How worried should Delta American Express cardholders be about RAT?

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I've been watching with interest as datapoints have rolled in of American Express signup bonuses being denied to people who meet the minimum spend requirement with manufactured spend techniques, particularly gift card purchases at unbonused merchants like Simon Malls and GiftCardMall.com. I was disappointed to see another datapoint yesterday from Vinh at Miles per Day, who keeps close tabs on this stuff, reporting that a promotional high spend offer on the Starwood Preferred Guest Business American Express card wasn't triggered by Simon Mall gift card purchases.

Will gift card purchases count towards Miles Boost?

I'm about halfway to my first 2018 $25,000 spend threshold on my Delta Platinum American Express card, and have seen my miles post as normal on my first two statements this calendar year. Additionally, my statement accurately shows my year-to-date purchases.

That makes me modestly confident that I'll earn my 10,000 bonus SkyMiles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles when I reach $25,000 in spend — I'll post an update in April or May when I hit that threshold.

Will gift card purchases count towards Medallion Qualification Dollar waivers?

There is a potentially confusing coincidence for Delta Platinum American Express cardholders, since the card accelerates your path to Medallion status in two totally distinct ways:

  • at $25,000 and $50,000 in annual spend, you receive 10,000 bonus Medallion Qualification Miles;
  • at $25,000 in annual spend, you receive a Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver for the Silver, Gold, and Platinum Medallion tiers (a Diamond Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver requires $250,000 in purchases across all your co-branded Delta American Express cards).

For Delta Reserve cardholders the situation is less confusing, since the Miles Boost thresholds are at $30,000 and $60,000, while the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver is still triggered at $25,000.

While my purchases have so far been earning miles and my year-to-date purchases have been shown on my credit card statements, my Delta SkyMiles account has not been updating to show any progress towards the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver. That makes me modestly confident that my manufactured spend will not trigger a Medallion Qualification Waiver this year.

Which combination of benefits would justify keeping a co-branded Delta American Express card?

My Delta Platinum American Express card is easily the card I have the most trouble deciding whether or not to keep each year. So far, I've narrowly come down on the side of keeping it, due to:

  • the annual economy companion ticket (subject to fairly onerous fare bucket restrictions);
  • the Miles Boost benefit which brings the earning rate on $25,000 and $50,000 in spend up to 1.4 miles per dollars;
  • the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver.

I fly Delta often enough and exclusively enough that those benefits have so far convinced me to keep the card.

However, without a Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver, I would only occasionally qualify even for Silver Medallion status, which requires $3,000 in MQD's each calendar year. That would neuter the value of Miles Boost since my Medallion Qualification Miles would expire at the end of any year I didn't reach at least Silver Medallion.

And while I have so far been able to redeem the annual economy companion ticket for flights which retail for more than $195, $195 in airfare is worth just a small fraction of that to me, given my ability to manufacture cheap paid airfare with the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card and Chase Freedom Unlimited and Ink Plus cards. In fact, the new ability to redeem US Bank Flexpoints at full value for flights under $400 makes the companion ticket even less valuable since, as I've explained at length in the past, "companion tickets are a bad deal because they require you to purchase a revenue ticket directly from the airline."

If you can sell your companion ticket to someone planning to purchase an eligible Delta economy ticket for $195 or more, then that's an easy workaround. However, note that friends and family tend to be extremely unamused by such antics!

Conclusion

Delta's exclusive partnership with American Express puts folks who fly Delta by preference or necessity in a bind. If it's not worth carrying a high-annual-fee co-branded Delta credit card, it might still be worth carrying a Membership Rewards-earning credit card, especially one that earns bonus points in easily manufactured categories like supermarkets, since those points can be transferred to SkyMiles (with the payment of an additional excise tax).

However, if American Express is serious, as they seem increasingly to be, about cutting down on the rewards they grant for manufactured spend, then the Delta flyer is ultimately fighting a rearguard action. If manufacturing SkyMiles becomes too onerous, the obvious solution is to stop manufacturing SkyMiles.

I've resisted that step so far because of my fondness for Medallion status, but at the end of the day, if they're not willing to play along, $195 per year can buy a lot of status, and I have plenty of other options to pay for the flights I want or need.

