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Before we delve into the values of specific types of points and miles, it is helpful to understand some basic concepts. | Before we delve into the values of specific types of points and miles, it is helpful to understand some basic concepts. | ||
Revision as of 02:06, 1 September 2021
Home, Easily Earn Points for Free Travel
When you are evaluating a signup bonus, promotion, or bonus category reward rate, it is not the NUMBER of points that's important, it is the VALUE of those points.
Different types of reward points have very different values. Some points are worth a fixed 1 cent each. Other points, like Chase's Ultimate Rewards, are considerably more valuable, worth 1.5, 2, or even 3 cents each. A point from some hotel chains, like Hilton, are worth ½ cent or even less, while a point from Hyatt is worth 1.75 cents or more.
But the truth is that most points and miles don’t have a set value. The value of each type of point and mile is different for different people—depending on how you travel, how you plan to use your points, how much you spend, and how many points you already have.
WE assign a value to each type of point so that you have a place to start and we can have a conversation about the relative value of different options. But YOU need to eventually adjust these “base” values to reflect your unique situation and travel goals.
Jump to
Jump to:
- 1 Some basics
- 2 Minimum Redemption Values
- 3 Hotel points
- 4 The diminished value of frequent flyer miles for coach flights
- 5 Get more value with business and first-class award tickets
- 6 “Fixed Value” frequent flyer points
- 7 The value of different types of miles
- 8 Fixed-value credit card points
- 9 "Transferable" credit card points
- 10 An example
Some basics
Before we delve into the values of specific types of points and miles, it is helpful to understand some basic concepts.
- While some types of points have "fixed" values, the value of most types of points and miles varies for every redemption. For example, the number of miles you need for an award ticket isn't usually based directly on the cost of the flights. Sometimes, you'll be able to book an expensive ticket for a relatively small number of miles. Other times, cash prices will be low and award prices will be high. This is even more true of hotel points.
- The real value of every redemption is based on the true value you receive, not the face value of the reservation. For example, let's say you could use 40,000 hotel points to book a hotel that has a cash price of $240. That works out .6 cents per point. But maybe that hotel is just priced on the high-end of the market and there is a hotel you like equally well that is priced at just $200. Using your points, you'd only be saving the $200 and your points would really be worth .5 cents each. Similarly, it is not the "best available rate" that should be the comparison, but the best discounted rate you can find.
- You should always value points and miles at a discount. For example, if you only expected to get 1.4 cents in value per Alaska Airlines mile, you should value an Alaska mile at somewhat less, such as at 1.2 cents per mile. Alaska miles aren't as flexible as cash, are subject to potential devaluation, and don't earn interest while you wait to use them. You'd wouldn't buy a gift certificate (for your own use) at full face value, so you shouldn't buy points and miles at the full value you'd expect to get.
- If you use your points strategically, you can expect to get a higher value per point. For example, a typical range of values for Marriott hotel reservations might be .4 cents to 1.2 cents per point, with some reservations even higher or lower. Let's assume that you can earn a limited number of Marriott points from credit card signup bonuses.
As a result, you need to settle for an estimate of how much your points will wind up being worth. There is no set value.
This tends to be most important when talking about business and first class tickets, which often have exorbitantly high cash prices. If you would genuinely pay this cash price for the tickets, you would get enormous value by using frequent flier miles. But if you would only spend $300-500 out-of-pocket to upgrade to a business class seat, the real value you are getting for the award ticket will be considerably lower.
If you spend your points at the first opportunity, you might average .6 cents per reservation. But if you only spend your points on reservations where you receive at least .7 cents in value, you might average .9 cents in value. Rather than using your points until you run out and then switch to cash reservations, you'd intersperse points and cash reservations, based on relative value.
Minimum Redemption Values
Ideally, you could pay for all your hotel rooms and airplane tickets with points, but more people can't generate enough points to pay for all their travel. Rather than simply using your points at the first opportunity and then switching over to cash whenever you run out, it often makes sense to try to use your points on the most valuable opportunities and use cash when you would get less value from your points.
- We recommend you set a "Minimum Redemption Value" (MRV) for each type of point. You would use your points whenever you could get more than this minimum value and use cash whenever you couldn't. For example, if you use .45 cents as the Minimum Redemption Value of a Hilton point, you'd use your points whenever you could get .45 cents or more in value. And you'd save your points (for a more lucrative future redemption) whenever you would get less.
