Category: Hotels

If you missed yesterday’s post because I can’t tell the difference between AM and PM, please find it here. If you missed it for some other reason, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

Anyhoodles:

  1. I heard from about a dozen people yesterday that the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card was being converted to a generic Citi ThankYou Points card; let’s just say don’t believe everything you read on the internet. There are multiple variants of this card, and I believe only the old Sears Silver version one is affected. Nothing to see here, move along.

    Since no one asked, I bet this happened because Sears is a dead brand and Citi was up for contract renewal on the co-brand trademark, then decided that even $2 to maintain the co-brand wasn’t worth it. (Thanks to Eugene)
  2. The IHG Business program, which is free to register for, is offering double points on stays booked by June 30 for stays through November 30. Registration also includes elite night credits for spend in multiples of $3,000 which might be applicable to exactly two of you. (Thanks to FM)
  3. The Barclays JetBlue Plus Mastercard card has an increased offer for 70,000 bonus miles after $1,000 spend in 90 days.
  4. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins stores have 8x points on Zillions Zift gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per account. Giant Foods does too, except at 4x because reasons. The current Pepper climate means that ebay gift cards are usually the best conversion for bulk resellers from the Zillions of Zift options. (How is was that even a valid sentence? Churning is weird.)

Have a nice weekend friends!

A churner descends into madness while trying to redeem Zillions Zifts.

Introduction

Typically I let the affiliate sites talk about how to do basic things like booking hotel rooms with points; after all those 14 credit card links don’t display themselves. Unfortunately though, the usual circles and arrows crowd have been derelict on the Accor front because (a) I don’t think most of them actually travel outside of the US and stay in non US hotel chains, (b) Accor ALL is somewhat non-trivial, and (c) something something affiliate revenue reasons. If you search google for “booking Accor with points”, you’ll find plenty of confused people too:

The responses to posts like the above are mostly useless too, again because (b) Accor ALL is somewhat non-trivial.

The Basics

Accor Hotels is basically like the European version of Marriott, but with lots more value and generally cleaner, nicer rooms. They also don’t loathe their customers which is a plus. Accor ALL points are worth a fixed 2 eurocents each, which is about 2.1 US cents with current exchange rates. With that out of the way, here’s what you need to know:

  • All points redemptions are in increments of 2,000 (€40)
  • Point redemption costs are exactly tied to the price of the room
  • You can use points for part or for all of your stay
  • The app and website won’t let you see points redemption options unless you already have at least 2,000 points in your account
  • Point redemptions work for room charges too
  • You can redeem with points during booking, during your stay, or during checkout
  • The front desk can do redemptions over the phone or in person with your ALL number
  • You can only pay with points online if there’s a prepaid rate available

Accor’s app and website often stop taking prepaid reservations in the last week of booking, but will still accept bookings that are paid at the hotel. When that happens, just reserve the cash rate and pay with points at the front desk during your stay. It’ll work out, it’s easy.

Getting Accor Points

Capital One miles and Citi ThankYou Points transfer to Accor ALL at a 2:1 ratio, and Bilt Rewards transfer at a 3:2 ratio. Citi occasionally has a 50% transfer bonus too, which is one of the few speculative transfer bonuses I take.

Good luck, and have a nice weekend!

Or there’s always the European Marriott experience if you don’t want to learn Accor.

  1. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s Q1 promotion for a $50 gift card after each two nights stayed, up to a whopping 2x$50.

    In what might be the lamest churn known to the community: You can book the Best Western Hollywood Plaza Inn for $76.80 with AAA or similar discounts, and 2*$76.80 =$153.60. That means you can churn $50 Best Western gift cards for only $153.60, and get two nights in a hotel that probably won’t kill you and two elite night credits too.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon, and on fixed value Visa and Mastercards through February 18.

    Pepper: (1) is still alive, (2) maybe got a bridge loan, and (3) continues to kill the bulk resale market for everything but BestBuy and lululemon.
  3. Meijer MPerks has 50,000 MPerks Points with the purchase of most $500 third party gift cards including BestBuy and Apple through February 15, limit 50,000 points per account.

