Two steps forward and one step sideways with Hyatt awards

I’ve seen a number of people write about two big improvements to the World of Hyatt award booking system: during the reservation process, Guest of Honor Awards (giving the guest Globalist privileges during their stay) and Suite Upgrade Awards can now be selected and applied online while make an all-cash or all-points reservation.

Previously, these awards could only be applied over the phone after a reservation had been made. Unfortunately, these awards still cannot be combined with each other or with Pay Your Way reservations, either online or over the phone. Let’s discuss.

“Pay Your Way” lets you use points, cash, and free night awards on a single reservation

I use this feature all the time, but it doesn’t offer any special value except convenience: most chains require you to “check out” and “check back in” when you move between different payment types and reservation channels, but as long as you’re booking through Hyatt you can combine points, cash, and free night awards however you like, as long as the same rate and room type is available for each night, saving you (or, God forbid, a loved one) a trip or two to the front desk during your stay to remake your keys.

That lets you use cash for the nights that are cheapest with cash, points for the nights that are cheapest with points, and free night awards for the most expensive nights (since Hyatt free night awards are classified by property category, not specific point values).

Again, this does not save you any money, points, or awards, as long as each of the nights is available on its own, although it may help you meet a minimum stay requirement during especially busy times if a property won’t let you book the nights individually.

Suite Upgrade Awards and Guest of Honor awards can be used online but can’t be combined with free night awards (or each other)

What many people have been talking about is the ability to apply Suite Upgrade Awards and Guest of Honor awards online at the time of booking. This is fine and good, but it’s only half the story.

As a reminder, Suite Upgrade Awards allow you to confirm an upgrade to a property’s entry-level suite, if available at time of booking. Previously, these awards had to be redeemed by calling into Hyatt. Now, there’s a radio button to click that lets you see if there’s an available suite and redeem the award for it during the booking process.

Guest of Honor awards give the guest (including yourself, if applicable), World of Hyatt Globalist status benefits during a stay, the most important of which are generally considered to be free breakfast, free valet parking (on award stays), waived resort fees, late checkout, and suite upgrades, if available at check-in.

So while it’s obviously not especially common, you can imagine a situation where you might want to apply a Suite Upgrade Award to a Guest of Honor booking, since the benefits are very slightly different. You want your in-laws to have free breakfast and late check-out but you also want to make sure they get a suite for their gazillionth anniversary instead of counting on hope or an e-mail to the general manager.

That’s not possible, since only one award can be applied to a reservation.

The problem and the easiest workarounds

That’s an extreme case, but a much more obvious situation is a Globalist or friend-of-a-Globalist trying to apply a Suite Upgrade Award to a Pay Your Way reservation, which happens to be the precise situation I found myself in the other week. I’d identified an upcoming Category 7 Andaz stay as a perfect redemption storm: a Category 1-7 free night award for the most expensive night and points for the cheaper ones, all made in a single online reservation through the convenience of Pay Your Way.

But as you’ve gleaned by now, it doesn’t work. You can’t apply a Suite Upgrade Award to a Pay Your Way reservation online, but Hyatt can’t apply it over the phone either.

How much of a problem this is depends on which nights you intended to apply the free night award to. Hyatt is better, in my experience, at detecting and combining reservations in advance, so if you’re using the free night award for your last night, you can just use the Suite Upgrade Award for the first nights of the reservation (booked with cash or points) and you’ll have a chance verging on 100% of simply being left in the same suite for the last, “ineligible” night.

This is less likely to work if the night you want to use the free night award on falls in the middle of your stay, but I suspect the odds are still pretty good.

I hesitate to venture a guess on how the billing would work out if you tried this with a Guest of Honor award, since many of those benefits are literally billed daily or nightly: breakfast, valet parking, resort fees.

Conclusion

World of Hyatt has been in a class by themselves when it comes to resisting the devaluation of their points and free night awards, and I am going to rely on them more in 2025 since I qualified for Globalist in 2024 for the first time since taking advantage of the Starwood-Marriott status match years ago.

But I’m not here to give them any more credit than they deserve: the system is still pretty annoying and I hope this post makes it slightly less annoying for the next guy.

