The Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devalued again, for the second time in just 6 months. This is pretty annoying, because this partnership went under the radar for a while, and as people became aware of what a tremendous deal this was, they had to start dialing it back. Now after a second devaluation, the partnership is still pretty good but it’s just not the same fantastic deal it was before.
The original redemption rates for Wyndham points on Vacasa rentals was simple – 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom, per night on any rental up to $500 per bedroom per night. In October of last year, they kept the same basic structure, but lowered the maximum redemption from $500 per bedroom per night to $350 per bedroom per night.
With the change made in October, it effectively made any rental that cost more than $350 per bedroom per night unrentable on points. The newest devaluation makes those properties rentable again, but means that any property that cost between $250-$500 per night per bedroom just got twice as expensive as it was prior to October 2023.
The new Vacasa/Wyndham redemption rates are essentially this: for any Vacasa vacation rental, it costs 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night for any property that costs up to $250 per bedroom per night. For any property that costs $250-$500 per bedroom per night, that will cost 30,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night. Any property that costs more that $500 per bedroom per night will be unavailable on points.
Example
Before Oct 2023
Oct 2023 – March 2024
After March 2024
1 Bedroom $200/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $300/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $400/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
Unavailable on Points
30,000 Pts/ Night
2 Bedroom $450/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $600/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
60,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $900/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
Unavailable on Points
60,000 Pts/Night
Effect of last 2 Vacasa/Wyndham devaluation on redemptions
These are All-In Prices
The $250 per bedroom per night price is the all-in price not the headline price on Vacasa’s website. They might show a headline price of $200 per night, for example, but for 5 nights it’s not going to be $1,000, it’s probably going to be closer to $1,400. This is because they charge a number of taxes and fees, which can get pretty extensive.
These fees can be state and local taxes, amenity fees, booking fees, damage waivers, etc. In my experience, these will probably cost an extra 30 to 50 percent on top of the rent itself.
I think we can all agree that fees are getting out of control as you can see below. I mean, damn, I know you have expenses and all but do you need to itemize them and make me pay one by one? Just tell me what the price is! I mean, I get it, you got an HOA, but you can include that in the price instead of charging me for an ‘Amenity Fee’? And what the hell is a ‘destination surcharge’?
How Many Properties Does This Actually Affect?
One of the bright spots about this devaluation has been that if you had a rental that you liked that normally cost $200 per bedroom per night, you have gone completely unaffected by this. There are a lot of quality vacation rentals that are under that $250 per bedroom per night range and they are the same as they ever were.
That being said, if you had your eye on a more expensive unit, you might be reevaluating your plans now.
Let’s look at the Destin Florida area for a 5 day rental in June to see the real life results of the devaluation. Let’s say you’re a family of 4 and you would prefer a 2 bedroom vacation rental, but would settle for a 1 bedroom if it had room for everyone to sleep.
The below examples are taking into account a 40% upcharge for taxes and fees. These fees vary by property, so some are higher and some are lower but in order for me to use the filters on Vacasa’s website for this chart, I had to make some assumptions.
Up to $250 per bedroom per night
$250 -$350 per bedroom per night
$350- $500 per bedroom per night
More than $500 per bedroom per night
1 Bedroom
25 (15,000 pts)
119 (30,000 pts)
129 (30,000 pts)
120
2 Bedrooms
323 (30,000 pts)
298 (60,000 pts)
94 (60,000 pts)
12
3 Bedroom
204 (45,000 pts)
86 (90,000 pts)
29 (90,000 pts)
4
Example availability of Vacasa vacation rentals with room for 4 near Destin for a random summer extended weekend.
The unicorn rental is if you can find a 1 bedroom with enough sleeping space for 4, that can be rented for 15,000 Wyndham points. In this example, prior to October 2023, there would have been 273 total 1 bedroom properties rentable for under $500 per night. When the first devaluation occurred and dropped the maximum price for redemption to $350 per night, that number dropped to 144. After the March 2024 devaluation, there are only 25 such properties left at the 15,000 point level. That’s only 9% of the original available properties at that rate.
Two bedroom properties fared a little better in the devaluation than the one bedroom properties. 94 were affected by the devaluation in October and another 298 were affected by the March devaluation. In this case 45% of the two bedroom properties in this example were unaffected by these devaluations.
The three bedroom properties fared the best with 204 of the total 319 properties for a total of 64% unaffected by the devaluation.
In general, the next time that I rent a Vacasa on points I’ll most likely be renting something that is 30,000 points per night, because the unicorn 15,000 point redemption is just going to be very hard to find now. It probably means that we will be looking for a two bedroom which will probably be more comfortable for us than a one bedroom, but twice the number of points is still a bit of a kick to the gut.
Elevated Signup Bonuses as a Consolation Prize
I don’t know if Wyndham did this at the same time as the most recent devaluation to soften the blow a little bit, but current signup bonuses for Wyndham credit cards are massive right now.
Wyndham is currently offering 100,000 point bonuses on their Wyndham Reward Earner Business card and their Wyndham Reward Earner Plus (Consumer) card. They are also offering a 75,000 point bonus on their Wyndham Earner card. All of those bonuses are the largest bonuses ever offered according to Frequent Miler.
The Wyndham Reward Earner Business card is one that we hold and continue to use. Jenn signed up for this one when the bonus was only 45,000 points. The reason we continue to use it is that it has some great point earning rates. It is 8x at gas stations and 5x on utilities. I put all of our gas and utilities on it for this reason. The full 100,000 point bonus for this card is after spending $15,000 on the card within 12 months.
If you really like those Wyndham points (which we do), the Wyndham Reward Earner (Consumer version) Card has some great earning categories too. It is 6x at gas stations, 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. It is also currently offering a 100,000 point bonus after a much lower $2,000 in spending within 6 months.
If you spend a lot on gas and you like vacation rentals, these cards can rack up points for those rentals in a hurry. In addition, all 3 of the Wyndham cards offer a 10% discount on award redemptions if you are a cardholder. This means that the example of a 1 bedroom Vacasa under $250 per night isn’t actually 15,000 points per night, it’s really 13,500 points per night for cardholders. The 100,000 point bonus alone would pay for a week at those rates.
Keep in mind that if you were to maximize these redemptions at a full $250 per night per bedroom, and you had one of these credit cards to reduce the redemption to 13,500 points, you would be redeeming those points at 1.85 cents per point. If you are earning 8x on all of your gas spending, you are essentially earning 14.8% back at gas stations. That’s pretty ridiculous.
Vacasa Still Remains the Best Way to Book a Vacation Rental on Points
Even with the rapid fire devaluations, Vacasa still remains the best way to book a vacation rental on points. Marriott has it’s Homes and Villas collection which does allow for booking vacation rentals using Bonvoy points, but the rates are much higher, and I would argue the points are harder to earn.
Sure, if you are a business traveler, you might be able to earn quite a lot of Bonvoy points by staying in Marriott hotels, so Homes and Villas might be pretty attractive for your family vacation. But, if you’re not a business traveler, the ability to earn a lot of points through spending on gas and utilities on the Business Earner card or by gas, groceries, and dining on the consumer Earner card is huge.
I’m still hoping that Hyatt, IHG, or Hilton can someday begin to make their points usable at VRBO or Airbnb, but I wouldn’t count on it. That being said, as long as Wyndham keeps the amount of points needed to book a rental low as well as allow easy earning of Wyndham points, it’s going to remain a fantastic deal. There is no doubt in my mind that the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership remains the best way to use points on vacation rentals.
“I wish I would’ve traveled when I was young.” How many times have we all heard that lament from either 30-somethings tethered to their children or empty nesters who just lack the energy for the kind of travel they wish they could still do?
The problem with traveling when you’re young is that you’re usually pretty broke and travel isn’t cheap. Travel, however, is a great education for young adults. Travel teaches about other cultures, languages, and most importantly perspective. It also teaches skills such as communication (especially how to communicate without a common language) and self-reliance.
Our kids have grown up around travel because it was always important to us, even if it was just short trips to nearby places. It’s not surprising to me that it wasn’t long after she graduated from High School that my daughter Emma began to plan her own trips. She and her friends recently planned a trip to California for an event taking place in Anaheim.
I’m sure they’ll have a blast and while, as a parent, I’m a little nervous, I understand just how great a learning experience this can be. I also have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t be her last trip, so not only do we want to her to have the skills to travel, but if we can teach her a little about travel hacking along the way so that she can travel cheaply, that’s even better. So, of course, we’re going to help her pick the best credit cards that allow her to do the traveling that she wants to do, but for less money.
This had me doing quite a bit of thinking about what the best credit card for her, and by extension, any young traveler. A word of caution here – Emma is ridiculously careful with her money, if you are a parent of a young adult that isn’t careful with their money, then steering them into credit cards could be a really bad idea.
Building Your Credit Score
One very important thing for any young adult to do is begin to build their credit score. Start by signing up with Credit Karma or another such credit monitoring service. If travel hacking is a future that you want, you need to know, love and cherish your credit score. If you don’t, all of those awesome credit cards with the huge welcome bonuses won’t be an option for you.
There are 6 items that Credit Karma have listed that affect your credit score:
Payment History
Credit Card Usage
Derogatory Marks
Credit Age
Total Accounts
Hard Inquiries
The top 3 items there can pretty easily be maintained well simply by making your payments on time – every time and in full. However, what you should be concerned about when choosing your first or second credit card is developing your credit age.
Credit age is the average length of time that you have had your accounts open. For instance, if you only have one credit card that you’ve had for 8 months, then your credit age is 8 months. If you then get a second card, your credit age will drop to 4 months, since now you have a credit card for 8 months and one for 0 months.