    Marrying MPerks and buyer’s groups are an occasionally profitable way to cash out mPerks Points on something other than paper towels. (Thanks to GCA)
  4. Southwest will extend their schedule tomorrow morning for flights between October 2 and November 1. Southwest expert Brian M predicts that flights around this window are highly likely to have substantial schedule changes, so gamers will game (but only starting tomorrow).
  5. Turkish Airlines has two February promotions:

    – 50% rebate on mileage bookings in all cabins for two passengers traveling by February 23
    – 15% off of paid flights for card holders with code USCARD15 booked this month for travel by the end of April

    If you don’t already have the credit card, it’s probably not worth your time, just get a Citi Double Cash and Strata Premier instead for much better earning, especially when paired with a Rewards+ for its 10% redemption rebate.
  6. FlyingBlue’s February promo rewards include the following US cities for travel through July 31:

    – New York
    – Denver
    – Houston
    – Raleigh/Durham
    – Boston

    Prices are 18,500 miles in economy with good availability, or 60,000 miles in business with better than normal (but still not good) availability.

Happy Wednesday!

Best Western Hollywood Plaza warning: The Front desk doesn’t know random facts about an airport over 15 miles from the property. Imagine!

Last minute update: The AA5342 collision with a helicopter hits hard, condolences to all and forgive today’s jovial tone, it was written before the accident.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q1 targeted promotion for a bonus elite night for all nights stayed, up to 10 bonus elite nights through April 28. If the site asks, the promotion code is 63666.
  2. Do this now: Register for Best Western Q1 promotion for 2,000 bonus points per night, up to a total of 20,000 points through May 11.
  3. Kroger has a promotion for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards excluding Amazon on Friday only.

    Thanks to Pepper, the brands that work for a reseller are largely limited to BestBuy and Lululemon.
  4. Rakuten in-store’s card linked program has two new promotions:

    – 1% bonus or 1x Membership Rewards at Food Lion stores
    – 1% bonus or 1x Membership Rewards at Stop & Stop stores

    Both are good through March 31, both require re-adding the offer an hour after its first use to continue using, and both have a bonus cap of $10 or 1,000 Membership Rewards per transaction. Fortunately, we’ve developed the technology to run transactions back-to-back though.

Happy Thursday!

What is this, and is it good? I’m not sure, but it’s slightly more interesting than the new JetBlue card.

  1. Do this now: Register for Marriott’s Q1 promotion for 1,000 bonus points and a bonus elite night credit for every paid night stayed between February 11 and April 28.
  2. Do this now: Register for Accor ALL’s promotion for 4x points earning on all 2+ night stays booked by March 16 and completed by July 13. Edit: this is only “new” hotels, not all hotels.
  3. Delta has an award ticket sale for round-trip flights booked by Friday for travel through the end of the year the, as long as the first flight happens by March 31. Rough pricing:

    – East coast to Europe in economy: 36,000-45,000 miles round-trip
    – West coast to Europe in economy: 50,000-65,000 miles round-trip
    – East coast to Europe in business: 220,000 miles round-trip
    – West coast to Europe in business: 290,000 miles round-trip

    Delta cut its daytime flights to Europe last fall which is the only way I’d do this in from the west coast in economy, but I could probably be talked into it from the east coast if I had imbibed a bit too much.
  4. Frequent Miler notes that Alaska MileagePlan Shopping awards elite qualifying miles on both regular spend and on portal bonuses, so prepare for a swole rank of 100k MVPs in 2026.

Coming soon: Alaska gate when MVP Group A boarding is called.