Some recent redemptions, from good to mediocre

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I usually try to write up a post for each award trip I take, both to share my thinking about my points and miles strategy and to keep myself honest about the value of the rewards currencies I earn. I've been doing quite a bit of redeeming lately, so I thought I'd cobble together those redemptions into an overview of the value I've been getting from my points lately.

Hilton Prague Old Town

After spending a few days in Karlovy Vary, we're going to return to Prague to use as our base for the last part of our trip this summer. Back in the days of last-night-free Club Carlton stays my go-to property in Prague was the Park Inn, but that property has no appeal whatsoever if you're not paying half price (although cash rates are just $166 for the nights of our stay).

That left a few options:

  • InterContinental Prague for 40,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night, or $260 per night if buying points at 0.65 cents each.
  • Hilton Prague for 40,000 points per night, or $200 per night if buying points for 0.5 cents each.
  • Hilton Prague Old Town for 36,000 points per night, or $180 per night.

There are also two Marriott properties in the city centre, but a quick glance showed both their points and cash rates were too high, as usual.

The Hilton options were especially appealing because our stay will be exactly 5 nights, making this possibly the first time I'll ever have taken advantage of Hilton's fifth-night-free benefit on award stays.

By the way, I'm using 0.5 cents per point as the price I purchase Hilton Honors points at, since a dollar spent at grocery stores earns either 6 Hilton Honors points or 2 US Bank Flexpoints, worth 3 cents towards travel. In other words, the opportunity cost, not the out of pocket cost, of the Hilton Honors points.

In this case the decision was easy to redeem 180,000 Hilton Honors points for 5 nights at the Hilton Prague Old Town. The actual paid rate for the room I booked was almost $2,000 after taxes, giving a shocking 1 cent per point redemption value, but even using the more realistic $1,200 total at the Hilton Prague yields a redemption value of 0.67 cents per point, or the equivalent of 4% cash back on grocery store spend.

One interesting thing this highlights is the difference between the absolute number of high-value redemptions you make and the volume of high-value spend you do. For example, if you only make a single high-value Hilton redemption each year, whether it's the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island (3.8 cents per point in December), or the Grand Wailea Waldorf Astoria (1.9 cents per point over New Year's), you may be earning a substantial return on a high amount of spend — $63,000 in the case of those two properties, which cost 380,000 points for a 5-night stay.

Many travel hackers think of Hilton as a "backup" chain to their preferred program, whether that's World of Hyatt or Starwood Preferred Guest. What I'm trying to point out is that Hilton Honors points may be worth earning even if it's just for the occasional stunt redemption, and not as a core part of your travel hacking practice, precisely because those high-value redemption turn the Hilton Honors Ascend American Express card into a powerhouse for uncapped grocery store bonus spend.

Park Hyatt New York

Since my World of Hyatt Globalist status is ending this month, I decided to put together a final stunt redemption as a Globalist and took the train up to New York City for Presidents Day weekend.

The Park Hyatt New York costs 30,000 World of Hyatt points per night, and the cash rate for our stay was about $860, giving a respectable 2.9 cents per transferred Ultimate Rewards point. We were upgraded to a one-bedroom suite and abused the hell out of the breakfast benefit, so in terms of maximizing the value of Globalist status, mission accomplished.

However, I can't imagine any reason to go back to this hotel. Besides the unavoidable Hyatt service gaffes, the room's elaborate electronic bells-and-whistles were a source of constant frustration, and the location doesn't have any particular advantage over the 25,000-point Andaz 5th Avenue a mile away.

Obviously a $300 hotel night in New York City isn't unreasonable, especially with $100+ of breakfast included every morning as a Globalist, but there's no way to argue the Park Hyatt New York is a value play.

Hyatt Regency Lexington

For an April trip to Lexington, Kentucky, I booked four nights at the Hyatt Regency Lexington, which is my preferred place to stay in Lexington during Keeneland. They didn't have points-only award availability, but I was able to book a Points + Cash stay for 16,000 World of Hyatt points and $255. A cash stay would cost $900, for a respectable 4 cents per transferred Ultimate Rewards point.

The Hilton across the street wants 160,000 points for my stay, which would give a value of just 0.56 cents per Honors point, so the Hyatt was clearly the way to go.

Note that if points-only award space was available for 8,000 points per night, I would have made a Guest of Honor reservation instead, even though the per-point redemption value would fall to just 2.8 cents each.