Venti pivots (out of existence)

As far as I know, I’m the only person who has written in detail about Venti, the weird high-interest travel savings program, so it falls to me to pass along the announcement of the end of their high-interest savings program:

“On December 31, 2024, Venti's partnership with Dwolla will be fully terminated. This means you'll no longer be able to deposit cash onto your Boarding Pass and earn points via interest payouts. To earn points on cash deposits, you'll have to bank with a financial institution that has partnered with Venti.”

I assume the last sentence is a reference to the program they announced in July whereby deposits at partner credit unions would earn Venti points in addition to the cash interest earned on those deposits. The program was of limited interest at the time because of the tiny number of credit union partners and the strict membership requirements they impose (congratulations to Georgetown University alumni and students).

Venti had one unique selling proposition and they couldn’t afford it

Venti’s website was terrible. Venti’s app was terrible. Venti’s airfare booking portal was terrible. Venti’s hotel booking portal was terrible. There was only one reason to use Venti, and that was the 9% APY (in the form of “points” that could be redeemed through the aforementioned booking portals) they offered on deposits.

This model relied on unredeemed points to finance it: since Venti was being paid for all the deposits they harvested, as long as the redemptions were small and few enough they could use the interest they earned on the entire deposit base to pay for the redemptions of that minority of users.

This model works extraordinarily well when it is adopted by firms that provide valuable services, like credit card companies. Chase earns interchange fees on every transaction, and interest on every unpaid balance, but only incurs the cost of rewards when they’re redeemed. Travel hackers may feel rich sitting on hundreds of thousands or millions of Ultimate Rewards points, but Chase feels even richer because they get to keep the money until we get around to redeeming them. This works for all the parties involved because Chase cards can be used to pay for goods and services, a valuable function in the modern economy. The fact that occasionally Chase is on the hook for the expense of a redemption is incidental to Chase’s view of the situation; Chase may well cheer us on when we score valuable redemptions, if it buys them a loyal customer for another decade.

Venti wasn’t like that. The only thing you could do with an account was put money into it, and the only thing you could do with the interest was book travel. In other words, there was no long tail of unredeemed points: the only people putting money into the system were people planning to make redemptions, forcing Venti to pay out a much higher percentage of the accrued points each month than Chase does in the example above.

Since interest rates are, in fact, below 9%, this situation could not and did not endure.

Conclusion

Venti has already redesigned their website to reflect their pivot towards a business-facing strategy. If anything comes of it, I’ll be sure to report back.

I’m not holding my breath.

Complete guide to all 3(+) Zillions/Zift card designs and Just4U earning

In Friday’s post I gave a breakdown of my experience with fixed value $100 “bonus” Zillions/Zift gift cards, which cost a flat $100 but have a $105 value that can be exchanged for egift cards, which can then be sold or used.

By necessity that was a post in real-time sharing my own experience to date. I wanted to put it up while the deal was still ongoing, and ahead of the frequent additional weekend bonus on gift card purchases at Just4U stores (Albertsons, Safeway, Acme, etc), which did indeed return on schedule last Saturday.

That urgency having passed, I want to share a more detailed look at the way these cards earn Just4U points and how they can be used. First, we must distinguish between not two, as I originally supposed, but three different subspecies of Zillions gift cards.

Fixed-value, tight variable, and loose variable Zillions cards

The three types of Zillions cards are distinguished by both the amount of money that can be loaded onto them and the merchants for which that value can be redeemed for egifts cards.

Fixed-value cards cost $100 and have $105 in value that can be redeemed at the merchants I listed last week.

What I call “tight variable” cards, can be loaded with between $20 and $500 and can only be redeemed for egift cards to the merchants listed on the front of the packaging. As with Gift of Choice cards, there are a bunch of different designs of tight variable cards with different combinations of merchants.

Finally, “loose variable” cards can be loaded with between $20 and $500 and can be redeemed for 176 different kinds of gifts cards (this works out to fewer than 176 merchants because some merchants are listed several times in different denominations). You can find a pdf document with all 176 options here.

Card type determines liquidation options

To determine the ultimate price you pay for the Just4U points this technique generates, you have to know how much value you get back for the card. The two most obvious ways to get value back from a card are to resell it and to use it.

This may go without saying for many readers, but you’ll always get the most value value from a card if you’re able to use it instead of the cash you’d otherwise spend for actual goods and services (discounted by the rewards you’d earn putting the purchase on a credit card). This will become relevant momentarily.

