Elite Benefit Battle: Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and IHG | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep333 | 11-21-25

On today's show, we discuss United's cardholder discount.

We go into the details of Hilton's new Diamond Reserve Elite status and we rank the perks.

We do a Hotel Elite benefit Battle.

Who's best between Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton and ihg.

Frequent Miler on the air starts now.

Today's main event, Elite Benefit Battle.

Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and ihg.

Which has the best Elite perks and which are the most accessible to the average frequent traveler.

We're gonna be looking at perks like free breakfast, lounge, access suite upgrade certificates and guaranteed late checkout.

And comparing across those four chains.

Everyone loves a great fight, so I wanna see how this shakes out.

We'll check that out later on.

If you want to jump ahead, check that out right now or you wanna come back to something later on.

Find the timestamps in the show notes.

Just expand the description box to find that there.

Wherever you are watching or listening, don't forget to like this, Give us a thumbs up.

Leave us a review, Leave a comment we always appreciate hearing your perspective on things as well.

Let's drag out this week's giant mailbag.

Today's giant mail comes from Brad.

Brad writes from Monte Carlo with love.

I just spent the day in Nice and Monte Carlo and I have you to blame.

I arrived in Europe in lie flat sea seats, a mode of transport that I didn't even know existed until listening to your podcasts.

Then today I flew a Blade helicopter from Nice to Monte Carlo at no cost thanks to Greg bragging about his free Blade flights from Built Platinum Perk.

All in all, I had an incredible day in the south of France today.

It's all your fault.

I love it.

I love it.

I apologize deeply to you for spoiling you so much.

But it's funny because I share that with you.

I did not even know that flatbeds existed before I found this hobby.

I just hadn't seen them.

I'd never seen that on a plane.

So yeah, so I, I, I didn't know that existed.

I didn't know there were hotel lounges.

I certainly wouldn't have imagined that there was a way to spend to a free helicopter transfer between Nice and Monte Carlo.

You know, not that everybody should go out and spend for Built Platinum status.

Don't get me wrong necessarily.

It's not a great fit for everybody but.

But the point is there are so many cool things you can do with this hobby and it is pretty wild.

Opens a whole new world.

Yeah, I remember the first time I saw live flat seats I think it was Delta or maybe Northwest before Delta that where we boarded the plane from the front rather than sort of the in between business and economy as they often do.

And so I remember walking by all these seats going whoa, what is that?

You know, and then forever after being like how do I get up there?

That's where I want to sit on a long flight.

And then the rest is history thanks to this hobby.

No kidding, no kidding.

As I, I flew yesterday from Papeete, Tahiti yesterday as we record this to, to Seattle and, and I, I spent hours writing posts, getting stuff done on the plane and I thought to myself, man, this is so convenient and nice and I was glad to be able to do that with miles and points because I, I never would have spent the money to do it otherwise.

So it was a lot of, a lot of appreciation for me yesterday just sitting there.

So awesome.

Good stuff.

Let's move on though to some bad news.

We've been bonvoyed this week.

Who's bonvoyed us this week?

This week's bonvoy of the day comes from United Airlines, who what they've done is they've increased award prices on their flights that are close in.

So within you want to book a flight that's within the next two weeks, you can do it but you're going to pay more than you would have before we're seeing it.

You know, a lot of domestic US flights that were 15,000 miles are now 20,000 miles if you try to book them right before flying.

So that's too bad.

You know, I know like Delta started doing that long time ago.

United has done that on and off with like partner awards.

But now we're seeing it with United's own flights.

Yeah, that's such a bummer because I find one of the best value uses of miles often is those last minute tickets when you really need to get somewhere and you have to book at the last minute.

So it stinks to see those increase in price.

I'm very disappointed by that side note.

Maybe this is just because I haven't searched much on united.com in a while, but I was searching last night actually to see if I could find a better option for a flight today than what I currently have.

And I saw some United flights that showed up for me because I don't have a United Card at 65,000 miles one way in economy class from Seattle to New York.

Now I would never book that but it said underneath it united card members pay 20,000 miles.

Now I didn't realize That I could see the card member discounting even without the card.

So smart.

It makes sense that United would do that.

But that was the first I had actually noticed that.

That's really cool.

I think that's probably new and that is smart of them to do that.

United.

I don't know that we've talked about that on this show.

That United has very aggressively moved towards providing better award pricing for card holders.

And so it really makes a big carrot for holding any card.

I think it has to be a card that has an annual fee to get that discount.

The.

I think the no annual fee, one you have to spend, if I'm remembering right, you have to spend like $10,000 on it or something to get that perk.

But yeah, I mean, it.

It's very well, well worth, you know, $150 or whatever if you have a paid card.

If you're gonna be booking a lot of flights with United miles, because yeah, you'll potentially save a lot of miles.

Yep.

Yeah.

Speaking of miles, let's talk about awards, points and more here.

So built in Rakuten, we talked about how you can now choose to earn Rakuten Rewards, or rather built rewards points.

Built points through Rakuten Rewards, the shopping portal.

And so we talked about that recently.

We talked about how you can redeem, essentially, or not redeem.

Choose to earn one point per dollar, so to speak, from your racket and rewards.

That type of conversion and how that.

Was penny per pen.

Per penny.

Yeah.

Thank you.

For the first six months.

And then after that it's only going to be members with status.

They get that one point per penny rate in terms of earning their rewards.

We've gotten that confirmed that that will apply through the May 15 payout.

It was a little confusing because six months from the day they announced that would have been before the.

The May 15th payout.

Because remember, Rakuten only pays out their rewards quarterly.

So there's four payments per year.

So we knew for sure that that sort of one to one conversion was going to apply 15th payout.

We weren't sure about the May 15th payout, but we have gotten it confirmed from Built that that will be at a 1 to 1.

So even if you don't have status, if you've chosen Built as your earning option with Rakuten, you'll be able to get that one to one through at least May 15, and then you'll need to have built status thereafter.

That makes sense to me because you can't even get the built credit card right now.

Until the new cards launch in February.

So if you all of a sudden got excited about this option, you're like, oh well, maybe I would like to have built status.

It'd be pretty hard to get without the credit card right now.

So I think it makes sense that they'll have that one to one through at least 515.

Also, we've gotten confirmation that you can freely switch between Bilt and Amex Membership Rewards points.

There was some concern initially because of terms way back when about changing your reward preferences with Rakuten, but you are eligible or available or it is possible, I should say, to choose to earn built points now and later on switch to MX Membership Rewards points, which is certainly what I would do if I don't maintain build status.

Yeah.

Yep.

So that, that's really good to know.