  1. Simon Malls will stop selling gift cards in-store on Friday. The glory days of Simon gift cards have passed, but because we like to study the past to learn for the future, there was a time when:

    – They carried $1,000 GCs in-store
    – Some malls coded as restaurants with some issuers
    – The cards could be easily liquidated at Safeway, Kroger, or Walmart

    None of those things are true any more.
  2. Regarding the elephant in the room: I think Pepper manufactured spenders are largely informed about the current risks involved with the platform. If and when it fails, I think the probable outcome is:

    – Gift cards issued more than a week prior are probably safe
    – Gift cards issued in the last days of the platform may be zeroed by BlackHawk
    – Floated coins will be lost

    Why bring this up today? Yesterday Pepper offered effectively unlimited quantities of Amazon gift cards at 22% cash back. Most of that 22% won’t post for a few weeks. So, I guess I’m reading the room which I’m good at about 50% of the time. I still have floated coins with Pepper, but I’ve been scaling way back. I actively chose not to buy yesterday.
  3. In a move surprising only the ghost of Spiro Agnew, Marriott devalued its award chart for higher end properties. A few notes:

    – High end property redemptions increased by as much as 80%
    – Don’t trust a blogger’s valuation of points, use your own redemptions as a guide
    – My valuation of Marriott points was already low at ~ 0.5 cents each, this doesn’t help

    New valuation? Still 0.5 cents, but a low 0.5 cents.
  4. Bilt’s rent day promotion for Saturday is a 20%-100% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles, depending on your status in the program. You’ve still got time to earn points that’ll post by Saturday. I’m certain there’s going to be a limit on the bonus, but I can’t find it published and I’m of course not part of Bilt’s marketing campaigns because reasons.

    Avianca has strange loopholes that lead to great redemptions, but availability often isn’t great.
  5. Staples stores have $200 fee-free Mastercards in store through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

More Bonvoy math.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Bonus Journeys promotion for:

    – 3x points at Hyatt Place and Hyatt House, up to 10,000 bonus points
    – 2x points at other Hyatts, up to 20,000 bonus points

    Valid for stays between January 27 and March 28.
  2. American Express has several new travel and gift card related offers, and with some trickery you can often get the same offer on multiple cards too:

    – $200 back on $1,000+ at Norwegian Cruise Lines through April 23
    – $70 back on $250+ at Hertz through March 10
    – $75 back on $250+ at Avis through March 31
    – $30 back on $75+ at Pepper through March 31
    – 5,000 bonus points on $2,000+ on the Marriott Business card through April 30

    The Pepper one is a $30 hedge against any potential failure, should they fail in the next couple of weeks.

With some trickery you can often get different types of hundos too.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No, it wasn’t anything to do with daylight savings time, it was the AM/PM thing with yesterday’s post. You can find it here if you never saw it once fixed. Actually, you can find it there whether or not you saw it once fixed.

  1. The Chase Hyatt cards have increased bonuses through March 6:

    – Personal: 35,000 points with $3,000 spend in three months plus 2x points on unbounded spend for six months, up to $15,000 spend
    – Business: 60,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months, and a Category 1-4 free night certificate after $15,000 spend in six months

    Both of these have some utility, but the business one is a clear winner if you can make use of a Category 1-4. I can always make use of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not annoying.
  2. On Wednesday we discussed Choice Hotel devalued redemptions, and apparently that was an oopsie on Choice’s part, much like when Bilt accidentally sent shutdown letters to many of its cardholders that weren’t shut down.

    Prices were supposed to revert to normal yesterday, but some European and Asian properties have redemptions with half the regular points needed, so I guess we discovered the mythical loyalty program de-devaluation and ended up better than we were before. This is probably an accident to though, which (accidentally) seems to be Choice’s 2025 modus operandi.
  3. Giant Food, Stop & Shop, and Giant/Martins stores have 2x points on Vanilla Visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 – $2,000 per account depending on the chain. (Thanks to RabbMD)
  4. Wells Fargo has a $2,500 bonus for opening or upgrading to a Premier Checking account and bringing $250,000 in new assets within 45 days through February 25. Investment accounts and IRAs count, so you can ACATS transfer funds from another brokerage into a Wells Fargo investment account without a taxable event.

    Coincidentally, $250,000 in linked accounts is what you need to avoid monthly service fees too. (Thanks to DoC)

Have a nice weekend, and watch for tomorrow’s guest post!

Even Choice Hotel plumbers accidentally did their work.