Category: Hotels

  1. The Rakuten shopping portal is offering $150-$300 or 15,000-30,000 Membership Rewards for credit card approvals with some Chase cards, and you’ll get it automatically with the Rakuten shopping extension installed in your browser:

    – Sapphire Preferred ($300)
    – Freedom Unlimited ($150)
    – Ink Unlimited ($300)

    This absolutely beats any two player mode referral bonus as is and also makes the Sapphire Preferred slightly more attractive than an Ink. If they drop back to their apparently regular bonuses of $50, then you can do better with a referral from P1 to P2 or buy selling a referral click on a marketplace.
  2. Register for Hilton’s Q2 promotion for 1,000 bonus points per stay between June 1 and August 15. Normally I’d take the time to click and register for a promotion at any hotel that I may end up at, but this one is almost not worth the clicks unless you’re staying at multiple Hilton properties over that timeframe.
  3. Qatar Avios has an incoming transfer bonus of 30% from Citi ThankYou points through May 31. In theory they have until the end of June to post the bonus points, but in practice they’re arriving instantly.

    You can transfer Qatar Avios to other Avios programs, so this is effectively a transfer bonus to all of those too.

Chase’s real-world testing for self-affiliate links.

  1. Bilt has apparently leaked a transfer integration with JAL MileageBank, visible only after logging in, and then only sometimes. This will likely be really live around May 1 and it may have a transfer bonus then too. I don’t want to tell you how to feel about this integration, but I will say I’m quite excited personally.

    Why talk about it now if it’s not fully online yet? So you’ve got time to earn Bilt points for a possible transfer bonus in a week and a half. (thanks to nikaidoushinku)
  2. There’s a new link that enables what I’m going to call a targeted American Express sandwich. It utilizes three of my favorite five stack techniques:

    1. Business Gold with 200,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    2. Business Platinum upgrade with 120,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months (this link is a hacked link, possibly risky)
    3. Employee card offers for 15,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 spend on up to five employee cards

    Spend for (3) will work for both of the bonuses in (1) and (2) which gives lets you earn three bonuses with a single swipe. There are variations on this sequence to attempt to go further with employee cards, but I’m trying to keep this post short and I guess mysterious so we’ll cut it off here.
  3. Loyalty Lobby reports that Hilton is in the process of removing late check-out as an elite benefit, and standardizing the charge for late check-out across its brands. #bonvoyed
  4. American Express has a targeted offer for the Blue Business Plus card with 75,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in three months via head-on application and referrals. If you don’t see it, try incognito, other browsers, VPNs, mobile versus desktop, or by taping hot dogs to your fingers and typing with those.

Going overboard with hot dog fingers.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Q2 promotion for 777 bonus points per night on up to 20 nights between April 10 and June 9 at casino properties.

    We may not have The Dirty Castle™ any more for phantom spotting, but at least we have The Sad Samba™.
  2. Do this now: Register for National Emerald’s Q2 promotion for a free day with every two midsize or larger rentals of two days or longer between April 1 and June 22.
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. This is your last weekend to figure out what to do with your Q1 American Express Business Platinum and Surpass Hilton credits. There are often local angles, but if you can’t find them or don’t want to deal with them, brunch at a corporate Hilton or Hilton Resort will almost always work in a pinch.

And let’s end today with a timely bit of weekend wisdom: In churning and manufactured spend the main goal is usually to take advantage of the spread between profit and loss, generally with very little risk, and turn that into a machine. Well, occasionally there’s a time where you know the spread is going to change for the worse at some point in the near future. When that happens, consider swinging for the fences taking to the extent that your risk tolerance allows.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Hilton Garden Inn breakfasts can be paid with AmEx credits (delicious breakfast not pictured).

  1. Chase made all the United cards dumber this week. The major changes:

    – Every card with an annual fee gets a bigger annual fee
    – The no-annual fee Gateway card doesn’t get XN inventory access unless you have $10,000 in annual spend
    – One time lounge access passes are no longer transferrable
    – You can now earn 1K status with nothing but spend on either of the ridiculously priced $695 personal and business Club cards
    – There are new credits on the annual fee cards, most of which are annoying, carved up throughout the year, and less valuable than they seem
    – Lounge access gets more restrictive without massive spend

    DD has a good rundown on the details of the changes if you care to read more.
  2. Southwest is releasing its winter schedule for travel between November 2 and January 5 today, which means today is statistically speaking the best time you have to game holiday travel, or just to play it straight to book holiday travel directly.

    Now’s a good time to book for other reasons too, like avoiding change fees on cheap tickets and paying bag fees, all of which will be implemented soon. Unfortunately double secret Rapid Rewards redemption values already quietly launched yesterday.
  3. On Tuesday, Bilt will have a transfer bonus of between 50% and 100% to British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Ibera Avios, depending your status level. Because Avios can be transferred freely amongst airlines, this is good for Qatar, Vueling, and FinnAir too.

