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 revenuereasons. 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.
The American Express Platinum and Business Platinum cards (side note: Am I supposed to ™/® those 14 times? everyone else does) famously have $200™ annual incidental airline credits®. There’s no trophy for being the first data point on what works for gaming the credits, so often waiting a few weeks to learn what works is the right play. As an aside, here’s what that looks like in 2025:
United: Buy TravelBank credit directly. It expires in five years and can be used to pay for United flights. You can usually sell this for 85%+ too, and with a little trickery you can turn them into flexible credits good for other people and on other airlines [more info]
Delta: Buy airfare and pay partially with a gift card or travel credit, pay for the remainder with your card (don’t go over the incidental credit amount though). Alternatively if you have a co-branded American Express Delta card and are eligible for Pay with Miles™, pay partially with miles and the remainder will be credited™ [more info]
Alaska: Buy a seat upgrade after booking (*cough* but call it a seat selection fee®) or buy a flight paid partially with Alaska wallet funds and partially with your AmEx (less than $100), then refund to your wallet after 24 hours [more info]
Southwest: Buy a flight less than $109, or book an international flight with taxes under $109 per ticket, then refund to a travel credit. Combine with Wanna Get Away+ to get around name-locking [more info]
American: Buy cheap airfare, then change it to a flight that you really want that costs more and pay with your credit card (don’t go over the credit amount though). If you want to gamble, you’ve got roughly even odds that award taxes and fees will count [more info]
JetBlue: Buy a flight less than $137 then cancel the flight after 24 hours and refund to your JetBlue wallet. Side note, whomever figured out that $137+ wouldn’t work but < $137 would is my hero [more info]
Spirit: Buying a Big Front Seat upgrade works, and airfare below approximately $60 also works [more info]
We’ve buried the lede though, January is special with American Express because you can change your selected airline once online this month only, even if you’ve already received your incidental credit on a different airline. You’ve got five days left to do that, don’t dally!
Economy: 25,000 miles each way, up from 20,000 miles
Premium economy: 40,000 miles each way, up from 35,000 miles
Business: 60,000 miles each way, up from 50,000 miles
La Premiere: 165,000 miles each way, up from 150,000 miles
Partner award prices went up somewhat too. The change was intentional, and in theory will also bring increased award availability on first party metal.
Devaluations Will Happen
Unfortunately, devaluations will continue over time in all programs because:
Inflation in consumer prices means more points earned for buying the same things with a credit card
Inflation in hotel and airfare prices means more points are awarded for revenue bookings
For airlines, CASM inflates over time, and providing an award seat costs more over time
For hotels, CPOR inflates over time, so providing free nights costs more over time
Decreasing the value of issued points lowers liabilities on a company’s balance sheet
The only way devaluations won’t happen is with regulation, but (a) that’s unlikely to come, and (b) would just cause a different type of devaluation, such as no award space released.
Protecting Yourself
To effectively shield yourself from devaluations to the extent that such a thing is possible:
Book awards as early as possible: Points on average are worth more now than they will be in the future, so lock in current pricing when you can
Book speculative awards with spare points: As long as a program offers free cancelations, you can lock in current pricing and cancel if the trip won’t work out (or if a lower price comes along)
Don’t save more points than you can reasonably burn in the next n months: Saving points that will decrease in value probably isn’t fiscally sound, just like eating a tub of lard probably isn’t nutritionally sound. Ok, but what value should you use for n? It’s hard to say, but I think the half-life of devaluations is around 24 months with some medium variance
(A corollary to the prior item) Cash out excess points, especially those you can’t burn in the next n months: Cashed out points turn into cash, which: earns interest, can be invested, and can be used to buy more miles if you cashed out too many. It turns out, money is fungible
Good luck out there!
Next time on Tuesday Wisdom: Elmo’s airplane explains RASM.
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.
– 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.
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.
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)
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.
It’s been awhile since we’ve played Breeze route bingo, but we can fix that today. Today’s Breeze bingo route is: Scranton-Fort Meyers! Congrats to today’s bingo winners.
Both are potentially even more interesting than watching a stampede of turtles overrun a Wendy’s drive through.