I guess originally when they first added Amex Membership Rewards as an option, they had a clause saying once you switch to this, you won't be able to switch back or something like that.

And that was.

That's an old term that doesn't exist anymore.

Okay, next up, you've probably heard this already, but if you have a recent Apple phone, you can now add your passport to your Apple Wallet and you might wonder, well, why the heck would you want to do that?

The reason is that it can be used at all TSA checkpoints within the us.

I mean, over time it should be usable at other places too, but for now that's the main places you can use them.

But I think that's great because if you happen to show up to the airport without your, you know, wallet and id, you can use your phone instead.

So I went ahead and scanned my passport no problem.

Unlike the UK E Visa like thing, the Apple one actually shows you where, where the chip is on your passport so you can scan it no problem.

And it has a nice little image showing where to find it because with other apps we've been trying to scan all over the place until we found the darn thing.

I like how you say you can easily scan it as long as your chip doesn't malfunction like I'm seems to have.

I don't think.

Yeah, mine doesn't scan when they try to scan it or when I try to use an E gate, but mine's up for renewal next year.

So I'm finally going to renew that and hopefully get rid of that problem.

But yeah, that's cool.

I think that's a cool addition.

I think it's actually nowadays with the facial recognition, I wonder how much longer you're going to need that physical thing.

I mean, will we still need it forever?

I don't know.

When I came into the US Last night, somebody did glance at our passports, but we just basically stood in front of a camera and that took a picture of each face and then just registered within the system.

Yeah, these are.

Yeah, yeah.

More and more I find I don't need to get out anything but my, you know, my boarding pass on my phone for getting through the airport.

But, and sometimes you don't even need that when you have the facial recognition systems, which is, which is really awesome.

But every now and then they do ask for the driver's license or other id and then I'm fishing through my wallet, you know, through my pocket, trying to find it, and it'd be really nice.

I'll already have my phone out if I could just tap or whatever it is instead.

So anyway, it's not this huge game changer, not by any stretch of the imagination, but nice little convenience for those devices.

Agreed.

Agreed.

All right, next up in awards points and more big news this week, Hilton did indeed launch their new Hilton or announce anyway their new Hilton Diamond Reserve status.

So this is something that got sort of leaked and rumored and we had talked about I think last week maybe, but now we have official confirmation from Hilton that there is a new diamond reserve status.

Is that exciting?

Is that, are you going to go for diamond reserve, Greg?

Well, let's talk about what it is and then we'll, we'll get to that.

First, let me mention that the lower tiers, so Silver, Gold, diamond don't lose any benefits.

They keep the same benefits they always had.

Nothing's changed there with terms of benefits.

Okay, so Hilton Diamond Reserve new status above Diamond.

It requires 40 stays or 80 nights and, and $18,000 of Hilton spend.

So you're not going to, if you spend 80 nights, you know, on award stays, you're not going to be anywhere close to diamond reserve status, unfortunately.

But if you spend a lot at Hilton's and a lot of nights there or a lot of stays there, then this is for you.

Let's go over what are the benefits of this, of this new tier.

First up, you get, when you earn diamond reserve status, you get one confirmed upgrade reward.

CUR is the letters for it.

So you get one cur and you can use that for, if I'm remembering right, I think it's one stay up to seven nights or is it five nights?

Sounds right.

It sounds right.

Yeah.

And so that should be usable just about anywhere where upgrades are possible with Hilton properties themselves.

It won't work with like SLH for example, and you can get another cur when you reach 120 nights.

Now that one is more like a milestone reward in that you don't have to have diamond reserve status.

So if you spend 120 nights on awards days, you'll still get that second one.

You won't get the first one though.

All you need is four months at Hilton.

Just spend a third of the year at Hilton Properties and you get yourself a confirmed upgrade.

So that's just 120 nights, that's all.

Yeah.

Versus, you know, if you look at competitors, and we'll talk about that later on, it's quite a few more nights than what you'll need with competitors in order to earn a confirmed upgrade.

But hey, it's there.

If you're spending a lot of nights at Hilton, you can get that.

And not only can you get the confirmable upgrades, but you'll get a space available upgrade these days that will include one bedroom suites.

So diamond reserve members apparently will be able to to be upgraded to a suite as a Hilton diamond or gold member.

You may have noticed that you rarely ever get upgraded to suites with Hilton.

So hopefully that'll be more common with this tier status.

Yeah.

So to me, this kind of just shines a light on the fact that it's not in the terms that you get upgraded as a Gold or diamond up to a suite, you know, that I wouldn't, I hadn't thought about that.

And so apparently, you know, that's something.

That.

You know, people like me didn't necessarily know.

And sort of a downside for Hilton about this new tier is that it's shining a light on some stuff that we weren't getting and didn't realize we weren't getting at the lower tiers.

Anyway, next up, you'll have guaranteed 4pm late checkout.

So that's something that we've been asking Hilton for for a long time.

It's something available with Hyatt and Marriott and this one ups them in that this does not have a resort exception.

So both Marriott and Hyatt say 4pm late checkout is guaranteed except at resorts and Hilton does not have that exception.

So that's, that's very nice.

Next up, you get access to premium clubs, which.

That sounds premium.

It sounds premium.

It does.

Now that also sounds kind of weird because you're like, if you know Hilton's program, you know that diamond status gets you into their club lounges.

So what's this about the premium clubs?

There are some number of premium clubs that are not diamond status eligible, where you have to pay for entrance, and they have a lot more premium offerings than a standard club would have.

Hilton was only able to name three examples, and our best guess is that those might be the only three that actually exist that are like that.

But anyway, you'll, you'll get access to those.

When you have diamond reserve status, do.

You think that's going to influence some hotels to now label their lounges as premium clubs?

Do you think that's gonna, you know, all of a sudden a lounge that you used to get access to, is that gonna become a premium club thing that is only accessible to, you know, the diamond reserve folks?

Maybe, maybe.

I suspect, I don't know.

I haven't done any research into this, but I suspect that if they're selling rooms as club rooms, then this is.

Then they're not premium lounges.

Like, you know, as long as you could get it included in the room rate, it probably is also included as a regular diamond as opposed to a diamond reserve member.

Again, that's just sort of my educated guess about what's happening there.

And so I think that a lot of hotels wouldn't want to give up the ability to upsell to club rooms, which I think they would have to do in this case.

Who knows?

We'll see.

Who knows.

That's a little scary that thought though.

Premium clubs out there, who knows?

Nobody knows what's going on there.

So yeah, just a few premium clubs, hopefully.

But.

But that's not all.

You also get a dedicated diamond reserve support team.