- When shopping for hotels and flights, we like to convert point prices to an equivalent dollar amount. To continue our example, if an award night at a Hilton hotel cost 50,000 points, we'd multiple by .45 cents to convert it to a cash equivalent rate of $225. Then we'd compare that "price" against the cash rate or rates at other hotels. Similarly, if our Minimum Redemption Value for Delta miles was 1.2 cents each, we'd multiple the required number of miles by 1.2 cents to determine the "price" of an award ticket and compare to cash prices or flights on other airlines.
- The trick is to set a value that is high enough that you tend to use your points on higher-valuable opportunities, but low enough that you will eventually use your points. If you find yourself never finding good opportunities to use a certain type of points and/or find it easy to generate lots of them, you should lower your Minimum Redemption Value. If you find yourself finding lots of great opportunities to that type of points and/or find it hard to generate more you should raise your Minimum Redemption Value.
- The expected value you'll get per point will always be higher than your Minimum Redemption Value. In the Hilton example, you might make one reservation at the minimum of .45 cents each, but you might get .6 cents on another reservation, or even 1.1 cents per point on a particularly good redemption. The average of these will always be higher than the minimum amount.
- If you plan on just redeeming your points at every opportunity, you'll get less value from them. While you can almost always use hotel points for rooms and the airline's own frequent flyer miles for flights, you won't always get very good value. Continuing our example, there are plenty of times when you'll get less than .45 cents in value from your Hilton points. If you use your points on these types of reservations, your expected value will be lower.
- When you are choosing what type of point to earn, you'd always want to use point values that are lower than the expected redemption value. For example, if you only expected to get 1.4 cents from your Alaska Airlines miles, you should value an Alaska mile at somewhat less than 1.4 cents cash. Alaska miles aren't as flexible as cash, are subject to potential devaluation, and don't earn interest while you wait to use them. You'd only "buy" them at a discount. And when you choose to earn them, over cash or some other type of point, you are essentially paying for them with what you could earn elsewhere.
- But the value may often still be higher than your Minimum Redemption Value. Since you'll often get more value than the minimum you would accept, even when you apply a discount to the points, the value might still be higher than the minimum. Of course, if you wind up redeeming all your points at your MRV or if you need to lower the value, the actual value of the points will be less.</li
The cash rate essentially represents the opportunity cost of using your points for a given hotel or airplane ticket, rather than saving them for a future trip. And it makes it easy to compare an award option with your other options for a trip.
Hotel points
While hotel points are easy to redeem, the value of points varies greatly between different programs. Different hotel programs require dramatically different number of points for a night at similar hotels. For example, for a nice full-service downtown hotel in all but the most expensive cities, Hyatt might require 12,000 points, Marriott might require 40,000
The diminished value of frequent flyer miles for coach flights
Travel and reward websites will usually tell you that most frequent flyer miles are worth around 1.5 cents each. But the truth is not so simple.
- Instead of having a fixed value, the value of frequent flyer miles varies widely based on your opportunities to use them. If you can use 25,000 points to book a cross-country flight that would have otherwise cost $400, you are getting 1.6 cents in value per point. However, if there is no saver availability and you need to use 50,000 points instead, you are only getting .8 cents in value. And if the flight were only $250, even at the cheaper award rate, you would only get 1 cent in value from your points.
- It is hard to get good value for your frequent flyer miles on coach tickets. If ticket prices are high, there is usually no award availability or the airlines require huge numbers of points; and if prices are low, you aren't saving much money with your ticket.
- If you don’t live in a popular international gateway, the situation is even worse. US carriers have gotten increasingly stingy with normal-priced awards, particularly on domestic flights. This doesn’t only affect your ability to find a good redemption opportunity when you are flying within the United States, it also affects many people’s ability to take advantage of international award tickets. Without award space available on your connection to an international gateway, you’ll need to buy a separate cash ticket to get you to the departure city or use your miles for an additional award ticket. In either case, you'll need to recheck your bags and worry about a missed connection.
- In extreme cases, fuel surcharges on international award tickets can be close to the full price for the ticket. For example, on British Airways flights to Europe, the out of pocket cost for an award ticket may only be $200 less than the regular ticket price. In the end, you would be saving only $200 with the 25–40,000 miles it will require to book your “free” tickets.