Lufthansa and ITA
Lufthansa has already said that ITA’s Volare frequent flyer program will be merged into Miles & More, and elite status will transfer too. I expect that by Q3 the frequent flyer programs will integrate, though that’s not set in stone. When the integration happens it means:
If you status match to ITA, it’ll probably turn into foreign Star Alliance status (UPDATE: The status match seems dead)
ITA Volare miles will probably turn into Miles & More miles
Foreign Star Alliance Gold status will get you access to the United Club when flying United domestically, free-checked bags, priority boarding, and a few lesser benefits.
ITA Volare is an interesting program because partner earning is based on class of service and mileage flown, not on ticket price. That means with really cheap Delta or Aeromexico tickets, you can mileage run way your way into Lufthansa Miles & More miles which can be used to redeem for Swiss Air First Class; the trad mileage run, it turns out, isn’t dead yet.
Korean and Asiana
Asiana never really recovered from COVID-era cutbacks, and its reputation was already suffering after the crash of Asiana 214 even before COVID. Facing Asiana’s bankruptcy, the Korean government approved a merger and EU regulators did in November too, leading to the deal closing last month. You’ve heard what this means before in another song:
If you have elite status Asiana, it’ll probably turn into foreign SkyTeam status this year
Asiana Club miles will likely be absorbed into the Korean SkyPass mileage program this year
Asiana doesn’t status match, so if you don’t already have status there I can’t help you much. But, turning Asiana Club miles into Korean SkyPass miles is really interesting, because:
Korean SkyPass doesn’t have major bank or hotel transfer partners
Marriott Bonvoy can transfer to Asiana Club miles at a 3:1 ratio (or even better in increments of 60,000 Bonvoy points)
Korean SkyPass members can standby for mileage upgrades to International First
It’s time for MEAB’s annual New Year tradition! Before we jump in to the regular short-form blog posts that litter the ground like glitter in a stadium after a Taylor Swift concert: A recap of travel hacking and manufactured spend in the last year with the most sophisticated, Shakespearean, high-brow form of story telling known to the modern world (checks notes, furrows brow): Animated GIFs.
Is it “GIF” with a hard G like “girl”, or with a soft G like “jiffy”? Obviously there’s a right answer, anyhoodles, let’s dive in with the intensity of the Spirit airlines stock price dive in November.
We started out January 2024 wishing for a Technotronic inspired aircraft livery at KLM, which frankly set the stage for 2024 in so many ways; 2024 was poised to be the best year yet, and Technotronic was bound to break the top 40 again.
Spirit Airlines executives react to the blocked merger, get ready to get back to work.
Southwest had its own crisis when Elliott Management became a majority shareholder and demanded major changes and new fees at Southwest. Probably in the name of altruism?
Based on language in the Terms and Conditions, it looked like the American Express Business Platinum $400 annual Dell credits would be going away at the end of 2024.
Then, we, uhhh, “celebrate” that they’re coming back in 2025.
On the other hand, churning Business Platinums and getting 99 employee cards with sign-up bonuses kept going all through 2024, marking more than three consecutive years of the employee sign-up bonus game.
American Express dropped a December surprise with the addition of $50 quarterly credits at Hilton properties on the Business Platinum card. It doesn’t move the needle, but hey, it doesn’t hurt.
In the first days after the Synapse collapse, community “experts” come out of the woodwork to tell us that no one is going to lose money based on solid evidence and “something something FDIC”.
Chase opened new Sapphire Lounges which are some of the best lounges in the US, but then blew the goodwill by removing its Priority Pass restaurant benefit.
The biggest Buyer’s Group spenders spent 24 hours straight, awake in front of the computer on Black Friday.
Travel hackers made their first transfer of Membership Rewards to Alaska MileagePlan via the Hawaiian airlines integration.
American Express sees massive restaurant spend after floosies learn to cycle millions while dining out, decides to take action.
The American Express Gold card gets a $50,000 annual dining 4x spend capacity, and AmEx executives rejoice.