So I guess this is sort of like the equivalent of a my high concierge or Marriott Ambassador contact.

You get your diamond reserve support team, you know, support.

Yeah.

I mean, the difference is you're not connected with a single individual.

But on the plus side, it's supposed to be staff 24 7.

It's supposed to be the support people that have been getting the best reviews.

So they, that should be a very talented group of people who will work actively to support your.

Your needs.

So, you know, the proof will be in the pudding on that one, but I think there's a good chance that that will be a pretty valuable perk if, if they do it right.

Very good.

All right.

And then the final piece of this is that they've lowered qualification thresholds for existing tiers.

Yeah.

As I said earlier, there's no benefit changes.

There's also one thing I didn't mention earlier.

Nothing's been changed about the credit card perks.

So.

There never has been a way to earn elite nights or stays through credit card spend.

You could earn status levels, but not elite nights.

And so there is no way to accelerate earning diamond reserve by having a credit card by spending on the credit card.

So even if you have, like the Hilton Aspire, which gives you diamond status, that's not getting you any closer to diamond reserve.

You still need to meet the full, you know, 40 stays or 80 nights plus $18,000 of Hilton spend.

Yeah, that's a great point.

People often, I think, find that confusing.

They think, oh, I. Diamond status, so I've gotten credit for 60 nights or what will be 50 nights.

But that's not the way it works.

You don't get actually elite nights.

And that's pretty universal with credit card elite status.

If you're getting status from a shortcut of some sort from your credit card, Marriott's sort of the exception here, but the only sort of.

Because not really with the.

The brilliant fit follows this as well.

Generally speaking, if you're getting status from a credit card, whether it's the platinum card, one of the Hilton cards, etcetera, it does not reduce your path to the next level of status.

You still need to earn the qualifying nights to hit that next level.

And Hilton's no different here.

So you're still going to need all 80 knights.

You don't get any shortcut.

So that's, you know, that's worth knowing at least that.

All right, so here's my $0.02 on this new status level.

I think that what, what they're trying to achieve here is really good.

I like this collection of perks.

But.

And this is a pretty big.

But the requirements to get there are so far above their competitors to get similar perks and so far above the requirements to get Hilton diamond or gold status that it's just too big of a leap.

Like, I can't imagine saying, well, all right, I got diamond status from my Hilton Aspire card.

Now should I go for 80 more nights and $18,000 to get to that next tier?

That's just too far.

Hilton needs to add some kind of benefits along the way to entice us to get to this level of status.

I mean, sure, there will be Hilton loyalists that will get there, but if the goal is to attract more people to be loyal to Hilton than they are today.

I don't think this does it, because what it does is it really highlights how you can get much better perks.

Or let me reset that again.

What it highlights is that you could get similar perks at much lower thresholds with other programs.

And so I think for anyone who does a little bit of homework into what's going on here, they're going to say, you know what, if I direct my spend towards another chain, I'm going to get a lot more perks a lot quicker with that other chain.

So I hope that Hilton is going to look at that and maybe tweak this whole program a bit, maybe add milestone rewards that happen way before 120 nights.

As things stand today.

The only milestone rewards before then is at 40 nights.

You're getting 10,000 points per 10 nights.

And that, first of all, Hilton points are worth so little that that's such a minor incentive and it's not getting you any of those perks, elite perks that.

That people are after.

You need to do something about that Hilton.

Yeah, I would agree.

You know, I think in fairness to Hilton, ish.

Maybe, I guess maybe we're looking at it differently than they are.

We're looking at the loyalty program as a way to incentivize people to, to stretch and, and stay more, and become more loyal.

And maybe Hilton's looking at this as they needed a way to actually reward the people who are spending $18,000 a year at Hilton, because as it stood, there was no benefit for those people that they couldn't just get with a $450 credit card.

There was no way to reward their, their most valuable customers, basically because they just didn't have a mechanism for that in their program.

So they weren't competitive with a Marriott or a Hyatt because there was no way to sort of thank those people for their great business.

So I guess, you know, maybe from that perspective, this program at least gives them a way to say thank you to those folks and make them feel as special as they would with Marriott or Hyatt Preps.

That's.

That's a great point.

It's a really great point.

And it's sort of consistent with Hilton's.

You know, Hilton all along has been the easiest program to earn, to get status just by having a credit card.

And, and so what they've done is instead of making people loyal by saying, you need to do this to get to this tier, they've been like, let me give you basically perks almost for free just by having this credit card.

And then we're hoping that you're going to like those perks and keep coming back.

So it's a little bit of a different thing.

So you're right.

Maybe they'll be like, hey, you $18,000 spenders, we're going to give you some really nice stuff.

And so we hope that is going to make you happy and feel really good about being a Hilton loyalist.

So I think that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we'll talk more about that and your other options here in today's main event.

Main event time Elite Benefit Battle Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and ihg.

Which one has the best and easiest to achieve free breakfast lounge access, suite upgrade Certificates and guaranteed 4pm late checkout?

Let's get into it.

So we've got a lot of stuff to consider here.

There's a whole lot there in that list.

But let's talk about some of the shortcuts to status to start, I think.

Right.

So we'll start out with Hilton because as we just mentioned, they have the easiest shortcuts to status, arguably among all the major chains.

So you've got Hilton Gold status, which comes with an AMEX Platinum card.

So whether it's consumer or business, they all feature Hilton Gold status as one of the perks.

You can get the Hilton Surpass credit card.

The Hilton Honors Surpass credit card comes with Gold status, or the Hilton Business card also gives you Gold status.

So those are easy shortcut ways to get Gold status.

And you can get Hilton diamond status just by having the Hilton Honors Aspire American Express card.

So that card's a little pricey, but it comes chock full of perks.

There's a whole bunch of perks that make it pretty worthwhile.

So that diamond status might not feel terribly expensive despite the price tag on the card.

So pretty easy.

Just get the right credit card and you got yourself either Hilton Gold or.

Hilton diamond and boom, you're done.

Yep.

And again, as we go through these, we're not going to be listing all possible shortcuts or, you know, all the ways of getting each level of Elite status, rather talking about some key ones that get you something meaningful easily.

With Hyatt, meaningful perks started at 20 nights because they have milestone rewards that can be valuable starting then.

And globalist status, which is where you get the really good stuff starts, is at 60 nights.

Now, shortcuts for getting there really are about having the right credit cards and spending a lot on Them.

So with the World of Hyatt personal card, you automatically get five elite nights each year, and every 5k of spend gets you two more qualifying nights.

The World of Hyatt business card gives you five qualifying nights for every $10,000 of spend.

So that's where we are with shortcuts to Hyatt.

