Shownotes
David launches the episode with a fast, deal-focused roundup of current credit card, transfer bonus, buy points, hotel, airline, and loyalty program news. The episode starts with a practical example of how David thinks through card choice and loyalty-earning for an upcoming trip to South America, then moves through active transfer bonuses, limited-time buy-point offers, registration-required promos, and notable program changes. The close shifts from weekly deals into a broader manufactured-spend lesson: some of the best opportunities can appear dead, obscure, or non-obvious until someone tests them carefully.
| Time | Chapter | Show Notes |
00:00 Intro/travel setup | David opens and walks through an upcoming South America trip as a live example of points-and-miles decision-making. He discusses using an American Airlines systemwide upgrade, choosing cards for taxes and fees, booking a Hilton stay through Rove, deciding where to put hotel charges, using an Airbnb Experiences credit for horseback riding, and testing Avianca/LifeMiles on the return.
02:17 New credit cards and SUBs | David says there are no major new credit-card products or broad sign-up-bonus headlines this week. He references recent JetBlue Premier coverage and Amex Delta-card activity, including a Delta Reserve Business-style elevated offer or upgrade offer tied to $12,000 spend and 60,000 SkyMiles.
02:42 Airline transfer bonuses | The strongest offer is Chase Ultimate Rewards to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club at 30% through July 14, with David rating it highly for specific premium-cabin uses such as Delta One or ANA awards, while warning to check surcharges before transferring. He also discusses Amex Membership Rewards to Air France-KLM Flying Blue at 25%, Citi ThankYou to Qatar Airways Avios at 30%, Rove Miles to Turkish Miles&Smiles at 50%, and Radisson Rewards to Flying Blue at 30%, which David treats as niche because hotel-to-airline transfers usually destroy value.
05:58 Hotel transfer bonuses | Chase Ultimate Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy gets the headline hotel-transfer mention at 55% through June 30. David says the high percentage is meaningful only when a specific Marriott redemption makes sense at the post-bonus math. He compares it with Amex Membership Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy at 20%, calling the Amex route weaker while Chase is offering a larger bonus to the same program.
06:42 Just-expired bonuses | David flags recently expired transfer bonuses so listeners do not chase dead links: Citi ThankYou to Preferred Hotels & Resorts I Prefer at 30% and Citi ThankYou to Wyndham Rewards at 25%, both described as having closed on June 13.
07:00 Airline points-buy promotions | Airline buy-miles offers include Air Canada Aeroplan at roughly 1.89 cents per point, Alaska/Atmos Rewards with a targeted buy-points bonus around 1.88 cents per point, United MileagePlus at roughly 1.88 cents per mile, Virgin points at roughly 1.48 cents per point, and American AAdvantage at roughly 2.26 cents per mile. David is most cautious where the acquisition cost is high or recent award-pricing changes reduce the upside.
09:50 Hotel points-buy promotions | Hotel buy-points coverage includes Wyndham Rewards, Choice Privileges, and World of Hyatt. David is most favorable toward Wyndham because of its simple 7,500 / 15,000 / 30,000-point award structure and lower purchase cost, more reserved on Choice, and skeptical of buying Hyatt at about 2.17 cents per point unless topping off for a specific stay.
11:12 Registration-required promos | David reviews promos that require registration before travel or conversion. Items include Hilton + Qatar Airways Avios, IHG double elite-night credits, Wyndham bonus points on qualifying stays, Best Western bonus points for early-July stays, and a United MileagePlus hotel-points conversion bonus. The main advice is to register before stays or transfers because many of these promos will not apply retroactively.
12:57 Program news | Program updates include Flying Blue June Promo Rewards to Europe, Alaska/Atmos partner-redemption fee increases, American Airlines raising the minimum AAdvantage price for transatlantic business awards on AA metal, Chase Sapphire Preferred Hyatt-transfer changes, Singapore Airlines award-seat selection fees, Wells Fargo ending points transfers between account holders, United allowing pooled miles for many partner awards, and Bangkok Airways beginning the path toward Oneworld integration.
14:53 Closing/zombie deals might be real | David closes by referencing Matt from Miles Earn and Burn, James from the Churn and Burn podcast, and Connor from the Churning Life podcast. The theme is “zombie deals”: manufactured-spend or loyalty opportunities that look dead, impossible, or too obscure, but may still work if tested carefully. The closing clip emphasizes opportunity cost, shutdown risk, and why high-volume plays require caution and judgment.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcripts
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Rewards Report. I'm your host David Yates. Before we get to this week's deals, let me tell you where I am headed this week.