Building a Solid Credit Age with a No Annual Fee Card
In the beginning this doesn’t matter that much, because you have to start somewhere, but what you really want to do at this time is get a credit card that you plan to keep – like forever. I actually have two accounts that are almost 20 years old and they work so well to hold this average up. If you pick the right card early, then you can keep that card for eternity and it can prop up this credit age stat.
This credit card should be a no annual fee card. The reason is simple, lets say you get a different credit card later that earns a huge amount of points and you start thinking that you should close that account because you don’t want to pay an annual fee on a credit card that you just don’t use any more. You either are going to have to keep paying the annual fee or take the hit on your credit score when your credit age drops. If you have a no annual fee card, you can stop using it and keep the card, no big deal.
What should a Young Traveler be Looking for in a Credit Card?
If a young person who wants to travel is looking for a credit card, there are a few things that they should be looking for:
No Annual Fee
Good Bonus Earning Categories (In categories they use)
Achievable Bonus With Low Spend Requirement
Good Transfer Partners
When it comes to good bonus earning categories, that obviously varies from person to person, but for my daughter, I know her typical spending categories are gas stations and dining. She should be looking for those categories as potential bonus categories.
As far as an achievable bonus with a low spend requirement, getting a card that earns a 60,000 point bonus is great, but if it requires a $4,000 in spend in 3 months, that might be a lot for a young adult to spend. It’s very important to know what is a reasonable amount to spend and don’t go for a card that stretches you financially to reach the sign up bonus. For our daughter, that number is probably no more than $400 per month toward a bonus, so if there is a bonus that is offered after $1,000 spending in 3 months, I think she’d be fine.
Transfer partners are really important if you want to maximize the amount of travel you can do with the points you earn from your credit card spend. By having a great menu of transfer partners to choose from, you can take advantage of any deals that pop up in a variety of programs.
With these things in mind, lets look at a few credit card options for the young traveler, all of which are offered with no annual fee.
Capital One Venture One Rewards
The Capital One Venture One Rewards card offers a generous 20,000 point bonus after only a $500 spend in 3 months. That is a good bonus offer with an achievable amount of spending.
The earning rates are 5x on hotels and rental cars, and 1.25 points per dollar everywhere else. Since I can’t imagine a young person spending a significant amount of money on hotels and rental cars, this is pretty much a 1.25x on everything card – not too exciting.
Capital One does have a great group of transfer partners including 15 airline programs and 3 hotel programs. Of the hotel programs, only Wyndham is interesting, but of there are some interesting airline partners like Avianca Lifemiles, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Air Canada Aeroplan, British Airways Avios, and Turkish Miles and Smiles.
American Express EveryDay Card
The Amex EveryDay card has a signup bonus of 10,000 membership rewards points after spending $2,000 in the first 6 months. That’s not a great signup bonus, but the $2,000 spend over 6 months should be pretty achievable for most young adults.
This card earns 2x at grocery stores and 1x on everything else. That could be very attractive to someone who spends a large portion of their spending on groceries, but it’s not particularly exciting besides that.
American Express does pack a powerhouse of transfer partners including 11 airline partners and 3 hotel partners. The hotel partners are Marriott, Hilton and Radisson. The airline partners include Air France/KLM Flying Blue, British Airways and Iberia Avios, Virgin Atlantic and most importantly, Delta. Delta doesn’t always have the best redemptions, but they do have a ton of available flights within the US.
The Bilt Mastercard
Bilt is, well, it’s built different. Pardon the pun, but while it doesn’t offer a signup bonus, it offers a feature nobody else can – you can pay your rent with it. If you’re a renter, this card is the biggest no-brainer ever. Why? because you can earn points on what is probably your biggest expense – rent. You only earn 1x on rent, but it’s better than the 0x on rent on every other card. You must make 5 other transactions on the card each month to get the points for the rent, but still, points on rent? That’s crazy!
Aside from 1x on rent, it also earns 2x on travel and 3x on dining. Also, any spending done on rent day (1st of the month) is doubled. Which, for example, would be 6x on dining on the 1st of the month.
Bilt also has some pretty crazy rent day promos. A recent one offered up to a 150% transfer bonus (the actual transfer bonus percentage was based on your Bilt status) on the first of the month to transfer to Aeroplan. That means if you had 10,000 Bilt points and you wanted to transfer it on that day, it would show up as 25,000 miles in your Aeroplan account. The rent day promos are generally announced just a few days before rent day, so if you’re paying attention, you can get some tremendous transfer bonuses.
What’s even better is that Bilt has the best group of transfer partners of any credit card. They have 12 airline and 3 hotel partners. The quality of these partners sets them apart. Not only do they have some of the usual transfer partners like Air France/KLM Flying Blue, British Airways/Iberia/Aer Lingus Avios and Air Canada Aeroplan, but they also have United Airlines.
As far as hotels are concerned, Bilt has Hyatt, Marriott Bonvoy, and IHG. Hyatt is the big one on this list. They consistently have award stays at great redemption rates and Hyatt points are by far the most valuable of any hotel chain.
Wells Fargo autograph Card
The Wells Fargo Autograph Card currently has a 20,000 point bonus when the cardholder spends $1,000 in the first 3 months. That should be pretty achievable for anyone with any sort of normal expenses.
The Autograph Card has some solid bonus categories. They offer 3x on dining, travel, gas, transit, streaming services and phone plans. Looking through that list, that looks like a list of bonus categories that should be pretty great for young adults. I’m not sure how much the average young adult spends on travel, but I have to imagine that the rest of these categories should get used pretty heavily. This card should earn a young adult a lot of points every month.
Prior to an announcement earlier this month, I would have considered the Autograph card to be a cash back card. However, starting April 4th, 2024, Wells Fargo has added transfer partners to this card as well as to the recently launched Autograph Journey card. There are only a few at this point with Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Aer Lingus/British Airways/Iberia Avios, and Avianca Lifemiles for airline transfer partners and Choice Hotels on the hotel side.
Even though there are only 3 programs (6 airlines) in the list of airline transfer partners, they are really good ones. Also, while you might think Choice is a sub-par hotel partner, Autograph Rewards transfer to Choice at a 1:2 ratio. If just look around Choice’s website, it’s pretty common to find hotels between 10,000 points and 20,000 points per night. At that transfer ratio, that becomes 5,000 to 10,000 Autograph Rewards points. That’s a pretty good value for those points.
Wells Fargo has been indicating that these are the initial transfer partners for the Autograph Rewards program and more will be added over time. This should mean that this program should only get better throughout this year and maybe beyond.
Why are there No Citibank or Chase Cards on this List?
The main reason why I didn’t choose any Citibank or Chase credit cards for this list is that both banks require the cardholder to have a premium credit card in order to transfer points. In the case of Citibank, you can earn transferrable Citi Thank You points on a number of credit cards, but you will need to have a Citi Premier card in order to transfer those points to one of the transfer partners in their program.
In the case of Chase, the cardholder must have a Sapphire Reserve card, Sapphire Preferred Card, or a Ink Business Preferred Card in order to unlock the transfer partner benefit. Again, Chase has some great cards to earn Ultimate Reward Points, but without one of those three cards the cardholder can’t transfer those points to one of Chase’s great list of transfer partners.
All of the cards I mentioned above not only have an annual fee, but the signup bonuses on these have some elevated spending (normally something like $4,000 in 3 months) that would be likely be difficult for a young person to achieve.
So which of these Cards is the Best For Young Travelers?
The Capital One Venture One card has a great signup bonus and fantastic transfer partners. However, with all of the ongoing spend being at 1.25x, it looks like there wouldn’t be great opportunities to accumulate a lot of points after the signup bonus.
The Amex EveryDay card has a not very exciting 10,000 point bonus after $2,000 spend. It does offer 2x on groceries and 1x everywhere else, so if groceries are a big expense, this might make sense. American Express also has great transfer partners.
The Bilt Mastercard doesn’t have any signup bonus, but the fact that you can pay rent with this card makes it a great card for any renter. Once you add in the fact that they probably have the best transfer partners and some really exciting rent day specials, this just becomes a must-have card for anyone who pays rent. Hands down, if you pay rent – get the Bilt Mastercard.
If you don’t pay rent, I think the Wells Fargo Autograph Card is suddenly the best choice. Yeah, it has some limited transfer partners, but it has a great signup bonus and 3x categories that hit all the right spots for young adults. I also think the limited transfer partners issue is a temporary thing. Wells Fargo is indicating that there will be additional transfer partners and my guess is that they will roll them out one at a time going forward so to maximize the amount of press they get. This could be one of the best no annual fee cards available by the end of the year.
Conclusion
I think it’s actually pretty important that young people choose wisely when getting their first credit card. The impact on credit score of having a credit card with a really long history means that picking a credit card that you will continue you to use for a long time is very important. It’s very important to make that credit card something that you aren’t tempted to close.
Assuming that the person applying for the account likes to travel, I think the answer is pretty clear – go with the Bilt Mastercard if you pay rent and the Wells Fargo Autograph card if you don’t pay rent. Just make sure that you pay your balances in full every month, and enjoy your travels!
I’ve only been into travel hacking for a couple of years, but I have been around long enough to know how much time can be spent trying to get a good deal on an award flight. When we were planning our first trip to Europe, United miles was the only way for us to go. It was the only program where we had accumulated enough points in order to book flights for the whole family to Europe. In some respects, that made it easier for me. Just search the United website and nothing else.
Even then, our dates were flexible and our destination was flexible to some extent. When I was checking for available award flights, I would have to make multiple searches based on different destination airports and different dates. Honestly, it didn’t take too long to do these searches, because it was all on one website, and I actually find United Airlines’s website to be pretty good.