    Why mention this early? So you can earn Bilt points before then.
  4. Accor ALL has new Q2 promotions for:

    – 2x-3x points on stays 3+ nights in many countries through June 8, valid for two stays
    – 4x points at new properties through September 7, valid for one stay

    You’ve got to book by April 27 and May 11 respectively, so these suck for last minute travel. (Thanks to FM)
  5. Breeze has 45% off of fares booked today for travel between April 9 and September 2 with promo code VACAY. There are a few blackout days around Easter, Independence Day, and National Peach Cobbler Day, but in general Summer travel is wide open.

    We haven’t played Breeze Dartboard Bingo™ for a while, but in honor of National Peach Cobbler today, we’ll take another round. [drumroll] Today’s draw is: Pensacola, FL to Norfolk, VA, PNS-ORF! If you hit Bingo, come see the MEAB front desk for your prize.
  6. AA’s shopping portal has a 500 mile bonus for the referrer and 1,000 mile bonus for the referred, as long as the latter makes a $75+ purchase by April 6 through the portal. The referral bonus is limited to 10 per account.

    With GiftCards.com’s current annoying portal rules, having multiple players with multiple shopping portals is one of the methods for scale (like banana).

Happy Thursday friends!

The other way of scaling.

  1. Do this now: Make any Hyatt award bookings today that fit your schedule before the award chart is retooled tomorrow and lots of hotels go up in redemption cost. Most award bookings have great cancelation policies, so even speculative bookings probably make sense.
  2. Turkish Airlines and Hilton have a promotion (registration required) for 1,000 bonus Turkish miles for stays through June 30, provided you set Turkish as your preferred travel partner in your Hilton profile. For new Hilton accounts, you earn 1,000 Turkish miles for each stay, but for existing Hilton accounts can you only earn the bonus once.
  3. The Chase IHG Premier Business card has an increased tiered sign-up bonus:

    – 140,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 60,000 points after $9,000 spend in six months

    The $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year.
  4. The Barclays Aviator Red Card has an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 AAdvantage miles after making a single purchase and paying the $95 annual fee.

    The best ongoing use case for this card used to be converting it to an AAdvantage Silver after a year, but because Citi will be the exclusive card issuer in 2026, that ship has probably sailed for new applicants. Instead, the best use beyond the sign-up bonus is probably to get a higher (or initial) credit line at Citi after the takeover.
  5. The Chase Sapphire Preferred (100,000 Ultimate Rewards), United Explorer (80,000 MileagePlus miles), and United Business (150,000 MileagePlus miles) cards’ increased sign-up bonuses are live today.
  6. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  7. Since it’s launch in 2021, I’ve thought the Chase United Quest Card was stupid, but it just keeps getting stupider and I’m convinced the product development team for the card lives in an alternate plane of existence. The annual fee has increased to $350, and there are new stupid credits to, uh, justify (?) the stupid increase:

    – $5 monthly Instacart credit, plus $10 one time Instacart credit
    – $150 in credits at stupid Renowned Hotels and Resorts
    – $8 in monthly rideshare credits, except in December when it’s $12
    – $150 in stupid JSX purchases
    – Small TravelBank credits for your first two rentals with Avis or Budget, but only using the United AWD which has generally inflated prices

    This is probably a good change for exactly three cardholders on the planet, and bravo to you if you’re one of them.

An amusement park in the United Quest Card team’s alternate plane of existence.

  1. There are two popup-free NLL American Express links that have been floating in the depths of the churning community for awhile, but have recently surfaced:

    – Business Platinum: 250,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months
    – Business Gold: 200,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months

    These aren’t modified links, but they are post-targeted links which makes them slightly risky. The links are less risky if your first name is Mike though. No, I’m not kidding, this one is real.
  2. Do this now: Register for Chase’s targeted offer for Ink cards for 5,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards with every $5,000 spent between tomorrow and the end of May, but only up to 15,000 bonus points. (Thanks to Jordan)
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s Q2 promotion for 7,500 bonus points on each two nights stayed between May 9 and June 16, up to 15,000 total bonus points. If you hold a Wyndham credit card, there’s an extra 7,500 bonus points after the first two nights too.
  4. American Express seems to have implemented a new 2/90 rule this year even on charge cards, preventing you from being approved for more than two cards in a 90 day window, shenanigans notwithstanding.
  5. AA has a targeted promotion for a free pass to a Flagship Lounge with a flight booked in any cabin other than economy after registration and flown before the end of March.

    I think AA’s promotions over the last couple of days trying to get someone, anyone to fly in March suggests that their Q1 might not be off to a great start.
  6. Air Canada Aeroplan family pooling is back after being pulled last year because of rampant mileage brokering abuse. If you want to use it in the future in a pinch, I’d set up your pool now because verification can take weeks.

    In this case, having the first name Mike isn’t believed to help.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Mike helps a churner celebrate another flight booked at 1.54 cents per Membership Reward point.

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.