The highest resale value I found for fixed-value card options was Columbia Sportswear Company, which resold at 82% of face value on CardCash, or $86.10 for the $105 value of each card (the rate has dropped since then, a reminder that things move fast in this game).

The range of tight variable card designs has a few dozen often-overlapping categories. Nordstrom Rack was the best reselling option I found at 81.5% on CardCash. However, the options begin to get more interesting here, since several of the tight variable designs feature Amazon as a redemption. I doubt I spend much more than $100 on Amazon in a year, let alone $500, but I appreciate it’s extremely common for Americans to spend very large sums there, and using highly-bonused gift cards is a way to earn outsized rewards on those purchases, or on net make Amazon’s prices lower compared to other merchants

Finally, loose variable cards have the widest range of options (go ahead and check out that pdf now), and I was frankly astonished at the abundance. I do not find gift cards to be a particularly useful or pleasurable way to pay for things, and this is of course by design: un- and partially-redeemed gift cards are a feature, not a bug, to their issuers. What’s more, Just4U bonuses are often on the least-useful gift cards: it’s not uncommon to see every Safeway in the country advertising a bonus on Topgolf gift cards — a discount on the more-niche version of an already-niche hobby!

That’s not the case with loose variable Zillions cards. There are options that, in short, a normal person might use without changing their behavior in any way. A few that jumped out at me:

• Airbnb

• DoorDash

• Hotels.com

• Southwest

• Uber

• Uber Eats

If you ordinarily charge those purchases to a credit card earning, for example, 5% in rewards, then redeeming for these gift cards and using them as intended is equivalent to liquidating them at 95% — an astonishingly good deal.

The best reselling options I found among the loose variable redemption options were Staples at 83.5% and Home Depot at 84%.

Your earning rate determines your value proposition

All of the above is true completely irrespective of the promotion that was running last week. These cards are hanging on the rack all day every day, whether a promotion is running or not. What makes them worth buying is the bonus Just4U points, and yet again, the number of points earn varies by card design. Last week I collected 4 datapoints across three purchases and two promotions. Here are the results:

• On Thursday I bought a fixed-value card during the week-long 10-point-per-dollar promotion. I incorrectly reported last week that I had only earned 800 points, but I later realized my error: the receipt lists two values, “Points Earned Today” and “Gift Card Points.” At first glance I assumed the latter was a subset of the former; in fact they’re additive, so I received the full 1000 points I was owed in total.

• On Saturday I bought another fixed-value card and a tight variable card, and earned a total of 7,200 Just4U points, broken down into 6,000 Points Earned Today and 1,200 Gift Card Points, again for the full 12 points per dollar.

• Finally, on Saturday I bought a loose variable card and earned just 5,000 points, broken down into 4,000 Points Earned Today and 1,000 Gift Card Points.

Just4U gift card promotions are confusing because of the difference between the way they’re advertised and the way they’re processed internally. Most gift cards earn 2 points per dollar all the time, so when they advertise “4X points” or “10X points” they’re really saying you’ll earn 2 or 8 additional points on top of the base points. I believe those 2 base points are the Gift Card Points reported separately on your receipt, which suggests that all three designs earn base points all the time.

What seems to be happening is that the loose variable card earned those base points and the week-long additional 8 points per dollar, but not the additional 2 points per dollar during the weekend, but I can’t be sure because I didn’t buy a loose variable card during the week.

Conclusion

From these observations we can create a simple hierarchy of the value of the cards under different circumstances:

• The highest value will come from using gift cards at merchants as intended (almost) regardless of earning rate because of the vastly superior liquidation rate. Naturally this will usually be loose variable cards, but if you have upcoming purchases at merchants included on fixed-value or tight variable cards (like Amazon), then keep in mind their higher earning rate.

• If you’re reselling gift cards, fixed-value and tight variable cards are superior when they earn 12 points per dollar and loose variable cards only earn 10, since that 20% boost swamps any potential difference in reselling rates.

• If you’re reselling gift cards, fixed-value cards offer the best value when the 5% boost in value offsets the lower liquidation rate compared to a loose variable card. This is usually the case, but the differences can be nominal: the 84% payout for Home Depot is 4.3% higher than the 80.5% payout for Adidas (a fixed-value redemption option), a difference that is lower than the 5% boost in liquidation value, making the fixed-value card is a better option, but only fractionally: 1.55 cents per Just4U point versus 1.6 cents per point.

