Tag: Major Updates

After testing dynamic award pricing with a small set of hotels earlier this year, IHG Rewards confirmed to AwardWallet this morning that it has expanded dynamic award pricing to more hotels around the world—including many regions here in the United States. Dynamic award pricing is usually bad news, but we are surprised to be finding some great deals using your IHG Rewards points now!

Emirates offers some of the best onboard products in the sky. But booking these aspirational seats can be expensive—even on award redemptions. Perhaps not anymore. Recent searches on Emirates' site are displaying a massive drop in carrier surcharges across the board. We are seeing some cuts to out-of-pocket costs as great as 90%!

Capital One has quietly shared the loss of two mileage transfer partners—Hainan Airways and Qatar Airways—effective May 13, 2020. If you've been meaning to transfer Capital One Miles to either of these partners, you'd better do it right away!

American Airlines has just added GOL Airlines—Brazil's largest domestic carrier—to its AAdvantage partner airlines, opening the door to earning and redeeming AAdvantage miles on GOL itineraries. But now that you can use AA miles for flights with GOL, the question is: should you?

Following the removal of partner award charts from its website, United Airlines has quietly increased award costs for flights on partner airlines. For flights starting July 1, United has raised award prices for travel on Star Alliance operated flights by roughly 10%. But our deep dive revealed how travelers can still skirt this increase. Also, we searched dozens of routes to piece together the new (unpublished) partner award chart.

American Express offers one of the largest collections of travel-oriented credit cards—some of which involve a significant annual fee. With travel at a standstill, many cardmembers are debating whether their travel cards are still worth the annual fee. In response, Amex just released the most comprehensive list of cardmember benefit updates we've seen yet.

American Express Membership Rewards is widely regarded as one of the most-valuable transferrable currencies thanks to having over 20 transfer partners and lucrative transfer bonuses. However, the program just lost a little luster with the loss of one of its airline transfer partners.

Over the last few days, United has made earning elite status harder and removed partner award charts from its website. Both without any notice whatsoever. They say bad things come in pairs. In this case, they were right. In this post, we go through what this means for you.

Overnight, American Airlines moved the entire country of Morocco from Africa to Europe—at least for the purposes of award travel. Believe it or not, the impacts of this change are largely positive for award travelers traveling between many regions—including from the U.S. to Europe. Read more about the impacts on mileage costs, possible routings, and award ticket taxes and fees.

While Citi ThankYou Points isn't known for being the most valuable transferrable currency, it just added its 16th airline transfer partner: Emirates Skywards. This new partnership means you can now book Emirates' legendary first-class product to Europe for just 135,000 Citi ThankYou Points round-trip, or fly to Europe in Emirates business class for 90,000 points round-trip.

Citi just announced a major revamp of the Citi Premier. Among the new features are raised earning rates for restaurants and groceries as well as a new $100 hotel credit. In this post, we're digging into the new card benefits to see if the value proposition has improved or gotten worse.

Air France and KLM recently launched a new partnership with Virgin Atlantic, making both Flying Club and Flying Blue miles even more valuable. You'll now have the ability to book partner awards on either airline using the other's currency. In this article, we're digging into the new partner award options to highlight the best values.

American Airlines has dropped its $75 close-in booking fee for awards ticketed less than 21 days from the date of travel. At this point, this seems to be a genuinely positive change, without any obvious downside. Still, the lack of fanfare from American's PR team leaves us wondering if the other shoe is still waiting to drop.

Korean Air has announced massive changes to its loyalty program, SKYPASS. These changes involve major price increases in award redemptions. In this article, we're going to walk you through all the changes and how they will affect you as an award traveller.

American Express has announced sweeping changes to benefits across almost its entire range of business and personal cards, set to take effect on 01/01/2020. There are positive and negative changes and the updates affect both credit and charge cards. Check out the post for all the details.

After months of collecting data, we’re excited to announce that we’ve made point transfer and purchase times available to all AwardWallet members. In today's post, we're going to cover how you can use this new information and share what we've learned about buying and transferring miles while building this feature.

Delta has announced sweeping changes to its co-brand card lineup for 2020. We cover all the details in this comprehensive guide.

On September 22, 2019, Citi is cutting key travel and purchase protection benefits across its entire range of rewards cards. In this post, we revisit some of Citi’s most popular card benefits, and detail the best alternative cards and card issuers for each one.

Ahead of the launch of its new loyalty program in 2020, Aeroplan announced a slew of changes to its award program. We outline everything you need to know about the changes.

Singapore KrisFlyer has announced a devaluation to its Star Alliance partner awards. The new award chart will come into effect on April 16, 2019, so there is still time to book an award with the old pricing before the change takes effect.

Lufthansa has announced an award chart devaluation that will come into effect May 9, 2019. The changes are widespread and affect flights operated by Lufthansa and Star Alliance partners. Although this is bad news, most changes are moderate.

IHG is changing the number of points needed to redeem a free night at nearly 700 of its hotels on January 25, 2019. Although some properties will cost less, nearly 80% of the changes are price increases, so it's a good time to review your travel plans and see if there are any stays you should book in the next few days.

Singapore KrisFlyer has announced a significant price increase starting January 24th for premium-economy, business, and first-class award tickets on Singapore and SilkAir-operated flights. Mileage upgrades and the waitlist process are changing too, so now is a good time to check your travel plans and see if you can book before this devaluation kicks in.

Arrival Miles earned with the Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard® can be used to erase any travel purchase greater than $100 charged to the card. Discount airfare, train tickets, ferries, cruise charges, Airbnb, purchases from online travel agents and discount travel websites — all can be wiped with your Arrival Miles.

Chase has added JetBlue TrueBlue as a transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards as of August 26, 2018. The move comes unannounced the day after Chase dropped Korean Air as a transfer partner, and does restore some value to Ultimate Rewards especially if you're a JetBlue loyalist. This won't get you to Australia in suites, but it could help you help you top off an account to try Mint service on a transcontinental flight.

Hilton Honors has brought in 2018 with a slew of changes to their reward program. While in 2017 Hilton brought in some valuable changes (the ability to pool points), and some which were pretty worthless (using Hilton points to shop at Amazon), the changes in 2018 are more sweeping and adds value to those loyal to the program.

Singapore has announced a devaluation to its Star Alliance partner award chart. The change will come into effect starting December 7, 2017.