Mediocre Delta redemptions

Finally, I've made a few sad-sack Delta redemptions lately:

  • I redeemed 80,000 SkyMiles and $55 for my partner's roundtrip flight to Prague. As I noted in my original post about the redemption, the price jumped from $953 to $1409 while I was watching it, which changed it overnight from a terrible 1.12 cent per mile redemption to a mediocre 1.7 cent per mile redemption.
  • For my flight to Lexington I redeem 23,000 SkyMiles for flights that would have cost $321 in cash, for a 1.4 cent per mile redemption. It would have been narrowly superior to redeem US Bank Flexpoints for the flight at 1.5 cents each, but I chose not to in order to build a bigger, more versatile Flexpoints balance. Since Flexpoints can only be redeemed for the full price of an itinerary, the risk of having too few Flexpoints is the total inability to redeem them, while the risk of having too many is having some leftover for a future redemption. Delta SkyMiles, on the other hand, are not valuable enough to hoard, so redeeming them is always my first choice, within reason.

Can you use this one weird old trick to get more value from World of Hyatt Globalist status?

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Last year in one of my subscribers-only newsletters I suggested the possibility that you could enjoy the benefits of top-tier World of Hyatt Globalist status after the official expiration of your status.

In principle, World of Hyatt status expires on the last day of February, and your status drops to the tier you earned during the previous calendar year. Suite upgrade awards expire on the same date, and can't be redeemed for reservations taking place after the expiration of your status (even if you requalify as a Globalist).

However, when Hyatt Gold Passport transitioned to World of Hyatt, they introduced a new benefit called "Guest of Honor," which allows top-tier Globalist members to share their elite benefits (room upgrades, breakfast and lounge access, waived resort fees, late check-out, and a few others) with friends and family when booking points-only award stays.

Astute readers may have identified the key question by now: if a Globalist member no longer receives Globalist benefits after the expiration of their status, and Globalist suite upgrade awards are not redeemable for stays after the expiration of their status, might it still be possible that Guest of Honor benefits are honored after the expiration of their status?

Having booked a number of such stays, I now believe the answer is yes. On the reservations I have booked, the "GUEST OF HONOR" designation appears on the reservation under "Preferences and Policies." I don't know whether that's manually entered by the reservation agent (you have to make Guest of Honors reservations over the phone) or is applied to the reservation some other way, but I believe it's more likely than not that it won't be automatically removed once the Globalist's status expires.

For folks who travel as a pair or more, nothing could be simpler than making a Guest of Honor reservation in your companion's name rather than your own. But even when making plans for solo travel, remember that many parents and children, aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces, also share the same name.

Finally, note that most Hyatt properties see vanishingly few Guest of Honor reservations, which fact combined with the very recent introduction of the benefit means you should anticipate maximum confusion when checking in on any Guest of Honor reservation.

All(?) 50 non-lounge Priority Pass locations

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[updated 3/5/18: added MSP PGA Lounge]

[updated 7/24/18: added CLE Bar Symon, OOL Velocity Expresso & Bar, GSP RJ Rockers Flight Room, LIM Bleriot Bar & Lounge and La Bonbonniere, LAX Barney's Beanery, MIA Air Margaritaville and Viena, GRU La Bonbonniere and Bleriot Bar & Lounge, SYD Chicken Confidential, SYR Johnny Rockets, DCA Bracket Room]

[updated 1/18/19: added BOS Stephanie’s, BOS Jerry Remy's Sports Bar and Grill, IAH Cadillac Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar, IAH Landry's Seafood, IND The Fan Zone, LAX Rock & Brews, LAX P.F. Chang's, SFO San Francisco Giants Clubhouse, SFO Yankee Pier, TLV Schmoozy Bar, TUS Noble Hops, DCA American Tap Room, removed LAX Barney’s Beanery, GRU La Bonbonniere]

[updated 3/7/19: DFW Gameway]

Longtime readers know that once I start thinking about a project I'm not satisfied until I've completely exhausted it. Over the last couple days I've written about non-lounge Priority Pass locations multiple times, and it was bugging me so much I decided I needed to finish the job. So, here are all 24 non-lounge Priority Pass locations around the world. I identified them by searching this PDF of all Priority Pass locations for the string "off the bill," which they consistently use to describe the benefit, i.e., "Cardholders can use their lounge visit entitlement to receive AUD$36 off the bill."

