Comparing IHG's 4th-night-free with Marriott and Hilton's 5th-night-free

I was reading Danny the Deal Guru’s write-up of the latest Chase IHG Rewards signup offers and something jumped out at me: the 4th-night-free benefit offered to cardholders, including those who hold the no-annual-fee IHG Rewards Traveler card. To be clear, this isn’t a new benefit, it’s just one I haven’t had a chance to think about in depth.

Generally speaking, I don’t rate IHG or their rewards program very highly, because while they have an enormous global footprint, they’re rarely competitive compared with the main hotel programs I rely on, Hilton and Hyatt. For example, I regularly visit Portland, OR, which on a sample search turned up two downtown Hyatt properties priced at 12,000 World of Hyatt points, a Hilton priced at 37,000 Hilton Honors points, a Marriott priced at 30,000 Bonvoy points, and a Kimpton priced at 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points (plus a nightly “amenity fee”). For a one-night stay, it would be ridiculous to choose the IHG property unless you’d built up a large orphaned balance through various shenanigans.

Since my framework is manufactured spend, not signup bonuses, it’s easy to make a direct comparison between the options:

• 12,000 World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards is worth $120 in cash.

• 37,000 Hilton Honors points earned at 6 points per dollar with the American Express Surpass co-branded card is between $123 (if the same $6,200 in spend had been put on a 2% cashback card) and $185 if the points were purchased for 0.5 cents each, an offer which is regularly available, including now through March 7, 2023.

• 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points are worth between $240 (if you bought the points during one of their periodic promotions) and $300 (if you transferred the points from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

• 25,000 IHG Rewards points are worth between $150 and $175 if you buy them using the “points and cash” trick (purchasing points while making an award reservation, then cancelling the reservation and having the points refunded to your account).

This makes comparing the four sample reservation options, and indeed comparing all reservation options at the four chains, easy, if on average:

• World of Hyatt points cost 1 cent each;

• Hilton Honors points cost 0.42 cents each;

• Marriott Bonvoy points cost 0.9 cents each;

• and IHG Rewards points cost 0.65 cents each;

then on a one-night stay you can convert the points cost of any property into the cash cost of manufacturing, transferring, or purchasing the required points. In the concrete example above, we saw that Hyatt and Hilton were quite competitive, while Marriott and IHG Rewards were significantly more expensive options.

On four-night stays, the equation changes, but only for IHG Rewards points. On four-night stays at the other three chains, the cost per point remains the same, while the 4th-night-free benefit offered by the IHG Rewards credit cards increases their value by 33% or decreases their cost by 25% to 0.49 cents each — same difference. The four-night IHG Rewards stay now costs just $122 per night, putting it squarely in the middle of the “competitive” pack of Hyatt and Hilton, or even on the cheaper end (ignoring that pesky Kimpton amenity fee, which you obviously shouldn’t in practice).

Moving to a five-night stay, the equation shifts again, but this time against IHG Rewards, since Hilton and Marriott both offer the fifth night free on award stays. The cost per night on the sample five-night stays with Hilton is $123 per night, with Marriott is $216, and with IHG $130. Hyatt doesn’t offer free nights on longer stays so their cost per night remains flat at $120.

Reference Card

I wanted to use a specific example to explain why I personally don’t care for IHG Rewards, but in case you want to bookmark this post or paste the values into your notes app, here are the shortcuts when calculating the cost of stays of various lengths.

Stays of 1-3 nights:

• World of Hyatt: 1 cent per point

• Hilton Honors: 0.42 cents per point

• Marriott Bonvoy: 0.9 cents per point

• IHG Rewards: 0.65 cents per point

Stays of exactly 4 nights:

• IHG Rewards: 0.49 cents per point

Stays of exactly 5 nights:

• World of Haytt: 1 cent per point

• IHG Rewards: 0.52 cents per point

• Hilton Honors: 0.34 cents per point

• Marriott Rewards: 0.72 cents per point

Now you can easily calculate the cost of reward stays of up to 5 nights in length in every city in the world — not just in Portland, Oregon!

Advantages to getting more involved in the travel hacking community

A few weeks back I wrote about some reasons why most people don’t have much interest in the travel hacking game, and why they’re mostly right: if you don’t have the bug, then it’s mind-bendingly boring to keep track of dozens of credit cards, loyalty programs, booking tricks, routing rules, etc.

Nevertheless, I’m quite involved, and if you’re reading this you probably are as well, so I thought I’d explore some of the obvious advantages of not just playing the game, but getting involved in one or more groups, following folks you respect on Twitter (or Instagram or Facebook, if you’re one of those people), and in general building relationships with other people who share your passion.

The most obvious advantage of making friends with other folks in the community is that it allows you to optimize your earning and redemptions over time. This can sometimes be purely transactional, and there’s nothing wrong with that: when I won a Bose sound system through an IHG sweepstakes, I sold it to a reader for a few hundred bucks lower than the list price, so he got a cheap sound system and I didn’t have to go to the trouble of listing it on Amazon or eBay, or dealing with a stranger through Craigslist or Facebook.

Folks like Vinh at Miles per Day have scaled this up a huge degree, going so far as to connect buyers and sellers of in-demand US Mint coins, but you don’t need to go that far to simply get to know people who might have miles and points you need, or might need the miles and points you have but don’t have immediate plans for.

Swapping referrals and signup bonuses

This option is talked about enough that I don’t think I need to go into it at any length, but when large credit card offers come around you may find that you’re not eligible (for example due to Chase’s 5/24 rule or Bank of America’s 2/3/4 rule) but someone else you know in the community is. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can ask your friends if they’d like to swap signup bonuses — maybe they’ve been banned from Citi for money order shenanigans and you haven’t, but you’re over 5/24 and they aren’t.

