips:
- Booking round-trip will result in better value than two one-way tickets
- Booking additional passengers has no effect on the point value.
- Avoid using points to book Spirit since CNB apparently charges a larger booking fee with Spirit.
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I get great value booking the activities. I’m going on a 13 day New Zealand cruise and I was able to book some fantastic shore excursions through CNB that I wouldn’t have been able to afford them from the cruise ship. I did compare them to Citi thank you points, Expedia, and Viator, and CNB was always lower in cost.
Great tip! I’ve been having a hard time finding the exact same activities listed in both Expedia and CNB but I found one. Indeed it was cheaper through CNB and then icing on the cake that CNB gives you the full 1.2 cents per point value.
[…] Until now you could get a value of 1.35 cents per points when using points to book flights through the bank’s travel portal. That was really a 1.2cpp value, since the prices showing in their OTA were actually inflated a bit compared to other sites as per FM. […]
Thanks for the article! having the reserve at 1.5 cashback for travel makes it a tough pill to swallow settling for 1.25 with this card. If i have the points, i’ll use them, but my daily will stay with reserve for this very reason.
[…] Travel With Grant posted that points were now worth 1.35¢ each only to have this debunked by Frequent Miler. There is actually a relatively easy way to get a true 1.3¢ per point in […]
[…] Travel With Grant posted that points were now worth 1.35¢ each only to have this debunked by Frequent Miler. There is actually a relatively easy way to get a true 1.3¢ per point in […]
[…] $25 booking fee using the Cruises and Tours department. You can see how that affects airfare prices here, it will be similar with cruises and […]
I don’t see any reason using this card, when there is Altitude Reserve with 1.5cpp. I just cycle through airlines credit on CNB every year.
Well, the AR has a $400 AF – $325 credit for an actual cost of $75. This one has an AF of $400 – $250 airline credit per card up to 4 cards, so your net AF could be -$600. 1.5 cpp is greater than 1.3 cpp, and if you have a Samsung Pay phone you could get potentially get it almost everywhere. However, CNB has a broader range of 3x at grocery stores airline, hotel, taxi, limousine, rental car, train, bus, gas, restaurant, fast food and takeout food dining establishments. So it adds grocery and dining, which may not be a huge deal to you. It also has free AU vs. $75 each. Priority Pass is unlimited. If we look at the spending difference of $675/.002 = $337,500. At 50k, CNB also gives $550 lounge club credit too. Not to mention the $100 airfare discount.
If you do business spend at Sam’s/Costco you may be better off with AR, but CNB could be a good ONLY card if you want.
Skip Experiences. I went down a rabbit hole yesterday to try to find out the cash value of a half day spa certificate, which I was thinking of getting my wife for Christmas. Cost is 52k CNB. I called CNB, who couldn’t tell me what the cash value limit was, then called the spa who had no idea what I was talking about, then called Great American Days, who sort of knew what I was talking about but not really. Eventually I got an answer that a half day cert is worth up to $300 and a full day is up to $500. That means 52k CNB for $300, or just under 0.58cpp. A full day is 85300 CNB for $500, or just under 0.6cpp. So, definitely skip the Experiences section.
great analysis, now get to work on hotels 🙂
in the past i have used them for hotels in orlando for some great redemptions.
8/18 towne place was $579 for 5 nights (per Marriott site) for total 34,445 CNB points = 1.68
8/17 hyatt place was $522 for 4 nights (per Hyatt site) for total 30,376 CNB points = 1.72
they changed there travel site recently and i think the redemptions for hotels have gone down and is consistent across properties
Yeah I just booked a hotel via concierge the other day. Website was flat 1.2 cpp. Concierge was flat 1.1 cpp. I was very disappointed that it wasn’t 1.3 cpp.
I booked through the concierge because they booked the actual price from the hotel’s website and had the full range of room types, rather than the restrictive portal options.
[…] The exact value of CNB Crystal Visa Infinite Points by Frequent Miler. The more expensive a flight gets, the better value you get because you’re paying a fixed $15 fee. I don’t think booking hotels ever makes sense, even if the prices aren’t inflated remember it’s very easy to get bigger discounts elsewhere. […]
[…] The exact value of CNB Crystal Visa Infinite Points by Frequent Miler. The more expensive a flight gets, the better value you get because you’re paying a fixed $15 fee. I don’t think booking hotels ever makes sense, even if the prices aren’t inflated remember it’s very easy to get bigger discounts elsewhere. […]
I love this card. Great customer service too. Thank you for your analysis.
Concierge is 1.3 with exact price as booking direct (at least with airline).
They book through their system or direct with airline if you need something special. It gets charged to card (so you actually earn 3X as well) and then you get a statement credit for the amount.
This is an incredibly helpful comment. How many times have you done this? Do you need to escalate to a supervisor? Any pushback or they are happy to do this at the 1.3CPM rate?
Thanks!
All I gotta say is:
My two fave travel bloggers’ names start w G
Both are in this post
Happy holiday season guys!
Great post Greg. If only CNB priced their flights the same as what the airlines price their flights at, we wouldn’t have such a complicated sliding scale. Thanks for the deep dive!
See my comment above which addresses this.