Here's a fairly quick rant about the foreign transaction fees with the SPG Amex:

I recently went on vacation with my family overseas. We booked one room on SPG points and paid for the other, at a Westin.

I booked through Chase's Ultimate Rewards website since there's no advantage to booking directly on SPG's website. Not sure what SPG could do about this part, but I get 2x UR points for doing it this way.

Next, since this was non-US, I paid using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. So, while I didn't get the 2x SPG points for the charge, I got 2x UR points instead - plus no currency conversion fee of 2.7%.

In the end, we spent a little over $2K. That works out to be about 8000 UR points that I will inevitably convert over to Hyatt points.

SPG and Amex: When are you going to lose the (increasingly archaic) foreign transaction fee? I want to love this card, but when I leave the country (which is when I really spend a lot) I leave this one at home.

Looks like I'll be staying at more and more Hyatts.