IHG's new card lineup: more premium, more coupons, milestones unlocked | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep377 | 10-2-26

Frequent Miler on the Air

The hosts break down a wave of updates across major credit card and loyalty programs, with a heavy focus on IHG's revamped card lineup and new

Key takeaways

• IHG is introducing a new Premier Select card at $350 annual fee, adding automatic Platinum status, 20 Elite Knight credits, and a 60K free night certificate.
• Bank of America points will transfer to Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards, potentially offering 2.62 points per dollar for top-tier investment clients.

Main topics

• IHG credit card lineup overhaul and milestone rewards
• Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards program changes

Notable quotes

That's amazing. You know, I think we reported before that Citi now has JAL, Japan Airlines, as a transfer partner.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable intelligence for points enthusiasts, highlighting how new

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 2 (0:11) This podcast episode is sponsored by Saley. Saley is an eSIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saley gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave, and your data activates automatically when you touch down. Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saley actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick Speaker 3 (0:44) gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saley keeps you connected without any Speaker 2 (0:50) surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saley from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15 % off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. Speaker 2 (1:05) On today's show, we discuss interesting new business cards from U.S. Bank. Choice Privileges now gives you the choice to share points. And Bank of America points will soon be transferable. And we will wrap up with complete details of IHG's new credit card lineup. Frequent Speaker 1 (1:24) Miler on the air starts now. Speaker 2 (1:28) Today's main event, IHG's new card lineup. More premium, more coupons, milestones unlocked. This week, we're going to be talking about changes to IHG's credit card lineup, as well as a brand new premium card that they've introduced. There's a lot to talk about there, so we're going to skip a lot of our usual sections in today's show, because not only is there a lot to talk about with the IHG thing, but A lot has been happening in miles and points while we've been traveling all around the world doing our wildcard challenge. So we've got a lot to catch up on. We're going to just jump right into that. All Speaker 3 (2:08) right. Well, if you're watching in video form, you can see that Greg and I are sitting next to each other. We're face to face this week. We are at the Sydney airport on our way back. from our most recent challenge, the wildcard challenge. So we are here in the Qantas first class lounge to record today's episode. If you would like to jump ahead to something, don't forget that you can always find the timestamps in the show notes so you can jump ahead or come back to something later on. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like, subscribe, enable notifications. Let us know how we're doing. Leave your comments and thoughts either in the comment section below or in a review. All right, let's talk about Speaker 2 (2:40) this week in points. Yeah, so there's just a ton to talk about. What's going on with points and miles in the past, really, two weeks as we've been traveling around. So I am not really. up on a lot of this stuff. I've been researching the IHG changes. So I'm going to leave it to Nick to tell us about a lot of the other stuff that's going on. But first, I know there's a lot of Alaska news. What's going on with Alaska? There sure is. So Speaker 3 (3:09) we found out this week that Bank of America points are going to transfer to Alaska Atmos Rewards. There's a lot we don't know yet. We don't know for sure, number one, that they'll transfer one to one. We expect they probably will. Also, in part of the announcement, was the fact that there will be other global financial partners that will be transferring to Alaska. So the interpretation, as we've seen it anyway at this point, is that it will probably be some foreign bank programs will also transfer to Alaska. So perhaps some of the Amex membership rewards in other countries or other things like that may transfer to Alaska in the future. We don't know exactly when that's going to start or what it's going to look like or which cards. Our best guess is that anything that earns proprietary. Bank of America points like the travel rewards or premium rewards will probably get transfers. But again, we don't know much Speaker 2 (4:00) yet other than that is coming. Yeah, you know, I find this pretty exciting. I have so Bank of America's travel rewards and premium rewards cards. If you have their like top level of status from investments, you get that 75 percent bonus on points earned, which gives you like two point six to. points per dollar if you have that top tier. Now, for the personal cards, that's gone up to needing a million dollars in investments. Business cards, though, it stayed at $100,000 in investments. And so I've been all set up with that for a long time. So if the transfer ratio is one to one, that means getting 2.62, you know, Atmos