Expiring or useless free nights

Most folks don’t have too much trouble redeeming the free anniversary night that comes with the Chase World of Hyatt or American Express Hilton Honors Aspire credit cards, but might run into a problem when it comes to free night certificates with worse loyalty programs:

The IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card comes with a free reward night (at properties costing up to 40,000 points) on every anniversary, which is certainly worth more than the $89 annual fee to someone, but it might not be worth it to you because of how much more valuable the required Ultimate Rewards points to “fill out” an IHG award redemption would be if transferred to a different partner. Cancelling the card saves you $89, but it also means that no one gets to use the award, while you may be able to sell or trade it to someone who can get hundreds of dollars in value from it.

Likewise the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless (Chase) and Brilliant (American Express) cards come with annual free nights worth up to 35,000 and 50,000 points, respectively. Those aren’t worth their $95 and $450 annual fees to me, but especially in the case of the Brilliant card, you could easily wipe out your annual fee by selling or trading those rewards, when combined with the $300 property credit (Marriott properties used to sell physical gift cards you could resell or trade, although it’s been too long for me to know whether they still do).

Companion tickets

Another annual benefit you might not be able to personally use is airline companion tickets, like those offered by the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit cards and the American Express Delta Platinum and Reserve cards.

The Alaska Airlines companion fare is the easiest to exchange with comrades because of a curious feature: when booking the companion ticket, any cash component of the reservation has to be paid for with an Alaska Airlines credit card, unless it is covered by funds you already have in your “Wallet.” This provides a simple way to book companion tickets without needing any information from the cardholder: just book a ticket that costs slightly more than the companion ticket, refund it to your Wallet, then pay with that balance.

Meanwhile, the Delta companion tickets have to be paid for in full with the credit card that generated the companion ticket (previously, any American Express card could be used, but that’s now changed in my experience). This makes the ticket slightly less transferable, since you need to place more trust in the person booking the ticket, which is another way of saying it’s good to make friends and connections in the community!

Transferable points and status

Another advantage of having friends in the community, especially ones that do things slightly differently than you, is the ability to pool points and status between programs. My two favorite examples of this are World of Hyatt and Hilton Honors.

World of Hyatt members can send and receive points by filling out the “Point combining request form,” which allows you to make award reservations out of the most advantageous account, and without contaminating either person’s relationship with Chase (there are strict limits on the number and frequency of Ultimate Rewards point transfers to non-household-members). Besides topping up a low balance, the main reason to do this is to make a Guest of Honor booking from an account with Globalist status, giving the guest the potentially valuable benefits like complimentary breakfast, lounge access, and waived parking fees, plus late checkout.

Hilton Honors has an even more streamlined system, with (in my experience) instant transfers after completing the online "transfer points” form. Their terminology is a little bit curious, but you “gift” points when you want to buy someone points with cash, and “transfer” points when you want to reduce your balance and increase their balance. Besides sharing Hilton’s fairly limited status benefits like potential upgrades, late checkout, and the dining credit that replaced their breakfast benefit, combining points in a single account allows you to take advantage of the very valuable 5th-night-free benefit on award stays (for elite members, including Silver elites, so pretty much everybody). This technique recently helped me book 7 nights in Hawaii for the price of 5 by combining 6 award nights and an annual American Express Surpass free night certificate.

Conclusion

Like any community, we’ve got our fair share of jerks, creeps, and affiliate bloggers, but overall I’ve been impressed by how warm and welcoming I’ve found the community to be, both at in-person events and online. There are obvious exceptions to be avoided, but if you’ve got the travel hacking bug, I think the advantages of getting more involved in the community swamp the pain of talking to the occasional jerk. And it always helps to remember that however small fry you think you are (and they don’t get much smaller than me), there’s almost certainly something you know that almost nobody else does, whether it’s a merchant coding error or a bank error in your favor: almost everybody has something to contribute.

Two increased (and one crashed) signup bonuses that caught even my attention

Long-time readers know that I don’t have much interest in signup bonuses. Obviously if there’s a card you want, it’s better to apply when the bonus is high rather than low, but that’s not something in your control. I vastly prefer to focus on what I can control: where to allocate spend, which points to earn, and when and where to redeem them.

But a few signup bonuses passed across my desk recently that got even my jaded attention.

Hilton Honors no-annual-fee and Surpass 180,000/200,000 bonus points

Hilton Honors points are not each particularly valuable. Unlike World of Hyatt points which can be redeemed at relatively low numbers for even the most luxurious properties, you need a lot of Hilton Honors points to do anything interesting.

This is one of the general reasons many people consider Chase Ultimate Rewards Points more valuable than American Express Membership Rewards: despite the occasional transfer bonus, the ability to both earn bonused Ultimate Rewards points and transfer them one-to-one to a program like World of Hyatt makes the program attractive to folks who aren’t interested in chasing signup bonuses.

However, while Hilton Honors points are worth less, they aren’t worthless, and there are still fun things you can do with them, especially if you have a lot of them.

While some of our finest scholars have attempted to determine the correct value of Hilton Honors points, I think it’s worth turning the question around: how little would Hilton Honors points need to be worth to make these offers worth applying for? At just 0.3 cents per point, 200,000 Hilton Honors points are worth $600.

You may ask, “why would anyone redeem Hilton Honors points for 0.3 cents each?” but that exactly proves my point: an absurdly low per-point valuation still gives you a pretty high total valuation for these offers.

