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Earn the most valuable points – and using an arbitrage opportunity, earn them quickly. And transfer them to programs that accept points from a variety of sources. Then you’ll have points for your award goals in no time.
As someone who flies American Airlines regularly, I place a high value on lounge access. It’s the people who keep me going especially during irregular operations, going above and beyond to get me where I’m going. As a result I’m very interested in the best way to get American Airlines club access.
For instance, agents have regularly double booked me giving me ‘backup’ flights just in case I misconnect. And I’ve even gotten a proactive call from a lounge about a delay, they had booked me as a backup on a new flight (that had looked sold out to me, and it was the last one of the night). And I’m not a Concierge Key member.
While American raises the price of memberships — effective July 25 — you can actually get much better deals and potentially even make a profit from Citibank credit cards that give you access.
Chase has released its first tv commercial for the new Chase Freedom Unlimited Card. It’s a fantastic card, and a really good commercial, but they’re totally underselling it.
It’s a clever attention-getting card, and attention-getting ad, but they pitch it simply as ‘unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you buy’.
Getting the most value out of the product — 90% more — takes an extra step.
For the past year Citi Prestige has been the ‘it’ card, and for very good reason. It’s chock full of benefits. Citi has built a premium card to surpass others at the price point. It’s built a transferrable points program, let you use the points at a strong value towards paid airfare, and bundled not just traditional benefits like lounge access but unique benefits like VIP treatment at restaurants and free golf.
Here are the 15 things I love about the product.
Singapore has long been one of my favorite transfer partners of American Express, and also for Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints. Last year Chase added Singapore as a transfer partner. And then Citibank did as well. That means you can transfer points to Singapore Airlines from all the best major transferrable points currencies.
Singapore offers fantastic award availability in premium cabins for members using Krisflyer points. And there are some real sweet spots on their award chart that will make them an even better Star Alliance program than United for some US-based members.
There are real opportunities, that I’ll review — and two gotchas as well that I’ll warn you about.
Last week I noted that Citi moved the card over to using Aspire Lifestyle Concierge. They have a much smoother process now for bookings using the 4th hotel night free benefit.
But there’s another hidden benefit to this change: Aspire’s Preferred Restaurant Program.
“Alternate reality: people are only allowed 1 credit card at a time, there are no other loyalty restrictions.”
Which card would you pick? What would you compromise?
These are among the most valuable points because of their flexibility, and because of the value of the programs that Chase partners with. Here are my 8 favorite things to do with the points:
My single favorite card for earning valuable rewards points has just gotten better with an offer of 50,000 points as a signup bonus. These points transfer to a variety of airline miles and hotel points.
There was a brief targeted test of 50,000 points with a higher annual fee two years ago. But otherwise we haven’t seen an offer like this for the card since March 2012.
As someone who flies American Airlines regularly, I place a high value on lounge access. It’s the people who keep me going especially during irregular operations, going above and beyond to get me where I’m going. As a result I’m very interested in the best way to get American Airlines club access.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