- There are often significant downsides to using frequent flyer tickets. You won’t earn new miles on the trip. Perhaps more importantly, you will often find yourself taking less convenient flights, in an effort to take advantage of the limited award space that is available.
On the other hand, if you can take advantage of a “sweet spot” to use 25,000 miles to book a trip from the East Coast to Hawaii (which would otherwise have cost $800), you are getting 3.2 cents in value per point.
Low-cost carriers have dramatically dropped the cost of international airfares from North America and on many flights within Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. At the same time, frequent flyer programs have been continuously increasing the number of miles (and sometimes the fees) you need to pay for award tickets. Plus, with airlines moving to dynamic pricing, it is hard to combine connecting flights into a single itinerary or use partner frequent flyer miles.
That said, you should occasionally be able to find well-priced convenient options.
For most people, we recommend holding onto your miles, unless you are getting 1.5 cents each or more. While you typically can't get this much value from your frequent flyer miles, you should eventually be able to do so—you usually want to hold onto them until you can. There are sweet-spots in different award programs (where you can book tickets for less than the normal number of points); routes where the regular prices are still high; and the opportunity to book award space far ahead of time.
But because frequent flyer miles are hard to use, we only value them at around 1.2 cents each. In other words, while we expect to eventually get 1.5 cents or more in value, we wouldn't pay more than 1.2 cents each to acquire frequent flyer miles. This discount offsets the effort involved to use the miles and the less convenient flight options we are likely to settle on.
Get more value with business and first-class award tickets
Things look different when you want to use your miles to get business or first-class award tickets or upgrades.
- When you use your miles to book premium-cabin international award tickets, you’ll get much more “face-value” from your miles—often 4 cents or more. For example, a business class round trip to Europe might cost $4,500. If you use 115,000 United points, that works out to about 4 cents in value per point. Some first-class tickets are priced high enough that you might theoretically get over 10 cents in face-value from your points.
- However, the real value of premium award tickets is based on how much you would have otherwise paid for the flights. If you would have paid the full cash price for premium-cabin seats, you are getting the full face-value from your award tickets. Anyone who would have actually paid out-of-pocket for an international business or first-class ticket is getting a great deal when they are able to use award tickets instead.
- Regardless of how much you value the tickets, you will need to earn a lot of points before you will be able to make a premium cabin redemption and it can be very hard to find availability. It will typically take around 200,000 points to pay for a round trip business class flight for two to Europe and 600,000 points for a family of four to fly on business class on a dream trip to Africa. That represents a lot of credit card spending or signup bonuses. So, if you realistically aren’t going to be generating many points from your spending, you are usually better off planning to use your points in a different way.
But if you wouldn’t normally consider paying more than $300-500 extra for a business class upgrade on an international flight, premium cabin redemptions are much less valuable than their face-value. Perhaps the tickets are only worth $1,000 or $1,500 to you. If so, you might still be only getting 1–1.5 cents in value from a typical redemption.
In other words, many people might feel they get more value from using their points for two coach tickets or a bunch of hotel nights, rather than a single business class ticket; while other people would prefer spending a bunch of points to fly in a business or first-class seat they could never afford (or convince themselves to pay for).
In addition, you can’t always assume you’ll be able to find two business or first-class seats on the same flight, let alone four. While it is hard to find regularly priced award availability in coach, it is much harder to find it in business or first class.
“Fixed Value” frequent flyer points
Some frequent flyer programs use “fixed-value” points. Most programs fix the number of miles needed for an award ticket to a specific region of the world—the value per point varies based on the ticket price. Fixed value programs fix the value of a point——the number of points you need to book the award varies based on the price.
For example, on Southwest airline, a round trip domestic ticket doesn’t cost a fixed 25,000 points. The award price of the ticket is determined by dividing the ticket price by between 1.2 - 1.6 cents per point. There aren’t really good or really bad opportunities to use your points and there aren’t issues with award availability—you’ll get roughly the same value per point, regardless of when you use them.
| Southwest Airlines | 1.4 |
| JetBlue | 1.3 |
The value of different types of miles
The value for different types of frequent flyer miles varies based on the program's award charts, policies and fees, partner networks, and award availability.