You can see the current personal referral offers I have on my Support the Site! page, although as far as I can tell the referral offers simply reduce the referee’s points by the amount received by the referrer, so if you don’t want to support this site, just apply through one or more incognito windows, as Frequent Miler describes here.

A final consideration is that Hilton points are relatively easy to consolidate, so it’s possible for partners to refer these offers to each other and then consolidate the points in a single account in order to take advantage of benefits like free breakfast, lounge access, and 5th-night-free award redemptions.

Chase Ink signup bonuses

A second signup bonus arrived by e-mail, with Chase suggesting I invite my fellow business owners to apply for the Ink family of cards. I’ve carried a Chase Ink Plus card more or less forever, but don’t recall the last time I saw a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards point signup bonus.

If the Hilton Honors Surpass card has a $600 minimum value, 100,000 Ultimate Rewards point have a $1,250 minimum value just by booking airfare or hotels through the portal.

Obviously transfers to Hyatt, Southwest, or Chase’s other airline partners can double or triple that value.

Chase World of Hyatt cratered bonus

Unfortunately, Chase flipped the script when it came to the World of Hyatt credit card and has radically reduced the value to new applicants. Instead of offering 60,000 points after spending $6,000, they’re now offering just 30,000 World of Hyatt points after $3,000 in spend, and then 2 points per dollar after that up to $15,000 in spend during the first 6 months.

This is supposed to look to civilians like a 60,000-point offer, but we know better than that.

The Chase Freedom family of cards: it's (still) all about quantity

In a case of impeccable timing, at the beginning of this week I was high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Shenandoah National Park, far from cell service, and so was barely aware of Chase’s announcement of a shakeup of their Freedom credit card lineup until we returned to sea level. This gave me the great fortune of being able to read what everybody else thought before weighing in myself.

The new Chase Freedom lineup

Just so we’re all on the same page, this is what the Chase Freedom credit card lineup will look like after September 15, 2020:

View fullsize

None of the cards has an annual fee, and all earn non-flexible Ultimate Rewards points, which require an annual-fee card (Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, or Ink Bold, Plus, or Preferred) to transfer to travel partners.

Load up on Freedom cards now

Looking at the table above, it’s obvious that the Freedom Flex is strictly superior to the Freedom card: there exist categories where it has a higher earning rate, and no categories where it has a lower earning rate. That’s the very definition of strict superiority: there are no tradeoffs.

And that’s why you should get as many Freedom cards as possible right now, before the card is closed to new applications and, presumably, product changes on September 14.

Since each Freedom (and soon, Freedom Flex) card has its own $1,500 limit on quarterly bonus spend, the best strategy has always been to have as many as possible through product changes. Applying for Chase Slate cards for their $0 balance transfer fees and 0% introductory APR offers and Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards for their signup bonuses, then requesting a product change to the Freedom, is a popular strategy for accumulating additional Freedom cards and additional bonused spending capacity.

So if you still have any Slate or Sapphire cards you’re been procrastinating on, this is a wake-up call to request your product change as soon as possible.

Nick at Frequent Miler suggests that product changes to the Freedom Flex will be possible despite the fact that the Freedom Flex will be issued as a MasterCard World Elite card and Chase’s existing cards are issued as Visas. If this is true, then you can call in again and request the change once the Freedom Flex goes live. If it turns out not to be the case, waiting in hopes of requesting a product change to the Freedom Flex may leave you trapped in inferior products going forward.

Freedom Flex for new applicants

Moreover, the Freedom Flex is a card that you will want to apply for from scratch, partly because of its $200 (20,000 Ultimate Rewards point) signup bonus, but mainly because of the ability to earn 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you spend $12,000 at grocery stores during the first year.

Since the Freedom Flex’s bonused earning on dining and drugstores is unlimited, there’s no reason to carry more than one of the card or prefer it to the Freedom (assuming the cards will share quarterly bonus categories). In that sense, it’s like the Freedom Unlimited: you want to have one, but there’s no particular reason to want more than one.

Conclusion

That’s the strategy I’ll be pursuing: convert my remaining Chase personal credit cards to Freedom cards, which will leave me with a total of 4, then apply for a new Freedom Flex card when the application goes live. Whether that’s the right strategy for you depends on how far above Chase’s limit of 5 total credit card applications in the previous 24 months you are, and whether you ever intend to fall below it.

If you’re so far above “5/24,” or credit card signup bonuses are so essential to your travel hacking strategy, that you decide that the only way you’ll ever get a Freedom Flex is through a product change, I would still recommend not product changing from a Freedom, since those will soon be irreplaceable. Far better to sacrifice a Freedom Unlimited or Sapphire card, as long as you maintain as least one premium Ultimate Rewards card to maintain the flexibility of your points.

Three notes on Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve grocery statement credits

I haven’t had a Chase Sapphire card in a long time, having downgraded my Preferred years ago to a second Freedom card and replacing it with an Ink Plus card to maintain the flexibility of my Ultimate Rewards points and the ability to redeem them for 1.25 cents each towards paid travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal.

Still, I’ve obviously been following with interest the news that Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards will allow Ultimate Rewards points to be redeem for 1.25 and 1.5 cents each, respectively, for “grocery, home improvement, and dining purchases.” That stacks with the accelerated earning on up to $1,500 in monthly grocery store spend on Sapphire cards through the end of June.

I wanted to share three quick notes on this new opportunity.

If you ever redeem points for paid travel, redeem them for groceries

There are three basic value buckets for Ultimate Rewards point redemptions:

• bank account direct deposit and credit card statement credits at 1 cent each;

• paid travel booked through the Ultimate Rewards portal at 1.25 cents (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold/Plus/Preferred) or 1.5 cents (Sapphire Reserve);

• travel partner transfers at higher — potentially much higher — redemption values for premium travel.

