LWT3

I'm curious what peoples' strategies are for going after hotel points vs airline miles. Assuming both the AAdvantage card and the Hilton card are churnable, do you try to accumulate points in both? In what ratio? I assume nearly everyone values airline miles more and therefore goes after the AA card primarily, but to bring your total travel cost down, you need both, and Hilton is nice because they have properties everywhere.

I realize that airline miles are generally worth 1 cent or more vs Hilton points being worth a half cent, so if you apply for an HH card at 50,000 points, you're getting ~$250 of value vs ~$500 worth of AA miles. I guess it's easy to stick exclusively to AA miles if you solve the hotel problem via another program, like Mariott or SPG, but those can't be churned the way the HH card can (for now).

dukerau

I think you're being generous on the value of HH points and shortchanging the value of AA miles. But even at the values you state, I'd always go with AA miles. And I always do.

Keep in mind that AA miles can be used for hotels. It's an inefficient use, but you'd need to compare that inefficiency with the inefficiency of choosing to earn 50k HH instead of 50k AA. For me, I have no particularly affinity to Hilton properties, so I'd rather get hotel rewards elsewhere or book an independent hotel or VRBO/Airbnb. When you calculate the value of HH points on what you'd actually book in the absence of points, I don't think you'll commonly see a valuation as high as 0.5cents per point.

sdsearch

That's a big assumption. Normally, you can churn only one Hilton card every 2 years, but two AA cards (one personal, one business) every 2 years. Occasionally we may have "no 24 month language" links, but how long those remain available and for which program(s) is unpredictable.

Hilton points may not be the easiest hotel points to redeem at good value, but then AA miles these days aren't necessarily that easy to redeem at good value either:

deant

It also depends on which programs you are "rich" in. For example, right now my wife and I have plenty of airline miles for our planned trips but we are short hotel points. So for us, it is best to go after the HHonors points so we don't have to pay for hotels.

LWT3

True, but it's the present state of affairs. Both have churnable links now, and there have been churnable HH links almost nonstop from the time the 24 month restriction kicked in. The AA card hasn't been quite as dependable as the HH card, but it hasn't been far off either.

LWT3

I'm in a similar boat, and that's what prompted my question. I've got a ridiculous amount of AA miles and a large amount of HH points. I know AA miles are more valuable, but there's a question about the marginal value of one vs the other.

darthbimmer

I value AA points about 3x HH points, so without knowing any other factors under consideration I would always choose a 50k AA card offer over a 50k HH card offer.

One factor I suggest you consider is how you'll spend your points. Program devaluations every year or two erode away the long term value. Don't just amass piles of points for their own sake or for some notion of an awesome trip you night take 5 years from now. Chances are 5 years from now those points will buy only half as much.

sdsearch

But chances are also that 5 years from now it'll "cost" twice as much to replenish the points as it does to earn them now. So you have to factor in earning devaluations, not just redeeming devaluations.

For years, I had no idea how I'd ever spend my 260k-ish Club Carlson points. Place after place I went to it didn't make sense. Then suddenly I happened to be going to Cape Town on a day when every Protea hotel through Marriott had only "advance purchase" redemptions (ie, non cancellable, no changeable). So I went with 30k Club Carlson points a night for Radisson Blue La Vendome, and suddenly the Club Carlson stash I'd built up years ago during super-rich stay bonuses and high Avis rental bonuses was of use.

It's through experiences like these that I know I can't possibly predict how many hotel points of what kind I'll need years from now. So if it's easy to "over-collect" in one program for a while, and I"m not clear if it'll be as easy later (no, it's not as easy to earn big points in Club Carlson now as it was a few years ago), why not "over-collect" while it's easy?

LWT3

I agree with this. I understand the conventional wisdom of not collecting points and miles without having a plan, but the flip side is it's becoming harder to accumulate them, so within reason you should grab whatever is easy. For me, Chase will never be easy again due to 5/24. Same for Amex. I've had nearly every card. Citi's 24 month rule should and probably will put a big crimp in my ability to accumulate; fortunately, they've created more loophole links than anyone could have imagined since the rule kicked in.

To provide an answer to the question I posed in this thread, I've basically done what most would advise. Whenever both the AA and HH cards are available, I get the AA card. When the AA card isn't available, I get the HH card because it has almost never not been churnable since the 24 month rule went into effect. I'm still going to stick with that approach because of the relative value of the miles vs the points, but I was just reconsidering a bit because I have so many more airline miles than hotel points. Also, because MS has become so much harder, the idea of a $1,000 spend requirement appeals more than a $3,000 spend requirement, but so far it hasn't been enough to make me pick the HH card over the AA card.

Big picture: I will always have a use for AA miles (in-laws live in South America, and AA has a lot of good domestic flights I can take even though I'm in a Delta hub) and for HH points (because Hilton hotels are everywhere so should be an option for almost any itinerary). I'll keep grabbing both as long as they are easy to get, and right now that means a new Citi card every 33 days or so. Or two new cards actually, once my wife's apps are factored in.

darthbimmer

I take a similar approach. The question is not if I should churn for points but which card I should apply for next. And the answer is based not just on what cards are available for churning but also how worthwhile each program's points are to me based on my travel patterns.

walterj

With a citi card every 33 days, assuming you do other credit card applications, how do you avoid the 6 inquiries in 6 months rule?

LWT3

The 6 inquiries in 6 months is more of a rule of thumb than a hard rule. I can only assume that either the rule doesn't apply to me under Citi's algorithms or that most of my other apps don't hit the same credit reporting agency Citi pulls from for me. I've hit both Amex and Citi very hard over the last couple of years, so they must be pulling from different agencies.

sdsearch

First, the original rule is "no more than" 6 in 6. Ie, don't get to 7.

Second, as LWT3 already explained, it's 6 on whichever bureau Citi pulls for you. Some people are lucky to have different banks pull different bureaus, some other people are unlucky in that every bank seems to pull the same bureau for them. (Among other things, it may vary at the very least by state for most banks.)

So it can depend where you live and at which other banks you apply, beyond whether Citi's number for you is "6" or greater, as to whether you'll run into trouble doing one Citi app every 33 days.

Back about a dozen years ago, I kept up this pace but only with Citi (hardly applying for anything else), back in the days when you could apply for two AA cards at a time, but still no more than 2 every 65 days, and so I was doing 2 (at 25k bonus miles each) every 65ish days, and thus just about 6 inquiries from Citi every 6 months (assuming they didn't get merged by bureaus, which they may have), for a total of about 300k a year. It was especially important to concentrate on AA churning in those days, because back then AA miles from churning (as with AA miles from anything else) counted toward AA lifetime status. These days "all" that churning AA cards gets you is AA miles themselves.

LWT3

I wish I had discovered this hobby a decade earlier than I did.

walterj

I was rejected (too many inquiries) in October even though I only had four inquiries in the previous six months. Citi uses Experian and Equifax for my applications. Using MyIDCare to see my inquiries and new accounts, I did notice besides the inquiries, that with Experian, I had three new accounts in the period, two from BofA and one from Barclays. BofA and Barclays did not report an inquiry but did report new accounts to Experian. So if they counted those new accounts as inquiries then I would have 7 in 6 months, which would explain my rejection. Any insight? Is citi counting these new accounts for which no inquiry was reported?