Thursday I fly American Airlines to South America. I bought the ticket main cabin cash but I had a system wide upgrade expiring so I applied that and was immediately cleared to business. All in.
x so call it around:The room rate came out to 383.72 paid to Rove. That's for three nights plus 56.36 in taxes and fees that I'll settle up at the hotel.
x so about:The $56 at the hotel will go on the Amex Hilton Aspire at 14x so roughly 789 Hilton honors points at that piece. Friday I'm going horseback riding in the mountains through an Airbnb experience that I booked.
The listed price was $135 but I had a hundred dollar Airbnb credit from a Thanksgiving booking so I paid about 35 bucks out of pocket via Apple Pay. That amount goes on the amex Green at 3x for another 104 Membership Rewards points.
Airbnb stacks its own Delta sky miles on top so I'll pick up about 100, 102, 103 Delta miles on that after I finished the horseback ride.
Then on Sunday I start my trip home on Avianca, who I've never flown and I'd like to evaluate whether to do more Central and South American flying with them.
Avianca's Life Miles program just got gutted about a month ago, but they do still have some useful Star alliance rates so maybe worth keeping the balance growing there to see how their product performs. Alright, that's the trip. Let's get into what's happening in the points world this week. I have no new credit cards this week.
I'm still gardening after opening up the JetBlue Premier Card a couple of months ago and upgrading the Delta Platinum business card to a reserve card and taking the elevator up on three of my AmEx Gold business cards. No subs other than just working on the Delta Reserve Upgrade bonus which was 12,000k spend in 6 months for 60,000 sky miles.
All right, transfer bonuses for airlines. The biggest one right now is one of my favorites. This year it's Chase Ultimate Reward points to Virgin Atlantic flying club at 30% through July 14th.
You transfer 100,000 chase points, you land 130,000 virgin miles. Virgin Atlantic is one of the best ways to book Delta 1 business class and ANA first class, both of which are notoriously hard to price sufficiently.
surcharges to these awards in:ANA first class to Japan runs from 115,000 points round trip from Honolulu up to 170,000 from East coast cities like New York or Chicago. If you have a large Chase balance and no immediate use for it, or if you're just tired of the Hyatt games, this one is worth a speculative transfer.
I give this one 9 out of 10. American Express membership Rewards has a bonus to Air France KLM flying blue at 25% that expires July 1st.
Flying blue has been running promo awards all year and right now economy from multiple US cities to Europe is 18,750 miles one way. They have a deal for premium economy from Las Vegas to Europe at 30,000 miles.
If you stack this 25% transfer bonus with an active promo award, you're getting strong value on both ends. 8 Out of 10 is my rating. It is speculative transfer worthy if you're planning a trip to Europe through November.
Citi thank you to Qatar airways Avios at 30% expiring June 30th. Now one important note here. You have to initiate this transfer through Qatar's website, not through Citi directly.
Qatar Avios prices some strong partner and One World Redemption so this can be useful. But the initiation quirk may trip some people up, so I'll give this one a 7 out of 10. I mentioned Rove Miles.
Rove has a Turkish miles and smiles at 50% bonus right now. It also expires on June 30th.
Turkish still has a distance based award chart that prices some routes well although we did lose the flights to Hawaii from the us They've got some nice short haul Star alliance flights and some United domestic connections. Now Rove's audience is smaller so this one flies under the radar.
It is relevant if you have Rove balances building and a Star alliance trip on the horizon because those miles on Turkish hard expire after three years. There is no way to extend them. So my rating on this one I'm going to give this a 6 out of 10.
Hyatt has a transfer bonus of 30% to Qatar Airways expiring June 30th. You know, hotel to airline transfers almost always bleed value. This one's no exception.
I think the only scenario where it makes sense is if you have a lot of Hyatt points past what you'll need for hotel redemptions and you've got a very specific guitar or one World award in mind. I'm going to give this one a six out of ten for that. For that narrow use case, it's a lower score otherwise.
Alright, let's take a look at hotels Chase Ultimate Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy at 55% expiring June 30th.
This is the highest percentage bonus that's active right now on any transfer, but Marriott's dynamic pricing puts a ceiling on how far you can stretch the value on this one. If you're aiming for a specific Marriott property and the math works at the dynamic price, 55% is not nothing.
