This quarter felt like a constant tug-of-war between devaluations and massive signup bonuses. Some programs got noticeably worse, while banks simultaneously started throwing out some of the biggest offers we’ve seen in a while.

Before we jump into this quarter’s updates, let’s take a brief moment of silence for Spirit Airlines.

Whether you loved Spirit for the cheap positioning flights or avoided it at all costs, it really does feel like the end of an era in the travel world. But if you haven’t seen, this guy is trying to revive Spirit as a crowdfunding, people-backed airline. Will be interesting if this pulls through.

The Devaluations Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Unfortunately, this quarter continued the trend of programs quietly getting worse around the edges. None of these individually are catastrophic, but together they slowly chip away at the value proposition of a lot of these ecosystems.

Hyatt Award Chart Changes

One of the biggest headlines this quarter was Hyatt’s latest award chart adjustments. Several properties moved up in category pricing, making some of the best sweet spots noticeably more expensive. On top of this annual change, Hyatt is moving from the 3-tier system of off-peak, standard, and peak to a 5-tier system of Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper, and Top. Majority of the higher categories will soon having higher price points, while the silver lining is some of the lower categories could potentially be cheaper.

Even with the devaluation, Hyatt is still probably the strongest hotel transfer partner in the game and continues to carry a huge amount of value within the Chase ecosystem. But this is another reminder that transferable points are meant to be used, not hoarded forever. This is change is happening May 20th, so make your reservations now to lock in the old price. You can always rebook if it actually becomes cheaper.

Other Devaluations You Should Know

• Chase Sapphire Preferred will no longer offers the 10% anniversary bonus of points earned. This was a tiny perk that essentially gave you 1.1% back instead of 1% on most things. Not a huge loss, but losing points earnings always sucks.

• Air Canada’s Aeroplan just made a small devaluation. While the program still has strong redemption opportunities, especially for Star Alliance flights, it’s becoming harder to consistently extract outsized value from the fixed award chart sweet spots many people became used to.

• United tightened lounge access to alliance partners. This is part of a broader trend we’re seeing across the industry as lounges continue struggling with overcrowding. Premium travel perks are increasingly becoming more exclusive again after several years of aggressive credit card expansion.

• Bilt nerfed one of its most popular cash redemption options by changing the $10 Grubhub redemption from a stackable gift card into a single-use monthly promo code that expires after 30 days and can no longer be combined with other discounts.

• American Express remove Uber VIP status benefit to cardholders.

Big Juicy Bonuses Still Exist

While benefits are getting trimmed in some areas, banks are fighting incredibly aggressively for new customers right now. Some of the current offers are genuinely excellent.

• Amex Business Platinum: up to 300,000 points

• Chase Sapphire Reserve: elevated 150,000 bonus

• Citi AAdvantage Executive: elevated 100,000 miles

• JetBlue Premier: elevated 100,000 miles (plus JFK JetBlue lounge is open, BOS is coming)

• Chase Freedom Unlimited: a return of the 5x on groceries andgas for a year (in-branch only so far)

Best Tool for Optimizers

One tool I’ve been using more lately is Savewise. If you’re someone constantly checking Rakuten, airline shopping portals, Amex Offers, Chase Offers, and trying to figure out which card to use for each purchase, Savewise can save you a ton of time.

It aggregates shopping portal rates, card-linked offers, and stacking opportunities all in one place so you can maximize cashback, miles, and points without manually checking 15 different sites (or Cashback Monitor which has an old UI). I’ve especially found it useful for quickly spotting stacking opportunities and elevated portal bonuses.

New Cards

We got some interesting new cards to look at:

• Tuyo - Probably the weirdest launch of the quarter. Tuyo is a stablecoin-focused debit card with a “Buy Now Pay Maybe” gimmick where certain purchases are randomly wiped away for free.The bigger takeaway here isn’t necessarily the rewards structure itself, it’s how fintech companies are increasingly trying to gamify spending behavior and provide unique perks to compete with the large banks.

• Robinhood Platinum Card - Robinhood also launched a new premium card aimed directly at the Amex Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve crowd. It’s mostly a massive coupon book.

• American Express Graphite Card - A 2% cards with a large annual fee ($295) isn’t that interesting, especially when it’s not earning Membership Reward points. It’s for a certain type of large business working in the Amex ecosystem, probably not worth for us points & miles people.

• Amazon Business Cards Moving to US Bank - One of the more surprising shifts this quarter is Amazon moving their business card relationship away from American Express and over to US Bank.

  • Ironically, even though I’ve criticized the Amazon cards before for being terrible, I’ll probably be getting the personal Amazon card soon anyway because it’s actually a very practical option for buying group purchases and large Amazon volume. If you’re curious about buying groups and why people care so much about Amazon spend, check out my blog post here.

Current Transfer Bonuses

What’s In our Wallets (Newsletter Exclusive)

Our lineup for this week is below. See our rationale here just for newsletter subscribers like you.

Matthew: World of Hyatt Business, Capital One Venture X

Sarah: Matt’s World of Hyatt Business, Capital One Venture X

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About WuhooPoints

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