They also instituted a one million Membership Rewards cash-out annual cap at 1.1 cents per point on the Schwab Platinum card, and they called us names while doing it.
SideshowBob233 (pictured in costume) reacts to churners on his flight that have Chase deposit accounts.
Mesa executives wait for sufficient time to pass between a bad MEAB post and their impending launch.
MEAB (pictured on the right side) at a travel hacking conference meets other bloggers.
A churner finds a way out of pop-up jail.
And after getting out of pop-up jail, the churner realizes it may be repeatable.
Virgin Atlantic became relevant with the introduction of the Virgin Credit card and its perks, some payment fun, and the introduction of dynamic pricing.
Critics review MEAB.
SAS announces a promotion to earn a million miles for flying on 15 different SkyTeam partners in Q4, travel hackers react.
SAS realizes people are taking their promotion seriously, and races to build its SkyTeam integration with quirky airlines.
Readers try and follow the hints in MEAB wisdom posts.
Botting several key deals made the money flow.
Tallying Carl’s 2024 earnings, prolly.
MEAB’s P2 flies Lufthansa First class for the first time.
Pepper Saga Part I: Getting unlimited 10% off of Walmart, BestBuy, and Sam’s Club cards (Q1-Q2).
Pepper Saga Part II: Unlimited 10% stops working, but new, daily targeted promotions start working after a hiccup or two.
Pepper Saga Part III: Gift card resale rates fall in slow motion due to oversupply.
Pepper Saga Part IV: A pitch deck for new investors claiming a total addressable market of $6 trillion, approximately 23% of the US GDP.
Pepper Saga Part V: The company gives unlimited 20% off of Amazon and Walmart gift cards for a day and is probably nearly out of money.
Pepper Saga Part VI: A Q1 2025 preview (Probably)
Pepper Saga Part VII: (space left intentionally blank)
“Seat 21A? I didn’t know first class went back this far.”
“Oh no.”
[4 and 1/2 hours later after touchdown in seat 21A]
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to James, the host of the Churn and Burn podcast, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!
Some of you may remember that almost one year ago, I wrote a guest post with a simple plea: stop inflating the value of your points and start considering more carefully how you value said points and what they cost you to make. Today’s post is a followup to that one. But instead of looking at C.P.P. (cents per point), I’m going to ask you to look at a different, yet closely related metric: R.O.I. The true R.O.I. of spend can be absolutely incalculable. Yet still, it’s worth doing.
In the Summer of 2023, I decided to make a push for Delta Diamond status after I realized that a certain card which was “Reserved” for me could be used to “Reserve” a lot of lucrative offers which were asking me to spend in increments of $1000 for a grand total of 5,000 Skymiles each. Mind you, this was “back in the day” before Delta nuked their loyalty program. Actually, I really need to thank Delta for that, because it ended up being one of the best things that’s happened to me in my recent award travel memory, but more on that later…
Real ones know that Delta Diamond used to cost less than the average Venezuelan starter home…Although said “home” might have been a prerequisite.
Yes, as a Skymiles account holder with a pathetic 3,000 MQDs to my name, I knew the only way I’d make Delta Diamond was by knocking out the mammoth $250,000 MQD waiver requirement for credit card spend. For all of this spend, I accrued the following:
1,675,000 SkyMiles
4 Regional Upgrades
4 Global Upgrades (x2?!)
Oh, and the Diamond status. That too.
I managed to parlay these upgrades into the following:
2 Roundtrip Transcon tickets on the A350 for only 48,000 SkyMiles
2 Roundtrip Delta One tickets to Rome for only 84,000 SkyMiles each.
2 More roundtrip Delta One Tickets to Rome thanks to a banking error in my favor (thank you Delta IT) for only 92,000 SkyMiles each.
For your own convenience, I’ve already done the math for us. The $250,000 in spend was done in a very lazy manner. You might say that I’d be called a floozy for doing so. In point of fact, I incurred a loss of $7,500 in order to complete this spend. So, what kind of ROI did my spend get me, if I value the above accrued items at fair market price?