The other this is sort of a shortcut is that starting at 40 nights, one milestone benefit is a guest of honor award.

And I'm mentioning that because you can use that for yourself to give yourself globalist status for one stay.

And so really, the globalist perks that normally would require 60 nights sort of indirectly start at 40 nights with Hyatt.

Yeah, well, the funny thing is because that could be valid for a stay of up to seven nights.

Once you hit 40, if you use that for a seven night stay, you effectively have globalist status for those seven nights.

And then you'd only need three more before you'd get another guest of honor award that you could use for seven nights and get yourself to six.

You know, pretty close to 60 anyway, so.

So you could close that gap between 40 and 60 with globalist perks on most of the nights between 40 and 60, depending on how you play it.

Right.

All right, next up is IHG.

IHG has their meaningful perks starting at 20 nights.

So at 20 nights you can earn, I think, a sweet upgrade.

We'll talk about that in a little bit.

Diamond status requires 40 nights.

And so your shortcut to those levels of status is you can get the ihg Premier or IHG Business Card and spend $40,000 on it, and that will get you IHG One diamond status.

So pretty simple, straightforward.

$40,000 spent on one of the IHG cards gets you diamond status.

Yeah, it's worth mentioning that when we talk about IHG perks that require knights rather than status, the credit card spend doesn't help you there.

So that's actually the same with Hilton.

With Hilton and ihg, there's no way to earn knights through credit card spend, but you can get to different status levels that way.

Okay, next up we have Marriott, where meaningful perks start at platinum status, which requires 50 knights.

And you can get there with one card.

So get the Bonvoy Brilliant card that gives you platinum status.

It also gives you 25 knights.

And that's important because Marriott also has milestone rewards that are based on knights.

So if you want to get to the 50 knight milestones or the 75 knight, you need to earn knights on top of the automatic platinum Status that the Brilliant card gives you.

Most other consumer cards give you 15 elite knights towards status.

Again, the Bonvoy Brilliant is 25 knights.

The consumer cards don't stack.

So if you have multiple consumer.

So if you have multiple consumer Marriott cards, you'll only get, you know, 15 nights or 25 nights if you have the Brilliant as one of them.

The business card, though, the Bonvoy business card will give you 15 elite knights and that does stack with the consumer cards.

So you could have as many as 40 knights every year just by having the Bonvoy Brilliant card and the Bonvoy Business card.

Finally, the Bonvoy Boundless card will let you earn one elite qualifying night for every $5,000 of spend.

So you can throw that into the mix as well.

Yeah.

And so if you ask yourself, well, if I have the Bonvoy Brilliant, that already gives me Platinum, why do I care about the Elite Knights?

That's because there are those sort of milestone Y type rewards that you can earn.

So you could, for instance, choose nightly upgrade awards once you achieve 50 elite nights.

So Greg's point about a Bonvoy Brilliant and a Bon Voyage business would give you credit for 40 elite nights every year.

You'd only need to spend 10 nights at Marriott in order to, to unlock that choice benefit that comes at 50 nights.

So that's why you might care about the elite nights, even if you have a card that already gives you Marriott Platinum status.

Yeah, if you're really into Marriott, I can't see not having a consumer card and a business card because for one thing, they'll each give you a free night every year on the anniversary.

Well, depending on which consumer card you have.

And so that could make it worth the annual fee right there.

And then you get all those elite nights towards status.

So again, that's if you're a Marriott loyalist.

I think that makes a lot of.

Of sense.

Yep.

All right, let's now start comparing the different perks and see who has the best of all of these things.

And let's start with our favorite free breakfast.

Who does free breakfast the best and how do they do it?

They're a little bit different in how they provide breakfast to us.

Well, I mean, so who does it best is a tough question to answer.

Right.

Because we, we got to talk probably about which are easier or easiest to achieve and then which are actually the most useful.

Because those are two different questions, I think, or two different answers, certainly for me.

So.

All right.

I mean, out of the, the different ones you can get here I think the easiest clearly is Hilton, because with Hilton you can get gold status just by having the right credit card.

But I hesitate on calling them even a breakfast status because within the US you get a daily food and beverage credit between 10 and $25 per person for up to two people.

And it varies in amount based on the type of property that you're at.

Overseas, you still get continental free breakfast.

So when you're not in the US you get continental free breakfast.

I just experienced that actually at the Hilton Marea where you got access to the cold buffet as a Hilton Gold or higher member.

If you wanted hot food though, it was an extra nine bucks.

So.

So they did limit that to continental as is advertised on some places.

You'll get a free full breakfast abroad anyway, so that's the easy one.

The others are a little bit more difficult.

Yeah, well, let's talk about what they offer first.

So Nick already described what Hilton offers.

Hyatt and IHG both offer daily full breakfast.

Hyatt, you have to have globalist status or be on a guest of honor award to get that.

With IHG you have to have diamond status.

The difference between them, Hyatt will give you daily full breakfast for up to two adults and, and two children, whereas IHG is for the member plus one guest.

So at most you have two people.

So that makes IHG sound, I mean that makes Hyatt sound better.

But in, in places with a lounge, with Hyatt you might be only given, it really depends on the Hyatt, but you might be only given lounge access.

Where you get breakfast there, that might not be as good as the, as the restaurant breakfast that you would have gotten if you had stayed at an IHG property.

So it really depends what you're looking for.

All right, so with the.

Oh, and then Marriott, let's talk about what Marriott offers for breakfast.

It's all over the board.

You name any particular possibility and there is probably a brand or a exception that gives you that from nothing.

So you have to have platinum status to qualify for any sort of breakfast benefit.

With Marriott, some brands will give you nothing.

Like staying at a Ritz, you get nothing.

Some brands will give you a single ten dollar credit, some will give you ten dollars per person per day.

Some will give you a free continental breakfast, some will give you breakfast in the lounge.

And there is a really complicated set of rules that determine which you're supposed to get.

And then there's the fact that Marriott allows hotels to willy nilly make exceptions to those rules.

So what kind of breakfast benefit will you get with Marriott?

Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's awful, sometimes it's nothing.

That's just the way it is, unfortunately.

Okay, so worth mentioning that when, when you get it with Marriott, it's officially for two.

Two.

Two adults in the register to the room.

So good to know.

Like you said, that still varies in terms of how different properties apply that, but I've definitely run into that where I've had to pay for the kids.

Right.

Okay, now let's.

Let's talk about first the achievability of these free breakfasts and then the.

Then we're going to rank them by quality.

So achievability, I'd say Hilton has to be number one because you can get this free breakfast just by having a $150 card.

Right.