For most people I suspect the hassle of liquidating $105 gift cards will probably outweigh the increased value for most people most of the time: after all, even at 12 points per dollar that’s just 1,200 points per card. If you’re planning to stockpile tens or hundreds of thousands of Just4U points (I’m not, but it’s not an unreasonable thing to do if you sign up for a Freshpass subscription to keep your points from expiring), then doing so in 5,000 point increments will give you a headache one fifth of the size.

Complete list of all 77 Zillions/Zifts bonus gift card redemption options

[edit 10/12/2024: added a correction to the conclusion]

Earlier this week I wrote about the return of my favorite Just4U promotion: bonus points on “Online Exchange” cards, which can be redeemed online for a variety of electronic gift cards, which can then be used or resold. If resold, the loss you take on the face value of the card is the price you pay for a stack of Just4U points and the value of the cards in credit card spend.

Since the last time this promotion came around, I noticed some new card designs at Safeway branded with various combinations of the words “Zillions” and “Zifts.” These cards are, like Online Exchange, issued by Pathward, N.A., and distributed and serviced by our old friends at InComm financial services. I heard these cards were earning bonus points during the current promotion (ending Saturday, October 12, 2024), so I popped over to Safeway to pick one up and see how they work.

The two designs in my store were a “Zillions” card with a variable load amount up to $500 and a fixed value card that offered $105 in value for $100. Neither card, however, listed the merchants for whose gift cards the value could be redeemed, and the redemption website ZillionsGift.com infuriatingly does not list them until you enter a valid redemption code, so for the sake of my beloved readers I picked up a fixed value card and found out for myself.

The first thing I found out was that these cards are not earning the full 10 Just4U points per dollar under the current promotion; I earned just 800 points for my $100 card. My lightly-informed speculation is that the promotion is coded to add 8 points per dollar for a total of 10 points per dollar, since most gift cards earn 2 points per dollar year round. Since these cards are new, they may not be coded to earn that base 2 points per dollar, so during the current promotion they’re only earning the promotional 8 points. Again, that’s just my speculation based on many years of taking advantage of promotions like this. It may be a regional or brand difference instead; find out for yourself and let me know!

Complete list of fixed-value Zillions of Zifts gift card redemption options

Having acquired a redemption code, I plugged it into the redemption portal. Here are the current options for redemptions (they say these are subject to change and I don’t doubt them):

• adidas ($5 - $500)

• Aerie ($5 - $500)

• Aéropostale ($5 - $500)

• AMC Theatres ($5 - $200)

• American Eagle ($5 - $500)

• Applebee’s ($5 - $500)

• Baby Depot at Burlington ($10 - $250)

• Baker’s Square Gift Card ($5 - $500)

• Banana Republic ($10 - $500)

• Bass Pro Shops ($5 - $500)

• Belk ($25 - $500)

• Blaze Pizza ($5 - $250)

• Bob Evans Restaurants ($15 - $500)

• Build-A-Bear Workshop ($5 - $500)

• Cabela's ($5 - $500)

• California Pizza Kitchen ($5 - $500)

• Carters & Oshkosh ($5 - $500)

• Paramount+ ($25, $50)

• Chart House ($10 - $500)

• Chico’s ($10 - $500)

• Chili’s Grill & Bar ($5 - $100)

• Chuck E. Cheese ($5 - $250)

• Columbia Sportswear Company ($5 - $500)

• Dickey’s BBQ ($5 - $500)

• Domino’s ($5 - $100)

• DSW ($5 - $500)

• Famous Dave's ($5 - $250)

• Fanatics ($5 - $500)

• Fandango ($25, $50)

• GNC ($10 - $250)

• GolfNow ($25 - $250)

• H&M ($5 - $300)

• IHOP ($5 - $200)

• KingsIsle Combo Card ($10, $20)

• Kirkland’s Home ($5 - $250)

• Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation ($5 - $200)

• L.L.Bean ($5 - $500)

• Lane Bryant ($5 - $500)

• Main Event ($25, $50)

• Maurices ($5 - $500)

• McCormick & Schmick’s ($10 - $500)

• Michaels ($5 - $500)

• Mix It Up ($5 - $200)

• MLB Shop ($5 - $500)