- Points from foreign airlines can be just as valuable as points from US airlines, even if you never plan to fly on that airline. For example, you may dismiss getting a credit card that offers British Airways points because you don’t often fly British Airways. However, British Airlines and American Airlines both belong to the Oneworld Alliance, so you can use your British Airlines points to book saver award space on American Airlines (as well as a bunch of other partners). In some ways, points on British Airlines can be even more valuable than American Airlines miles. Their program is distance-based, so it requires fewer miles when you are taking shorter American Airlines flights.
- On the other hand, it is getting harder to use points from partner programs, especially for US-based airlines. If you are planning to book most of your award tickets on American, Delta, or United, it might be a lot easier with their own miles than with a foreign frequent flyer program. A ticket may only require a little more than the normal number of miles, but not be true "saver" space, and thus not available through most or all partner programs. Keep in mind that Membership Rewards points can be converted directly to Delta miles, Ultimate Rewards points can be converted directly to United miles, and (for now), ThankYou points can be converted directly to American Airlines miles.
- As discussed above, the base value of frequent flyer miles depends on your how frequent flyer programs work for you. If you are willing to deal with the extra complexity, have a great deal of flexibility, and/or place a high value on premium seats, miles are more valuable.
- If you plan to use your points for economy-class tickets, the value of a typical frequent flyer mile is around 1.2 cents. On many trips, you won’t find an opportunity to use your points at all. When there is award space available, you often won’t be able to get this much value from your miles. But, when you do get a good opportunity to use your points, you can get 1.5-2 cents per point. We discount the value somewhat due to the difficulty of finding these good value redemptions (especially with more attractive flight options).
- If you assign a high value to business and first-class award tickets and plan to use your points in this way, the value of a typical point is 3-4 cents. You’ll sometimes be able to get more value than this. It can be very hard to find award space when you need it, so you'll need to be lucky or flexible to use your miles for premium cabin seats, especially as a couple or family.
- If you value business and first-class seats less highly, the value of a typical airline mile is closer to 1.2 - 1.5 cents again. If you only value a business class seat at a premium of around $500, the extra value you’ll receive when you can find premium cabin availability is balanced out by the extra miles required.
- If you don’t want to spend much time mastering frequent flyer miles, their value is probably still around 1 cent per point. It becomes easier to find redemption opportunities when you only require 1 cent per point. You can start finding opportunities to user your points on more expensive anytime awards or for less expensive flights. Even if you are willing to accept 1 cent per point, it can still be hard to use miles from foreign airline programs.
- From these base values, the relative value of points for different programs depends on their award charts, policies, and partners. If a program often offers lower-than-normal price rewards, has particularly good redemption policies, doesn’t charge excessive fees, and/or has a good set of useful airline partners, their points are more valuable. For example, Alaska Airlines has a good partner network, offers reduced priced short-distance awards, has some great values in their partner award charts, isn’t particularly stingy with availability, and is the only airline that allows a free stopover on a one-way award, making their points more valuable than many of their rivals.
Due to the major alliances and partner programs, points from almost any frequent flyer program are useful to almost everyone.
Of course, what matters most is how the program will work for you. If you frequently fly to Central America or Korea, programs that offer less expensive redemptions to those regions are more valuable. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter that those sweet spots exist.
Here are the current set of values from a few popular websites, While they may not be accurate guidelines, they should give you an idea of which airline points are more or less valuable than others.
| One Mile at a Time | Points Guy | View from the Wing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major US Airlines | |||
| Alaska | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.6 |
| American | 1.5 | 1.4 | 1.4 |
| Delta | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.1 |
| United | 1.4 | 1.3 | 1.4 |
| Others | |||
| Air Canada (Aeroplan) | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.4 |
| Air France / KLM (Flying Blue) | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| ANA | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
| Avianca | 1.4 | 1.7 | 1.4 |
| British Airways | 1.3 | 1.5 | 1.2 |
| Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles) | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.3 |
| Emirates | 1.0 | 1.2 | 1.1 |
| Etihad | 1.2 | 1.4 | 1.2 |
| Frontier | 1.1 | ||
| Hawaiian | 0.9 | 1.0 | |
| Korean Air | 1.5 | 1.7 | 1.5 |
| Lufthansa (Miles & More) | 1.2 | 1.4 | 1.2 |
| Singapore | 1.4 | 1.3 | 1.4 |
| Turkish | 1.3 | ||
| Virgin Atlantic | 1.2 | 1.6 | 1.0 |
Fixed-value credit card points
Programs that let you use your points to "purchase" travel are called “Fixed Value” programs, because each point is generally worth a fixed amount of cash towards your purchase. For example, every point you earn from the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card is worth a fixed 1.5 cents towards travel purchases. Points from most of these programs are worth 1 cent each.