If you redeem, or plan to redeem, most or all of your Ultimate Rewards point balance for high-value transfers to Chase’s travel partners, then this opportunity doesn’t affect you at all; save your points, transfer them to high-value partners, and make high value redemptions!

If, on the other hand, you think of Ultimate Rewards points as a useful reserve account for paid domestic airline tickets, and were already happy to redeem them for 1.25 or 1.5 cents each for airfare or hotels when award space wasn’t available, then you should be eager to redeem them for the same value as statement credits against eligible grocery purchases. After all, once you’ve redeemed the points for a statement credit, you can use the same cash to buy the same tickets with a different credit card, and earn miles, points, or statement credits on that card!

A word of warning: statement credits aren’t “payments”

I wanted to flag one issue for folks who are planning to hit this deal especially hard. Most responsible travel hackers will tell you not to carry a balance on your credit cards, in order to avoid interest charges that can easily overwhelm the value of any rewards you earn on purchases. The “statement credit” is one way credit card companies have developed to charge fees regardless of how carefully you monitor your balances: according to the terms and conditions of most, if not all, of my credit cards, statement credits are not treated as payments and do not decrease your minimum payment due.

This doesn’t matter if you diligently pay your credit cards off before each statement closes, but one of the nice benefits of travel hacking and manufacturing spend is having several weeks of float to earn interest, meet minimum spend requirements, and spin up other opportunities. In that case, even if you pay off your entire statement balance with statement credits, you may get hit with a late payment or interest charge on the minimum payment. This shouldn’t apply if you reduce your balance to $0, but if you have made additional purchases during the month, your credit card company may consider those purchases to be subject to interest charges since your remaining previous balance was merged with your new balance.

This isn’t an extremely common situation, but I wanted to flag it for folks seeking to redeem tens or hundreds of thousands of Ultimate Rewards points towards grocery store purchases: go ahead and make your minimum payment in addition to any statement credits you redeem, to make sure Chase doesn’t decide to ding you for missing a credit card payment (and take a closer look at your account activity).

Apply or upgrade to Sapphire for redemptions?

Finally, this new opportunity raises the question whether you should upgrade an existing Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, or Sapphire card to a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card, or apply for a new card, in order to take advantage of these new statement credit redemption opportunities. Here, I don’t have a strong feeling either way.

If your credit history made you eligible for a Sapphire Preferred or Reserve offer prior to the new redemption opportunity, then it was probably already worth applying. It’s unclear to me that the new redemption opportunity should change your application calculus.

On the other hand, for folks with an existing large Ultimate Rewards balance held on Chase Ink cards, the new ability to redeem those points for statement credits may well justify upgrading a Slate, Freedom or Freedom Unlimited card to a Sapphire Reserve in order to cash out that existing Ultimate Rewards balance for grocery statement credits while travel redemptions remains a distant prospect.

Conclusion

I have to had it to Chase in making a fairly crafty calculation with this new redemption option. Existing members with large existing points balances, but who found themselves unable to redeem their points during the pandemic, might be tempted to simply cash out and cancel their accounts. Instead, Chase offered them the opportunity to both earn bonus points on their everyday purchases and redeem their Ultimate Rewards points at their “full” 1.25 or 1.5 cent value against them. That both directs spending towards Chase products and reduces the attrition of their “travel” clients during a period when travel is impossible.

But however clever Chase is, it’s still up to you to make the important decisions about how, when, and where to redeem your points.

Two great, one good, and one marginal grocery store earning boost

By now you may have heard that starting May 1, 2020, Chase and American Express have enhanced the rate that several of their cards earn miles and points at grocery stores. I was notified by American Express by e-mail on May 1 (subject line “FQF, your Amex Card Member benefits just got better”), but I still haven’t actually received any official communication from Chase.

Here are the four most attractive offers I see, from the no-brainers to the tough call.

12 Hilton Honors points with Surpass and Aspire, plus a lifetime status angle

The American Express Surpass card usually earns 6 Hilton Honors points per dollar spent at grocery stores, and the Aspire card just an unbonused 3 points. Through July, both cards will earn 12 Honors points per dollar spent, with no maximum.

Hilton Honors points are worth about half a cent each, and normally cost about half a cent each when manufactured at grocery stores (since the same spend could be put on a card that earns 3% rewards). During this period, the card earns the equivalent of 6% cash back, which is essentially unheard of for an offer with no limit on the bonused amount.

Additionally, if your travel hacking strategy includes hitting the $15,000 spend threshold for a free weekend night with the Surpass card, or the $60,000 threshold for a second free weekend night with the Aspire, you obviously want to earn as many points as possible along the way, and the next 3 months are going to be a great opportunity to do so. American Express is also extending the expiration date of all certificates earned after May 1 and allowing them to be redeemed any night of the week.

Finally, I want to mention — without putting too much emphasis on it — that there’s a lifetime status angle here as well: all points earned with the Surpass and Aspire cards through December 31, 2020, will be treated as “base points.” Base points are a legacy feature of the Hilton Honors program from when it was a hotel loyalty scheme instead of a credit card loyalty scheme, and are (normally) earned only on your room rate and room charges. If you receive Diamond status by holding the Aspire card or by spending $40,000 on the Surpass, then you have probably never had any reason to think about base points.