I'll give this one a rating of 6 out of 10. Amex Membership Rewards transfers to Marriott Bonvoy at a 20% bonus expiring July 1.
This one's harder to justify when Chase is running 55% to the same program simultaneously. Unless you have no Chase points, the Amex route is the weaker play. I give this one a 4 out of 10, just expired but worth knowing about.
City to preferred hotels I prefer at 30% expired June 13. Citi also had a transfer bonus to Wyndham at 25%, also expired June 13. If you were sitting on either of those, those windows have now closed.
All right, if you want to buy points, let's look at the airlines first.
Air Canada Aeroplan is offering a 30% discount on purchases of 110,000 points or more through June 30, bringing the cost to about 1.89 cents per point.
Aeroplan has a strong partner network including Lufthansa, Swiss and Air India, and its distance based pricing on Star Alliance Metal is still one of the better tools if you're looking for a transatlantic business class flight, I'd rate This one a 7 out of 10. Alaska Atmos Rewards has a targeted offer of up to 100% bonus on purchases of 30,000 points or more through July 5th.
That comes out to about 1.88 cents per point at the best tier. Now think about this.
Alaska changed how Atmos Saver fares work starting June 11, meaning that flights booked on or after that date for travel on or after August 1st earn 0 Atmos points from flying. They also earn zero loyalty.
They only earn for your million Miler status, so buying points to use for award redemptions makes more sense than earning your way there going forward. If you're used to flying saver, check your account to see at what point you're targeted. I'd put this one at a six out of 10.
United Mileage plus is running a 100% bonus on purchases of 25,000 points or more through June 24 at about 1.88 cents per point.
Now, United miles are reasonably liquid given the program scope, but 1.88 cents is a high buy in when Chase Ultimate Rewards can get you there through a direct transfer. For less, I would give this a 5 out of 10. Virgin Red as selling points add up to 70% bonus on purchases of 125,000 points or more through July 7th.
That pegs them at about 1.48 cents per point.
Virgin Red has some interesting redemptions through Virgin Atlantic and Hotel Partners and on Flying Blue, but the program isn't one a lot of people are actively building toward. I'd give this one probably a six out of ten if you have a very specific Virgin redemption in mind.
Virgin Red offers a safari for 100,000 points a night and I looked at the math on that. It doesn't work out. You're paying 1.48 cents, but you're redeeming them for about 1.3, so you're overpaying.
American Airlines Advantage is discounting at 40% on 151,000 plus point purchases with no stated end date. That puts them at about 2.26 cents per point.
American Airlines recently raised its minimum Transatlantic Business Class award on AA operated metal from 65,000 to 70,000 miles, which makes buying in at 2.26 cents a harder sell than it was six months ago. I'd rate this one 3 out of 10 hotel points.
Programs Wyndham rewards a selling points at 80% bonus on purchases of 3,000 or more through July 27, bringing the cost to about zero 0.76 cents per point.
Wyndham has a three tier award chart at 7,500 15,000 and 30,000 points per night, with the majority of their properties sitting at 15,000 points, buying at 0.76 cents could get you nights that otherwise would cost $100 or more in cash. And this one I think is underrated. I bought some Wyndham Rewards points on this deal. I'd give this an 8 out of 10.
Choice Privileges is selling points at a 40% bonus through July 1st at about 0.74 cents per point. Choice's footprint is mostly limited service properties in the U.S. the program has limited aspirational value and they just devalued central Tokyo.
I'd put this one at a three out of 10. And World of Hyatt is running a 20% bonus on point purchases through July 27, bringing the cost to about 2.17 cents per point.
Hyatt points are worth buying at the right price, but 2.17 cents is above most people's threshold given Hyatt's recently expanded dynamic price.
partner. After that you earn:Register at both ends before your next Hilton night. Be sure to register and set Qatar as your travel partner. IHG has a targeted Double Elite Night credit offer running through July 31.
It is capped at five bonus nights. It's worth checking your IHG account to see if you're targeted before your next stay.
Wyndham is running a Bonus Points promotion 7,500 to 15,000 points per stay for stays of two or more nights booked by September 3rd. For stays through September 30th with a maximum of 15,000 points, total registration is required.
Best Western is offering 2,500 points per night at US and Canada properties July 1st through July 7th, up to a maximum of 10,000 points. Registration is required before July 1st.