- Some of these programs allow you to "erase" any travel purchase you make with your card. After you use the card to buy travel, you go to the credit card company website and use your points to eliminate the charge (or part of the charge) from your bill. For example, you can go to Hotels.com, use your card to pay for a hotel for $89, and then use $89 worth of points (usually 8,900 points) to refund the cost.
- Points from these programs are about as valuable as real cashback. Most people are going to spend enough on travel each year that they will be able to easily use any points they earn. You can buy on any website you want or directly from a travel provider. You can use your points to offset a very wide range of travel purchases, usually even things like car share rides, subway tolls, theme park tickets, and the taxes and fees on your award tickets. In many cases, you'll still even earn new rewards on the purchases you later eliminate.
- The main downside is that you will need to use the card for at least some of your travel purchases, instead of a different card that you might prefer. For those purchases, you might earn a less valuable reward rate or miss out on free travel insurance.
- Other fixed-value programs force you to purchase directly through the credit card company's website. They work with a third-party company to offer their own travel booking site, sort of like Expedia, but not as good. Sometimes they will give you more value per point when used to make airfare purchases than other types of travel purchases. For example, your points may be worth 1.5 cents towards airfare, but only 1 cent towards hotels and car rentals.
- Points from these programs aren't as valuable as their full "face value". While they charge standard prices for hotels, car rentals, and usually cruises, you can get almost always get better deals elsewhere. With hotel bookings, you won't be able to take advantage of the hotel's loyalty program.
- A few programs have some trickier rules for getting maximum value from your points. Sometimes you can only use your points for the full value of a purchase. If you don't have enough, you can't use your points. When you do have enough to make a purchase, you are likely to have leftover points that will be hard to use on other purchases. Sometimes you need to use a block of points to make a purchase of "up to" a dollar amount, such as for a ticket purchase of up to $400. If the purchase is less than that, you aren't getting the full theoretical value from your points.
- You often also have the option of using fixed-value points for other things (such as gift cards or merchandise), but you'll get the best value per point on travel purchases.
Airfare prices are more standardized across the web. But with the credit card websites you sometimes can't book basic economy fares, you usually won't receive any free credit card travel insurance, it is always less convenient than booking directly with the airline, and you may miss out on small amount of extra rewards you could have earned by booking through a different travel booking site. And some of these sites tack on small extra fees and have extra cancellation charges (or no cancellations!)
Due to the limitations of booking through the site, if points are counted 1 cent towards travel purchases, we would value them as worth between .8 and .9 cents.
"Transferable" credit card points
Each of the three biggest credit card companies operate their own reward program. Amex’s is called “Membership Rewards”, Chase’s is called “Ultimate Rewards”, and Citibank’s is called “ThankYou Rewards”.
The points you earn from these programs can be transferred to any of a bunch of different airline and hotel loyalty programs where they can be redeemed for free airplane tickets and hotel rooms. In addition, you can use these points (like cash) to pay for most hotels, airline tickets, and other travel.
The points that you earn with the Marriott hotel program can also be transferred (at favorable rates) to airlines partners. Even though they are technically hotel points, they act enough like transferable credit card points to be part of the same discussion.
In addition, Diners Club, Capital One, and HSBC operate similar, but smaller, transferable rewards programs.
- Transferable credit card points are almost always more valuable than frequent flyer miles. Instead of being locked into a single program, you can transfer your points to several different frequent flyer programs. This lets you redeem award tickets for almost any airline and take advantage of whichever partner program offers the lowest priced redemptions for your trip.
- For most people, Ultimate Rewards points are generally more valuable than Membership Rewards points, which are more valuable than ThankYou points. Ultimate Rewards has easy-to-use redemption options, like booking award rooms through Hyatt, purchasing travel at 1.5 cents per point, or booking flights on Southwest Airline, which don't depend on finding good value award space for frequent flyer tickets. Membership Rewards is generally the best option for frequent flyer tickets. Introduction to 'Transferable' Reward Points.
- If you know you can get good value from your points with frequent flyer tickets or you are focusing on premium cabin award tickets, Membership Rewards points are the most valuable. ThankYou Rewards is probably next, but Ultimate Rewards points are close.