The Hilton Surpass or the Hilton Business card gives you gold status and that gives you this benefit.

Boom.

Also, if you happen to have a platinum card or a Spire card, then you also will have Elite status.

Good enough for this free breakfast.

So really easy.

Marriott is very close behind.

You also only need one card, but it's a very expensive card.

You need the Bonvoy Brilliant card, Which is what, 650, something like that?

It is, it is.

I mean, it can be worth it if you're going to have a couple of stays at Marriott's with very expensive breakfasts.

But.

But it is very expensive to get.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the card has other perks that could make it worth having.

But anyway, so I put it below Hilton, really, because there's only one card that'll get you there automatically, and it's much more expensive than some of the Hilton options.

Third up, I'd say ihg.

If you have the IHG Premier card or the Business card Twin, and you spend $40,000 on that card, you get diamond status.

And that'll give you free breakfast for the rest of that year and all of the next.

Hyatt is probably the hardest to get the free breakfast benefit because you have to get globalist or you have to get a Guest of Honor award to apply.

And so you have to do a combination.

You can do a combination of spending on credit cards plus, you know, stay the required number of nights, or you could do all of one or all of the other, but either way, it's not as easy as some of these others.

Yeah.

And because Hyatt's footprint is smaller, it's not as easy to achieve that number of nights necessarily, depending on where you're traveling.

Either in terms of actually staying places.

So I agree.

Hyatt has the hardest to achieve out of those four.

But now that we've talked about the relative ease of achieving those, what about the quality?

I mean, how do you rank these?

Who's got the best benefit?

Second best, third, fourth?

Where do you rank these?

Yeah, so I put Hyatt and IHG as number one that are.

I think they're roughly equal.

I talked about this a little bit before that Hyatt has the benefit of allowing up to two kids.

IHG has the benefit of even if there is a lounge, you still get restaurant breakfast.

And so you might prefer that for.

So they're.

They're first.

I put them tied for first for.

And tied for second.

I put Hilton or Marriott, and now this one is easily debatable.

The reason Hilton doesn't get an automatic win here over Marriott is that, you know, first of all, within the US you often don't get enough of a food and beverage credit to cover breakfast outside the US all they guarantee is continental breakfast.

Marriott, some chains on a blue moon, on an alternate Tuesday do guarantee full breakfast, even within the United States.

But of course they have that complicated mess of rules.

Rules and exceptions that make it really difficult.

Difficult.

So I don't know, what do you think, Nick?

Who would you rank higher there, Hilton or Marriott for this benefit?

That's so tough.

Really, it's, it's really.

Who would I rank below the other one more so because I don't get particularly excited about either one.

Which one is.

Is the fourth place?

I don't know.

I'm not sure because like you said, it's.

Marriott has so many exceptions that even I was just taking a trip and I was on slack with the rest of the frequency saying, am I gonna get breakfast?

I'm not sure.

I can't figure it out.

I'm looking through terms and, and I write about this kind of thing for a living.

So if it confuses me, then it probably confuses some other folks out there.

So I hate that about Marriott.

The inconsistency is ridiculous.

They really just need to have a more consistent benefit.

And that's where IHG kind of blew them out of the water when they revamped their diamond status that they made it.

And I had said at the time I didn't think that IHG could achieve it in terms of making it consistent, but they have.

So.

So that.

I hate that about Marriott, but I hate the food and beverage credit at Hilton.

Now, some people probably love it because maybe you're not a breakfast person.

Maybe you're already booking a rate, a corporate rate that includes breakfast.

And so it doesn't matter to you.

You didn't need free breakfast and now you've got a food and beverage credit.

You can use the bar the night before or whatever.

So some people perhaps like that, but I don't like that either because it rarely ever covers breakfast for two.

Forget about four because I'm usually traveling with my kids.

So I guess out of those two, I'm going to take Marriott slightly over Hilton.

But man, the inconsistency makes that tough.

Yeah, and for those, you know, listening at home who, you know are saying, but hey, I stayed in a Hilton or a Marriott and got an amazing breakfast.

Yes, right.

There are definitely, definitely hotels where, where the benefit is fantastic and would probably beat anything you'd find at, at most Hyatt or IHG properties.

But that's not the standard, that's not required.

And so it.

Yeah, I'll just stop there.

Yes, agreed, agreed.

Okay, so breakfast out of the way.

Let's move on to upgrade certificates.

So who's got the upgrade certificates and how do you get them?

Let's first talk about that.

Yeah, let's talk about what.

We'll talk about what they are and then we'll go on to the achievability rankings and the quality rankings.

So Hilton at 80, once you get Diamond Reserve status, which requires like 40 stays or 80 nights, plus $18,000 of Hilton spend, and then again at 120 nights, you'll get a confirm confirmable upgrade reward, which is confirmable at the time of booking up to seven nights.

So you can apply that on your stay and get confirmed into a suite at the time of booking.

That sounds really good.

Now I said that sounds.

Hyatt has sweet upgrade rewards that you can get as Milestone rewards at 40 nights.

And every 10 nights after that for a few times, you can.

You actually get two instead of just one.

And then starting at, I think 70 nights and every, every 10 nights after that, you could get one more.

So you can get a lot of these if you stay a lot of nights with Hyatt.

And these are confirmable at the time of booking for up to seven nights.

So very, very good.

These are really the, you know, the pinnacle, what we point to when we say who's done the confirmable upgrades correctly or best.

You know, Hyatt's looking really good.

Hilton maybe will be at that level, but you can only get up to two a year.

With Hilton IHG, you can get these at 20 nights, 40 nights and 70 nights as milestone rewards.

And these are not confirmable at the time of booking.

They're confirmable up to 14 days before your stay.

And each one is good for up to five nights.

Marriott at your 50 night and 75 night choice benefits, you can pick five nightly upgrades.

So instead of there being one certificate for whole stay, what they do is they have these individual nightly upgrade awards.

You have to have enough to cover your whole stay or else you can't apply it to your stay.

An advantage there is you could use them on, you know, multiple shorter stays.

So you could use them on up to five different stays of one night each.

The downside is they're confirmed no more than five days before your stay.

So on some brands they're not confirmed till three days before.

And the way it works is you can apply them right at the time of booking, but they don't even begin to look for availability until five days before or three days before.

And then each day until the day before your stay, they check to see whether some magical system formula has decided you get the upgrade or not.

And if not, then you get a.

Sorry, this didn't, this didn't work for you.

So calling them confirmable upgrade certificates is a little bit of a stretch there.

Oh, it's, yeah, it is a stretch because, I mean, I guess they're confirmable, but not, not by you or a Marriott agent.

