Rob

Just checked in to a Marriott and got titanium benefits.. not complaining

Jan M

Totally agree and in any sensible joined-up world an offer would have been launched yesterday. But wasn’t. We’ve not heard anything either, and we’ve been talking to the Virgin Money team this week about other stuff so it probably would have come up.

ChasP

+1

Rupert

So it is! Hope my Titanium holds out for a check-in on Monday.

RBS/ Natwest Rewards Black MC. Rob has said he doesn’t cover this card as the Avios partnership isn’t permanent but it has been available to me for 5+ years. If you’re a heavy spender outside the UK then it is a really good option.

£84 per year (waived for Black account holders). No FX fees, earns min 0.5% cash back (more on certain spend categories) and your Rewards cash can be exchanged for Avios at 1170/£10 so it’s approx 0.6 Avios per pound spent. You can also cash out via vouchers for JL and a few others at 5-10% discount if you don’t want Avois, compared to this you’re buying Avios for about 0.9p.

Don’t think they are big on sign-ups or referrals but as back-up card to an Amex it’s a strong proposition for me.

David

HfP ads don’t behave like ads, because we don’t pull them in from a 3rd party server. Your adblocker simply sees a 300×250 image (hosted by us) with a link behind it, which is itself an internal HfP link and not one to Amex.

John G

Yep, the no.1 above doesn’t even mention what the two years of fees are. At minimum this article should show each card with the annual fee AND the minimum fee commitment needed for the SUB.

Rob

….or perhaps it made it “less attractive” for your readers to take these cards and resulted in fewer referral fees ??

Clair

We run articles whenever we see there is a bonus (which normally happens when a reader does a transfer and mysteriously gets extra!). See https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/10/08/hsbc-premier-credit-card-points-conversions-to-avios/

DaveJ

Good point

DaveJ

Not at all. They are designed to make you think to yourself: “Is this the best hotel loyalty scheme for me?”

When you read the articles you can compare it to what would benefit you the most and then you have the answer.

John

“ Chase actually takes longer as they want you to photograph your ID”

Took me a matter of seconds to do that

Rob

So the headlines for the articles were silly?

Chris W

It’s not possible. What are we meant to do? “Do you go to Sweden?” “Do you want to redeem for Dubai beach resorts?” etc? You need to read them all and then decide what your circumstances dictate.

If you can do 60 Hyatt nights per year then Globalist, hands down, is better than anything else. What’s the chance of you doing 60 Hyatt nights though? Probably nil. Even if you could (perhaps you spend a night a week in Manchester or Birmingham) then could you actually redeem well for Hyatt? Again, given the footprint, probably not.

RussellH

Yes Virgin+ not great – we need an increased signup bonus offer. They used to come along regularly but nothing for nearly 2 years now

John G

Agree 100%.
The HSBC card actually earns you £10 worth of points. You are buying the other £390 worth.
The Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard is even worse. It gets you £150 of points, but they cost you £160, so you have converted £160 into a less flexible currency and also lost £10.
Makes no sense to me at all.

Rob often makes the point that £100 value in points is worth less than £100 cash because the cash is far more flexible.

True, the arithmetic is more complex for the Amex cards, but one could easily do similar sums based on 3 months of holding the card, which would give useful guidance.
But with the spending requirements having doubled or trebled recently, plus the 24 months without most Amex cards requirements, I no longer even bother thinking about Amex sign-up bonuses.

DaveJ

Yes, you asked the question across 10 articles – ‘is this the best hotel loyalty programme’.

Was this question ever answered? Maybe a summary table showing which is the best for the different demographics?

Vahan

That’s the HSBC Expat site.

Andrew

https://www.expat.hsbc.com/credit-cards/products/premier-world-elite/#things-to-know
Says it in the requirements

Vahan

What makes you say that? Their website just says you need to be a Premier current account holder and the salary requirement for that is still 75k

John G

We used to do it like that but it got too complex due to Amex pro-rata fee refund assumptions.

Save East Coast Rewards

We were out yesterday PM checking a potential event venue. Will take a look. Only decent deals are Jan/Feb 24 though.

Blair Waldorf Salad

Bingo. Always book 2 rooms? Choose Accor as both count for status. Want suites as rewards? Hyatt. Want free breakfast above all? Hilton. Want lounge access? IHG now easiest. In Sweden a lot? IHG has zero hotels. Etc etc

DaveJ

I’ve always felt there’s the best objectively, and then the best subjectively. As a simple example say you travel to Dubai a lot, where IHG have no appealing beachfront properties. Marriott however have numerous. There’s little merit in one focusing on IHG if the scheme is good but they don’t have suitable hotels where one needs them for the holidays one expects to take.