1,675,000 SkyMiles = $19,262 per my own personal valuation
4 Regional Upgrades (RUCs) = $3,000ish in savings
8 Global Upgrades (GUCs) = $24,000 in savings
A total of 6 measly first class Diamond Upgrades and obligatory premium economy = ????
You’re probably thinking that my valuations for the upgrades are insane. And of course, they are. A more appropriate valuation would be for me to decide how many SkyMiles I would have paid for those upgrades over economy and then applying that value. So let’s go ahead and assign a value of $1,400 and $8,400 to the RUCs and GUCs respectfully. I’ll conservatively value the complimentary upgrades at a very round $2,000 figure. Feel free to play mad libs with my math and fill in your own break point numbers. After all, it’s not my blog. I don’t make the rules! That gives us a grand whopping total of $31,062 in value after $7,500 in loss. It’s a very, very respectable ROI, and I hope you can hear the sound of my shoulder dislocating as I reach around to pat myself on the back. *Please clap*
But, as they say: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” That brings us to the Fall season of 2023, when Delta announced (probably because of me) that they were gutting the SkyMiles program like a suckling pig at the Calala Island bonfire.
Delta would later roll back several of these devaluations, but not before our friends at B6 (JetBlue) decided to lower an olive branch to all of us Delta Elite members who were jilted by our abusive partner and now found ourselves craving an illicit affair with our spouse’s trashier, broke neighbor. And what better place to have that affair than at the Motel (B6)? The offer: “Be the first of 30,000 to open up a JetBlue Card in the next 30 days, and we’ll give free Mosaic 4 status for all of you dirty Delta Diamonds out there.” At the time, this offer was largely ignored. I am only aware of a couple of close friends besides myself who took B6 up on it. What was promised seemed too good to be true, and maybe that’s why so many people didn’t bother. For my infidelity against Delta, I was given a heaping treasure haul consisting of:
6 “Move to Mint” vouchers
4 Blade Helicopter Transfers in the NYC area
Unlimited non-mint upgrades on B6
These were all awarded to me fairly quickly after a successful match, and I used them to great effect:
3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI
2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK
4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan
5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free.
Perhaps the best part of all this is that I had already stashed around 100,000 B6 miles from a previous card signup offer, and the 2nd B6 credit card offer required of me for the status match accrued an extra 80,000 miles. All of this was utilized in order to book flights that I would later shower with Move to Mint certs. (As a brief aside, JetBlue knew they goofed with this campaign, because very quickly after this status match, the Move to Mint certificates were severely devalued. I very fortunately booked most of mine prior to that. Guess I’m just cool like that.) Calculating the value of all this is hard. Would I have paid out of pocket for all of those helicopter rides? Unlikely. So again, I’m going to apply the same math as before, and value these items at the price that I would have paid for them myself:
3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI ($3,000)
2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK ($900)
4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan ($440)
5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free. ($900)
It’s an additional $5,240 in value. Bringing our total valuation to $36,302. If we again consider our initial “investment” of $7,500” then we achieved a total ROI of 384%.
Enjoying my B6 Chopper ride over NY, which I apparently valued @ roughly $110? Who knew Bond was such a cheapskate?
At this point, if you’re still with me after watching me blow smoke up my own tailpipe for several paragraphs, I’ll finally quit burying the lede. There’s a few takeaways to be had, here:
Many times, one person’s devaluation is another person’s play of the year.
The true R.O.I. of a play is what you value it at, not the valuation of some person who doesn’t live in the same hub as you or frequent the same hotel chains.
You should, frequently and ruthlessly, reassess the R.O.I. of various “investments” you are making and ask yourself if there are more lucrative R.O.I. plays to be made elsewhere.
$250,000 of spend might sound like an astronomical amount for some of you reading. But I assure you that for others, it’s just another Tuesday. Something to think on.
As MEAB says: “Always be probing.” You never know when a play will quickly open a new door into a different play.
People will often scoff at you for spending on cards that most people wouldn’t take a second glance at. Trust your own compass. Every dog (of a card) has its day.
The “noise” generated by a less lucrative play can often be used to arbitrage or “feed” another play. Sometimes you need to find yourself rolling in some cash before you can wade through the muck.
