Saturday Roundup
Delta has made some MASSIVE changes to their co-branded Amex cards, and they’re great news for Delta flyers specifically and points lovers generally.
Also in this edition of the roundup: Earn easy bonus miles with AAdvantage dining, Grubhub is earning cash back at Rakuten again, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless from Chase is offering a 5-night sign up bonus, an increased sign-up bonus from Hyatt, Capital One cardholders are losing their Hertz benefits, and Lufthansa’s credit card is a trap.
Delta’s Amex cards are new and improved
I already have and love a Delta Amex Gold card, and this week I got an email announcing some big changes. Although the annual fee is increasing from $99 to $150, that is more than offset by a $100 hotel credit when booking a room on Delta’s Expedia-powered travel site. The $100 flight credit after spending $10,000 on the card is now $200, meaning that those who spend just over $10k on the card will earn roughly 3x on their base purchases, one of the best rates out there.
Those, like me, who already have the card will benefit from the $100 hotel credit right away and get a new one once we renew the card. Newcomers will enjoy the $100 toward a hotel plus 70,000 Skymiles (almost enough for a trip for Italy for two people) while with the annual fee waived for the first year, after which you can downgrade your card, cancel it, or offset most of the annual fee with the hotel benefit.
Delta’s premium cards also have undergone big changes which I think are very positive as well. The annual fees for the Platinum and Reserve cards have each gone up by $100, but those increases are more than offset by big new credits. Platinum holders now get $150 toward a hotel booked via Delta, $10 toward rideshare each month, and $10 on Resy monthly. Reserve cardholders get a $200 hotel credit, $10 on rideshare monthly, and $20 on Resy. That’s not to mention benefits like a companion fare that can now be used to fly to Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, and Central America, complimentary upgrades without status, and lounge access benefits with the Reserve. For Delta loyalists, simply holding the cards will get you halfway to Delta’s entry level elite status, and spending on the card earns more points toward elite qualification.
I will try to write more about these changes, but as a Delta and Amex loyalist I’m very excited about these developments.
AA bonus points
As we’ve noted a lot, dining programs are a great way to earn a bunch of extra rewards. You can sign up for AA’s dining program here via our referral link and earn 500 AA miles after your first qualifying dine (in addition to the miles from the meal itself). If that’s not enough, once you sign up, you can activate this offer by February 22 and earn another 250 bonus miles. That’s nearly 1,000 valuable AA miles just for eating out once.
Grubhub is back on Rakuten
When my beloved IHG/Grubhub hack abruptly disappeared a while ago, Grubhub purchases also stopped earning rewards at Rakuten, really putting a dent in my favorite way to squeeze extra value from the dining benefit on my Amex Gold. While the IHG deal seems to be gone for good, Rakuten rewards have come back to Grubhub, making that Amex Gold dining benefit just that much nicer again.
Capital One cardholders will lose Hertz benefits
One of the perks of Capital One’s outrageously valuable Venture X card has been top-tier Hertz status. I used it several times last year to book ultra-cheap economy cars with the agency only to upgrade to a fancy Tesla upon pickup. Unfortunately, Cap One is cutting its Hertz benefits for Venture and Venture X cardholders beginning in 2025. As much as I enjoyed my free Tesla’s, the value of that perk might be diminishing with Hertz pivoting away from EVs. Personally, most of the time I prefer an economy car anyway to save on gas, so upgrades to full-size cars are not too valuable.
Regardless, there are a ton of ways to get some form of Hertz status, including via a World Elite Mastercard (like Bilt’s no-fee card), Amex Platinum card, the aforementioned Delta Amex Reserve, or via status with Delta or Marriott.
Marriott offering 5 free nights with the Boundless card
Chase’s $95-fee Boundless card is a decent mid-grade hotel card with solid benefits for Bonvoy enthusiasts. The typical sign up bonus on this card is 100,000 Marriott points or 3 free nights. The points are generally a much better deal that can be stretched much further (6-8 nights in the US if you catch the right hotels at the right time, even more abroad). But the current deal is now five free nights. If you like or need to stay in more expensive hotels, five free nights might be the better deal. With each night redeemable at a hotel with nightly rates up to 50,000 points (you can use up to 15k of your own points if the hotel you want runs more than 50k points), you could get up to 250,000 points worth of value out of those stays, and stay in expensive upscale and/or city center properties. That’s not my cup of tea, but if it fits your travel style you might want to jump on this opportunity.
Extra points for signing up for a World of Hyatt card
I really like Hyatt’s credit card, which earns ulta-valuable points and earns you extra benefits at Hyatt’s collection of excellent hotel brands. The card normally offers a 30k sign-up bonus after spending $3,000 in the first three months, plus the chance to earn 30k more on $15,000 on certain purchases in the first year (by which point you’d also earn a free night stay).
They recently upped the welcome bonus to 35k points, and the 5k bump is enough for at least one extra free night and close to two for off-peak nights at many Hyatt locations. Because this card requires spending $15k to unleash its maximum value, I would still recommend holding off until you can hit that minimum spend (without spending any extra money beyond your normal budget, of course). But if you were in the market for this card anyway, or if you know you’d never be able to hit the $15k spending benchmark anyway, the extra 5k points in the bonus make this a good time to sign up.
Lufthansa has a credit card…
I got an email about the Lufthansa credit card the other day and it’s… interesting. It offers 60,000 miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months, and its key perks are 2 Lufthansa lounge passes and a companion fare annually.
This sounded pretty interesting, but I won’t be signing up for this card anytime soon. It’s very hard to find good mileage deals on Lufthansa’s website (failing the test of laziness) and they tend to carry tons of fees and surcharges (failing the test of value). The lounge passes can only be used on Lufthansa Group flights, so you’ll have to fly Lufthansa every year to get any value out of them (and even then it’s not much, since most airports have Priority Pass or other lounges you could also access with better credit cards… oftenincludingLufthansa lounges!). And while an international companion certificate sounds amazing, the fare class restrictions, fees, and surcharges mean you’ll need to buy very expensive tickets and likely end up paying much more for those two tickets than whatever deal you could find normally through Google Flights. (You can also only book via phone, so you can’t search online and you’ll have to engage in some human interaction.)