Thursday Quad

1. Do this now: Link your Hilton account to Bilt Rewards to earn 1,000 Bilt Hilton points. Bilt points can can transfer 1:1 to Hyatt or AA (or to Hilton if you like terrible redemption values).
   
2. We’ll see at least three dozen articles in the next couple of weeks about the Citi Strata Premier, and they’ll all boil down to a few salient points:
   
   – The old Premier goes away today for new applications
   – Strata Premier applications start on May 16 with a 75,000 ThankYou Point bonus
   – The bonus won’t be available if you had a Premier bonus in the last four years, and yes, you can still double dip
   – The new card is almost exactly the same as the old card, except for the addition of 3x at EV charging and 10x earning on hotels, cars, and entertainment booked through the slightly inflated price CitiTravel.com portal
   
   If anything else important comes up, you’ll see it here. Otherwise, skip all the upcoming articles and go probing instead.
   
3. American Express has new spend offers for Platinum cards:
   
   – Delta: $40 back on $180+ booked through AmEx travel through July 5
   – JetBlue: $50 back on $200+ through August 6
   – Hilton: $40 back on $180+ through July 31
   – Hertz: $40 back on $150+ through June 30
   – Dell: $50 back on $250+ through September 30
   – Oceana Cruises: 10x on up to $4,000 spend through July 8
   
   The Delta one is gameable using the same methods for airline incidental credits and that’s only somewhat interesting, but JetBlue and Hilton are more easily played. I have no direct experience with Oceania Crusies, but there’s an angle with most.
   
4. The Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select personal Mastercard has a new 75,000 AAdvantage Miles sign-up bonus after $3,500 in spend within four months. This one is better than normal because the $99 annual fee is waived for the first year.
   
   Warning: This may be someone’s affiliate link. I’ve found it in multiple places that have affiliate relationships, I can’t get it to appear without leaving all of the URL parameters in place, and I can’t find it via Google search, Citi’s page, or AA’s page, so there may be a hidden commission paid to someone with this link. I can say for certain that I’ll earn exactly as much with this link as with every other link on the blog: $0.

Preparing for the upcoming deluge of Citi Strata blog posts.