United's Hotel & Miles promotion is giving you a 25% bonus when converting Marriott IHG or Hilton points to United Mileage. Plus it requires registration. I'll put the link in the show notes and runs through June 30th. Bonus points will post by January 31st of next year.
At the best case conversion, 60,000 Marriott points become about 35,000 United miles. Hotel to airline transfers rarely work out. Check it out if you're interested okay, Some notable program news for the week.
Flying Blue promo awards for summer and fall are still available. I mentioned them earlier. 18,750 Miles economy from Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, Seattle, San Jose and Washington. That's to Europe.
Premium economy from Las Vegas to Europe comes in at 30,000 miles. Book by June 30th for travel through November 30th. Alaska Atmos partner redemption fees increased to $20 on July 1st from $12.
If you have a partner award booking to make on Alaska points, get after it. American Airlines raised its minimum Transatlantic business class award price on AA operated metal from 65,000 to 70,000 miles.
Routing through partner airlines remains unchanged in price Chase Sapphire preferred holders. The Hyatt transfer ratio drops from 1:1 to 4:3 for new cards starting June 15th and for existing cards starting October 1st.
The 10% annual points bonus is also ending on the same schedule if you're holding a large Sapphire preferred balance with Hyatt in mind, the clock is running. Singapore Airlines is adding advanced seat selection fees on most award business class bookings. Seats remain free within 96 hours of departure.
Wells Fargo is ending points transfers between account holders on September 25th. If you've been pooling autograph points with a household member, September 24th is your last day.
ntegration is expected around:In closing, as we wrap up this week's episode, I want to leave you with the words of three points and miles guys. Matt, who writes the MilesEarnandBurn.com blog, James of the Churn and Burn podcast and Connor of the Churning Life podcast.
I'll link to all three in the show Notes I discovered Matt first. He was on an episode of the Risk of Ruin podcast last summer.
Since I followed him the longest, I guess he's like the churning Godfather as far as I see it.
he wrote back in September of:I've known a number of manufactured Spend hall of Famers and I've learned several lessons from every one of them. There's a common theme that falls out of many of these lessons. The best deals are often deals that already died.
I can attest to this Being true, a great way to explore manufactured spend is to do a little investigative work on dead deals. You may find that they've risen from the grave. Ready to join yet another spin off of AMC's the Walking Dead. Good luck.
That's Matt from Miles, Earn and Burn. And that's the rewards report for this week. I'll record next week from South America.
So to close out today's show, a clip from James of the Churning Bird podcast and from Connor of the Churning Life podcast.
Speaker B:I won't say where or how or what the method was, but essentially like three years ago, I found a way to reliably spend 25k a day on any debit card of my choosing. So, well, can we grab a time.
Speaker A:Wait, go back
Speaker B:And so again, like, I tested this and proceeded to do this daily for I don't know, like two years. And I'll just say that there was no way that anybody else is doing it was so niche.
Not only was the place it was happening niche, but the way I had figured out to do it was just so I like, there's a reason I was the person who discovered it. So I discovered one day that it was no longer working.
And because I had no other connections to this particular institution, I, against all common advice, I called just to see, like, hey, what's, what's going on here? Like, I waited a week, obviously, to make sure it was well and dead. And I was really politely told that I couldn't do this anymore, but was strong.
This is crazy, Riley. I was strongly encouraged to continue my relationship with this place, notwithstanding. Not that 25k
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:That's hilarious. And so, yeah, I definitely, I was the play reaper, if you will.
Speaker C:The thing is, the way that I'm doing the spend is a unicorn.
I'll just say that it's something that I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that is doing it because it's something that's allowing me to spend 25k every business day with any card that I want, whether that's credit card or debit card, I guess not Amex, but any Visa or MasterCard. And I'm pretty sure if another manufactured spender knew about that, then they would have shut down the play by now.
So I don't know how long that that is going to.
So there is a pretty significant opportunity cost of only spending 13.5k every 3 business days to earn 1x Jao miles instead of just hammering this with a 2% card, which I think is what I should be doing. But yeah, this kind of manufactured spending isn't really my, like, expertise.
You know, I usually focus on buying groups in Pokemon, so I don't have very many plays. Like, if this doesn't work, then there's not that many other things that I know how to do.
I guess maybe there is also the argument that if I do less volume, then it'll take longer for them to shut me down. But in my experience, that isn't really the case. It's more just how long it takes them to see where you're doing.