It's rather by the Marriott algorithm because it's, it's worth highlighting here that it, it's not based on the room you want being available.

Like there may be a suite or whatever it is you want to get upgraded to available.

Maybe the specific thing you've asked for is available to book, but they won't necessarily upgrade you.

There's some magical algorithm that decides whether you get upgraded or not, and it's not somebody at the desk at the hotel in question.

So, yeah, it's, it's confirmable, but only by the algorithm.

That's right.

All right, what do you think about achievability?

Let's, let's rank them.

I mean, IHG is clearly the winner here because you can get one of these at 20 nights.

So in terms of achievability, that's a pretty low threshold.

20 nights in order to earn a sweet upgrade award.

Now, it's not as good of a suite upgrade award as, as a Hyatt or potentially the Hilton Confirmable ones in the sense that you can't confirm it at the time of booking, but 14 days before should give you enough time to decide whether or not you actually want to stay there, depending on whether or not the upgrade clears.

So that's obviously the easiest, I think Marriott, I guess is number two.

I, I think I'll agree with what, what you're going to say here.

Marriott, you could just get the Bonvoy Brilliant and the Bonvoy business and you'll be at 40 nights.

Then you just need 10 more nights at Marriott Properties in order to get yourself those confirmable ish upgrade awards.

And then Hyatt, you know, you'd have to spend money and nights at Hyatt in order to get to 40 in order to get one of those confirmable upgrades.

I think they're pretty easily number three.

Yep.

All right.

And then we haven't mentioned Hilton yet.

I put Hilton down as number 10.

On the confirmable sweet upgrade award list.

Because, so you need, you need, you know, 80 nights plus $18,000 or 120 nights to get your first confirmable upgrade reward.

And that's just so far above the others that it's.

Yeah, you know, I'm, it's fourth in the list, but I gave it a number 10 achievability.

One of the things that's interesting here is that in both of these first two categories, free breakfast and upgrade certificates, the, there's, there's a almost exact inverse relationship between how easy it is to get the perk and how good the perk is, you know, so like Hyatt and Hilton have the best confirmable upgrades, at least on paper, but they're also the hardest to get of these four, you know, and then for free breakfast, you know, Hyatt and IHG have the best, but again they're the hardest to get that level of status of the four.

So that makes sense, you know, that, that if, presumably when, when a brand is providing a good perk, it costs them more than providing a bad perk and so it makes sense for it to be a little bit harder to achieve.

So speaking of a good perk or a bad perk, where do you rank this suite Upgrade awards.

So the Hyatt and Hilton are potentially tied for number one.

I mean, on paper they're the same seven, you know, one upgrade certificate can you can use to upgrade at the time of booking for up to seven nights.

So the quality again on paper is the same.

We'll see how the execution is with Hilton when it rolls out.

And then I put, I think that, you know, I put IHD and Marriott as next, but I really think that IHG has a leg up over, over Marriott.

So I'll say IHG is second and then Marriott is third.

Yeah, you know, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna argue actually on the number one, number two, that Hyatt deserves the number one spot by itself.

Now, like you said, it's a little hard to say since we haven't actually seen the Hilton Upgrade Awards in action, but unless I missed this, I think the reason why I would give Hyatt the edge here is that their suite Upgrade awards are giftable.

So you can gift that to somebody else.

So maybe you don't need a suite, but maybe you know somebody else who does, or you just want to treat somebody to a nice day, etc.

You can gift that to anybody online very easily.

You just need to type in their, you know, world Hyatt number, email address, or whatever it is, last name.

I can't remember what they require, but very easy to transfer that to somebody else and let somebody else use it.

So for that reason, I think I would give them the leg up also.

I just have more faith in, and I had to execute this perk.

Well, as things stand, I mean, as things stand, they're pretty easy to use in the sense that, you know, if there is a suite available, you can use it on a paid stay or an award stay, whereas I don't, I'm not even sure how that's going to work with Hilton yet.

I don't know whether that matters or not, paid stay or awards day, but I didn't see anything about them being giftable.

That's true.

I really doubt they're giftable in any way.

And you could also argue that that improves Hyatt's achievability of this perk, because you don't necessarily need to, to have 40 nights in order to get a sweet upgrade award if you have a really good friend who spends a lot of nights at a Hyatt hotel.

So, yeah, that all makes a lot of sense to me.

I, I, I, I am fine with that.

So we're going to move Hyatt to number one, Hilton to number two, then IHG is three and Marriott is four with the suite upgrade awards.

Agreed.

Yeah, yeah, the Marriott Sweet Upgrade Awards.

It's funny, we talked about just recently about how they only clear a few days in advance and how not useful they are.

And then of course I, I used one and it worked out well.

Just A couple of days ago.

So every now and then they work out well, but you know, it's so inconsistent.

Yeah.

And you know, meanwhile, I think when we last talked about it on the show, I said, you know, usually they work for me.

And then just a couple weeks ago, I tried using one on a one night stay.

It should have been an easy win and I didn't get anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I don't.

I assume you're in the same situation where I'm gonna have these things expire at the end because I didn't use them all now.

And so I'm gonna have some expire at the end of the year that just probably aren't going to get used again.

So, yeah, I've got, I've got two more in the running for an end of year stay and so we'll see whether that clears or not.

It would be nice.

I hope so.

But yeah, I'm not.

Not expecting much that.

Not hopeful.

Just hopeful.

That's right.

All right.

All right, let's talk lounge access now.

So if you're in a hotel with a lounge, can you get into that for free without having to pay up to a more expensive club room?

Hilton, you get that as a diamond benefit.

Now, there are at least three exceptions out there where there are premium lounges that they won't get you into.

But for the most part, all you need is diamond status with Hilton to get in Hyatt.

Hyatt has two ways.

Starting at 20 nights, you can get club access awards which will let you get in for a single stay.

Or once you get to globalist status, you'll get into club lounges for free while you have globalist status.

Or if you have a guest of honor award applied to your stay, you'll get in because you're treated as a globalist.

So Hyatt has a number of ways to get into their clubs.

IHG offers club memberships at 40 nights and 70 nights.

So those are milestone rewards.

It's not something you get with IHG diamond status.

It requires those number of nights to be able to pick it.

And what you get is you get a membership that's good for the rest of that calendar year and all of the next.

There's an interesting little trick there where if you hit this milestone near the end of a calendar year, you have some time before you have to pick it.

And so if you wait until January 2, or probably even January 1 would work to pick that milestone reward, then that's good for all of that calendar year.

And all of the next.

So you get two full years of lounge access that way.

And then Marriott, it's a benefit that comes with platinum status.

