Category: Hotels

  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.

  1. Two airline portals have bonuses for online spend:

    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 1,000 miles with $300+ through January 15
    – AA eShopping: 1,000 miles with $500+ through January 12

    Giftcards.com is on both of these portals, so you can take a Kudos college break.
  2. The Alaska Airlines business card has a heightened sign-up bonus of 70,000 miles after $4,000 spend in three months, and the $95 annual fee is not waived in the first year. Pair a few of these with the personal 75,000 miles offer for more cowbell. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Do this now: Register for double Hyatt elite night credits at Under Canvas Resorts for stays between March 7 and June 15. I hesitated to put a “do this now” on this one because y’all don’t seem like the glamping under a canvas tent type, but I mean you never know when you might accidentally end up in a tent I guess.
  4. Choice Hotels have devalued redemptions and added some dynamic room pricing. There’s still value to be had, but this change moves it from a secondary program to a tertiary program in my mind.
  5. Southwest has a fare sale for travel between January 28 and May 7 booked by tomorrow night, with some variability on those dates for Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Based on my extremely limited searches, early and late flights carry most of the discounts with mid-day travel at regular pricing.
  6. JetBlue has a fare sale for travel between January 11 and April 9 booked by January 14, and this one has teeth in a way that most JetBlue sales don’t, for example $89 LAX-BOS fares, $99 BOS-SAN fares, and $49 short and medium haul fares. Mint fares look higher than normal though, so there’s that.

How do we know this JetBlue plane isn’t Mint-equipped? Bees.

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 18 and December 31. After that, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

By popular demand we’ll have at least a few guest posts during the break. If you’d like to write one, please reach out, I’d like to find guest posts for the whole break!

  1. Do this now: Register for 5x categories on quarterly cards:

    – Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: Grocery, fitness, gyms, hair, nails, spas, and Norwegian Cruises (welcome to the world of sponsored 5x categories friends)
    – Discover IT: Restaurants, home improvement, and some streaming
    – Citi Dividend: Amazon and some streaming
    – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics stores

    I try and knock these out on the first day or two of the quarter so I don’t have to think about them after.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card sent new mid-month targeted spending offers for online spend through January 14, 2025. We’ve seen:

    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points with $1,000+
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points with $750+
    – $70 statement credit with $1,000+
    – $50 statement credit with $750+

    As usual, these stack with other offers. (Thanks to birt, Adam, Lindsay, and Tyler)
  3. Giftcards.com has 10% off of its own gift cards through December21. These cards can be used to buy other, third-party fee-free gift cards on the site with promo code EPICGIFT. These probably won’t track on shopping portals when you buy them, but when you use them on another purchase that’ll probably track. There are several credit cards that earn 3x on giftcards.com.
  4. Answering a few of the questions we asked on Friday with American Express’s new Business Platinum $50 quarterly Hilton credit:

    – Will this work with HiltonGiftCards.com? Yes
    – Will this work buying gift cards at a hotel? Yes
    – Will this work at Hilton restaurant? Usually, watch for a 15% extra hold for tip
    – Will this work for a regular hotel to pay your bill? Yes, depending on the front desk’s skillset
    – Who is John Galt? I dunno; or if I do, I don’t want to talk about it here, why do you ask?

    Also, orange-you glad I didn’t say banana? (That’s called a “long con” friends, at least on internet time scales.)

Yes, I know I deserve this.

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 18 and December 31. After that, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

  1. Hyatt now lets you apply Suite Upgrade Certificates to a reservation yourself online. In the past, Hyatt’s long had a quirk that when (a) standard suites are available at a property, but (b) standard rooms weren’t available with points, you couldn’t book using points and a suite upgrade certificate without working directly with the property and some luck. That’s now fixed with the new change.
  2. Citi is going to be the exclusive issuer of AA cards in a year and change. If you’re Citi banned, getting a Barclays AA card in the next several months may get you back in with Citi when they assume the Barclays AA card portfolio, which is also part of the deal.

    Side note: The Citi AA Business card will often bypass Citi bans regardless of this news.
  3. You can currently buy Hilton Honors Points at 0.5 cents per point, up to 160,000 points. At the low end (e.x., Lubbock, TX), Hilton points are worth about 0.5 cents so this is a wash, but at high end properties it’s not hard to get 1.5-4.0 cents per point, and 8.0 cents per point isn’t unheard of at the Maldives.

    I wouldn’t buy speculatively but if you know that you’ll be staying at a high end property in the next year, there’s plenty of outsized value to be had.

Happy Monday friends!

A different kind of churner’s triple for those banned at Citi, but 30 years ago.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s promotion for 3,000 bonus points per night at Hyatt Vacation Club properties between December 1 and March 30, 2025 with a maximum of 30,000 bonus points.
  2. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third-party gift cards excluding Amazon, and fixed value Visas and Mastercards through December 3.

    Holiday demand for third party gift cards is soaring, and fuel points demand remains steady.
  3. The Barclays JetBlue Plus Mastercard has an offer for 80,000 TrueBlue points after $1,000 spend and paying the annual fee within the first 90 days in the mobile app. I can’t make this appear on desktop without some trickery, but it appears on the front page of the mobile app even if you’re not signed in. (Thanks to abhirpduttamit)
  4. Staples in-store has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.
  5. The personal United cards from Chase all have an increased sign-up bonus for those of you light on MileagePlus miles. Yes, the increased bonus even includes the stupidest United card of all, the Quest:

    – Gateway: 30,000 miles after $1,000 in three months, no annual-fee
    – Explorer: 60,000 miles after $3,000 in three months, $95 annual fee is waived
    – Quest: 70,000 miles and 500 PQP after $4,000 in three months, $250 annual fee
    – Club: 90,000 miles after $5,000 spend in three months, $525 annual fee

    Only the Club’s bonus gives enough miles for a one-way long-haul partner redemption from the US to Europe or Asia, which should tell you something about the actual value of these cards especially as compared to an Ink. Each card does get you XN award space access, which is great for domestic economy awards I guess. Each card also earns an extra 5,000 bonus miles for adding an authorized user within the first three months. (Thanks to DDG)
  6. Hy-Vee stores have $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards through Monday. You can repeat this with back-to-back-to-back transactions until either the police are called or they run out of stock.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

More weekend catchup (?) fun.