The reason you might care about base points now is that Hilton has a “lifetime” elite status program: if you earn 2,000,000 base points, and maintain Diamond status for a total of 10 years (they don’t have to be consecutive), you are awarded “lifetime” Diamond elite status. For those with access to especially plentiful and socially-distanced grocery store spend, this is an opportunity to earn a phenomenal number of base points towards that 2-million-point goal.

If, like me, you believe every deal dies eventually, then you can treat lifetime Diamond status as a kind of long-term insurance policy: American Express can fire you as a customer, grocery stores can refuse to serve you, but Hilton will be stuck honoring your status for years to come.

If you do decide to pursue this angle, contact Hilton and ask them what your current lifetime base point total is and the number of years of Diamond status they’ve credited you with. I don’t know of any way to look up this information online (leave a comment if you do!).

3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points with Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve

Over time every travel hacker should be diligently accumulating as many Chase Freedom cards as possible, which in the second quarter of 2020 are already earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per card in spend. I personally only have 2, but I know others have many more.

In May and June, 2020, Chase has increased the earning rate on their premium Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards to 3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points, respectively, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend. That means after you’ve exhausted your quarterly Freedom bonus categories, you have another $3,000 in bonused grocery store spend to go.

Points earned with the Sapphire Reserve are worth a minimum of 1.5 cents each (when redeemed for paid travel), which makes the spend a no-brainer, but even if you only have the Sapphire Preferred I think the flexibility of Ultimate Rewards points, compared to the relative restrictiveness of Hilton points, suggests you should knock out your capped spend on these cards before going all-in on the Surpass or Aspire cards.

3 World of Hyatt points with Chase Hyatt cards

The two offers above are great, in the sense that my recommendation is: if you have the cards, take advantage of them. The Chase World of Hyatt earning boost is attractive, but doesn’t quite fall into that category: in May and June, 2020, you’ll earn 3 World of Hyatt points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend.

My perspective here is that if you plan to transfer 9,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt any time in the near future, these 9,000 World of Hyatt points should be valued the same as Ultimate Rewards points: every point you earn in World of Hyatt is a point you don’t have to transfer from Ultimate Rewards.

But whatever your plans and your level of confidence in those plans, you should almost certainly value World of Hyatt points “somewhat” less than Ultimate Rewards points, which is to say, maximize your Ultimate Rewards earnings first before turning to World of Hyatt.

4 Delta SkyMiles with American Express consumer credit cards

I no longer have an American Express Delta co-branded consumer credit card, having swapped my personal Delta Platinum card out for the business version several years ago (a card I’m planning to cancel, if the increased $250 annual fee ever hits). That means I’m not personally affected by American Express raising the earning rate on consumer cards to 4 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent at grocery stores through July, 2020.

Let me get the obvious out of the way first: if you value and chase elite status with Delta through the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver (spending $25,000 per calendar year) and Status Boost (bonus Medallion Qualification Miles when spending $25,000 or $30,000 on the Platinum and Reserve cards, respectively), then you should certainly try to earn as many redeemable miles as possible while doing so! A high, uncapped earning rate at grocery stores makes the next few months a great opportunity to sprint towards those goals.

Likewise, if Delta American Express consumer cards are the only cards you have featuring enhanced earning at grocery stores, they’re the only ones you can use: play the hand you’ve dealt yourself.

But as much as I enjoy the experience of flying on Delta, there’s no escaping the fact that SkyMiles are simply hard to use for high-value redemptions, and I hesitate to value them at more than 1 cent each (their value when used on “Pay with Miles” redemptions). The risk of unredeemed balances, or low-value redemptions, is much higher even than with a program like Hilton, where even break-even redemptions come with a 5th night free, for instance.

That’s what makes this earning boost a “marginal” play: a 4% earning rate in normal circumstances would be great, especially with the potential of accelerated elite status with a good airline. But given the other possibilities available, I would turn to Delta only after meeting Chase’s earning caps and satisfying my need for Hilton points.

Bonus tip: free manufactured spend at Safeway & Co.

I’d been noodling this post for a day or two when I saw Doctor of Credit share a new Safeway deal for $10 off $100 in MasterCard gift cards. The discount reduces the cost of each card below face value, making it a great opportunity to score some early wins this month.

The offer runs through May 16, 2020, but in my experience these offers must be added to your Safeway accounts during the week they launch (after which they remain linked until expiry).

So, get cracking!

A decent strategy for the Chase IHG Rewards credit cards

I’ve played around with the IHG Rewards program over the years, for example when I dutifully filled out my 94 index cards (and won a Bose home stereo system), but the program isn’t of much interest to me, given that I earn enough Hilton Honors and Ultimate Rewards points to cover the majority of my travel. Earning IHG Rewards points on an ongoing basis just doesn’t make much sense for me.

That being said, everyone’s situation is different, and you might find IHG Rewards to be the best program for your own needs, whether because your company uses them as a preferred travel provider, because you’ve been shut down by American Express, or simply because IHG has the properties you want to stay at in the destinations you want to visit!

If that’s the case, you may want to take a look at the Chase IHG Rewards Premier card.

Reminder: (almost) never buy or transfer IHG Rewards points directly

In addition to being a 1:1 transfer partner of flexible Ultimate Rewards points, you can also buy points with cash for 1 cent each, or slightly less if you click through to Points.com from a cashback portal like TopCashBack, which is currently offering 2% cash back, lowering the cost per point to 0.98 cents.

If you transfer flexible Ultimate Rewards points, of course, you’re paying the equivalent of at least 1.25 cents per point, since that’s the cash value each Ultimate Rewards point could be redeemed for through the travel portal.