However, as we started to venture into more transferable points, such as Capital One Venture miles and Chase Ultimate Reward points, it became much more difficult. Chase alone transfers to 11 airline programs and Capital One has 15 airline transfer partners. Even if you narrow it down to just a handful of programs that you want to check, repeating the steps that I took on United’s website on 4 or 5 other websites can get pretty annoying.
The Rise of Flight Award Search Tools
I must not have been the only person who found myself with this problem because recently there has been an explosion in the number of good online award search tools, often with very powerful and free searches. All of them have their pluses and minuses. They include:
Now, have I tried all of these websites and done a point by point comparison to determine exactly the best website to use? Hell no! I have tried a few of them, but once I started to use Pointsyeah.com I latched onto it pretty quickly. I’m a firm believer that once you’ve found a tool that works for you, there’s no sense in continuing to look for a better tool. If I have a screw to tighten and I’m holding a screwdriver that works, I don’t go run to Home Depot to see if they have a slightly better screwdriver with a better grip. I just tighten the screw and move on with my life. That being said, Pointsyeah.com is a hell of a tool.
Basic Award Searching
Let’s look at a scenario, where you want to visit a friend in Phoenix, and you have a little flexibility on date. You just enter into the search bar your departure airport and the arrival airport, and a date range of up to 4 days. When you click the ‘Yeah!’ button it will automatically search for awards across a variety of airline award programs.
In just a few seconds, you will be presented with the results. In this case, the best deal is with Spirit Airlines for 4,000 points and $5.60 for a one-way flight from Chicago to Phoenix.
The problem with that is, that I don’t have Spirit points, nor a desire to fly Spirit Airlines. Also, that flight is almost 15 hours with connections – no thank you. In this case, you can scroll down, or you can filter out results from Spirit Airlines altogether, since it’s not really an option.
At the top of the screen, you will see a series of buttons that are preset filters. I want to filter out the airlines programs that I know I don’t have points for or transfer partners for, in this case, Alaska Airlines and Spirit Airlines. All you have to do is uncheck the boxes and click ‘Apply’ and view the new results.
This gives you another set of results, the top one being this Delta Airlines flight. The results here pack a ton of useful information into one tiny area. First, you will notice that the flight costs 8,000 Delta Skymiles and $5.60 in taxes. Secondly, you notice right above the Skymiles total you see the number of American Express Membership Rewards that are needed to transfer those 8,000 points to Delta. There is also (not on every result, but on some) a cash price listed. This is awesome, because you might just look at this flight and say that it’s cheap enough that you don’t want to waste your Skymiles or Membership Rewards points on it, you’ll just pay cash. Lastly, you can click on the down arrow to the right to expand the box to give you details about the flight itself.
But, what if you just want a direct flight? Well just go back to the top bar where all of the filters are and simply click on ‘Stops’ and then click ‘Non-stop only’. This supports multiple filters, so you will be able to search for non-stop only with the airlines that you don’t want to see already turned off.
Once you do that, you will see a number of results that fit the newly narrowed search criteria that you entered into the filters.
What is left is a series of direct American Airlines flights from Chicago to Phoenix for 8,500 points and $5.60. Perfect, now you know what to look for and can log onto the American Airlines website, search for this flight and book it.
Daydream Explorer is Awesome
There is a new feature that PointsYeah has added recently called Daydream explorer which is like a candy store for travel junkies. Rather than searching for individual flights from airport to airport, Daydream Explorer allows you to search airport to region, region to region, airport to country, country to region, basically anything that you can think of. On top of that, it allows for super broad time ranges like a couple of months.
Imagine you’re thinking “I’d like to go to Central or South America in April” – you can search for that and just see what comes up. Let’s say you’re local airport is MSP and you want to go south in April. Just search for MSP to Central or South America from April 1st to April 30th and abracadabra a list of potential flights you could take and their prices pop up.
You will get a bunch of random results that you can sort by price, date or last update. This will allow you to browse a whole bunch of different ideas for taking a trip to Central or South America. You can also use the filters at the top to look for deals with certain airline programs or bank programs. You can even filter by number of stops or set a maximum that you’re willing to pay for taxes and surcharges.
If you’re thinking that you would like to go from New York to Spain in May in business class, just put in that criteria and search again.
A group of results appear nearly instantaneously, allowing for the user to browse through and see if they find anything that they like. The results are so fast and the searches are so interesting that you can easily waste hours just window shopping potential vacations.
Let PointsYeah Send you Updates
PointsYeah also has a feature called Points Price Alert. This allows you to have PointsYeah send you an email when there is a flight available within the criteria that you set.
If I would like to get notified on a specific date if business class seats become available, I can set that criteria. In this case, I’m looking to book a flight home from Europe, and I know that Iberia does occasionally have business class flights available from Madrid to Chicago for 34,000 Avios, so I want to know if those seats become available on the day that I want to fly home. I simply put in the criteria that I’m looking for.
In this case, I want two seats, under 40,000 points and $200 in taxes and fees, per seat. I set that criteria and clicked create and now I will get an email if that Iberia business class award becomes available.
You are only allowed 4 flight alerts on a free account and each day counts as a flight alert. If you want to search this criteria but over a 4 day window, that would count as 4 searches.
Disclaimer
If you haven’t noticed, you will see on these searches that there is an updated date on these searches. The reason for this is because of how PointsYeah works.
What PointsYeah is doing is crawling the various airline websites and doing a ton of searches and saving the results. If they didn’t do this, these searches (especially the Daydream Explorer feature) would take forever because it would have to search each of those websites in real time and crunch that data (the websites would hate that as well, because it would create unnecessary traffic).
They are nice enough to let you know the last time that they searched those flights, because the older the search, the less likely it is to still exist, especially if it’s a particularly good deal. You always need to check the airlines website to see if the deals are still available. In other words, don’t transfer your Chase Ultimate Reward points to Flying Blue before you know that the flight you want to book is still available.
Free Vs Paid Account
Everything that I’ve talked about thus far is part of the free account. Why? Well I use a free account. I find it has all the features that I need right now and that’s just fine with me. However, if you want to have some additional features, you can pay for a subscription.
The main difference between the free and the paid memberships is that you can search for 8 days instead of 4 days on normal searches and you can set up as many as 24 alerts instead of the 4 that are available with the free version. The price of the paid membership is only around $8 per month, so if you find the additional alerts or the expanded date range useful, it might be worth the money.
Why I love PointsYeah
I always find it funny when people say they have a bucket list of places they want to go. The reason for that is that if I actually sat down and wrote a bucket list, it would be unbelievably long. I could probably think of at least 2 dozen places it Italy that would make that list. The biggest problem with a list like that is that the more I travel, the longer the list gets. As we visit places, we always hear about other places that we hadn’t heard of and that list just keeps growing.
What PointsYeah does for people like me, is to allow those of us with flexible places and dates, to dream a little better. Maybe you didn’t know that for 37,500 American Airlines miles and $44 you can fly from Chicago to New Zealand. Well you do now, and it only took a quick search to find out.
You might never have thought you could do that trip, but now you know whether it’s possible or not, and you did it without making multiple searches on multiple websites. Just one search gets it done. PointsYeah is an absolute gamechanger for me, I love it.
When I first got into the points and miles hobby a couple of years ago, I was listening to a Frequent Miler podcast when I heard the term “sweet spot” for the first time. What they were referring to was a route, series of routes, or region in a points program where the deals were especially good. They were talking specifically about Turkish Miles and Smiles which had a number of great sweet spots:
7,500 miles in economy and 12,500 miles in business class within the United States including Hawaii (on Star Alliance Partners – usually United Airlines)
10,000 miles in economy and 15,000 miles in business class within North America including the Caribbean and Mexico (on Star Alliance Partners – usually United Airlines)
30,000 points in economy and 45,000 points in business class to Europe on Star Alliance Partners or Turkish Airlines.
This turned out to be the first program I that I ever used to redeem points for a flight. I had to learn how to take my Citi Thank You points, transfer them to Miles and Smiles and then use their program to book United Airlines flights. In this case, I booked Jenn and I round trip tickets from Chicago to San Jose del Cabo Mexico for 40,000 points, which was a very good deal. 10,000 miles per person one-way to Mexico was fantastic. This was a deal that wasn’t the easiest to get, but it wasn’t too hard either. It just required a little flexibility on when you took the flight.
Because of this sweet spot, I always wanted to keep some Capital One Venture miles or Citi Thank You points (Citi and Capital One transfer to Turkish 1:1) around just to make sure that I could transfer them to Miles and Smiles. It was nice to have some miles available in case we wanted to use Turkish to book flights to the Caribbean or Mexico.
Turkish Airlines Website is Frustrating
The Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles website is notorious for having all kinds of glitches. I kept getting an error when doing an award search while writing this blog post, and based on some google searches and reddit threads, I would say this error is common and has been around for a while without being fixed.
There is also an issue where most people cannot book anyone besides themselves online the first time they use the Miles and Smiles website to book an award ticket. Most people report that they end up calling customer support the first time they book with Turkish so they can book additional passengers (I had to do this also). Travel Update wrote a blog post about how to book with Turkish, which is very informative on the subject. For the most part, if you want to book with Turkish, you probably need to be a patient person.
The Sky Is Falling!
In early February, I started to see a bunch of blog and Twitter posts about a sudden devaluation that was to take place on February 16th. I read this one by One Mile at a Time, which showed what the new award chart would look like on Turkish Airlines, and it looked bad, with rates going up in the 40%-100% range.
A favorite redemption of miles and points hobbyists was business class tickets from the US to Europe for 45,000 miles. That’s a pretty amazing price, but with the new award chart it’s going cost 85,000 miles. This was, in my mind, what I think was freaking people out the most. One of the great ways of using Citi and Capital One points – business class flights to Europe for 45,000 miles – gone.