• Morton's The Steakhouse ($10 - $500)

• NBA Store ($5 - $500)

• NFLShop.com ($5 - $500)

• NHL Shop ($5 - $500)

• O’Charley’s ($5 - $500)

• P.F. Chang’s ($10 - $500)

• Rainforest Cafe ($10 - $500)

• Regal ($5 - $100)

• REI ($10 - $500)

• Saks Fifth Avenue ($5 - $500)

• Saks OFF 5TH ($5 - $500)

• Saltgrass Steak House ($10 - $500)

• Smashburger ($5 - $500)

• Smoothie King E-Gift Card ($10 - $100)

• Soma Gift Card ($10 - $500)

• Spa & Wellness Gift Card by Spa Week ($5 - $500)

• Sportsman’s Warehouse ($5 - $500)

• Stitch Fix ($5 - $500)

• Texas Roadhouse ($5 - $100)

• TGI Fridays ($5 - $500)

• The Children’s Place ($5 - $500)

• Ulta Beauty ($5 - $500)

• Under Armour ($5 - $500)

• Village Inn Gift Card ($5 - $500)

• Vudu ($25 - $100)

• White House Black Market ($10 - $500)

• Xbox Digital Gift Card ($15, $25, $50)

I did some spot checks on this list and found that CardCash buys Adidas gift cards for 80.5% of face value and Columbia gift cards for 82% of face value, which is relevant when deciding how much you’re willing to pay for your Just4U points.

Variable load cards have different options

When I first grabbed the bonused fixed value card I was hopeful that the variable cards would have the same list of merchants, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Listed on the front of the variable cards are several merchants missing from this list:

Conclusion, and warning

[correction: I did not realize Bloomingdale’s cards have to be mailed in to CardCash, eliminating that as a liquidation option. The next best Gift of Choice card I’ve identified is Nordstrom Rack, which pays out 81.5% on CardCash.]

It’s good to stay on top of new gimmicks as they come along in this game, but for now these cards appear to be strictly inferior to the older “Gift of Choice” cards, at least if your plan is to liquidate them to cash through reselling. Both brands have an option that pays 82% on CardCash (Columbia in the case of Zillions/Zifts, Bloomingdale’s in the case of Gift of Choice). It’s true the $5 bonus on $100 Zillions cards increases your payout by a free 5%, but if Gift of Choice cards earn 10, 12, or 14 points per dollar then the higher rewards swamp the effect of the lower payout. If the rewards earned on both types were identical, on the other hand, then the 5% bonus would be decisive.

Finally, a word of caution: since I redeemed my $105 card this morning I have not received any communications from them, neither confirming the redemption nor, even more importantly, actually sending me the Columbia gift card I ordered. I can look up my order in their system, which has my correct e-mail address and the correct details for the order, so it hasn’t been lost, but it hasn’t found its way to me.

As always, if you can’t be without money as long as it takes to fight to get it back, then don’t spend it on travel hacking!

My favorite Just4U gift card promotion is back

The only grocery store loyalty scheme I pay any attention to is the Safeway/Albertsons/etc. Just4U program, which periodically offers bonus points on the purchase of gift cards. When the bonus is high enough, it can be worthwhile to buy gift cards and resell them at a loss, making back more than the difference in value in Just4U points.

Through October 12, Just4U is running my favorite version of the promotion: 10 points per dollar spent on “Online Exchange” gift cards. These cards are actually just codes you enter online to redeem the value on the card for virtual gift cards at a variety of merchants. If you’re reselling the gift card, be sure the reseller you use accepts virtual gift card codes, since you won’t get a physical gift card to mail in.

Is it worth it?

Keep in mind, this manufactured spend technique is quite expensive: if you redeem an Online Exchange card for a Lowe’s gift card, for example, and sell it to CardCash for $402.50, you’re out $98.50. That’s either a lot of money or a little money, depending on what you get for it.

During the current promotion, a $500 Online Exchange card would earn 5,000 Just4U points. In order to break even, you need to value those 5,000 points at 1.97 cents each: if you valued 5,000 Just4U points at exactly $98.50, then this would be a way to manufacture “free” spend, since you’ll earn (hopefully bonused) credit card rewards on the purchase as well.