Meanwhile, IHG Rewards sells an unlimited number of points year-round for around 0.6 cents each, using the “Points + Cash” workaround. At the first property I checked (Kimpton : RiverPlace Hotel in Portland, OR), IHG was willing to sell me 20,000 points for $115, or 0.58 cents each.

The only time you’re better off buying points outright is during 100% bonus sales, when the price mechanically falls from 1 cent to 0.5 cents per point. Such sales do come along periodically (there was one in December, 2019), but I abhor buying points at all speculatively, so would never recommend buying points you don’t have an immediate plan to redeem.

A good IHG Rewards Premier signup bonus

You can currently sign up for the IHG Rewards Premier card and receive 140,000 points after spending $3,000 within 3 months. From the above, we know that this bonus would otherwise cost between $700 and $812, depending on whether the points would otherwise be bought at 0.5 or 0.58 cents each. Back out the $89 annual fee (not waived the first year) and you get a final value of the signup bonus of $611-$723.

This isn’t the highest signup bonus offered by Chase, but if you have already received, or are otherwise ineligible for, Chase’s more valuable Ultimate Rewards signup bonuses, this is a perfectly respectable value for a signup bonus.

The fourth-night-free benefit may supercharge the value of the signup bonus

Both the IHG Rewards Premier and Traveler (no-annual-fee) cards allow you to receive each 4th night free on an unlimited number of points-only award stays (i.e., excluding stays booked with free night certificates).

It’s worth taking a moment to consider how much more valuable a 4th-night-free benefit is than the 5th-night-free benefit offered by Marriott and Hilton to elite members. First of all, every 5-night award stay still includes a free night, which is to say, the IHG Rewards benefit includes the maximum benefit offered by the Marriott and Hilton programs. Then, in addition, every 4-night award stay also includes a free night. Finally, 4-night stays are substantially more common and more flexible than 5-night stays. At the most basic level, it’s the difference between getting 4 free nights or 5 free nights out of every 20 you stay.

If, and only if, you plan to redeem your signup bonus for stays in 4-night increments, then the value of the bonus therefore rises from 140,000 to 186,667 IHG Rewards points, or $933-$1083 (less the $89 annual fee).

Flipping the numerator and denominator shows that with the card, your breakeven year-round imputed redemption value on 4-night stays falls to 0.44 cents per point (or 0.38 cents per point if purchased during 100% bonus periods).

Product change after the first year

After the first year, the IHG Rewards Premier card doesn’t offer any benefits except an annual free night certificate that can be used at properties costing up to 40,000 points. Since the certificate can’t be used as part of a 4th-night-free points stay, it has a maximum value of $232, if and only if you plan on a one-night stay at a 40,000-point property (and are able to find award availability there). I’ve heard and seen too many horror stories about people scrambling at the last minute to find something — anything! — to do with single-night award certificates to ever recommend paying an annual fee for one.

However, the no-annual-fee IHG Rewards Traveler credit card also offers a 4th-night-free on points stays. Therefore, the ideal strategy would be not to cancel the Premier card, but to request a product change to the free Traveler card, permanently raising the value of your IHG Rewards points by up to 33%.

So, what are IHG Rewards points worth?

I’ve been focused so far on the cost of IHG Rewards points. But of course, it’s possible to pay more for something than it’s worth. The final question when deciding whether to proceed is by far the most important one: what are IHG Rewards points worth (and even more important, what are they worth to you)?

With so many properties closed or offering fire-sale prices on rooms, it’s hard to run even a half-assed scientific test of the redemption value of IHG Rewards points, except to say that they seem to fall in a pretty narrow band between 0.45 and 0.7 cents. Using the values we calculated above, that gives a redemption value of the signup bonus of up to roughly $1300 (if the entire 140,000 point signup bonus is used on 4th-night-free stays at a redemption value of 0.7 cents), or as little as $630 (if the signup bonus is redeemed on stays of 3 or fewer nights at the lower bound of redemption value).

Meanwhile, if you’re able to consistently redeem IHG Rewards points for 0.7 cents or more, consistently buy them for 0.5 cents, and consistently redeem them on four-night point stays, then with the no-annual-fee Traveler card you’ll receive an ongoing discount of about 46% off the relevant stays.

Not great, but not bad for points that you can buy and redeem from the comfort of your own home. If you have more money than time, or if you really hate manufacturing spend, then there are certainly folks out there for whom this deal makes sense.

Barclaycard gutting Arrival+ travel benefits November 1

I’m not sure how old this news is since I rarely log into my credit card accounts on my desktop, but when I logged into my Barclaycard account the other day I was greeted by a foreboding message:

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Never a message you want to see from your primary credit card, and sure enough, a quick comparison of the old (current) and new Cardholder Guide to Benefits reveals the damage is near-total. Here’s are some of the most important changes.

Trip Delay

Most travel hackers prefer the more generous trip delay insurance provided by the Chase Sapphire family of cards, but since I don’t have one of those (I use a legacy Ink Plus to make my Ultimate Rewards points transferrable), I put most of my travel charges on my Arrival+ card, which currently offers a benefit of up to $300 for delays of 6 hours or more.

I can’t say that I “rely” on Barclay’s trip delay coverage since I’ve never actually used it (my only experience was using the Sapphire Preferred trip delay coverage), but the ability to earn some points, and possibly trigger a hotel promotion, on someone else’s dime at least partly makes up for the inconvenience of a long flight delay.

On November 1, the benefit disappears (it’s possible trips purchased before November 1 will still be covered, but I wouldn’t rely on that possibility).

Purchase Protection Benefits

I don’t know what else to call the suite of current benefits, which include “Extended Warranty,” “Price Protection,” “Purchase Assurance” (goods stolen or damaged within 90 days of purchase), and “Satisfaction Guarantee” (the ability to return items that the retailer refuses to refund).