After writing this post, but before posting it, I saw via Doctor of Credit that yet another restaurant had been added, at New York's JFK airport in Terminal 8. Bobby Van's Steakhouse is not yet showing on the Priority Pass app, but is already showing on the Priority Pass website.

In other words, these non-lounge locations are getting added pretty quickly, which is nice for folks who have either limited or unlimited free access to Priority Pass locations. Let me know in the comments if I've missed any.

United States

Portland International Airport

  • Capers Cafe Le Bar, $28

  • Capers Market, $28

  • House Spirits Distillery, $28

Denver International Airport

  • Timberline Steaks & Grille, $28

Lexington Blue Grass Airport

  • Kentucky Ale Taproom, $28

Miami International Airport

  • Corona Beach House, $30

  • Air Margaritaville, $28

  • Viena, $28

Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport

  • PGA MSP Lounge, $15 off either your golf experience or food bill (cannot be combined across both)

St. Louis Lambert International Airport

  • The Pasta House, $28

  • The Pasta House & Schlafly Beer, $28

John F. Kennedy International Airport

  • Bobby Van's Steakhouse, $28

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport

  • Bar Symon, $28

Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport

  • RJ Rockers Flight Room, $28

Los Angeles International Airport

  • Rock & Brews, $28

  • P.F. Chang's, $30

Syracuse Hancock International Airport

  • Johnny Rockets, $28

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport

  • Bracket Room, $28

  • American Tap Room, $28

Boston Logan International Airport

  • Stephanie’s, $28

  • Jerry Remy's Sports Bar and Grill, $28

Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport

  • Cadillac Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar, $28

  • Landry's Seafood, $28

Indianapolis International Airport

  • The Fan Zone, $28

San Francisco International Airport

  • San Francisco Giants Clubhouse, $28

  • Yankee Pier, $28

Tuscon International Airport

  • Noble Hops, $28

Washington Dulles International Airport

  • Chef Geoff's, $28

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport

  • Gameway, 2-hour stay including one bottle of soda or water and two free snacks

Australia

Brisbane International Airport

  • Bar Roma, AUD $36

  • Graze Grill & Bar, AUD $36

  • Corretto Cafe & Bar, AUD $36

Melbourne Airport

  • Bar Pulpo by MoVida, AUD $36

  • Cafe Vue, AUD $36

  • Urban Provodore, AUD $36

Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport

  • Better Burger, AUD $36

  • Mach2, AUD $36

  • Peroni Bar, AUD $36

  • Bistro 2020 & Bar, AUD $36

  • MoVida, AUD $36

  • Bar Roma, AUD $36

  • Wok on Air, AUD $36

  • Chicken Confidential, AUD $36

Gold Coast Airport

  • Velocity Expresso & Bar, AUD $36

United Kingdom

Gatwick Airport

  • Grain Store Cafe & Bar, GBP 15

Japan

Osaka Kansai International Airport

  • Botejyu, JPY3,400

Peru

Lima Jorge Chávez International Airport

  • Bleriot Bar & Lounge, USD $27

  • La Bonbonniere, USD $27

Brazil

São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport

  • Bleriot Bar & Lounge, USD $27

Israel

Tel Aviv Ben Gurion International Airport

  • Schmoozy Bar, ILS100

Conclusion

In addition to these restaurant locations, you can also use your Priority Pass membership for yourself and up to 3 guests for an hour-long stay at "Minute Suites" locations at the Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Philadelphia airports.

It's also interesting to note the variable value of Priority Pass redemptions in different currencies:

  • 15 GBP are worth $20.73;

  • JPY3,400 are worth $31.28;

  • and AUD $36 are worth $28.23.

And even within the United States a redemption is worth more in Miami than at the other domestic locations.

Finally, note that for now you're able to use Priority Pass at multiple locations within the same airport on the same day, so in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Portland, and St. Louis be sure to treat yourself right.

Follow-up on non-lounge Priority Pass locations

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After I posted a reminder on Saturday to enroll your Hilton Ascend American Express cards in Priority Pass, I did a little more digging into the non-lounge Priority Pass locations I mentioned at the end of that post. Reader Helmholtz pointed me to this One Mile at a Time post mentioning new locations in Miami and Denver, and I found this Points Guy post (brought to you by Bankrate) describing how their writer was able to take advantage of all three Portland locations on a single afternoon.

