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Is IHG about to be the next big thing in hotel loyalty? Is Hilton actively trying to drive me away? Where are Choice and Marriott headed — and is Hyatt still at the top? This week on Frequent Miler on the Air, Greg and I discuss hotel the hotel loyalty rollercoaster as some programs hit an upswing and others fail to impress.
This week on the blog, we also published a handy scorecard to keep track of all the ways we’re posting to earn easy American Airlines elite status through Loyalty Points, a weird hack for booking some Delta awards for fewer points, and more. Watch or listen to the show below or read on for more from this week at Frequent Miler.
1:06 Giant Mailbag
9:37 What crazy thing did . . . Aeromexico do this week?
15:50 Mattress Running the Numbers Triple Header
29:35 Main Event: Hotel Loyalty Rollercoaster
1:02:31 Post Roast
1:04:41 Question of the Week: What counts as American Airlines Loyalty Points?
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This week at Frequent Miler
I’m excited about… IHG?! [On Greg’s Mind]
One of the things I love about Greg is his ability to look on the bright side and find what we should be excited about even when my first impression is less favorable. While I have a healthy skepticism of IHG’s ability to surprise and delight, Greg has good reason to be hopeful for the future of the program given the very positive changes coming to the credit cards. Ultimately, as I said on the podcast this week, I just can’t see IHG getting enough of its owners to play ball on adding any meaningful elite benefits across the board and I’m just not excited enough about even IHG’s luxury brands, but I will be glad to have my perspective changed on that should IHG have something big up its sleeve.
IHG Card Changes: New Biz Card, Higher Earning, Top Up Certs With Points & More
Greg’s optimism about IHG is reasonable in large part due to the great changes announced to the IHG cards this week. These changes are so good that I might have to take Chase up on one of its awful upgrade offers to give up my old (no-longer-available) $49 annual fee IHG Select card to replace it with the IHG Premier (if it is true that only the 40K certs from the Premier and upcoming business card are upgradeable with points). More about the changes in Stephen’s post.
Hilton DisHonors: More Than 75% Of Hilton Properties Worldwide Don’t Have To Offer Upgrades
While IHG is giving us hope for a brighter tomorrow, Hilton keeps dimming the lights to lower their costs and increase profits. I wasn’t too excited about the loss of breakfast in the US (which is permanently being replaced with food and beverage credits), but then Stephen stumbled on Hilton’s latest ridiculousness: they don’t offer room upgrades at all at more than 75% of properties worldwide. Ok, that might not really feel like news to anyone who has ever had Hilton elite status, but we’ve now had multiple reports of people being unable to score even a slightly better view (even when plenty of such rooms are available) and front desk staff are pointing to the policy — most Hilton brands do not need to offer an upgrade despite upgrades being a published benefit of Hilton elite status. It turns out you have to be staying at one of a fraction of its brands to be able to get something better than the category you booked unless you get very lucky with an extra generous property.
Keep score with the AA Loyalty Game Scorecard
I’ve never been one to chase airline elite status, but with how easy it could be to earn high-level American Airlines elite status from my couch this year, I have to play along….I just hope I get a chance to leverage the benefits to good value at some point this year or next. This scorecard will help keep me honest about how much I invest in earning status that I don’t really need. Still, if I can generate high-level status for a few hundred bucks, it shouldn’t be too hard to reap enough benefit to make this worthwhile. I’ve already earned more than enough points for Gold, so I am hopeful to hit Platinum by the time the new program officially launches on March 1st. We’ll see.
How to earn American Airlines Loyalty Points without flying (Cheat Sheet to play the elite status game)
While the previous post will give me the scorecard to keep track, this is the post that I intend to update regularly as we see new opportunities for easy American Airlines Loyalty Points. There are already quite a few options to pick up points at little or no cost, but I am holding out on some of them hoping for even better offers to reduce my cost further. Keep this one bookmarked and we’ll keep it up to date.
Expanded Delta award availability via . . . Aeromexico?
Would you believe that Aeromexico has access to more Delta award availability than Air France or Virgin Atlantic? I wouldn’t have believed it either. Thanks to the current transfer bonus from Membership Rewards, there are some instances where Aeromexico could be your best bet for booking a Delta award — maybe by a long shot. I don’t have an immediate need for this type of redemption, but I’ll definitely keep this in mind and give it a search now and then to see if I can save some miles.
AAdvantage Loyalty Games Fail: There’s just no Future here.
We had an idea for a stack, but we didn’t really think it would work. It sounded like it would involve an investment of time and annoyance and be fruitless, but somebody had to try it. Solution? Give it to the new guy! Tim was a great sport, giving this deal a shot even though it was barely better than “not very likely” to work. Still, if it did work, it would have been great. Oh well — hopefully Tim’s time investment pays out in saving you some time from trying the same.
Hyatt’s Royal Palms Resort and Spa, Scottsdale: Bottom Line Review
Greg’s recent vacation in Arizona included this little gem of a use of Hyatt’s Premium Suite Upgrade option. Very cool to see this available even in a situation where a standard room wasn’t available and the stay looked quite good. Just like we said on this week’s podcast, Hyatt continues to deliver at a high level for Globalists and that’s great to see.
