Is it worth booking a 30 night Hyatt stay to secure two years of top tier Globalist status? At first I thought Nick was a bit nuts for considering it, but in this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air he convinced me… almost. We then tested out my new Cash or Points Worksheet to decide whether Nick should book his stay with, you guessed it, cash or points. We were both surprised by the answer!
In addition to our usual segments (Giant Mailbag, What Crazy Thing Did Citi Do This Week?, and Question of the Week), we discussed Chase’s latest big welcome bonuses. This is an awesome time to be new to the game since it is now super easy to amass over 160,000 valuable Ultimate Rewards points with only two new cards. But… should we wait to see if even better offers appear? Watch Frequent Miler on the Air, here:
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This week at Frequent Miler
Chase goes big
Rather than taking my advice to add 3X categories to make the Sapphire Preferred attractive again, they decided to apply some lipstick. Don’t get me wrong… 80K points is a lot of beautiful lipstick! But, should you go for it? See this post: Chase Sapphire Preferred 80K Offer – Should you go for it?
What if you recently signed up for the old 60K offer? Will Chase match you to the 80K offer? What if you want to refer a friend? Will they be able to match to the 80K offer? See this post: Will Chase match the Sapphire Preferred 60K offer to 80K?
Finally, don’t forget that the new Freedom Flex and the updated Freedom Unlimited cards also have 80K-ish offers. The offers are really 20K plus 5X at grocery stores for 12 months on up to $12K spend. If you spend the full $12K at grocery stores, you’ll end up with 80,000 points. See our updated guides to both cards:
Rocking Hyatt Promos
Nick’s first son floating down the lazy river at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. Will he opt to earn triple points or get a points rebate on his next stay?
I love that Hyatt has come out with multiple huge overlapping promotions. Even the one that I had earlier dismissed seems to be way better than I had thought: Work From Hyatt Package Rates: Cheaper Than Expected + Stack With Other Current Promos.
With all of these juicy opportunities on the table, I dug in with a deep analysis: Rocking Hyatt’s overlapping promos. Top tier status is easier than ever.
The question with these promos is not whether to take advantage of them, but how best to. And the top question there is whether to book stays with cash or points. Is it better to earn triple points on a cash stay or a 25% rebate on a points stay? I don’t know the answer, but I built a tool that does: Hyatt cash or points? Use the Frequent Miler worksheet.
Orphaned points & certificates are worth less
After cancelling lots of travel due to the pandemic, many of us are left with stray travel credits, airline miles, hotel certificates, etc. In this post, I argue that we need to abandon our usual way of deciding which points to use and instead use up these orphaned assets. See: Miles, credits, and certs orphaned by COVID-19 (on my mind).
Dreamin’ of Hawaii
We’ve heard this before, but this time it looks like it might be really happening: they have a cool chart. See: Hawaii opening to tourism October 15th!
Updated resources
The deal of the week
The Lodge at Spruce Peak, Stowe, VT
Work From Hyatt Package Rates: Cheaper Than Expected + Stack With Other Current Promos. We’re all working from home anyway. Maybe it would be more fun working from Hyatt? Yeah, I think so.
More noteworthy deals
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