- If you have the Amex Business Platinum card, you can redeem your Membership Rewards points for 1.54 cents each when you use them to buy airfare—placing a floor on the value that points are worth. However, to make this approach work, you need to be eligible for a business card, pay an additional annual fee of $595 (which can be partially offset by some credits and benefits), and maintain a large balance of points.
- Marriott points are the most flexible. You can get good values per point when you redeem them for Marriott hotel rooms, they have the widest set of airline partners, and you’ll get 25,000 miles every time you redeem 60,000 points. But because of their long transfer times, there is some risk that any award space will disappear while you are waiting for your points to transfer.
- If you highly value business and first-class award tickets and are willing and able to build up large amounts of points, the value of transferable credit card points are over 4 cents each. They will be far more valuable than any other type of reward points.
- If you don’t really want to mess around with frequent flyer miles, the value of transferable points depends on their other redemption options. Ultimate Rewards, Marriott and Capital One points deliver a lot of relative value even if you never redeem them for typical award tickets. ThankYou and Membership Rewards points don’t (unless you have the Business Platinum Card).
Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, Thank You points, and Diner's Club points transfer to airlines on a 1:1 basis. The value you can get from these points is about the same as you can get from miles in a good frequent flyer program, but since you can redeem your points on almost any airline, you’ll find opportunities to get those values much more frequently. And since you can take advantage of a cheaper-than-normal option for each trip, your typical award ticket might, on average, cost 20% fewer miles.
Marriott points transfer to Airline miles at a rate of 3 points to 1 mile, but you'll receive 25,000 miles for every block of 60,000 points you transfer. Capital One points transfer at a rate of 4 points to 3 miles (or 4 points for 2 miles for Singapore or Emirates). So, these points are worth less than an airline mile (but you'll earn at least 2 points per dollar).
| Ultimate Rewards | Membership Rewards | ThankYou Rewards | Marriott | Capital One | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| If you highly value business and first-class tickets | At least 3 - 4 cents per point, sometimes much more | 1 - 1.5 or more | 2 - 3 or more | ||
| If you are patient and take advantage of coach tickets | 1.5 – 2 cents or more | .5 - .8 or more | 1 - 1.5 or more | ||
| Quality of their airline partners | Good | Very Good | Good | The Best (but slow) | Less Good |
| Value of easier-to-redeem redemption options | 1.5 - 1.75 | 1 | 1 | .7 | 1 |
| Value from using points to pay for travel | 1.5
(w/ Sapphire Reserve) |
1
(1.54 w/ Business Platinum) |
1 | - | 1 |
| The “base value” we use for our calculations | 1.7 | 1.5 | 1.5 | .7 | 1.5 |
An example
If you are evaluating your options for a general purpose reward card, you might have the choice of a card that earns 1.5x Ultimate Rewards points, a card that earns 1.5x Membership Rewards points, and a card that earns 2.5% cash-back.
- The math on the 2.5% cash-back card is simple. It earns $250 back for every $10,000 you spend.
- If you highly value premium-cabin award tickets, the Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards cards will each earn points worth at least $450-600 per $10,000 you spend and could earn rewards as high as $1,000 per $10,000. This is much better than the $250 from the cashback card.
- If you are patient and plan to redeem for economy-class frequent flyer tickets, spending $10,000 with the Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards cards will typically earn between $225 and $300 in award travel and might earn as much as $450. This is usually better than the cashback card but requires more time and effort. You would more strongly prefer the Ultimate Rewards card over the Membership Rewards card, because you would also have the option of redeeming at good value for Hyatt hotel rooms or other easy redemption options
- If you want to earn rewards more easily and more often, the Ultimate Rewards card should offer at least $255 in value when you redeem for Hyatt hotel. This is slightly better than the cashback card, plus there is additional upside to get even more value on particularly good redemptions. However, the Membership Rewards card doesn’t have any good options other than cashing-out at 1 cent per point, which would only give you $150 in value. So, in this scenario, 1.5x Ultimate Rewards > 2.5% cash-back >> 1.5x Membership Rewards.
- However, if you have the Amex Business Platinum card, you can cash-out at 1.54 cents per point (on your favorite airline), and see at least $230 from your Membership Rewards points, which probably tips the balance versus the cashback card (due to the possibility of redeeming for much more).