Another way of looking at it is in terms of revealed preferences. I happily manufacture spend at grocery stores year-round at a cost of 1.4%, so I don’t need to make back the entire $500 in order to get the same value I’m already happy getting; I’ll break even valuing Just4U points at just 1.8 cents each.

Check for a stack on Saturday

For many months Just4U has offered bonus points on gift card purchases almost every weekend. They don’t award those points for prepaid debit card purchases, but the promotion does stack with their other brand-specific gift cards, and should stack with Online Exchange. That means this deal could be even sweeter on Saturday, October 12, the last day of the Online Exchange promotion. I don’t see any reason not to wait until then, unless you’re worried about folks cleaning out the shelves in your area while you wait.

Don't forget resort fees when pricing Guest of Honor awards on paid stays

World of Hyatt elite “milestones” are, in addition to being a clever marketing gimmick, one source of additional value you accumulate as you earn elite qualifying nights each year. I recently broke down their value methodically here and shared my experience with “2K Next Stay Awards.”

At 40, 60, 70, 80, 90 elite-qualifying nights, and every 10 nights after 110 elite-qualifying nights, you automatically earn Guest of Honor Awards in addition to an award you choose. These awards allow you to give anyone (including yourself) the “in-hotel” benefits of being a Globalist elite. In addition to the breakfast and lounge access benefits most people are familiar with, and the guaranteed 4:00 pm checkout that’s my own favorite benefit, Globalists and Guests of Honor also get resort fees waived on paid stays.

The tricky part is that Hyatt does not remove resort fees from their pricing summary when you apply Guest of Honor awards online, which, if you’re not aware of it, will cause you to misvalue your World of Hyatt points.

You can see this clearly in these two screenshots, where a resort fee appears at checkout whether or not a Guest of Honor award is attached to the reservation:

Most of the time this doesn’t make a decisive difference: World of Hyatt points are usually so valuable that whether they’re “slightly more” or “slightly less” valuable doesn’t impact your booking decision.

Once you’re aware of the issue, however, it’s easy to imagine corner cases like the one I stumbled into at The Lodge At Spruce Peak, where I found the rates shown above. A Category 8 property, the hotel starts at 35,000 points per night during “off-peak” periods, and costs between 40,000 and 45,000 points per night during ski season.

At $424.08 per night off-peak, that’s already a marginal points redemption at 1.21 cents per point; you could book it through the Chase travel portal for fewer Ultimate Rewards points than transferring them to Hyatt.

But at the true price of $376.38 (after subtracting the waived resort fee and tax), it’s a truly godawful redemption at just 1.08 cents per point.

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of things, properties that charge resort fees are likely on the more expensive end of Hyatt’s portfolio, and thus likely to be solid enough point redemptions that a waived resort fee won’t change your booking calculus. But at highly seasonal properties, cash rates may drop by much more than points rates, while resort fees stay flat and make up a larger share of the total cost in cash.

In those circumstances, applying a Guest of Honor award to a paid rate may turn a marginal redemption into an outright bad one.

Correction: Membership Rewards-HawaiianMiles-Mileage Plan transfers are instant, when they work

Last week I wrote about Alaska Airlines’ announcement that miles could now be transferred back and forth between Mileage Plan and Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles.

I wrote, “it takes a few days to complete the cycle of moving Membership Rewards points to HawaiianMiles and then moving them to Mileage Plan.”

This turns out not to be true. Instead, last week there seems to have been an outage in the connection between American Express Membership Rewards and HawaiianMiles, and transfers were completely failing.

In fact, I noticed at the time I submitted my transfer that my Membership Rewards balance didn’t reflect the trial transfer I initiated, and I didn’t receive a confirmation e-mail. Since it was my first transfer, I assumed that was just how the system worked.

When I submitted an identical transfer a few days later, the miles appeared immediately in my HawaiianMiles account (and I received a confirmation e-mail from American Express). I was then able to instantly transfer the miles to Mileage Plan through their dedicated Points.com portal.

Instant transfers mean there’s less need to speculatively transfer Membership Rewards points to Alaska, and makes it more marginally attractive to wait for another transfer bonus to HawaiianMiles.

Things are looking good for the Membership Rewards-Hawaiian Airlines-Alaska Airlines play

Last month I wrote about one possible use of the world’s most-hoarded, least-useful loyalty currency, American Express Membership Rewards: transferring them to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles in anticipation of a successful merger with Alaska Airlines and the ability to eventually transfer them to that much more valuable airline currency.

