Originally Posted by
zyxlsy
SPG's 1.7 cent is conservative as well.
SPG at 1.7c is very conservative. Average hotel redemption value is close to 2c, so redemption for properties in the highest value quartile will be way above that. My average value is currently over 5c for hotels and 10c for points transferred to AA (with bonus offers). It's hard, as everyone's valuations will be different.
Now that I've had time to make some foreign transactions, my experiences for 2016 have been:
1) Mastercard 0.9933 vs xe.com.
2) Visa 1.0027 vs xe.com, dramatically improved.
(May be relevant that it was mostly AUD transactions and the AUD has been mostly very stable.)
3) Amex 1.0026 vs xe.com. Still by far the hardest to gauge, as it's erratic. The only reason the average isn't closer to MC is because of one transaction at 2.5% worse than the xe.com rate! Sometimes, it's more stable than the market rates too.
e.g. AUD transactions on 3 adjacent days.
xe.com rates for those days: 0.7359, 0.7425, 0.7437
Amex rates I received: 0.7373, 0.7374, 0.7374
Amex/xe.com: 1.0019, 0.9931, 0.9914