Hyatt Centric Las Olas Fort Lauderdale: Bottom Line Review
I very nearly booked a night here last fall when Greg and I stopped in Fort Lauderdale en route to the Virgin Islands for a weekend. I think Greg might have spent the night here, but with just a short overnight he likely didn’t get the full sense of the property that Tim did on a recent stay. After reading Tim’s review here, I’d be open to staying here if I were to make a return to Fort Lauderdale for some casino matching shenanigans, though my first choice would probably be a return to the Conrad Fort Lauderdale and its location directly across from the beach despite Hilton’s best efforts to convince me that I want nothing to do with them.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep your eye on this week’s month-ending last chance deals to grab before they’re gone.
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I just had a chance to listen to the podcast today. It was a really good one. I have one comment, though.
Putting down a second person to get an extra breakfast credit seems like it crosses a line to me. I know everyone has a different line. I’ll sign up for things I’m going to cancel to get miles, or sign up for banks I don’t think I’ll keep a relationship with in order to get a sign up bonus. And I know that hotels are sticking it to us on breakfast and so it’s only right to think of ways to stick it back to them. But if you are really only one person and have no intent to put a second person in the room with you, I kind of think this is just . . . well. Lying? Not judging. (Well, maybe I am a little.) It is just too much for me!
Makes sense. For me, since hotels usually charge the same for two guests as one, I just think of it as getting my money’s worth (or point’s worth)
I want to put in a good word for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which Nick didn’t know or appreciate. They provide a curated list of boutique hotels that are more appealing to me than most generic points hotels. Only a portion of their portfolio is available through IHG, as they have their own cash-based loyalty program. Their phone agents are charming and helpful. I like Kimpton properties for my aspirational stays, and on the prosaic end I prefer a Holiday Inn Express to a Hyatt Place, so IHG is a solid program for me.
This is from the Radisson site “Existing reservations that meet Eligible Night criteria are eligible for the promotion. Award Nights and Points + Cash redemption nights are not eligible to receive bonus points. This offer may not be combined with other promotions, offer or discounts.
Bolding is mine and it looks like Award stays will not qualify for the 10k night bonus points. Your thoughts?
Do you think nights booked with points will qualify for 10k bonus points?
That’s correct. Radisson changed the terms and now award stays won’t count.
Sound like what crazy thing did Radisson do this week.
@Nick Reyes Reyes Do you know if when you book with a “standard” hyatt leverage rate from the hyatt biz if it counts as “standard” rate for the purposes of a 3k club/6k suite/9k prem suite upgrade? Assuming it’s not a resort ofc. Thanks.
Great question. I don’t know the answer. If you find out, let us know!
Dang Nick, it’s like that?
Greg, can you explain why you are saying the terms of the Radisson offer say it works for award nights? Looking at the terms, I’m seeing “Eligible Night(s) means one or more paid nights booked on a rate that earns points” which I would have thought excludes award nights.
I actually found a Park Inn at 10,000 that I wouldn’t mind spending 6 or 9 nights at, so hoping you can show me why I’m wrong.
Yikes. It looks like the terms must have changed since since Tim posted the deal. You’re right I’m seeing the same as you in the official terms.
I disagree with your saying that Choice’s loyalty program got better during it’s last update 3 or 4 years ago. Before the change the status of loyalty gave you earlier booking availability to use your points:
No Status: 30 days
Gold: 50 days
Platinum: 75 days
Diamond: 100 days
plus you got point bonuses.
So there was a large advantage to having the higher status since some of the beach locations had only a room or a couple rooms available with points during the summer, so if you had status you could get them before the person without status. This would be true for other hot locations that had special events nearby.
I am in total agreement that there really isn’t a real advantage for having status with Choice. For me, the above advantage was the best one they had, and they got rid of it.
Great podcast this week, especially re downward trend of Hilton and upward trend of IHG. I hold both the Aspire and the IHG Premier. I was going to downgrade the IHG, but it looks like it’ll be staying with the future changes to benefits. I’m still finding a lot of secondary value in the Aspire, ie. Airline free credit, resort credit, etc. But I’m curious as to your thoughts @Greg The Frequent Miler @nickreyes, does the Aspire still earn a spot in your wallet? Or is it time to downgrade and take my loyalty elsewhere?
If you can earn the $250 airline fee credit and $250 resort credit each year, then the Aspire is still absolutely worth keeping. Those two reimbursements more than make up for the annual fee and you also get a free weekend night each year. That’s a hard to beat combo
Greg, regarding suite upgrades, you missed a category of denial:
When the hotel manager acknowledges your tier status and acknowledges that a suite is available for your entire stay but then says “I’m simply not going to give you a suite for seven days.”
Ride the hotel loyalty roller coaster long enough and you will barf.
After barfing, if you get back on, you deserve what you get.
I saw a Country Inn & Suites in mid March for 10k/night just outside ohare with a free airport shuttle and free parking. Could potentially do a sporting break free-after-promo park & fly for 3,6, or 9 nights if you check in and put a do not disturb on the door. I almost want to do something like that just because of the deal aspect!
Nick, the IHG Select Card gets 10% of points redeemed back. That is one reason to not upgrade it. I just was looking at using the 40K certs from the select card, it’s brutal. Seeing lots of stuff at 50K+. Really hoping that IHG’s tech does allow us to upgrade the Select Certs – one can hope!
Once again, FM proves it’s the most useful points, miles and cash back site.
You guys have the most useful free content on the internet.
On the other hand, what a shameless use of your son for promotional purposes.
I’m calling CPS.