That “eventually” turned out to be sooner than expected, as Alaska announced the details of the loyalty plan connectivity last week, and it’s supposedly already operational through a Points.com backend. I’m currently testing it for myself, since it takes a few days to complete the cycle of moving Membership Rewards points to HawaiianMiles and then moving them to Mileage Plan.

I’ll post an update when the cycle is completed and I’ve confirmed it works as advertised.

Why it matters

The main attraction of this play is that Alaska Airlines miles are extremely valuable for domestic Alaska and American Airlines flights and internationally for flights on the oneworld alliance, but relatively difficult to earn compared to the direct transfer partners of Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards.

For the time being, this indirect transfer channel makes them as easy to earn as any direct Membership Rewards transfer partner.

Long-term risks

As is often the case, the two primary risks in this play are moving too fast and moving too slow.

By moving too fast, I mean speculatively transferring millions of Membership Rewards points to Mileage Plan, and then seeing that program devalued over the years it takes you to spend down those miles. I often get 5-6 cents per mile redeeming Mileage Plan miles on short-haul domestic tickets or business class tickets to Europe, but if those redemptions became revenue-based I’d feel silly for sitting on a million miles suddenly worth just a cent each.

By moving too slow, I mean waiting for another transfer bonus to HawaiianMiles in order to stretch your Membership Rewards points even further, while in the meantime the airline’s contract with American Express expires on its own or is broken early, leaving you with a stack of miserable Membership Rewards points instead of a bounty of precious Mileage Plan miles.

How I’m playing it

Like most things in this game, I’m planning to split the difference: I’ll move a couple tens of thousands of Membership Rewards points over every month, waiting to see if another transfer bonus comes along. If it does, I’ll empty out my account immediately, and if it doesn’t, I’ll end up moving over most of balance over the course of the next year anyway. And, of course, I can always speed up or slow down the transfers depending on other transfer opportunities.

Speaking of other transfer opportunities

I did not mention in my early Membership Rewards post transfers to Hilton Honors, which reader Bryan helpfully mentioned in the comments. Especially given the current transfer ratio of 1-to-2.6, if you value Hilton Honors points at 0.5 cents each this is a solid way to get rid of Membership Rewards points. It turns the 4 points per dollar earned on dining spend on a card like the American Express Gold card into a 10.4-point-per-dollar Hilton Honors earning rate.

I get a lot of value from Hilton Honors and spend my points almost as fast as I earn them, so I happily topped up my account during the current transfer bonus. However, unlike Mileage Plan miles, I can easily earn Hilton Honors points through manufactured spend on my American Express Surpass card, so I didn’t feel any urgency to empty out my Membership Rewards account, even though I know I’d eventually get decent value from the resulting Hilton Honors points.

Quick hit: Hyatt Milestone 2K Next Stay Awards don't stack, but do post on award stays

I’ve been plugging along earning top-tier Hyatt Globalist status through manufactured spend on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card, and recently hit the 30-night and 40-night milestones in quick succession. With no obvious reason to choose the other options, I selected the 2K Next Stay Award for each milestone.

As long-time readers may remember, I used to live in Madison, WI, and return several times a year to visit old friends there. I usually stay at the Hyatt Place Madison/Downtown, a Category 3 property that costs 9,000-15,000 World of Hyatt points per night. At the lower end of that range, that’s a terrific value for World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards. At the higher end, it’s a great value for Category 1-4 Free Night Certificates earned on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card.

What I didn’t know was whether both my 2K Next Stay Awards would be triggered by a single stay. Fortunately, I had two stays planned (with the week in between spent on Madeline Island, the largest of Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands).

As it turned out, each of the two stays triggered a single 2K Next Stay Award. This ended up working fine for me given my travel plans, but the awards do have expiration policies to be aware of: they have to be selected (the other options at each of the 20-night and 30-night milestones are two club access awards and $25 FIND experience credits) and then used within the specified time periods, so unless you already have plans to visit a Hyatt House or Hyatt Place, or a property with a club, there’s no point in selecting your awards prematurely. Just set a calendar reminder to make sure you pick something!

Finally, note that the 2K Next Stay Awards did post on both my stays, despite being booked entirely with points and free night awards. This wasn’t surprising (Hyatt treats award stays as “eligible stays” for virtually all their promotions) but it was important to me to verify and pass along.