What I hadn’t seen anyone comment on was about my favorite redemption with Miles and Smiles. What was a flight to Mexico or the Caribbean from the US going to cost in economy? I figured I would just wait until after the change and then do a quick search to find out the answer.
I wasn’t too concerned, frankly I figured if they jumped it to 15,000 each way it would still be a decent deal. Besides, I’ve seen the points and miles community overreact when it came to Delta just a few months earlier. How bad could it possibly be?
Well, As it Turns out, Pretty Damn Bad!
30,000 miles? Are you serious? My favorite sweet spot to Mexico and the Caribbean is now 3 times the amount of points as it was before! Considering that the only way flights are even available to book on Miles and Smiles is if they are a saver award from another airline, there is no way that that I would book that through Turkish, I would just book it through the other airline.
Two of the best sweet spots, business class to Europe and economy or business class to Mexico and the Caribbean are effectively dead. But is there anything still worthwhile with Turkish Miles and Smiles?
Is Any Redemption Still Decent With Turkish?
The one remaining bright spot, in my mind, is 10,000 miles for domestic flights in economy and 15,000 miles in business class. When I saw this in the chart, I thought it meant just within Turkey. However, this appears to be any domestic, Star Alliance flights within any country. In the example below, a flight from Vancouver to Montreal is 10,000 miles in economy class.
A coast to coast flight from Washington DC to San Francisco is also just 10,000 miles.
The most impressive redemption left in the Miles and Smiles program is still on flights to Hawaii from the mainland US for just 10,000 miles in economy and 15,000 in business class. This used to be 7,500 miles in economy and 12,500 miles in business class before the change. They don’t make an exception for Hawaii even though it is almost a 5,000 mile flight from the east coast of the US. I even managed to find a flight to Hawaii from my little regional airport in Moline for 10,000 miles. That shocked me.
The baffling thing is that for some reason, coming it at one tenth of the distance of the flight from Washington to Honolulu is Chicago to Toronto for 30,000 Miles and Smiles. Why 30,000? Well, that’s because since it crosses a border, it counts as a flight within North America, not a domestic flight. Because it crosses the border between the US and Canada it ends up being 3x the number of miles to redeem. It doesn’t matter in the least that this has got to be a much cheaper flight for the airline to operate.
Dynamic Pricing Vs Award Charts
Most airline award programs have gone to some sort of dynamic pricing model, where they essentially calculate the price, in miles, based on the price of the ticket or the availability of award seats on the plane. American Airlines does this, and this became apparent to me when Jenn and I were trying to book 4 seats on American Airlines, 2 seats on her account and 2 on my account for the same flight. Once I booked my 2 seats, her price went up by 5,000 points each for those same flights. I assume that happened because 2 award seats had just disappeared from inventory.
This can get a little frustrating when you check the price of a flight a couple of days in a row and they change, but at the end of the day, they follow the price, in dollars, of the same flights. The cost of the flights, in points, generally makes sense.
There are some airlines, like Turkish Airlines, that still use an award chart for their award flights. This does make their award flight prices much more predictable, but can mean that some flight prices don’t make a lot of sense, such as the low cost of the flights from the east coast to Hawaii compared to a short flight across the Canadian border. For those of us who like to make the most of our miles and points, these charts often provide us with ideas on how to stretch the value of those points.
How I will Use Turkish MIles and Smiles
Turkish Airlines used to be one of the best uses of Capital One miles and Citi Thank You Points. Because you can transfer either of those programs 1:1 to Turkish Miles and Smiles, the great deals they had for flying from the US to Turkey, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and within the United States made this program a favorite amongst people in the miles and points hobby.
Most of the value of the program has disappeared with the increase in award prices to Turkey, Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean. That eliminates most of the usefulness for me, but knowing that I can still fly for 10,000 miles one-way within the US on United Airlines makes it still relevant. At 10,000 miles, it won’t always be a better deal than booking with United, American or Delta, but it most likely will be on the longer US routes.
Turkish Miles and Smiles, you’re not dead to me – yet.
We’re planning a trip to Italy for the fall with friends and Jenn’s parents. This requires a little bit of coordination between the parties, especially since we are all booking with different methods. Remarkably, even though Jenn’s parents and our friends were flying from different airports, the last leg of their journey is on the same Delta flight from Atlanta to Rome. Now it was up to us to try to match that time to land.
The best thing to do would’ve been to use Delta and get on the same flight, but we don’t have a lot of Delta Skymiles and their only transfer partner is American Express Membership Rewards and we don’t have any Amex points. Delta was not going to work but Air France (Flying Blue) had a flight landing just 10 minutes after the Delta flight.
The Problem with Short Layovers
Unfortunately, that had an hour and 25 minute layover in Paris (CDG), and that seemed pretty risky considering we would have to go through passport control, then security, and then find our gate in a busy airport I’m not familiar with. I would put the chances of success at about 50/50. Not good enough for me – especially with Jenn’s luck (she has had delays of 2 hours, 5 hours and 8 hours respectively on her last three flights)
A little off topic here, but why in the hell do airlines offer these tight layovers? You know you all suck at getting your flights in the air on time. I once sat on the tarmac for half an hour watching two mechanics trying to fix a seat that wouldn’t recline – on a 2 hour flight. Suck it up buttercup, I got places to go and your inability to move your seat 3 inches back is not my problem. Strap yourself in and lets go!
Sorry about the rant – the other option was to arrive in Rome 3 hours later, around 3 PM. Not only would that have been a massive inconvenience for our fellow travelers, but our plan was to take a train to Florence on the first day, and when I added up all the time to get through passport control, take the commuter line to Rome Termini, transfer, then take a train from Rome to Florence, we would be getting in very late. Assuming we all only sleep a little on the plane, we might be dragging our suitcases through Florence trying to find our Airbnb with the mental acuity of a toddler on Benadryl.
The better option was to go a day early, but with timing of the flights and the fact that FCO really isn’t that close to Rome, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy the extra day in Rome, we probably would just end up sitting in a hotel room. But what if we stayed in Paris or Amsterdam on the way, instead?
Flying Blue Free Stopovers to the Rescue
A quick google search pulled up this article by One Mile at a Time that points out that indeed, Flying Blue offers free layovers. We pieced together an itinerary that flew KLM from Chicago landing in Amsterdam at 7:10 AM and a second flight that leaves Amsterdam 26 hours later which lands in Rome a mere 20 minutes after our companions. The nice thing is that since we will go through passport control in Amsterdam, and they will be going through in Rome, theoretically we should be ready to leave the airport in Rome around the same time.
Perfect, now we just had to call, and by we, I mean Jenn since the points were in her account. She wasn’t happy about that.
She was on hold for about an hour, but when she got on, the agent understood what Jenn was trying to do, and got it all booked. The process on the phone wasn’t exactly quick, but she was probably off the phone in about 15 minutes after the agent picked up.
Free Stopovers Aren’t Exactly Free
When Jenn got off the phone, she said that the taxes were higher than we expected. We looked and sure enough, the taxes were $139.70 per ticket instead of the $85.90 that is listed online. The difference worked out to be exactly 50 Euros. So it appears that the “Free Layover” is going to cost 50 Euros per ticket, unless it’s 100 Euros per call.
They do have the fact that higher issuing fees do occur by phone, but when you click on the link for an explanation, you get a dead link. So my assumption is that it costs 50 Euros per ticket, but I don’t know for sure.
Booking Stopover Online isn’t Possible, Yet
Currently there isn’t a way to book with a stopover on the website. I would assume that they might add that in the future, but for now it’s by phone only. This means that you are going to have to do a considerable amount of research on their website to pick out the flight segments that you want and then communicate this effectively to an agent who is most likely in France or the Netherlands. This can lead to confusion, which Jenn found out, when she gave my birthdate to the agent the American way, month-day-year, and the agent entered the birthdate the European way, day-month-year.
It also means that until they can add a free stopover feature to their website, you will be paying the fees associated with making an award flight redemption over the phone. My limited experience with how agile tech development is with airline point programs suggest it might take some time before you see that feature on their website. For now, prepare to pay for the stopover.
Which Cities Can you Stopover with Flying Blue?
I assume that these stopovers will only work in their hubs. I doubt that they would let you fly, say Chicago to Paris to Barcelona, then get a free stopover, then Barcelona to Paris to Munich. However, they will allow you to stop in Paris if flying from Chicago to Barcelona when the normal layover would be in Paris. So that will limit any stopovers to just Paris or Amsterdam. The article from One Mile at a Time does indicate that it should work with partner airlines booked through Flying Blue, so there are actually other possibilities besides Amsterdam and Paris, but for the most part, that’s how you would typically use them.
Stopovers can be as short as 24 hours and as long as 1 year. That offers great flexibility, but I imagine that most people are going to use this as a way to visit Paris or Amsterdam for a few days and then move on to another location. With this stopover rule, you could pretty easily put together an itinerary where you go to Amsterdam for a few days on a flight from the US, move on to another European city for a few days and stop in Paris for a few days on the way back. That’s a pretty easy way to get a sampler platter of Europe and the prices could be around 40,000 points (transferable from Citi, Amex, Chase, Capital One and Bilt), around $240 for taxes and $100 for booking by phone. That’s not too shabby.
Making Lemonade out of Lemons
For us, it was a way to make lemonade out of lemons. We didn’t want to land in Rome that late on the same day as our fellow travelers, and getting in at 3 PM the day before left us with not a lot of time to enjoy Rome. However, 26 hours in Amsterdam with the opportunity to adjust our sleep to the new time zone, sign me up. We’ll get to walk along the canals and have dinner in downtown Amsterdam and still make it into Rome right at the right time. That’s some damn good lemonade.