A few Portland folks on Twitter confirmed the same details, although one said that you're no longer allowed to buy bottles of wine to go with your $28 credit at the Capers Market location, as the Points Guy writer was able to do in September.

Finally, Doctor of Credit shared that you can receive the $28 credit multiple times if you wait 2 hours between visits.

For folks who are, or who have friends who are, based in Portland, Denver, Lexington, or Miami, this also increases the value of the Chase Ritz Carlton Rewards card, which allows you to add authorized users at no additional cost, each of whom is eligible for their own Priority Pass membership (so you don't need to be traveling with them for them to receive the benefit).

Conclusion

As someone who values airline credits, lounge access, and the other gimmicks used to sell credit cards at far below their face value, I value being able to get a restaurant lunch or dinner in an airport relatively close to face value.

The fact that I travel a few times a year to Lexington and Portland, where the option is available, means I'll get much more value from the 10 calendar year visits that come with my Hilton Ascend American Express Priority Pass membership than I suspected when I thought it was just going to be good for a few drinks in an Air France lounge.

Enroll your Hilton Honors Ascend American Express in Priority Pass

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If you already carried a Hilton Honors Surpass American Express card, or if you recently signed up for a Hilton Honors Ascend card, one benefit it's easy to overlook are the 10 free Priority Pass visits you get each calendar year.

What is Priority Pass?

Priority Pass is a program that gives members discounted access to participating lounges, and certain other benefits. It's not a great program on its own, since the "discounted" lounge access is still $27 per visit and doesn't include any guests.

However, many credit cards now offer a free Priority Pass membership as a benefit of card membership, and if you have one of those credit cards, you may as well sign up. In addition to a membership in the program, the Hilton Honors Ascend American Express card also includes 10 free visits per year. This makes it the equivalent of the $249 "Standard Plus" Priority Pass membership, although it's handled slightly differently by Priority Pass on the backend.

How to get your 10 free visits

If you already had a Hilton Honors Surpass American Express and the Priority Pass membership card that came with that card, then they should still be linked, or at least they were for me. If you never used your Priority Pass membership (and why would you?) then that card's probably extremely expired. However, you can call Priority Pass (972-735-0536 in the United States), give them your information, and they'll send you a new card and provide you with the information you need to create an online account. Once you have an online account, you can download the Priority Pass smartphone app and use that to enter most participating lounges.

If you are a new cardmember or weren't enrolled in Priority Pass already, you won't know your Priority Pass member number until you get your card in the mail. That letter should also include the information you need to create an online account, but if it doesn't, just follow the instructions above.

Non-lounge Priority Pass locations

I didn't realize this, since I've never had a credit card that offered free Priority Pass visits, but it seems they've expanded their options beyond just off-brand airline lounges. There now seem to be a number of airport restaurants, bars, and other venues where you can redeem a Priority Pass visit for a credit towards your order. A few I noticed while clicking around the app are:

  • Kentucky Ale Taproom (LEX)
  • House Spirits Distillery (PDX)
  • Capers Cafe Le Bar (PDX)
  • Capers Market (PDX)
  • Minute Suites (DFW)

At the first four locations, you get a $28 credit towards food and drinks for you and each guest (each redemption uses up one of your 10 free visits). At the Minute Suites in Dallas you get an hourlong private suite for you and up to 3 guests.

Those redemptions might be a better value in some locations than a visit to an overcrowded lounge. And if you lived in Portland or Lexington and frequently ate or drank in the airport before or after flights, in principle you could get $280 in value from a card with a $95 annual fee, ignoring any of the card's other benefits.

Question: how do these redemptions work for unlimited-access cards?

The Chase Sapphire Reserve, Citi Prestige, American Express Platinum and Business Platinum, and Chase Ritz Carlton Rewards credit cards offer a Priority Pass membership with unlimited lounge visits, and I'm wondering how non-lounge locations treat that benefit.

My gut tell me it shouldn't be possible for a Citi Prestige cardholder to receive three $28 restaurant credits with a single Priority Pass card by inviting two guests to lunch at the Portland airport, but I also don't see anything spelled out in the terms that would prevent it.

Does anyone have experience using the guest benefit at non-lounge locations?

The logic and illogic of Delta award pricing

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I mentioned earlier in the week that I'm planning a summer trip to the Czech Republic, and discussed some different strategies I'm considering for booking our first few nights in Karlovy Vary (check out the comments to that post for some great reader suggestions for saving money at independent hotels).