These benefits all disappear November 1, and are replaced with “Cellular Telephone Protection.” Besides the obvious requirement you charge your monthly bill to the credit card in order to qualify, there are a number of additional requirements that I think would make my phone ineligible, particularly the exclusion of “Eligible Cellular Wireless Telephone(s) purchased from anyone other than a cellular service provider’s retail or internet store that has the ability to initiate activation with the cellular service provider.”

Since I bought my iPhone directly from Apple, which is not a cellular service provider, the question of whether my phone would be covered depends on precisely what work the word “or” is doing. In other words, is a phone eligible if it is purchased from a cellular service provider’s retail store or a cellular service provider’s internet store (the obvious grammatical reading), or is it eligible as long as it is purchased from a cellular service provider’s retail store, or from any internet store that has the ability to initiate activation with the cellular service provider?

Phones purchased directly from Apple would be excluded under the first reading but covered under the second.

The maximum benefit is $800 per claim and $1,000 per 12-month period, after a $50 deductible per claim, and you can make a maximum of 2 claims per 12-month period.

Unchanged Benefits

The card will continue to offer “Baggage Delay,” “Trip Cancellation and Interruption,” and “Travel Accident Insurance” (this is not medical insurance — it’s basically an accidental death and dismemberment policy that only applies during your trip), although there may be some changes to the coverage terms and amounts. The rental car collision damage waiver benefit also remains, and is still secondary to your primary auto insurance policy.

Conclusion

Obviously the loss of the trip delay benefit is the worst of these changes, and if you’re the kind of person who relies on trip delay reimbursement, you’re going to need to find another card. Besides the Sapphire family of cards, there are several more cards from Chase (United Explorer and Club, Marriott Bonvoy Bold and Boundless), US Bank (Altitude Reserve), that offer a trip delay benefit and that you might already carry for one reason or another. Additionally, American Express is reported to be adding a trip delay benefit to certain cards beginning January 1, 2020.

I don’t think it is reasonable for most people to pay an annual fee on a credit card they wouldn’t otherwise carry exclusively for the trip delay benefit, but if you’re already paying for it, you had better be using it!

Chase's missed opportunity to do the right thing

I mentioned in Friday’s post that the airport transfer I ordered through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal to pick us up at the Sofia airport never arrived, and that we ended up taking the (cheap, convenient) subway instead. I wrote, “I have a request in with Ultimate Rewards to refund the points, so hopefully this mistake will end up being free, but overall it was a silly experience and waste of time.”

Oddly, that’s not how it worked out.

Chase wanted the transfer company’s permission to refund me

On my first call with Chase, on Thursday, October 10, I was placed on hold several times as the representative tried to contact the transfer company, but wasn’t ultimately able to. She told me they would contact the company and be in touch by phone or e-mail once they’d resolved the issue.

I received the first e-mail followup on Saturday, from the e-mail address “VNA-INTL.chasetravel@customercare.expedia.com,” which is obviously the e-mail address for the person at Expedia that handles Ultimate Rewards reservations:

“Thank you for contacting Chase Travel about Refund Request for your Budapest Express - Transfers on travel in dates Sep 08,2019 and travel out dates Sep 28,2019 .

“We have made multiple attempts but are still in the process of making contact with [Budapest Express - Transfers] for your Refund Request. Please expect an email update from us within 24 hour.

“Thank you for choosing Chase Travel.

“Sincerely,
”Arnold Fajardo
”Travel Consultant Supervisor
”Chase Travel”

Ignoring Arnold’s grammar, this is a very strange e-mail for multiple reasons: the dates of my trip were not September 8-September 28, they were September 27-October 9. The name of the transfer company is given as “Budapest Express - Transfers,” when the pickup was at the Sofia airport in Bulgaria, and the company in my original reservation was “P-Airbus,” which is obviously a nonsense, but it’s a different nonsense than “Budapest Express - Transfers.”

The transfer company didn’t give it

The next e-mail, from the same Expedia e-mail address, tried to break the news to me gently:

“Thank you for contacting Chase Travel about your cancellation request for your reservation at Budapest Express - Transfers.

“We have advocated your case with Budapest Express - Transfers and due to their policy in relation to your reason for cancelling your reservation, they have unfortunately denied your request.

“We apologize that their response was not more favorable.

“We apologize for the delay in answering your e–mail. We are currently experiencing an extremely high volume of e–mail requests preventing us from responding within our normal standards.

“Thank you for choosing Chase Travel.

“Sincerely,
”Alvin Elona
”Travel Consultant Supervisor
”Chase Travel”

Again, obviously I did not cancel my reservation for any reason. They simply never showed up.

I’m not mad about the points, I’m confused about the missed opportunity

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, 2,000 Ultimate Rewards points aren’t that big a deal to me, and they certainly aren’t that big a deal to Chase. But in its own way, that makes the situation more, not less, confusing. I understand Chase doesn’t have any way to exercise control over the service providers Expedia uses. But when you’re putting your customers, with whom you have a direct relationship, completely in the hands of your partners, the obvious way to resolve partner disputes is to err on the side of caution. Instead, Chase decided to very mildly annoy me in order to save $25 because they’re not willing to stand up to their partner.

Like I say, I’m not mad, I’m just confused.