Jenn asked what she thought was a simple question the other day – “I have a friend who is interested in getting two award flights to Germany, but doesn’t want to open a bunch of new cards, which single card should she pick?” My immediate answer was “Of course, the Chase Sapphire Preferred.” But now I’m second guessing that answer
The reason for my answer was fairly simple, Chase Ultimate Reward points transfer to a number of great airline programs many of whom serve Germany well, especially United Airlines. It’s a pretty good earning card and the transfer partners for Chase are great.
Then I questioned myself, because the Amex Gold card has tremendous points earning potential and some pretty good transfer partners as well. It’s flagship airline partner is Delta, which is not the best way to redeem points to Europe, but it could be a possibility.
Let’s run the numbers and see which of these two cards would be the best fit for a single reward card for redeeming points for two flights to Germany.
The Assumptions for this Comparison
The only categories of spending that are important for the Amex Gold and Chase Sapphire Preferred are groceries, restaurants and travel. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is 3x on dining, 2x on travel and 1x on groceries. The Amex Gold is 4x on groceries, 4x on dining and 3x on travel. Both cards earn one point per dollar on everything else.
The person we are comparing these cards for has a family of 4, and for the purpose of this comparison we will say that she spends $1,000 per month on groceries, $500 per month on dining and $2,500 on everything else, with no real spending on travel. I know $2,500 sounds like a lot, but when you figure that you can charge virtually everything, including shopping, insurance, gas, utilities, etc. that adds up quick when you have a family of 4.
Signup Bonuses
I always start with the Frequent Miler best offer page when I’m determining which credit card I want to sign up for, since it always posts the best publicly available offer. In this case, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering a 60,000 point bonus when the card holder spends $4,000 in 3 months. The Amex Gold is offering a 75,000 point bonus when the card holder spends $6,000 in 6 months as well as 20% back on dining up to $250 back. We are going to ignore the 20% back on dining, because that isn’t terribly common for Amex to offer that, but it is a fantastic deal. Neither one of those spend requirements will be a challenge for this card holder to reach.
Everyday Spend
So for this example, we are going to use the assumptions set earlier, $1,000 per month on groceries, $500 per month dining and $2,500 per month on everything else. The other assumption here is that she will use this card exclusively for 1 year. So which one will earn more points?
Category
Chase Sapphire Preferred
American Express Gold
Groceries
12,000
48,000
Dining
18,000
24,000
Everything Else
30,000
30,000
Signup Bonus
60,000
75,000
Total
120,000
177,000
I’m going to be honest, I thought the Amex Gold card would earn more points over the course of a year, but I didn’t think it would be that much more. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is a very beloved card in the travel hacking world and to see it get outperformed by 57,000 points by the Amex Gold was a little shocking.
That being said, the Amex Gold does have a $250 annual fee compared to Chase Sapphire Preferred’s $95 annual fee. In the case of someone who is using it in this manner, the Amex Gold definitely is worth the extra $155 in annual fees though, which may not be the case for someone like me who churns and burns a lot of cards.
Comparing Flagship Partners
When comparing points you have to consider the most important transfer partner. In this case, Amex has Delta Airlines and Chase has United Airlines. Since the person in question here was looking for 2 tickets to Munich, with flexible dates, in the summer, let’s look to see what these points can get.
With Delta, the points calendar from Chicago to Munich in July looks like this.
The lowest available round trip is 164,000 miles. That would essentially eat up all of the points earned from the Amex Gold with one round trip ticket when the points are transferred to Delta. That’s not great.
With United Airlines, it’s a bit better with round trip tickets available in the summer for 80,000 United miles.
In this comparison, you would be better off with 120,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points than you would with the 177,000 Amex Membership Reward points, because on the flagship partners, the points go much further on United than on Delta. Neither one was able to get the cardholder to 2 roundtrip tickets to Munich, though. Luckily, those aren’t the only transfer partners for Amex and Chase.
Does Chase or Amex Have Better Airline Transfer Partners?
On the face of it, Amex has more airline partners, but as we all know, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. In the chart below, Amex has 15 airline partners while Chase has 9. There are some key overlaps for trips to Europe, namely Avios, Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic and Air Canada. Amex has Avianca Lifemiles, which I have used before, and I like due to their low taxes and fees. Chase and Amex both have JetBlue but Chase has a better transfer rate than Amex. Chase also has Southwest Airlines, which is a great partner, but it’s irrelevant for flights to Europe.
Airline Partner
Transfer Rate
Chase Ultimate Rewards
Amex Membership Rewards
Avios (Aer Lingus, Iberia, British Airways)
1:1
Yes
Yes
Aeromexico
1:1.6
No
Yes
Air Canada Aeroplan
1:1
Yes
Yes
ANA
1:1
No
Yes
Avianca Lifemiles
1:1
No
Yes
Cathay Pacific
1:1
No
Yes
Delta Airlines
1:1
No
Yes
Emirates
1:1
Yes
Yes
Etihad
1:1
No
Yes
Flying Blue (KLM, Air France)
1:1
Yes
Yes
Hawaiian
1:1
No
Yes
JetBlue
1:0.8,1:1
Yes (1:1)
Yes (1:0.8)
Quantas
1:1
No
Yes
Singapore Airlines
1:1
Yes
Yes
Southwest Airlines
1:1
Yes
No
United Airlines
1:1
Yes
No
Virgin Atlantic
1:1
Yes
Yes
A Quick look at Pointsyeah!
We need to talk a little bit about PointsYeah. This is a fairly new website that allows you to search available airline award space across 14 different airline programs. It also shows you which transferable points transfer to those programs as they display the results of the search. It’s an unbelievable free tool that is making searching for award flights super easy. There are other tools out there like Point.me and Seats.aero, so it’s a matter of preference, but my favorite right now is PointsYeah.
Searching on PointsYeah and using flexible dates in July, I was able to find these award flights from Chicago to Munich with the dates of July 1st through July 4th:
20,000 Flying Blue Miles and $105.38
24,500 Avianca Lifemiles and $26.70
26,500 Virgin Atlantic Miles and $149.40
30,000 Iberia Avios and $231.20
40,000 United Miles and $5.60
63,000 JetBlue Miles and $42.80
160,000 Delta Miles and $5.60
Returning, the flights from Munich to Chicago with the dates of July 8th through July 11th were:
22,000 Flying Blue Miles and $223.20
28,250 Iberia Avios and $237.60
30,000 Avianca Lifemiles and $109.30
43,900 United Miles and $124.60
63,000 JetBlue Miles and $156.20
160,000 Delta Skymiles and $288.21
Since there is no real penalty for booking one-way award flights, this is really like picking a first course/second course to piece together the round trip. If you are really trying to conserve points you could go with the two Flying Blue awards and pay 42,000 Flying Blue miles and $328.58 in taxes and fuel surcharges. Both Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards to Flying Blue so in this case, it wouldn’t matter if Jenn’s friend picked the Chase Sapphire or the Amex Gold. Either way it would cost a grand total of 84,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards and $657.16. In either case, Jenn’s friend would have points to spare, but $657 is a lot of taxes and fuel surcharges for 2 economy tickets.
I would be tempted to go with Avianca Lifemiles both ways which would cost 54,500 miles and $136.00 in taxes and fuel surcharges round-trip. Avianca has a $25 fee for booking, so I think you would have to tack on an additional $100 for the two round trip fares. Avianca transfers from Amex Membership Rewards, and not Chase Ultimate Rewards so the total for the two flights to Munich would be 109,000 Membership Reward points and $372.00. That’s not too bad for flights in the summer.
You could also do a flight out using United miles and back using Flying Blue miles. That would only be available with Chase Ultimate Rewards, since United is a Chase partner and not an Amex partner. It would cost 62,000 Ultimate Reward points and $228.80 in taxes and fuel surcharges each. For two tickets, it would cost 124,000 Ultimate Reward points and $457.60. In this scenerio, there wouldn’t be enough Chase points available in one year, so this would have to take 13 months to earn the points for this trip instead of 12.
Disclaimer
There are a lot of factors at work here, including the fact that if you wanted to use Iberia Avios, for example, you would try to find the best times to get the best prices for those flights. I just used a random stretch of days in July, so you would most likely do better than this if you were searching over a longer period of time. There are also occasional transfer bonuses, so you can sometimes transfer points from Chase Sapphire Preferred or Amex Membership Rewards and get more than a 1:1 ratio, making your points work harder. Also, just because Flying Blue is offering great prices now doesn’t mean they will in six months, and just because United is charging 40,000 for a saver fare now doesn’t mean they won’t offer a flight for 30,000 later. Change is the only constant in miles and points.
What Wins – Chase Sapphire Preferred or Amex Gold?
In this case, I would say hands down the Amex Gold wins. This is simply because Amex, for someone with a decent amount of grocery and dining spend, earns a lot of points. This is also because with Amex Membership Rewards points, they could book the Avianca Lifemiles example or the Flying Blue example. In the Flying Blue example, they would be left with 93,000 Membership Rewards points that could be used on a different trip. In the Avianca Lifemiles example, with lower fees, they would be left with 68,000 membership rewards points after booking the trip.
With Chase Sapphire Preferred there was enough points to book the Flying Blue example and would be left with 36,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after booking the two flights. They didn’t have quite have enough points after one year to book the United/Flying Blue combo with lower taxes and fees.
Conclusion
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that Amex Gold outperformed Chase Sapphire so easily in this comparison. That being said, this is a narrow comparison with a mid-summer trip from Chicago to Munich, these things vary wildly based on destination and timing. There are plenty of circumstances when you would be thrilled to have access to United miles or Southwest Airlines miles and you don’t have that access with Amex. However, doing this kind of search ahead of time can help you determine the best credit cards to sign up for before you potentially make a mistake.
