With recent changes in the Canadian loyalty landscape, there’s been a big question on my mind: what’s the optimal strategy for earning points between airlines and hotels?
In the past, the American Express Cobalt Card‘s 5x points on eats and drinks was a fantastic vehicle for racking up Marriott Bonvoy points for hotel stays.
But now that they can also be transferred to airlines, it feels like we’re losing out on value by using the 5x points for hotels instead. However, if we were to convert all of our Cobalt 5x points to airlines, we’re left with not too many ways to earn hotel points – and therein lies the conundrum.
In this video, I’ll share with you my thoughts on the airlines vs. hotels conundrum and what my optimal strategy looks like for deciding between the two.
Without further ado, you can watch the video below:
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There’s one middle ground: spend points mostly on flights, but amass hotel cards in order to have some hotel flexibility.
For instance, you can get 4x marriott free night certificates by getting all four of the Canada and US cards. The Canadian cards are practically free with shop small + other offers. The US cards have reasonable value from the certs + grant the 30 elite nights for anyone going for Plat.
Aspire pays for itself if you plan at least one weekend vacation and can use the cert + $250 credit at a resort. Even more so if you take the occasional united flight and buy preferred seats, wifi, food, etc.
Hyatt cert is also good value, especially if you can combine it with some UR points from chase for a weekend getaway each year.
That covers a decent amount of marriott airport hotels or weekend getaways, while saving bulk of points for flights and allowing a small cash outlay for an airbnb or hotel on longer trips.