Award travel changes really fast!
It’s been almost 6 months since I started publishing the weekly recap. Since then, we saw major changes in award transfer partnerships (Chase ending partnership with Emirates, devaluations on many transfer rates, the addition of Rove with JAL & SAS); TSA employees having a rough go at it with two periods of disruption to their pay; and a bunch of cool new routes that helped open up award availability among countless news stories that come out every week.
The changes continue this week with Marriott adding 2 new helpful features, Rove Miles continuing to beef up their program, and some minor changes that I highlight in the recap section at the end.
Overall, I hope this newsletter helps highlight the important changes, as it’s even challenging for me to keep up sometimes!
This week's highlights
End of quarter checklist
We are a little halfway past March, so there are about two weeks left to use your credit card coupons. American Express is the largest culprit for quarterly credits, so here is a reminder to use them! For a more comprehensive list to make sure you aren’t missing anything, check out a list of credits by credit card on AwardWallet here.
American Express
Amex Platinum: $100 Resy quarterly credit
Amex Platinum: $75 Lululemon quarterly credit
Amex Business Platinum: $50 Hilton quarterly credit
Amex Hilton Surpass: $50 Hilton quarterly credit
Amex Hilton Aspire: $50 flight quarterly credit
How am I using these credits?
Amex Platinum Resy: Bought a $100 gift card from a restaurant and got a $25 bonus, then used it at said restaurant. Check out this site called Use Your Credits to find which restaurants by geography let you buy gift cards online that will most likely trigger the Resy credit. FYI, paying through Toast should 99% work. However, I have bought a gift card through Securetree (Bavette’s Chicago) and still got the Resy credit.
Amex Platinum Lululemon: I bought a $75 gift card in-store and it triggered the credit. Buying a digital gift card online will not work.
Amex Hilton credits: I will test mine at a bar based on a Hilton property later this week. There is a Google Sheet that has some data points on which Hilton-based restaurants work and don’t work. If you have an upcoming stay at a Hilton property, you could also ask for a credit card authorization form and add $50 credit to your future stay. I do this with my Hilton Aspire resort credits. Or just stay at a Hilton.
Amex Hilton flight credits: Unlike the Platinum card where you get $200 in annual airline incidental credit, the Hilton cards give you credit for anything flight-related. So it will credit for airfare as well. I just bought United Travel Bank.
Marriott adds 2 new features (good)
This week, Marriott unveiled two new features that are actually member-friendly. The first is the ability to add Marriott gift card certificates to your account, making it easier to keep track of them. It probably also helps the front desk more easily redeem them instead of requiring you to print out the instructions from FlyerTalk.
The second is improving the free night award (FNA) points top off option. For background, Marriott free night awards allow you to book standard rooms up to a certain points amount. These certificates generally come from credit card benefits, credit card sign up bonuses, or annual loyalty member rewards. These certificates also usually let you book rooms for up to 25k points, 35k points, 50k points, or 85k points. However, due to continued devaluations and properties requiring more points, Marriott started to allow people to “top off” these FNAs with Marriott points in April 2022, by up to 10k points. So if you had a 50k FNA, you could book a property that required 60k points (50k FNA + 10k Marriott points).
Well, more devaluations have happened since then, so it has been getting harder to use these FNAs. In response, Marriott will now let you top off your FNA with an additional 25k points. So if you have a 35k FNA, you can add 25k points and book a 60k award night. If you recently got one of the 5× 50k FNA subs from Chase, you can now book standard rooms that need up to 75k points.
The bad news is that it won’t help stop the points inflation. In fact, it may have already caused properties to raise their pricing in response to the new additions…So that luxury property that was asking for 110k points may now ask for 111k points so you can’t combine your 85k FNA with +25k points. Bonvoyed!
Source: Marriott
Rove Miles 20% transfer bonus to SAS
Rove is a newer program that is essentially a combination of Rakuten (getting cash back or points for shopping online) and Bilt Travel (get points for booking travel). The difference is you don’t need a credit card as Rove is its own points ecosystem (Rove Miles). Plus, they have a lot of cool transfer partners. Rove also just added another transfer partner this week - SAS. Rove is the only program that transfers to SAS. The new addition also includes a 20% transfer bonus through April 8. You can book SAS business class between US-CPH for 60k points one-way (50k w/transfer bonus).
My annoying self plug but it is a better sign-up offer than the public offer. If you sign up using my link here, you’ll get 1,500 Rove Miles (vs. public offer of 500 miles). So go ahead and sell your personal shopping data to another fintech for those points!