Travel hackers have for years directed their efforts around four main banks – Citibank, Chase, Capital One, and American Express. You might throw Barclays in there as an honorable mention. Also in 2021, the Bilt Mastercard was launched which allowed renters to earn points by paying their rent with Mastercard. Aside from that, there are “travel cards” that are offered by US Bank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
The Sweet Spot for Travel Hackers
Credit cards that offer signup bonuses as well as transfer partners are the sweet spot in travel hacking. The Bilt Mastercard has great transfer partners but they don’t really offer much in the way of signup bonuses. The travel cards from US Bank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo offer signup bonuses, but they essentially are cash back cards that you can redeem using their travel portals. But Citibank, Capital One, Chase and American Express were the only banks to offer signup bonuses as well as the option to transfer those points to a variety of hotel and airline programs. Until now? Maybe?
Rumors About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo launched the Autograph Card in June of 2022, which came with a 30,000 point ($300) bonus and offered a nice variety of 3x categories. It was a strong offering by Wells Fargo for a no annual fee card, but it was essentially a cash back card because they didn’t offer any transfer partners. However, as 2024 approaches, Wells Fargo is teasing a couple of things. They are teasing that transfer partners will be available soon and that a new card called Autograph Journey is coming.
Why are Transfer Partners Important?
Transfer partners are important because they often offer a significant discount over the price you can get through a travel portal. Here’s an example from a flight I’m currently researching for my own travel plans. Using the Chase Travel Portal, a flight from Chicago to Rome runs 95,608 Chase Ultimate Reward points.
However, the same flight costs 40,000 miles and $215.90 if you transfer those same Chase Ultimate Reward points to Flying Blue and book there.
Even if you chose to pay for the $215.90 fees with Ultimate Reward points by cashing out at 1 cent per point that would only cost 61,590 points instead of 95,608. That’s a significant savings simply by transferring the points and purchasing there. The other benefit is that I would always rather book a hotel or an airline ticket using that program’s own currency and website. It will most likely be easier to deal with a cancellation or a problem if you are dealing directly with the hotel or airline instead of trying to get a travel portal to resolve it with the hotel or airline.
What could the Wells Fargo Transferable currency look like?
As Summer Hull and Nick Ewen from the Points Guy confirmed, Wells Fargo intends to give points transfer options for their Autograph card as well as a new product called Autograph Journey. This could end up being anything from pathetic to amazing, but it really all hinges on who they land as transfer partners and how good the transfer rates are.
The Pathetic Option
If Wells Fargo only lands a few transfer partners or they land fairly weak transfer partners like Choice Hotels, EVA Air or Royal Orchid it’s only going to make the points mildly interesting. Also, if those points transfer at rates lower than they would from Citi, Chase, Amex, or Capital One, then Wells Fargo points won’t be as valuable as points from those other banks. This won’t move the needle for most consumers, and probably won’t create any real buzz for their products.
The Middle of the Road Option
If they put together a set of transfer partners like Capital One or Citibank along with decent transfer ratios, then you will essentially have a pretty good list of transfer partners that provide good value for their customers. This would put Wells Fargo’s consumer cards immediately on par with consumer cards from Capital One and Citibank.
The Amazing Option
The best set of transfer partners, in my opinion, is the one put together by Bilt. One huge reason is that they have Hyatt as a 1:1 transfer partner which is by far the most valuable hotel currency from a major hotel chain. The second reason is that they are the only transfer partner for American Airlines. Prior to Bilt landing that partnership, there were no transfer partners for AAdvantage miles. Considering how big American Airlines is, that makes Bilt points very interesting to people who live near places that American flies.
I mention Bilt for one reason – you can apply for the Bilt Mastercard on Wells Fargo’s website. I don’t know how tight the relationship is with Bilt, but if they are able to use the exact same transfer partner roster that Bilt has, then this will be an absolute home run. I can’t imagine many people who know a lot about points and miles who wouldn’t sign up for a Wells Fargo travel card immediately after it launched.
What This Could Mean For US Bank and Bank of America
If Wells Fargo is able to make a big enough splash with this release, that is going to put a lot of pressure on US Bank and Bank of America. Nobody likes losing market share and I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t notice if their customers begin to choose Wells Fargo over them. I would expect those banks to counter with their own transfer partners.
Both US Bank and Bank of America are well positioned to be able to take that next step. US Bank offers the Altitude Connect card and the Altitude Reserve card. Both currently offer 50,000 point bonuses and have some strong bonus categories. Bank of America has both a travel rewards and a premium rewards card with 25,000 and 60,000 point offers respectively. Bank of America also offers cobranded airline cards with Alaska, Allegiant, Spirit and Air France/KLM Flying Blue.
Both of these banks offer good travel cards and could fairly easily insert themselves into a travel rewards arms race. The only thing that is stopping either of these banks is making the necessary agreements with these airline and hotel programs and adding the necessary changes to their software and website. I would imagine those changes could take at least a year to implement.
Benefits for the Consumer
Anytime competition creeps into a space like this, then the customer will benefit. If suddenly there are 7 banks that offer signup bonuses and points that are transferable instead of 4, these banks will be competing for business. I would imagine that elevated signup bonuses could be the end result of this and that would be a nice benefit for travel hackers.
The other nice result would be the ability to choose between which package of transfer partners that you like. For example, if you live near an airport that is serviced by Delta, you might want to pick an American Express card because Amex Membership Rewards points transfer to Delta. If you have a favorite hotel chain, you might pick your travel rewards card by who transfers to that hotel’s points program. Maybe you can find one card that transfers to both your favorite airline and favorite hotel program. Having 7 menus of transfer partners would be very good for the consumer.
I’ll be keeping my eye on what Wells Fargo does here. If they release Autograph Journey with a signup bonus of at least 60,000 points and a similar menu of transfer partners to Bilt and if they have an annual fee under $100, then I’ll definitely be applying for a card. If they offer it with similar 3x categories that the Autograph card has, then it might quickly become my favorite credit card.
Wells Fargo may have just started the new points arms race, and I’m here for it.
In June, I wrote a post about how bad the situation had become at the State Department and their ability to process passports. My kids both needed passports for our trip to Europe and it was a frustrating experience.
When we sent in the applications, the processing times were 8 to 11 weeks and by the time the applications arrived at the State Department, it had unexpectedly grown to 10 to 13 weeks. We needed the passports within 15 weeks, which should have been enough time, but we cut it too close and I got very nervous and probably overreacted (I most certainly overreacted). Unfortunately, getting information out of the State Department is pretty much impossible and changing anything after the application is submitted literally requires help from the office of your Congressperson or Senator.
The problem that I had the last time basically revolved around one thing – it’s pretty much impossible to speed up the process once you’ve decided which level of service you are paying for. Because the expected processing times grew by 2 weeks while the applications were in the mail, it cut out all of extra time that we left. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to switch to expedited service. The inability to change to expedited service led to the frustrating story that I had in the previous post. None of this would have been a problem if we had left them plenty of time to process the application, however.
This time my passport was expiring and I applied for it with about 16 weeks to spare. This time the State Department was showing a 7 to 10 week processing time for normal processing. I checked in a couple of times out of curiosity but I wasn’t at all worried about it.
To my absolute astonishment, they returned it to me within 3 weeks! That’s completely unexpected considering what happened last time and it appears to be an indication that the State Department hasn’t just caught up on the record numbers of passport applications that they were receiving early in the year, but they are now processing these applications at lightning speed.
Obviously, this could just be an outlier, but the fact that they dropped their expected waits to 7 to 10 weeks as well as my super quick process time indicates that the State Department is over the hump and they and people should expect better service going forward. It looks like the post-Covid passport surge is over and that’s great news for travelers!
I’m a travel hacker. When I explain how I got a cheap trip somewhere, it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theorist explaining how the lizard people are controlling the world banks. For example, the first flight I booked on points was made with Citi Thank You Points transferred to the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles program to book a United Airlines flight. It was complicated, it took some research and it’s probably something that someone with limited time doesn’t want to spend their mental energy on.
Travel Hacking is Complicated, but it Doesn’t Have to Be
If you want to maximize every dollar of personal spending to earn the most points and then maximize the value of those points when you redeem them, it takes effort, lots and lots of effort. When I explain what I’m doing, sometimes I get confused looks, because travel hacking can get really complex. I do it because it interests me, its a hobby, but for many people it sounds like a lot of work.
There is a much simpler way to save significant amounts of money without putting in a ton of effort. What I’m talking about is a one new credit card per year strategy that gives you simplicity but still allows you to take advantage of points and miles.
Why One Card Per Year?
One of the things that has become annoying for us is that because we have opened so many credit cards (to earn signup bonuses) that it means that whenever Jenn reconciles our budget, she has to log into a bunch of accounts to see our spending. I believe we had some spending on 8 different cards last month. That’s a lot to keep track of, especially when you consider different usernames and passwords for each website.
If you can keep it to one card per year, it’s literally just one account, one username and one password. You’ll only get the one signup bonus, but you’ll only have to deal with one account.
Working Backwards
If you are going to use just one card per year, it’s important that you pick the right card and that starts with knowing what you want. This usually means starting with where you are planning to go. The examples that I will be talking about in this post are from the US to Europe, specifically Spain, England and Ireland.
Why those three specific countries? Well, those are the home counties of Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia Airlines, three of the airlines that use Avios as their award currency. Concentrating on earning miles from an airline that has a hub where you want to visit is extremely helpful. Also, checking flightconnections.com to see direct routes is a great way to get a sense of airlines that might be useful for you to concentrate on.
In this case, Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia Airlines have co-branded cards that are issued by Chase. Each one of those are currently offering elevated bonuses of 125,000 Avios with a fairly large spend of $20,000 in a year. That may seem like a lot, but if it’s just a one card strategy, then it’s not really a lot to spend.
