livencali

Heads UP!

Citi Thank You adds another transfer partner; JetPrivilege.

Not familiar with this partner, but the transfer ratio seems to be 1 to 1.

esf

Their award chart is unbelievably overpriced. There is no sweat spot, but plenty of sour spots!

UA Fan

Nice. Hope they add Avianca next.

mia

Do you find value in Jet Airway's awards? esf isn't enthused...

Nick92

Just looked at the chart, a bit pricey for my tastes but always nice to see another partner added to ThankYou.

garykung

I believe it is in response to the increased (Asian) Indian population in CA, especially N. Cal.

UA Fan

At first glance their intra-India flights seem to have reasonable award levels, but considering how cheap flights are it may not be. Regardless, good to see Citi add transfer partners. Wish they would add more useful ones.

esf

On one hand it's good to see Citi keeps adding transfer partner. On the other hand, it is disappointing that Citi seems to be overly focused on quantity of partners, and pays little attention to quality of partners. That's why Citi has added a lot of almost useless partners to their program.

UA Fan

True at least I wish they would add more partners where the miles would not expire with some activity. I think VS is the only one.

mia

I think it's good that Citi continues to add transfer partners, even if they are not partners that I would use, because it demonstrates that they recognize that customers value this redemption option. American Express, Chase and Diners Club seem to be resting .

mikesyr18

It would be nice if Citi added Hyatt as a rewards partner. I'm not sure how it works, but it seems like certain banks have certain favorites or "agreements" with hotel programs that are exclusive with their rewards program, i.e: AMEX = Starwood Preferred Guest, Chase = Hyatt, etc., which definitely makes sense because the program gives better deals to their "partner" bank for rewards redemption's (or at least I can imagine that's the case).

I was approved for both a Chase Hyatt and a ThankYou Premier this week so combining each card's points sum into the Hyatt rewards program would be nice. Since I am over 5/24 and haven't gotten around to opening a business checking to potentially get prequals for the business credit cards, I am out of luck with combining cards to maximize Hyatt point quantities.

The only exception to the above theory is Hilton Honors, which has multiple cards across American Express and Citi, along with the ability for AMEX and Citi customers to transfer from their non-Hilton branded points cards to the program.

I'm not sure what to think about card issuers adding "low quality" transfer partners to the list, unless of course they make up for it by multiplying the value of the points earned on the cardholder's side... Also typically in the case of Hilton Honors where 1000 X Points = 1500 HH points. I seem to like Chase's idea of having 1:1 on everything, even if the list of partners is smaller, although I would never use most of them.

mia

Ending soon:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ds-2018-a.html

sdsearch

Forget it. I just read the other day that Hyatt has renewed their contract with Chase for a number of years.

The greatest chance of Citi and hotels would be less-famous hotel programs (analogous to how they're going after less-famous airline programs). What about a way to transfer into Scandic (which currently has no partners outside of Scandinavia), for example?

There are lots of hotel programs not tied up with the big banks, it's just that you have to forget about Hilton, Hyatt, probably Marriott/SPG, and probably IHG, and look to the hotel programs not already affiliated (at the credit card level) with Chase or Amex.

There's also "budget" hotel programs that don't mind affiliating with multiple transferable point programs (Amer MR USA and Diners Club USA), like Best Western and Choice.

mikesyr18

It was just wishful thinking really. I know Citi won't add Hyatt because they're tied in with Chase pretty tight.

What will truly be interesting is if Hyatt will see some more card competition when the merger between Marriott and SPG happens. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Chase Starwood Preferred Guest Visa Signature card in the future with the ability to transfer UR points 1:1 to SPG/Marriott.

I know the names won't be the same after the merger, nor will Starwood points be as valuable, but I wouldn't think Marriott would devalue the combined program but perhaps improve on what they already have with Marriott seeing as how weak they are compared to Starwood points.