Today I finally pulled the trigger on our airline tickets, about one day later than would have been ideal, but you book tickets at the prices you have, not the prices you might want or wish to have at an earlier time.

Because I'd been watching the ticket prices so closely, I noticed an odd price move.

Delta award tickets are not perfectly aligned with prices

While Delta has adopted revenue-based earning on paid tickets, they've only fitfully moved towards revenue-based redemptions. More expensive award tickets do tend to cost more miles than cheaper tickets, but the relationship isn't linear, which means Delta SkyMiles still offer a range of redemption values, rather than a fixed redemption rate.

Today I saw that the cash price of our ideal itinerary had moved from $953 to $1,409, while the award price remained at 80,000 SkyMiles (plus $55 in taxes and fees). Since I was planning to book my partner's award ticket with miles anyway, I did so immediately. Theoretically, this begs the question of whether I got $1,354 in value or $898 in value, but that part doesn't worry me too much, since the revenue price had already increased by the time I decided to book it, turning the decision to book with miles from a head-scratcher into a no-brainer.

What interested me was how I was going to book my own revenue ticket now that the price had shot up.

It still pays to search one leg at a time

I already knew our outbound itinerary was the ideal one, with a short connection at New York's JFK airport and a nonstop flight to Prague, and that itinerary is still available for 30,000 SkyMiles. But perusing Google Flights, I realized that there were still cheap itineraries including our transatlantic return leg.

And that's when it hit me that the final, domestic leg was the one messing up the pricing. The itinerary including the domestic leg priced out at $1,408:

While the same itinerary without the final domestic leg cost just $1,013:

Given those conditions, I booked my international itinerary to end at JFK, and I'll figure out my own way home from there. Revenue flights are just $216 (compared to the full itinerary price difference of $456), and I can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards or US Bank Flexpoints for that leg.

Or I'll just catch a Chinatown bus if I have to!

Conclusion

I went into this booking with a pretty restrictive set of constraints, so I didn't initially do as much work as I should have figuring out which flights were available at high and low revenue and award prices. Once I realized my mistake, I was able to immediately save hundreds of dollars by stopping short of my final destination and figuring out my own way home from there.

The lesson is clear: search multiple combinations of routes and itineraries in order to identify which legs are the most expensive, and see if you can find alternate methods of transportation to avoid them.

The forgotten joy of booking independent hotels

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I'm currently in the middle of planning a summer trip to the Czech Republic to revisit some of my old haunts and check out the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The plan is to spend a few nights in Karlovy Vary before returning to Prague. This gave me the occasion to do something I haven't done in years: book a non-chain hotel!

Chain hotels are great

For many people, it's become easier and more desirable than ever to avoid chain hotels. AirBNB is a popular option for parents traveling with kids since you often get more space and the use of a kitchen, and in many places it's also cheaper than whatever chain hotels are available. And of course if you're going on safari, camping with bedouins, or hiking Kilimanjaro you're not likely to have options when it comes to accommodations.

But personally, I like chain hotels. Of course there are exceptions, but you can generally count on clean beds, hot water, and decent service. Manufacturing spend on Hilton Honors and Ultimate Rewards-earning credit cards lets me prepay for discounted stays at Hilton and Hyatt properties, and those two chains account for the overwhelming majority of my annual stays.

While there are a lot of hotels in Karlovy Vary, not one of them belongs to a chain. That means while planning this trip I got to brush up on the art and science of booking independent hotels.

Booking independent hotels is tricky

The biggest problem going in is that there's no floor for hotel quality. While hotel chains impose standards (that are occasionally not met), non-chain hotels don't even have standards to fall short of, so filtering a search by number of stars is the beginning, not the end, of finding a suitable room.

I started my search on TripAdvisor to get a sense of the price range available during our stay. After filtering for four-star and five-star hotels, it became a game of trying to make an optimal choice across the variables of price, location, and quality. The third-ranked hotel in town costs $196 per night while the fourteenth-ranked costs $148. I'd surely pay something to move up 11 spots, but would I pay $50 per night? Probably not.

TripAdvisor is a decent way to get a sense of prices and narrow down your options, but you probably don't want to book directly through TripAdviser. That's because you want to lower the final price you pay as much as possible. There are two obvious ways to do so.