Assumptions for this Example
I’m going to assume for these following examples that we have a family of four that spends $3,500 per month on a credit card. You might be thinking that’s a of credit card spend for a family, but you can charge a lot on credit cards these days. We charge our phone bill, all our utility bills, insurance, groceries, shopping, dining, hell we even charged out taxes last year. If you think credit card first, it’s really not that hard to charge a big amount each month while staying within your existing budget.
Saving Over $4,500 on Flights to Ireland
Let’s assume that your family of four wants to go to Ireland during summer vacation (in 2025 – they need to earn the points before they can spend them).
They start January 1st by getting a shiny new Aer Lingus credit card from Chase with the 125,000 Avios sign up bonus. With this card, they will earn 75,000 bonus Avios after they spend $5,000 in the first 3 months and an additional 50,000 bonus Avios when they spend a total of $20,000 in a year. In addition, they will earn a companion pass when they reach $30,000 in spending on that card in a year. The card has a $95 annual fee.
This card earns 3 points per dollar on flights with Aer Lingus, Iberia Airlines and British Airways. It earns 2 points per dollar on hotels and 1 point per dollar spent on everything else. For this example, we will assume all spending is at 1 point per dollar.
In this case, the example family will spend $42,000 in the year, all on this credit card. They will earn all 125,000 bonus Avios after the $20,000 in spending, the companion certificate when they spend $30,000 and they will also earn 42,000 Avios through normal spending in a full year. That means they will earn a total of a companion certificate and 167,000 Avios.
The family wants to fly to Dublin from Chicago in June and according to the Aer Lingus award chart, that is “in peak.” That means 20,000 Avios each way per ticket and around $285 per round trip ticket for taxes and fuel service charges. The family uses 120,000 Avios, a companion ticket (no taxes or fuel surcharges on the companion certificate) and pays $854.40 for taxes and fees.
How much does that save, though? Well, the exact same flights from Chicago to Dublin in June cost $5,492.24, in economy – not business class, economy class.
If you account for the $95 annual fee, that is a savings of $4,542.84 on a trip for four to Ireland! The only thing that this family did was put all of their spending on the Aer Lingus card and then use their points and companion certificate to book those flights instead of cash. That’s a huge return for a very small amount of effort.
Saving Over $3,000 on Flights to London
The British Airways Visa Signature Card is very similar to the Aer Lingus card. It earns 75,000 bonus Avios earned after $5,000 in spending in the first 3 months, with an additional 50,000 bonus Avios after a total of $20,000 in 12 months. When the cardholder hits $30,000 in spending in 12 months, they will receive a 50% off travel together certificate for two people. I assume that means that two people will get an award flight for the number of Avios for one flight, but will have to pay the taxes and fees on both flights. It has a $95 annual fee.
British Airways also will cover up to $600 in taxes and fees per year, but what that really means is up to to 3 times per year they will pay $100 of the fees on economy flights and $200 of the fees in a business class taxes and fees. In the example we are using, I assume that means that the family of four may deduct $100 off of their taxes and fees for their flights.
With the same earning structure as the Aer Lingus card we can say that the hypothetical family of four will earn the travel together certificate, the 125,000 bonus Avios and 42,000 Avios in normal spending for a total of 167,000 Avios.
When they go to redeem those Avios for flights, a Sunday to Sunday spring break round trip flight for 4 comes up to 200,000 and $1,359 in taxes and fuel surcharges, however because of the travel together certificate, they can take 50% off two of the flights and because of the fee credits from the British Airways credit card, they would actually pay 150,000 Avios and $1,259.00.
The cash price for the same exact flights were $4,755.20. The amount that would be saved is $3,496.20. If you take into account the $95 annual fee for the card, you end up saving a grand total of $3,401.20 for a family of four to visit Big Ben over spring break – not too shabby.
Saving Over $3,500 on a Trip to Madrid
The Chase Iberia Visa Signature card offers the same 75,000 bonus Avios after $5,000 of spending in 3 months and an additional 50,000 bonus Avios after reaching a total of $20,000 in spending in 12 months. There is an additional benefit of a $1,000 discount voucher on two tickets booked on the same flight when you spend a total of $30,000 in a calendar year. This card also comes with a $95 annual fee.
As with the other two cards, it earns 3x on flights on Aer Lingus, British Airways, and Iberia as well as 2x on hotels. All other spending would be 1x and for this example I will assume all spending will be at the 1x level.
With this card, the spending would end up identical as the previous examples with the theoretical family of 4 spending $3,500 per month or a grand total of $42,000 over the course of the year. They would earn the 75,000 bonus Avios, the additional 50,000 bonus Avios and the $1,000 discount voucher. After a year, the cardholder would have 167,000 Avios and a $1,000 discount voucher which is only good for one year after issue.
The example I’m using is for a spring break trip to Madrid, it ended up being Saturday to Monday (because of availability, sorry the kids are going to have to miss an extra day of school). Iberia gives you a variety of ways to pay combinations of points and cash but since we have the 167,000 Avios I would go with the 136,000 Avios and $910.80.
The cash price for the exact same flights was $4,594. If you take into account the $95 annual fee and the $910.80 in taxes and fees you end up with a savings of $3,588.20.
Everyone Likes Leftovers!
In all of the examples above, the example family is left with Avios and/or certificates that they weren’t able to use. In the Aer Lingus example, the family used 120,000 of the 167,000 Avios they had and used their companion certificate. This left them with 47,000 leftover Avios. In the British Airways example, the family used 150,000 of their 167,000 Avios and the companion certificate leaving them with 17,000 leftover Avios. In the Iberia example, they kept the $1,000 discount voucher and used 136,000 of the 167,000 Avios they earned. That left them with a $1,000 discount voucher and 31,000 Avios.
Doing a Second Year?
None of these cards are really compelling to keep more than 1 year, and that’s because they all are basically 1x cards, which in the points and miles world is basically as bad as you can get.
Assuming that you want to continue traveling on points, the thing to do is to cancel this card (before the annual fee is charged) and open a new credit card with a new signup bonus.
If you get any of the other credit cards that earn Avios (you can’t get another signup bonus on the card you already had due the rule that Chase will not give you another bonus within 24 months of earning a bonus on that card), you will be able to earn a new bonus and you can transfer the leftover Avios to your new account (certificates and vouchers are not transferable).
Intermediate Strategies for More Points
The easiest strategy is the one outlined above, however there are a few basic things you could do to amp the point earnings up without overcomplicating things.
Player 1/Player 2
Since we are talking about a family of four, I’m assuming two are adults, although that’s not always the case, since there are lots of single parents out there. If there are two adults then there can be what is referred to as “Player 1/Player 2” in the points and miles world. This is basically where the two adults both have separate credit card accounts but work together to earn miles (this, by the way doesn’t have to be romantic in nature, it could just be someone you like to travel with, maybe a parent, sibling or best friend).
Two Players Open Accounts Near the Same Time
Let’s take the Aer Lingus card example here. Player 1 opens an account and starts the clock on the $5,000 minimum spending in 3 months. Once the account is set up, Player 1 refers Player 2 to the same Aer Lingus card.
In this example, not only does Player 1 get the opportunity to earn the 125,000 bonus Avios but also gets a 10,000 Avios referral bonus for referring Player 2. Player 2 then also has the opportunity to earn up to 125,000 bonus Avios as well, but they will have to decide how they want to split their $42,000 annual spending (from the example at the beginning of the post) on these cards.
Method 1 – split evenly
In this case, both players would barely earn the 125,000 bonus Avios since $20,000 spend is required and each would have around $21,000 in spend. This means they would have to be very careful to make sure they got the bonuses by the end of the year.
However, being diligent would pay off and they would each earn 125,000 bonus Avios for a total of 250,000 Avios as well as Player 1 earning a 10,000 Avios referral bonus. On top of that would be the 42,000 Avios for normal spending. That would equal a grand total of 302,000 Avios and since round trip from Chicago to Dublin during the summer is 40,000 Avios and $285, that’s 7 round trip transatlantic flights for $285 each. Not too shabby.
Method 2 – Go for the Companion Pass
In this example, Player 1 would do at least $30,000 of the $42,000 total spend and Player 2 would do at least $5,000 of the total spend (in the first 3 months to earn the 75,000 Avios bonus).
Player 1 would earn the 125,000 Avios for $20,000 spend, plus the companion ticket as well as a 10,000 Avios referral bonus. Player 2 would only earn a 75,000 Avios bonus. Together, they would also earn 42,000 Avios from normal spending for a grand total of 252,000 Avios and a companion certificate.
Method 3 – Only 1 player, Churn and Burn
Let’s say in this example, you are a single parent or your significant other has less than ideal credit and can’t get approved for cards.
In this case, I would probably sign up for the Aer Lingus card, spend until I got the companion certificate (at $30,000, which at a $3,500 per month spending rate should take about 9 months). Then sign up for the British Airways card and spend the $30,000 on it in 9 months and sign up for the Iberia card.
Each nine months period in this example would earn the cardholder 155,000 Avios and the big bonus that each card offers at $30,000 in spending. Interestingly, the basic rules that Chase has is that you cannot earn a bonus on the same card more than once in a 24 month period, meaning that after you get the last bonus, you should be able to cycle back to the beginning and get the Aer Lingus bonus for a second time.
The Fine Print
This all sounds great, I mean who doesn’t want to save a huge amount of money on a trip to Europe? But there are a few things to keep in mind.
The 125,000 Avios Offer is Probably Temporary
If you are counting on this offer to be around indefinitely, it’s probably not. There almost always are offers on the three Avios cards, but the typical amount is 75,000 Avios when you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. There have also been extended periods where the offer was a 100,000 Avios bonus after spending $5,000 in 3 months. Keep these previous offers in mind when you time out your applications for Avios cards. The big spend bonuses (ie. the companion certificates are features of the cards, not bonuses, so those should always be available after $30,000 spend in a year).
