Greg The Frequent Miler

One of the cool things you can do with Choice Privileges points is to use them at select Preferred Hotels & Resorts . Not long ago, the top point price for these properties was 55,000 points per night. Then, this past June, they bumped the top end up to 87,000 points per night. Now, apparently enough time has lapsed to bump things up again. The new top rate is 118,000 points per night. Yeesh.

On paper, Marriott Bonvoy is an excellent loyalty program. It offers many ways to earn and redeem points, and its elite program offers upgrade certificates, free breakfast and more. But… it's no accident that “Bonvoy” has become a negative verb (as in “you've been Bonvoyed!”). We get nickel and dimed with ever-increasing resort fees; our free breakfasts often aren't free; those upgrades frequently fail; and our free night certificates often fall short.

It’s possible to fly economy class to Hawaii for 10,000 miles, or fly business class to Europe for as few as 34,000 miles, or fly business class to South Africa for 75,000 miles. It’s easy to dream about enjoying flights like these, but it’s often very difficult to find award availability. That’s where tools can help. […]

Not long ago, if you wanted to use your transferable points for hotel stays the advice was simple: transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards or Bilt points to Hyatt. Transferring to most other hotel programs was usually a bad deal, especially considering the great value that is possible by transferring to airline programs for outsized awards. Now,

Ben, at One Mile at a Time, describes Japan Airline's new first class as “Unbelievably Good!!!” And, yes, three exclamation points were apparently required.

The point of this post is all in the title. I love tools that let you set up alerts so that you'll get notified when airline and hotel awards open up.

I've been on vacation since September 26th and a lot has happened in the points & miles space in the 2+ weeks that I was away! AA and Hyatt deepened (and arguably devalued) their relationship; the Amex/Hawaiian relationship seemed to fracture as Alaska Airlines tied the knot; Marriott gave Titanium elites a new valuable benefit; Virgin Atlantic announced their move to dynamic (read “uncapped”) award pricing; Choice partially walked back their Preferred devaluation; Bilt added new transfer partners; and SAS unveiled a crazy opportunity to earn

My head is spinning… Just a few days ago, the Frequent Miler team met to discuss the possibility of turning the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion into a team challenge and now it is on! As Nick reported in the challenge launch post, Nick, Stephen and I each plan to complete the SAS challenge in mid […]

Chase has arguably long offered the best automatic travel protections of any card issuer. This has been especially true for Sapphire Reserve and Ritz cardholders who get what I often describe as “best in class” protections such as 6 hour trip delay coverage and emergency medical & dental. But even lesser cards like the Sapphire […]

Complete list of airline and hotel transfer partners for Citi ThankYou Rewards, including tips to consider when transferring.