Anyways, I do want to highlight some positives and negatives with Rove as most people/sites/blogs probably won’t talk much about the negatives. The main good is some unique and valuable transfer partners. The main negative is that it seemingly takes forever for points to post and I don’t think any points ever post immediately, except for prepaid hotel stays. I have waited over 3 months for one of my shopping trips to post and it hasn’t posted yet…
Positives
Some great transfer partners including Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, AF/KLM, Air India, and Turkish Airlines
Great earn rates with some retailers including Giftcards dot com
Current 50% transfer bonus to JAL through 3/31
Current 20% transfer bonus to SAS through 4/8
Crazy good earn rates on select hotels (think 30-50% back via Rove Miles)
Ability to earn Rove Miles and hotel credits with Rove’s Loyalty Eligible Stays (some negative here too as cash rates might be higher vs. booking direct)
Negatives
Usually takes 2-3 months for miles to post after a transaction
Need minimum 2,000 miles to transfer to partners
Newer start up so who knows what the longevity of the Rove’s current business model is
Limited customer support
Loyalty Eligible Stays may not be best cash price vs. booking direct but this is true with any hotel OTA platform
High-earning rate hotels are usually not the best vacation options and are hostels or lower-end hotels and are priced higher than booking through other OTAs
Current Rove Miles transfer partners
Citi ending points-sharing between cardholders
Citi will be ending the ability for cardholders to transfer Citi Thank You Points (TYP) points freely between different cardholders starting on May 17. If you have a Citi card with TYP, you probably received an email this past week about it. Frequent Miler for more details.
Less flexibility = devaluation of course. This perk helps people combine points (up to 100k per calendar year) and book awards on programs such as American Airlines or EVA Air.
You still have time to combine points, however don’t forget that the points that are transferred will expire after 90 days. So don’t just combine points just to combine points. At least Citi mentioned that caveat in their email or else it would have caused even more chaos as people combined points before the deadline.
Deal of the week
Fly American Airlines’ First Class between JFK or Miami to Argentina or Brazil for as low as 75k points one way. Some dates have up to 6 seats in first and generally have at least 2 seats in business class. If you need some creativity getting there or back, check out LATAM routes and book business class awards through Virgin Atlantic for 50k or 95k points one-way.
The American Airlines first class seats are unique due to their swivel chair features, so I thought it would be cool to highlight some award space. American is phasing out their international first class product over the next year so it’s kind of a unique experience that some people may want to try before it’s gone. Here is a first class review from LHR-MIA from One Mile at a Time.
How to book (first class)
American Airlines: Starting at ~83k points + $5.60 in tax/fees one-way. Variable rate pricing, though.
Alaska Airlines: 75k points + ~$107 tax/fees one-way
British Airways: ~114k points + $6-31 tax/fees one-way
JAL: 90k points one-way +$5.60 tax/fees or 165k points round-trip
Qatar: 100-103k points +$4.50-100 tax/fees one-way
Tip: There is currently a 20% bonus to the Avios ecosystems (British Airways→Qatar) from Chase through 3/31
JFK-EZE | MIA-EZE | MIA-GRU |
|---|---|---|
March: 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 30 | March: 22, 25, 27 | June: 9 |
EZE-JFK | EZE-MIA | GRU-MIA |
|---|---|---|
March: 17 | None | August: 11 |
Need help finding deals? (affiliate link)
Check out seats.aero, a search engine for all things award travel. View award availability for flights for the next 60 days for free. Subscribing unlocks a full year of availability and helps you get the edge over others. You can also set alerts, get access to an invite-only Discord community, and find hotel award availability.
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Other news to highlight
Register now: Hyatt Glamping Promo, get 2k points per night up to 60k points for stays between March 13 to July 1 at 14 Under Canvas locations, ULUM Moab, The Fields of Michigan, and Bar N Ranch (Hyatt)
Register now for Freedom Flex 2Q: 5% back up to $1,500 on Amazon, Chase Travel, and donations to Feeding America (Chase)
Singapore Escapes: Up to 30% off SQ award flights. Doesn’t look like any long-haul business class savers though (Singapore Airlines)
Forbes on Bilt: “No Remorse, No Accountability”—Bilt Users In Uproar Over New Credit Cards (Forbes)
Bilt will refund inadvertent FTF charged, which was 0.2% of the txn amount (View from the Wing)
Cathay Pacific raising fuel surcharges starting March 18. $76.30 increase, a 105% increase. (Cathay Pacific)
Cathay offering 10-15% miles rebate for travel between May 5 to June 30 for economy awards between US-HKG and all cabin classes for South Asia and Australia/HKG (Cathay Pacific)
Amex Bonvoy Brilliant 200k points for $6k spend. NLL link despite the LL language? (Doctor of Credit)
InKind updating terms to disallow stacking offers ☹ (Doctor of Credit)
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About Find Flights for Me.
I started the idea of Find Flights for Me back in 2023 to help educate and inspire people to use their credit card points more effectively, with a focus on using points to fly business and first class flights.
When I’m not working on Wall Street or searching for flight deals, you can find me planning for my upcoming wedding, enjoying local restaurants, helping my parents book their next trip, traveling internationally, or visiting friends/family in NYC, Philadelphia, or DC.