Book using credit card rewards

The premium Ultimate Rewards-earning credit cards, US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card, Citi ThankYou Premier, and I'm sure some other cards offer increased value when you redeem your points for travel booked directly through the credit card company. That means if a property is available for the same (or a lower) price through a credit card portal, you can get more than 1 cent per point in value.

In my case I'd like to redeem my Ultimate Rewards points for 1.25 cents each for my stay, but the property I identified as the best value wasn't available through Chase's travel portal (in such cases you may still be able to book by calling the bank in question).

Book through a shopping portal

Another great option is using a shopping portal like TopCashBack to click through to a online travel agent like Hotels.com. When you do that, you're able to earn both cashback and Hotels.com Rewards free nights. TopCashBack pays out less when you choose to collect Rewards nights (5% instead of 9%), but the two programs together still offer the equivalent of 15% off the price of your stay (once you accumulate 10 Hotels.com Rewards nights).

A drawback of making reservations at chain hotels through Hotels.com is that you typically don't get elite status benefits. But if you're staying at an independent hotel, that's no drawback at all!

Pay with discounted gift cards

Finally, you can save even more by paying with Hotels.com gift cards bought at a discount. For example, the cashback portal Lemoney pays 11% on the first $100 in Hotels.com gift cards you buy each month (and you can stock up when Lemoney periodically lifts the limit on the number of times you can earn "Turbo Cashback"), and Hotels.com gift cards are available through Raise for 7% off.

You can apparently combine the balances of Hotels.com gift cards on this page, although I've never used that feature myself.

Conclusion

So, that's how I plan on booking our independent hotel in Karlovy Vary to hopefully get the equivalent of a 26% discount off the room rate. What other tips are there for saving money on independent hotels?

Guest post: Seated app review

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Today's post is another guest contribution from Robert Dwyer about his experience with a new restaurant reservation and rewards app called Seated. You can follow all Robert's culinary and viticultural adventures on Twitter @RobertDwyer.

We wanted to check out a new spot for brunch this past Sunday. I recalled seeing some of the better/up and coming restaurants in the Boston area in the Seated app so I gave it a try.

Their program works by giving you gift cards (Starbucks, Uber, Amazon) when you make a reservation and dine at participating restaurants.

I like deals where I get rewarded for doing something I wanted to do anyway.

How it works (from their site)

  1. Download the Seated app (available on iOS and Android) 
  2. Search from the best restaurants in your city, and pick when you'd like to eat 
  3. Choose your $15-$40 reward credit (Uber, Starbucks, or Amazon) 
  4. Book dinner, eat, and repeat! 

My experience using Seated

Making a reservation via the app is pretty straightforward. You select your city then can sort by cuisine/neighborhood/price. Strangely they don’t seem to allow search by restaurant name, perhaps to encourage discovery? Not sure, but with enough scrolling I was able to find the restaurant wanted.

From there, you have to make a reservation through the app. The reward you get depends on the number of people in your party and the time of the reservation.

For our Sunday brunch for 3 people we needed to spend $72 before tax and tip to get a $17 reward. For the same restaurant for dinner tonight 3 people would need to spend $90 to get a $15 reward.

This is smart on their part because they can tune the reward to encourage you to spend more than you otherwise would. And it allows them to dial back rewards when demand is high.

It turns out, prices are quite modest at the restaurant we selected and we would have had to order things we didn’t really want to get to $72 for the 3 of us. It’s kind of like they dialed it in that way.

It’s unclear to me whether money spent on alcohol counts towards the spend target required for the reward. Some states have laws that are jumpy about these sorts of things, and MA is surely one of the worst in that regard. If alcohol were included, it could make hitting the target a lot easier. Let’s hope for the best in this regard and keep it on the down low if it works.

If we would have spent $72 we would have gotten paid out either by submitting an image of a receipt -or- by linking bank account credentials for them to monitor. Your choice. You don’t have to tell your server you’re dining with Seated or anything like that.

Bottom line

We would have gone to the restaurant anyway, and it was quite good so I don’t regret tinkering with the Seated app. But since I didn’t end up being rewarded for the dine it wasn’t a fruitful first experience.

That said, I’d happily try again in the future. Their list of participating restaurants in the area is terrific and it doesn’t take much cognitive bandwidth to use the service.

Sounds like too much work? Check out these three dining programs that earn rewards passively.