So that's your status.

You get at 50 nights.

And what's worth pointing out here is that kind of like breakfast, maybe not as severe as breakfast, but there are brands that do not honor that perk.

So, you know, Ritz Carlton, for example, you're not going to get into their lounges, not without paying extra.

So that's something worth knowing.

All right, with that, what do you think are the achievability rankings?

Well, very easy to get access with either Hilton or Marriott.

All you need is a credit card.

So with Hilton, if you have the Hilton Aspire card, you get Hilton diamond status, that gets you access to lounges.

And with Marriott, if you get the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card, that gives you Marriott platinum status, gives you access to lounges.

So in terms of achievability, that's as easy as it gets.

Yeah, yeah, they're both super easy.

With Hyatt you just need 20 nights.

So I'd put them second, you know, after Hilton and Marriott.

Or you could, you know, if you, again, if you have a friend that got a club access award as a perk and they gift it to you, that's another way to, to get in.

So you can start getting into clubs pretty darn easily.

With Hyatt, IHG, it starts at 40 nights, but it's, but it's, you know, a different level than sort of a single stay access.

The way I was talking about with the club access awards with Hyatt, because with IHG it's a membership that'll give you up to two years of membership.

Yeah.

We should probably also mention though that out of these, Hyatt is the only one, I think.

Well, sort of that, that'll let you just book into a room that gets club access, you know, whereas you, you and I say let you book into.

You could obviously pay for a club access room at any of these, but with points with high on an award day, you can sometimes book a club room or you can add club access for points on top of the, the cost of an award.

So you can't do that with Marriott, for instance, and with Hilton, I guess theoretically you could, but it would be a ton of points usually to book any sort of premium room rewards.

So.

So you do have a sort of another way to get club access with Hyatt beyond what you do with other programs.

And same story with suites as well.

Right, right, right.

Right, true.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, let's rank the quality of the perks now.

So I put IHG as number one only because their Intercontinental hotels, their club lounges are known to be really special.

Now I haven't ever that I can remember have had access to an InterContinental Hotel's Club Lounge because having even diamond status doesn't get you in.

But what I hear is that they have like full menu, like breakfast and lunch and dinner, at least at some, if not all of them.

So that's different from your standard like club lounge with like Marriott or Hyatt, where they tend to have breakfast and then just sort of evening snacks and stuff and not much beyond that.

So that's why I put IHD first.

Definitely.

Debatable.

Second, I put Hyatt and Hilton as roughly comparable.

I mean, I know Hilton has a couple, maybe three exceptions, but other than that it's just like, I think you're just if, if you have the right status or access reward, you just get in and that's fine.

And then Marriott, I put last just because again, they have so many exceptions that are brand base that, you know, you may not get in at all and that would be very frustrating.

Yeah, yeah.

Easy to agree that Marriott has the lowest quality perk in this regard.

You know, ihg, I understand why you put them number one.

I think the thing there is that you have to be staying in Intercontinentals, not other IHG brands, because there just aren't.

There are very few lounges that aren't at Intercontinental.

I think I saw one at a Crowne Plaza once or twice in my life.

But generally speaking, at the vast majority of IHG brands there is no club lounge.

So it's just basically if you're staying in Intercontinentals.

So, yeah, it's nice if you stay at Intercontinental Properties, but if you don't primarily stay at Intercontinental Properties, then it's not very good.

And you might say the same is true at other brands.

But there's so many more Hyatt properties out there that have lounges or Hilton properties, even that have lounges.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, yes, you, you make a really good point.

So the, it's sort of like the quality of the perk, if you happen to be at the right hotel.

Yeah.

Is probably better with ihg, but the quality of the.

Yeah, the perk in terms of applicability.

Right.

Is much more broadly applicable at Hyatt's and Hilton's because there are so many more lounges and they say so many more Hilton.

I don't See tons of lounges at Hilton properties either, but, but there's still more Hilton's out there that have, you.

Know, I think that's a fair bet.

Fair bet.

Okay, so this is not a science, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, that just hit me as we were talking about it.

I was like, ah, but ihg, you know, it's just, it's so, so rare, you know, because it's only that one brand basically.

That's all.

So all right, like, yeah, that's, that's that.

Let's move on to our last perk we're going to evaluate is 4pm guaranteed 4pm late checkout.

So Hilton just added this.

With their diamond reserve status, they're hard to get top tier status.

And you could also get it if you have a guest of honor award on your stay.

It's not guaranteed at resorts though.

The 4pm late checkout IHG does not have anything in their own rewards program, but they have something that's specific to Intercontinental Hotels, which is Intercontinental Ambassador status that you could just buy and you buy it and it's good for a year and that guarantees you 4:00pm late checkout at Intercontinental Hotels themselves.

Finally, Marriott will give you guaranteed 4pm late checkout if you have Platinum status.

And just like Hyatt, it is not guaranteed at resorts.

I think it's actually worth a mention, even though we jumped over it here, that both Hyatt and Marriott also have a 2pm late checkout benefit at a much lower level of status quo.

We haven't even discussed Hyatt, Discoverist or Marriott Gold status, but those are statuses that are relatively easy to achieve and you get a 2pm late checkout on those.

And that's useful.

I find sometimes there are times when I'm really frustrated by the fact that I have to get out of a Hilton property at 11am When I really just need a couple extra hours.

And so I think that it's nice to have that as an option too for people who aren't going to actually stretch for the 4pm late checkout.

I, I totally agree.

I mean I had to recently at a, I think it was a Hilton maybe kind of beg for a noon checkout when it was supposed to be 11 and, and I have diamond status.

And you know, knowing that a low tier or mid tier elite with merit or Hyatt would have been guaranteed 2pm it's kind of frustrating knowing that it's so much better with, with those change for, for that benefit.

Yep.

But okay, so the 4pm checkout though is the gold standard here.

And that's, that's really the aim for a lot of us anyway.

That's, that's awesome having a 4pm checkout.

So which is the most achievable?

Well, IHG is I think clearly the easiest to achieve though it only applies to Intercontinental again.

So you can just buy Intercontinental Ambassador Status, get your 4pm checkout and, but you know, that's nice if you're staying in Intercontinentals and doesn't help you at all if you're staying at any of IHG's other properties.

Yeah.

Then Marriott is clearly second because all you need is the Bonvoy brilliant card that gives you platinum status and boom, you get the guaranteed 4pm late checkout.

Except at resorts.

Hyatt is third.

I mean it requires you get at least the, you know, 40 nights in order to get the guest of honor or 60 nights to get your global status.

Now you could do that through spend a combination of spend and actual nights at Hyatt Hotels.