At the 40-night and 50-night Milestone levels I assume I’ll pick the 5,000 bonus point awards unless I see suite availability for an uncoming trip; I can use the free Guest of Honor award at the 40-night level to get club access if an upcoming stay has a club, although that’s not typical for the domestic properties I stay at.

What are Membership Rewards points for?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a travel hacker in possession of Membership Rewards points, must be in want of a way of disposing of them.

This is the main reason that until this year I avoided the American Express Membership Rewards ecosystem. I know what to do with Chase Ultimate Rewards points (transfer them to Hyatt) and Hilton Honors points (book 5-night award reservations) and US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards points (redeem them for 1.5 cents each on paid airfare).

But for as long as I’ve been travel hacking, the main feeling people have expressed about Membership Rewards points was frustration: yeah, they’re easy to earn, but what the hell do you do with them once you have them?

Now that I’ve got a gazillion of them, I feel that frustration firsthand. Here’s what I’ve gleaned over the years about how people really redeem them.

Cash out through co-branded Platinum cards

One reason Membership Rewards points are so hard to redeem is that their cash value, unlike Ultimate Rewards (which can be redeemed in unlimited quantities for 1 cent each), is discouraging. You can redeem them for statement credits at 0.6 cents each, or for travel through the American Express reservation portal at 1 cent each (or slightly higher for Platinum cardholders, under certain conditions).

“Invest with Rewards” is a feature of the Charles Schwab co-branded Platinum credit card that lets you redeem up to 1,000,000 Membership Rewards points per year at 1.1 cent each for deposits into a Schwab investment account.

This is a popular choice for a lot of people, but it’s also an admission of defeat — and an expensive one, since the Schwab card has a $695 annual fee, not waived the first year. If you’re paying 3% “all-in” to manufacture bonus spend that earns 4 points per dollar, plus a $695 annual fee, you’re only clearing $2,805 per year on $250,000 in manufactured spend.

That’s not for me, but it is a popular choice so I wanted to make sure readers were aware of it.

“Substituting” Ultimate Rewards transfers

The most appealing approach to redeeming Membership Rewards points is to use them as a substitute for Ultimate Rewards transfers. Since transfers to World of Hyatt are so valuable, this is a true “penny saved/penny earned” situation: every point you’re able to redeem from your Membership Rewards account instead of from your Ultimate Rewards account is “worth” whatever value you get from World of Hyatt transfers. It’s not uncommon to get 3 or 4 cents per point in value when redeeming World of Hyatt points, and it’s possible to get much more value if you’re working at it.

This is most obvious when Chase and American Express share a transfer partner. Here are the programs they have in common:

• Aer Lingus Avios

• Air Canada Aeroplan

• Air France KLM Flying Blue

• British Airways Avios

• Emirates Skywards

• Iberia Plus Avios

• JetBlue trueBlue

• Marriott Bonvoy

• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Note that all the Avios programs (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia Plus, and Qatar) have miles that can be transferred between the programs, but obviously not everyone has all four programs set up and connected to their credit card rewards accounts, so I mention them separately as well.

Another method of substitution is to transfer “similar enough” miles. For example, Star Alliance partner award availability can be booked with both United Mileage Plus miles (transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards) or Air Canada Aeroplan miles (transferred from either). Where award space is available in both programs, then saving Ultimate Rewards points by transferring Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan is another way to preserve your Ultimate Rewards balance for higher-value redemptions.

Betting on the Hawaiian-Alaska merger

One interesting alternative that I would consider “low-” but not “no-risk” is preemptively transferring Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles. The merger recently passed the Department of Justice’s review process, so it has a reasonable chance of being finalized at some point. After that happens, I would guess the airlines would take a year or two to align their reservation and award systems, and at some point I’d expect Hawaiian to enter into the oneworld alliance, as Alaska already has.

Once all that has happened, miles might become transferrable between the programs, or used from either program to book oneworld alliance partner flights.

There are a lot of if’s, and’s, and but’s in there, but if you’re sitting on more Membership Rewards points than you have any idea what to do with, then stashing a few hundred thousand in a HawaiianMiles account is one way to hedge the value of your points. You might regret doing it eventually, but the least valuable point will always be the one you don’t redeem.