I would have been better protected using a credit card

The final piece of this microdrama is that if I had simply booked an airport transfer with a credit card, and they didn’t show up, my credit card company would have cheerfully reversed the charge within minutes. By putting customers through this absurd three-step dance, where Chase contacts Expedia, Expedia contacts their in-country partner, and then it’s up to the partner whether or not to grant a refund, Chase may save 25 bucks here and there, but also sends a loud and clear message not to trust them with third-party reservations.

It’s not going to bankrupt them, and it’s not going to bankrupt me, but that doesn’t make it a good business decision.

How bad would a Hyatt devaluation need to be?

I’ve been following with interest the changes Hyatt has made to certain types of award reservations. To roughly summarize the changes:

• points can now be redeemed for “premium” suite award nights;

• Points + Cash can now be redeemed for standard and premium suites;

• qualifying paid stays can now be upgraded to premium suites with points;

• the cash co-pay on Points + Cash stays is now 50% of the “standard” room rate for the room type you’re booking instead of a fixed amount based on hotel category;

• a new 40,000-point redemption tier will be introduced to cover certain newly-acquired luxury properties.

I’m frankly not sure if it was part of this update or not, but I also noticed recently that award nights at Hyatt Ziva and Zilara all-inclusive properties can now be booked online (you used to have to call to book).

Hyatt is a competitive program for travel hackers

If you earn miles and points mostly or exclusively through manufactured spend this shouldn’t come as surprise, but to break it down simply:

• a Category 1 Hyatt property costs 5,000 points per night, or $3,333 in spend on a Chase Freedom Unlimited or $1,000 on a Chase Ink Cash or Ink Plus at office supply stores;

• a Category 4 Hyatt property costs 15,000 points per night, or $10,000 in spend on a Freedom Unlimited or $3,000 in spend on Ink Cash or Plus;

• a top-tier Category 7 property costs 30,000 points per night, or $20,000 on Freedom Unlimited or $6,000 on Ink Cash or Plus.

We can break down Hilton’s award chart in the same way:

• a bottom-tier Hilton property costs 5,000 points per night, or $833 in grocery store or gas station spend on an American Express Ascend card;

• a mid-tier Hilton property costs 50,000 points per night, or $8,333 in bonused spend;

• and a top-tier Hilton property costs 95,000 points, or $15,833 in bonused spend.

(Note that since grocery store spend costs about 50% more than in-person unbonused spend, the out-of-pocket costs for the same spot on the Hilton award chart end up being somewhat more expensive than Hyatt).

This is what I mean by a “competitive” program: Hyatt properties won’t always be cheaper than Hilton properties in a specific city or on particular dates, but having access to both programs gives you a better chance of paying as little as possible for the trips you want to take than relying solely on one program or the other and being stuck paying cash when it fails you.

Likewise, having credit cards that are useful for unbonused spend, office supply store spend, and grocery store spend means you’re able to take advantage of more promotions and opportunities, instead of relying on a single merchant or bonus category.

That brings me to today’s topic.

How bad would a Hyatt devaluation need to be to make the program uncompetitive?

I think it’s useful to think through questions like this ahead of time, so you don’t fall into the trap of motivated reasoning once a devaluation actually happens (something credit card affiliate bloggers are especially vulnerable to, but a risk for anyone).

You can imagine multiple forms a Hyatt devaluation might take:

• Hyatt could change or end their transfer relationship with Chase. This is the least likely situation in the short term since Chase loudly promotes its uniform transfer ratio, but there’s no natural law that says Hyatt will remain a Chase partner forever, or that Chase will never revamp the Ultimate Rewards program.

• Hyatt could introduce higher award categories and steadily shift properties upwards. Hyatt told Pizza in Motion that they have “no plans for any Hyatt-branded hotels or resorts to move to a new Category 8,” but all that wording requires is that the Park Hyatt sign come down and be replaced with a Small Luxury Hotels of the World or Joie de Vivre sign. No Hyatt branding? No problem.

• Hyatt could restrict award space or introduce dynamic pricing. This is in many ways the most likely or even inevitable form a devaluation will take, since Hilton has had dynamic pricing for years and Marriott will launch it in 2019. 30,000-point properties might limit their availability to a few low-season weeks per year, while mid-tier properties might cost a few thousand points less for part of the year and tens of thousands of points more when people actually want to visit.

A change to the relationship with Chase would be the most catastrophic from a travel hacker’s point of view. Changing the transfer ratio or perhaps capping annual points transfers would make Hyatt a truly niche program, still worthwhile under specific conditions but uncompetitive with Hilton or even Radisson Rewards, which has US Bank co-branded credit cards that still earn 5 points per dollar on unbonused spend and a much larger footprint than Hyatt.

Meanwhile, category inflation isn’t the end of the world as long as the Chase relationship remains the same, although eventually you might see your favorite properties inflated out of eligibility for annual credit card free night certificates (currently good at Category 1-4 properties).

Conclusion

There should be no question in your mind that something will eventually give in the World of Hyatt program, and this post isn’t about predicting whether or not it will happen — it definitely will. There has to be enough money to go around between Chase, Hyatt, and Hyatt’s owner-operators, and a fixed credit card earning ratio and fixed award chart are simply incompatible with that. I don’t know which piece will buckle first under the pressure, but the transmission mechanism between Chase Ultimate Rewards, World of Hyatt, and award availability and price will change because it has to change.

The point of this post is to encourage you to think in advance about what kinds of changes would make you walk away from the program, or at least radically reduce your dependence on it. How bad would the transfer ratio have to become? How hard would it have to be to find award availability? How low would your typical redemption value have to fall?

If you don’t think about it in advance, then when the devaluations do start to roll in and you’re bombarded with affiliate bloggers explaining how “it’s not really that bad,” you’re not going to be ready to tell if they’re right or not.