Frequent Miler

We now have a new way to book independent luxury hotels with points! As we reported yesterday, Citi added a new transfer partner to their ThankYou Rewards program: Leading Hotels of the World (LHW). At first, I was incredibly excited, but now after digging into the details, my enthusiasm has tempered down to a mild […]

IHG’s Kimpton Fitzroy hotel in London is visually stunning inside and out. My wife and I just spent 6 nights here and enjoyed our stay. While we still prefer Marriott’s St. Pancras Renaissance hotel (especially due to its awesome Chambers Club), the Kimpton is in a better location in the heart of Bloomsbury near the British […]

Delta has just announced revisions to the drastic SkyMiles changes that led to many, many fliers (including yours truly) declaring that they’re done with Delta. And while we knew that walkbacks to this plan were coming, Delta has made far bigger updates than I expected and some of them are pretty exciting. Overview Delta has […]

Thanks to JetBlue’s generous status match for Delta elites, I now have near-top-tier Mosaic 3 elite status with JetBlue, and my wife has top-tier Mosaic 4 status. Additionally, since we each were approved for JetBlue Business cards, the status match terms state that we’ll keep our high level status through the end of 2024. Cool! […]

With no advanced warning, Amex today introduced big changes to the Hilton Surpass and Aspire cards. The Aspire card’s annual fee has increased, Priority Pass is gone, annual credits have changed, and a few new perks have appeared. The Surpass card’s annual fee also increased, but they’ve added new credits and new perks. In both […]

Remember Maisie the Culinary Concierge? She contacted me a few days ago because she found that she was $2,865 MQDs (Medallion Qualifying Dollars) short of earning Delta Platinum Medallion status. She had more than enough MQMs (Medallion Qualifying Dollars), but was short on MQDs. She wondered if I had any ideas for how she could […]

Delta’s 2024 elite program is completely bonkers. The justification Delta gave for making big changes was that they wanted to reduce the number of elite members so that they could offer better elite recognition. But the new program makes elite status easier than ever before to achieve via Amex credit cards. Previously you could earn […]

Delta’s revised SkyMiles plans for 2024 and beyond present an incredible opportunity. With considerable cost and effort through the remainder of this year, my wife has the opportunity to earn 7 years of Delta Diamond status, and lifetime Platinum. This is an opportunity we can’t pass up… Overview My wife currently has Delta Diamond Medallion […]

Last week I wrote about my wife’s “last, great Delta mileage run.” She is fairly close to achieving Delta’s 2 Million Miler status and that will mean lifetime Platinum Medallion status. And, critically, this year (2023) is the last time that credit card spend can move her closer to Million Miler status, and so we’re […]

The Air France KLM Flying Blue program has become very interesting lately. The program recently reduced award prices between North America and Europe so that you can now fly one way for 20K miles economy or 50K miles business class. That’s excellent! Additionally, they’re starting to offer international first class awards with some partners. All […]