🔁 New transfer partner, new transfer bonus

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 25 seconds

Good morning from moist Guangzhou, China!

Today is all about the hotel game… so let’s talk about three ways to earn and redeem points for great value:

• 🔁 Get a 200% transfer bonus to Hilton

• 💳 Bilt adds a new transfer partner

• 🏨 Buy IHG points with a 100% bonus

🔁 Get a 200% transfer bonus to Hilton

Bilt is back with another Rent Day promotion, and I gotta say – it’s not very interesting…

On July 1 only, you can transfer Bilt Points to Hilton Honors with a sub-par transfer bonus.

Here’s the deal:

Depending on your level of Bilt status, your transfer ratio will vary:

One thing to note is that you can give yourself a temporary status upgrade by redeeming $150 worth of Bilt Cash, which you earn from spending on Bilt’s credit cards.

(Note that you can only upgrade one tier up from your current status… so if you held Blue, you could temporarily upgrade to Silver, not all the way up to Platinum).

If you have top-tier Platinum status, you can also redeem $150 of Bilt Cash to unlock a whopping 200% transfer bonus.

Why am I not more excited about this?

Well, for starters, you can transfer MR points to Hilton with a 1:2 ratio, any day of the week.

That’s basically like having a 100% transfer bonus at all times. MR points even has occasional transfer bonus that makes it even better.

My guess is that most of you don’t have any Bilt status… and if you do, it’s likely Silver status – putting most of you on par with the MR point transfer ratio.

But also, Bilt has capped this promotion, and will only allow you to transfer a maximum of 100,000 points to Hilton, resulting in 175,000 Hilton points for most members.

Since Hilton charges such extreme rates for their hotels, most people won’t really get any benefit from the transfer bonus. 🤷 

However…

If you are one of the rare high-ranking Bilt elites, that 200% transfer bonus could be worth considering, as it effectively triples your points.

Hilton also offers every 5th night free when using points. So combining those two deals is the move.

For example, this hotel in Puerto Rico costs around 60,000 points per night:

A five-night stay would cost you 240,000 Hilton points thanks to the fifth-night free perk, or just 80,000 Bilt points with the maximum 200% bonus.

In that case, I’d say you got a pretty good deal.

But again, most people won’t be able to access that tier of bonus.

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

This is a pretty meh transfer bonus. Honestly, I think there are other solid ways to use your Bilt points, including a new transfer partner that they just added a couple of days ago… 👇

💳 Bilt adds a new transfer partner

Bilt Rewards has just added Preferred Hotels to its roster of transfer partners. And honestly, I think this is a pretty exciting development.

The default transfer ratio will be 1:2. And as you’ll see, that could result in some excellent deals.

My only question is…

If Bilt JUST added Preferred hotels this week, why didn’t they make the upcoming Rent Day about them…? Did nobody at Bilt think of that…?

I digress.

Preferred Hotels has a pretty limited footprint compared to the other big chains… but generally, I’d say the hotels are higher quality and lean toward the luxury side.

For example, you can book this fancy place in Milan, Italy, for just 50,000 I Prefer points per night, which is just 25,000 Bilt points per night:

If you wanted to get a taste of Northern Europe and head to Stockholm (one of my favorite cities on earth), you could book this luxury hotel for just 25,000 Bilt points per night, too.

The cash rates there are around $400, which means you’re getting great value for your Bilt points here.

As I’ve mentioned before, Preferred Hotels also has some properties in weird places that other chains don’t.

For example, if you want to explore the lush forests of Equatorial Guinea, there aren’t many ways to do it with points…

… unless you book this luxury mountain resort with Preferred Hotels points. 👇

Pretty cool, eh?

The list of unique places includes Mozambique, Brunei, Mongolia, and more – all places where Preferred Hotels has properties and no other chain does.

Anyway, as I always say:

It’s great to see more options for how we use our points, so I count this as a win.

🏨 Buy IHG points with a 100% bonus

While we’re on the topic of hotels… IHG has brought back its popular offer to buy points with a 100% bonus (you have to log in to see the offer).

While buying points can usually be hit or miss, buying IHG points this cheap is almost always a slam dunk move. ⚾️

That is especially true if you combine buying points with the 4th-night free perk you get from holding an IHG co-branded credit card.

Personally, my IHG card is my favorite in my entire wallet. It’s just such a no-brainer card.

Let me show you an example of how you can stack these together:

This Crowne Plaza in downtown Seattle costs $307 per night after tax, or 55,000-65,000 points per night:

With the 4th-night free perk of IHG’s cards, a 4-night stay would cost you just under 44,000 points per night, or 175,000 points total.

Instead of paying $1,228 for a 4-night stay, you could buy 175,000 points for just $880 during this promotion.

In this case, you’d save almost $350 just by being a little savvy.

And this trick works for hotels across the price spectrum and globe.

For example, I’ll be passing through the city of Hohhot in a couple of weeks, where the Crowne Plaza costs 20,000 points or $154 per night.

Instead of paying $154 cash, I could simply buy 20,000 IHG points for just $100 and book the same hotel on the same night, saving over $50.

In this case, doing this simple trick is saving me a solid chunk of cash even without the 4th-night free perk.

Anyway, it’s pretty easy to get good value from this deal. It’s valid through July 16th, so mark your calendars and mull it over if you’re interested.

That was a lot of hotel talk for one day… but it’s always good to see such great deals pop up at the same time.

Tomorrow, we’ll cover some more airline stuff. So make sure you tune in.

Ta ta for now,

23.12911° N, 113.264385° E.

With contributions by Sam Anthony.