Those Avios Prices for Flights are not Guaranteed
The examples I included in this post are typical, but not guaranteed. At any time, the airlines can change the cost of those flights, including points needed, without warning. It is fairly common in the points and miles world to have your points devalued and its frustrating if you were counting on them for an important trip, so keep that in mind. Also, there is no guarantee about availability and often you might find yourself flying on less than ideal days, such as a Tuesday instead of a Saturday. If you are going to fly on points you will need to be little flexible.
You Will Need a Decent Credit Score to Get Travel Credit Cards
Travel reward credit cards, especially the ones with big bonuses, typically require higher credit scores to get than other credit cards. From what I’ve read, people seem to think that a 700 credit score is the floor for travel hacking in general, but you can definitely get some co-branded cards with a lower score than that and other cards such the Chase Sapphire Preferred card probably require higher scores than that. If you want to do any travel hacking, you’re probably going to want to keep a good handle on your credit score, and I would recommend Credit Karma for that.
Do Not Carry a Balance on these Cards!
Most cards that give travel rewards have ridiculous interest rates. Typically when I look at mine, they are always between 20%-30%. I honestly don’t care what the interest rate is because I always autopay for the full amount and I never pay that interest rate. If you carry any balance on a travel reward card, you will regret it, because it’s incredibly high.
Do Not Make Player 2 an Authorized User
We made this mistake on the first travel rewards card we applied for. By signing up your player 2 as an authorized user, it shows up as a new credit card account for the authorized user and counts on their Chase 5/24 status. This could, potentially, keep you from getting a new credit card later. That being said, if you are going to always follow a one new card per year strategy, this isn’t really an issue.
Beware of the 5/24 Rule
This is a rule that Chase has implemented to prevent travel hackers from getting too many bonuses from them. The rule is essentially this – Chase will not consider your application for a new credit card if you have opened 5 new credit card accounts in the last 24 months. One of the nice things about the strategy that I wrote about in this post, is that it should comfortably keep you under that 5/24 number.
It matters how you Apply
Depending on what links you click on, the signup bonus amounts may vary. Yes, I realize that sounds stupid, and it is, but depending on what website you start from can make a huge difference between how big your bonus actually is. That being said, Frequent Miler always has the current best offers on their website. You should always start there to check if you’re getting the best deal.
Saving with Simplicity
Having a simpler strategy for earning points and miles will not earn you the greatest possible points, but it will allow you to save significant amounts of money with a lot less effort. It’s not just about saving money, though. A lot of families, mine included, would not take a trip to Europe if the airfare was between $4,000 to $6,000. It’s just too much to spend. By saving thousands of dollars on airfare, it opens up vacations that we wouldn’t have considered before.
Keep in mind, if you could afford to drive to Florida, rent an Airbnb, and eat in restaurants while you’re there, those things are probably about the same price as they would be in Europe. The difference between the cost on those two vacations, primarily is the difference between gas and airfare. By dramatically reducing the cost of those flights, it equalizes those two destinations. This is unless, of course, you were planning to go to Disneyworld while in Florida, because then Europe is way cheaper.
This post was written in October 2023 after the first Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devaluation. For a post about the most recent devaluation, which took place on 3/26/2024, please visit my newest post on the subject.
There has been a lot of chatter in the last couple of weeks about the Wyndham points program recent devaluation. Wyndham points have suddenly become less valuable for booking Vacasa vacation rentals. At the end of the day, I’m more relieved by the changes made to the program than upset about it. It seemed like something that was inevitable and I think they still managed to keep the partnership valuable with Wyndham.
Update (3/6/2024) - Loyalty Lobby reports that starting on 3/26/24 pricing for a Vacasa vacation rental with Wyndham points will be 15,000 points per bedroom per night for a rental with an average price of up to $250 per night per bedroom. The price will be 30,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night for a rental with an average price of $250 to $500 per night per bedroom.
We have used Wyndham points twice to book Vacasa rentals and have gotten great value with those two bookings. I have written about those redemptions in the two blog posts below.
Using Wyndham points on a Vacasa vacation rental can be such a crazy good deal, that maybe we should keep this quiet?
What is the Vacasa Partnership with Wyndham?
Vacasa is another short term home rental agency, like Airbnb or VRBO. Being a family of four we appreciate the extra space a vacation rental provides, and we try to eat healthy as much as possible which is difficult to do when eating at restaurants all the time. Because of that, a kitchen is a huge bonus for us. I know people hate the “inconsistencies” of vacation rentals, but I’ll take a vacation rental with worn pillows and sheets and a kitchen over a 300 square foot hotel room with a terrible coffee maker and perfect sheets. I also find daily housekeeping to be more of an annoyance than a benefit.
There are very few partnerships in the short term vacation rental space, Marriott has Homes and Villas and Wyndham has Vacasa. Hyatt is working on a vacation rental program called Homes and Hideaways, but we’re all waiting to see whether or not it becomes a big deal or just a few rentals in a few locations. Because of the limited choices, booking vacation rentals with points is not easy. But the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership is the best way right now to book rentals with points.
Wyndham and Vacasa put together a relatively easy to understand program. Basically, if you looked at the Vacasa website and you found a rental that you liked, and it was available on the days you wanted, you could rent it for 15,000 Wyndham points per night per bedroom. In other words, if the rental was a 1-bedroom, it would cost 15,000 points per night, a 2-bedroom would cost 30,000 points per night. There was only 1 limitation of the program, and that was that the price for the nights that you wanted would have to be under $500 per bedroom per night. So, you could rent a 1-bedroom for 15,000 points if it was under $500, and you could rent a 2-bedroom for 30,000 points if it was under $1,000 per night.
That Wasn’t Going to Last
That was way too good of a deal. You could get maximum value for those Wyndham points at 3.3 cents per point when Wyndham points are normally valued at 1.1 cents per point. On top of that there are some great ways to earn Wyndham points, such as 8x on gas and 5x on utilities when using the Wyndham Business Earner card. In the case of the gas, if you were to earn 8x and then spend it at 3.3 cents per point, you would be getting 26.3% back and there is no way that is profitable. If you also take into account the 10% discount you get when redeeming points when you have a Wyndham Business Earner card it was like getting 29.6% back.
This deal was going to have to change. This felt like the kind of deal that happens if they were just trying to figure out a simple way to bring vacation rentals into the Wyndham points program. Once the word got out and people started to take advantage of it, they were going to have to change the program – it was inevitable. I was worried that they would go to a cash value system, where they would allow you to book Vacasas at 1 cent per point. That seemed to me to make the most sense from a business perspective, and while I would probably still use it occasionally, it wouldn’t have been great deal.
How Did they Devalue Vacasa/Wyndham?
One morning I was scrolling though Twitter and came across a post from Shawn Coomer at Miles to Memories titled “Vacasa Makes Negative Change to Wyndham Rewards Bookings“. Oh no, here it goes, one of the great deals in miles and points is gone. But after reading it I felt okay. What they did was lower the cap from $500 per night per bedroom to $350 per night per bedroom. The price is still 15,000 points per night per bedroom. What this means is the maximum value falls from 3.3 cents per point (3.7 with Wyndham Business Earner Card) to 2.3 cents per point (2.6 cents per point with Wyndham Business Earner card).
That may seem like a bummer, but I think it might actually be a blessing. I was very suspicious that they could keep this program the way it was because I didn’t believe that it could be profitable. If they have made this particular adjustment, I would assume that this should make the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership more sustainable. I actually feel better about building up balances of Wyndham points, because I feel there is a better chance that they won’t completely devalue Wyndham points or kill the partnership altogether.
How Much Does the Devaluation Hurt?
I think that the way to measure how big the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devaluation is to find out how many properties are suddenly unavailable for booking on points. What that means is, how many 1-bedroom properties are priced between $350 and $500 per night and how many 2-bedroom properties are priced between $700 and $1,000 per night. For this I’ll look at Hawaii during a spring break weekend in 2024.
There are 147 1-bedroom properties for rent on Vacasa for the weekend from March 15th through the 18th for up to $500 per night (bookable under the old rules). There are 136 properties for the same weekend for up to $350 per night (bookable under the new rules).
There are 126 2-bedroom properties for rent on Vacasa for the same weekend for up to $1,000 per night (bookable under old rules) and 124 2-bedroom properties for rent for up to $700 per night (bookable under new rules).
So with all of the handwringing about the changes to the program, people have lost access to 13 properties during a Spring Break weekend in Hawaii while still having access to 260 properties. Even though you are probably losing access to the nicest properties, that’s not a lot of properties in a time and place where vacation rentals tend to run very expensive. The sky isn’t exactly falling.
What might Be Around the Corner
The one thing that seems to be missing here is that the higher end Vacasas won’t be available for a points redemption. This could be an area where Wyndham could make changes in the future to allow for a higher point redemption for a more expensive property. For example, maybe they say that a vacation rental from $350 – $700 per bedroom costs 30,000 points per bedroom if they wanted to keep the point chart simple. But with this new devaluation, the higher end Vacasas are out of reach on points and allowing for a second tier would at least make them bookable.
Another potential devaluation I could see on the horizon for the Wyndham program would be the elimination of 8x on gas when using the Wyndham Business Earner card. It just seems so out of whack, that I can’t understand how that’s a good business move for them. I would expect them to drop it to 3x or 5x some time in the future.
Even if they made these changes, the Wyndham program would still be a great program. The redemption rates on Vacasas are still way more valuable than using them on Wyndham hotels and earning Wyndham points is still fairly easy to do. I’m obviously a big fan and still plan to use it for vacation rentals in the future.
Newby to Expert Traveler 