And then Hilton is last with because you have to get diamond reserve status.

And we've talked about how hard that is.

So I once again put them not as fourth, but as tenth.

So true.

So well deserved.

Well deserved.

Held in the 10th place finish there.

So.

But what's important is, is our ranking.

So, so what is the.

How do we rank the quality of the, of these benefits across these chains?

And I'm now I put Hilton as last on achievability, like far last.

But I put them number one because their 4pm guaranteed late checkout includes resorts.

Yeah, I mean it's hard to argue with that because there's certainly plenty of times when I've been at a resort where I really would have loved to have had late checkout so we could use the amenities on the checkout date before a late flight or something.

And I have not necessarily been able to get that with other chains or certainly wasn't guaranteed.

So having that guaranteed, I think that's a great move on Hilton's part.

Hopefully the resorts can all accommodate that because I think the reason why there's the resort exception is that it's tougher certainly at peak times for a resort to guarantee that because you've got people in the lobby waiting to check in.

And so hopefully they're able to execute that if they can.

Then I think we need to start leaning on Hyatt and Marriott to say hey, if Hilton can achieve that, why can't you?

Right, right.

But Marriott and Hyatt are, you know, really good because of the 4pm Guaranteed, except at resorts.

And, you know, at least with, with Marriott it's, you know, all you need is platinum status, which is so easy to get.

So that that's actually, I think, really good.

And that's not something I've seen as much as many problems with delivery on with Marriott as I've seen with like the free breakfast benefit, for example.

And then last up for perk quality.

I mean, I put iceg just because it's so limited.

Just Intercontinental hotels.

Yeah, yeah, I have to agree with that.

And I don't think it's easy to rank Marriott or Hyatt one above the other.

They're both good on the 4pm checkout.

I rarely have to push back much, and if I do, it's more of a property exception than it is a general rule thing.

So they're both pretty good in terms of honoring that and proactively offering the 4pm late checkout.

I think so, Yeah, I agree.

Marriott and Hyatt number two, IHG number three, pretty easily there.

All right, I think that brings us to the question of the week.

This week's question of the week.

All right, this week's question of the week came in via email.

And so let's see, Pura Vida asks us about this said, and I'm going to summarize a little bit here, but I recently got the Atmos Rewards Summit, so the Alaska Atmos Rewards Summit card.

I'd like to start my player 2 on the Atmos rewards ladder by referring her to the bank of America Atmos Ascent card.

Is there a way for me to get a referral bonus when I don't even have that card?

That's question number one, which is going to be an easy one to answer, I think.

Question number two.

Are there any bank programs that allow you to refer to a lesser card when you have a Premium card?

If I have her fill out, you know, a, an Ascent card with my referral or code or whatever while I get the bonus.

So question number one, if you have the Summit card, can you refer someone to the Ascent card?

No, I don't think so.

These are issued by bank of America.

I don't think bank of America has a referral program at all.

So that's pretty unusual with, with the banks, but unfortunately that's the case.

The second question about, are there any situations where you could refer someone to a lesser card if you Have a premium card.

The, the number one option here is American Express because if you have any American Express card that's not a co brand, like not a Delta or Hilton card, you can refer, you can refer someone else to any of the Amex cards, like to any of them.

And so we've referred to that as like multi referrals.

So we'll add a link in the show notes to a post about Amex Multi referrals.

If you have a co branded card.

So let's say you have a Delta reserve card for example, and you want to refer someone to another AMEX card, you can only refer them to another Delta card, but you could refer them, so you could refer them to the Delta Gold card for example, if you have the, the higher level card.

So those are two options.

Chase within card collections will let you refer different ones.

So if you have the, you know, the Ink Business reserve card, you could refer to any of the other Ink cards and I think like Southwest, I think you refer to any of the Southwest cards, things like that.

Yep, yeah, if you have any Southwest card, you can refer to any other Southwest card.

So, so yes, those are the two major players that allow for that Amex super easy, both up and down.

You could have a card that has no annual fee, you could have an old AMEX Everyday card and you can refer someone to a Platinum card and you get whatever the bonus shows for the card from which you generate the referral link.

So you know, if you have a Platinum card that offers 30,000 points per referral, you can refer someone and they can click through your link and they can open a blue Business plus card for instance, that has no annual fee.

And as the Platinum cardholder, when you give them that referral link from your Platinum card and they click through and click around and find the Blue Business plus and open that card with no annual fee, you'll get the 30,000 points.

And so that's really nice.

So the AMEX Multi referrals, like Greg said, we'll have a link to that.

That's easy answer there.

And yes, Chase within some of the families, the card families, they'll allow you to refer to any other card within that.

But yeah, to my knowledge, bank of America has never had any sort of referral situation going on for their cards.

So that's unfortunate.

Citi once in a while has offered referrals, but it's not all the time.

And I don't think it's all cardholders.

I think if I remember correctly anyway.

I can't even Remember seeing those.

But yeah, maybe I'm, maybe I'm making that up.

And then Capital One, Capital One's one where sometimes you can refer to a somewhat lesser card.

It's very confusing with Capital One, it kind of depends on the card you have.

You'll just have to open the referral link and see, I know my wife's Spark Cash, for instance.

I think there's a lesser Spark card that you can also choose through her referral link.

But then with a Venture X referral, I don't think somebody can open a Venture.

And Capital One's kind of weird because if the person you refer already has a Capital One card, then you won't get the referral bonus, whereas that's not a restriction that applies with other banks.

So, yeah, those are the answers to your questions there, I think, anyway.

And that is certainly one of the ways I think both Greg and I earn additional points each year is by referring within our households.

If my wife's going to open a card, I usually refer her for it or vice versa.

Absolutely.

And you know, and the AMEX Multi referrals.

One last thing I just want to say about that is we talk sometimes about how amex Membership Rewards points are much easier to earn in big quantities than a lot of other programs.

And one is because there's a lot more cards that offer membership rewards points.

So you could sign up for, you know, get a bunch of welcome bonuses.

But the other is because as long as you have a few, you know, at least one card that earns membership rewards points, you can wait till there's some great offer for any MX card and then tell your family and friends about this great deal.

I mean, maybe even just pass them along an article from Frequent Miler, you know, showing how great of a deal it is for whatever the Delta Gold card or something, and use your referral link from your, let's say, AMEX Gold card and you'll earn membership rewards.

They'll earn the welcome offer, whatever it is for, in that example, the Delta card.

So it's, it's, it's a great kind of win, win for everybody when that's available.

Agreed?

Agreed.

All right.

Well, that brings us, I think, to the end of today's episode.

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