points per dollar everywhere. Speaker 2 (4:50) At first blush, I thought, wow, that's amazing. And then, of course, I thought about like Steven Pepper and other, you know, expats who live abroad. And I thought about the Atmos Summit card, which earns 3x on all foreign transactions. So they're going to do better without having to have any investments with Merrill or Bank of America. But still, I think for those of us in America, it's a very interesting potential change, right? Speaker 3 (5:17) Yeah, potentially. I mean, as somebody who's a built Palladium card user, it's not as exciting to me. But I think that for anybody for whom that's not a good fit or there are a lot of reasons why it might not be a good fit. So then I think that this transfer option becomes particularly interesting news. Of course, the fear is that maybe we will see a devaluation in terms of the points if we start seeing large numbers of points transferred in. So that's something to watch out for. And, you know, certainly if you've got some sweet spots in mind with Alaska Atlas, it might be worth thinking about. using the points you have for those things. sooner rather than later. But again, we don't know. This is just speculation at best. Some things that we do know, though, members are going to start picking their earning style. And that has started on October 1st. So existing members, if you haven't chosen your earning style, you're automatically going to be opted into distance based. Now, when I talk about earning style here, what I mean is elite status earning, because now Alaska has multiple ways for you to earn elite status. And so you can choose to earn it based on the distance you've flown, or you can choose to earn it based on the amount of money So for instance, earning, I can't recall the exact number, but let's say five status points per dollar spent or whatever it may be. In fact, it's not going to be that many, but I can't recall exactly what the ratio is. New members of Alaska Atmos. So if you. are not yet a member and you join as a new member, you'll automatically be opted into the spend based, but members can change their earning style one time per year. So if you find that the distance based will work better for you, then you can switch to that and or vice versa. So we have a post about that because that was announced a long time ago. So you can see that for more detail about exactly how that's going to work. Now we know that it well, now it has begun already by the time this publishes. So so you have got that now and that is debit card. coming. And again, we're sort of light on details, but we know that there's going to be some sort of a discount for signing up for notifications. And the code for that is D2Card20. So I don't know a ton about that one. The debit card is not something that I have followed closely. I don't know if you followed that one more closely than I did. So a number of airlines now offer these debit cards because there's some sort of a way for very small banks to earn money on the interchange, whereas major banks don't. Debit cards can't earn money on an interchange. So we've seen Wyndham launch a card, United, Southwest. And so now Alaska is joining in that. Speaker 2 (7:39) So if I understand right, the interesting thing short term is that you will get some kind of 20 % discount code just for signing up to be alerted about the debit card, right? So might as well, right? Right. So that's interesting. A couple of questions about the earning style before we move off to the next thing. All right. So you mentioned that you can pick, you know, to earn based on distance or spend amount, right? Dollar amount. So that does not affect how many redeemable points you earn at all. Speaker 3 (8:14) Correct. Speaker 2 (8:14) Okay. Suppose you pick that you want to earn loyalty points based on dollar spent and you book award flights. Speaker 2 (8:27) And, you know, today you get you get loyalty points based on distance flown with with award flights you book. So how is that going to work when you. Speaker 3 (8:35) To Speaker 2 (8:35) be honest with you, I can't recall, but it's in the post that we Speaker 3 (8:37) wrote about it months ago. So I don't know. There is there is a metric by which they determine an amount of of the status points you'll earn if you're picking the spend based. So you will still be able to earn it from award redemptions. But I don't remember the details on that off the top of my head, to be honest. So so you have to check the post for details on that. Another piece of news, though, from this is that communities have launched on October 1st. So Alaska promised a long time ago they would launch these communities that you could join. And originally they had one for folks who lived in, well, Hawaiian had this for folks who lived in Hawaii and Alaska. I initially had it for folks who live in Alaska, but now they've created some additional communities and there are some benefits to joining. Now, you don't have to join a community and you won't automatically be opted into one if you don't join. you'd probably want to join one. You can change it one time per year. And the reason I say you probably want to join one is because there are two particularly interesting ones. First is families on the go. If you've got kids, this one might be of interest because if you join that community, you'll get 20 % of your points back on award flights for children 12 and under. So it's just a benefit. You're going to get essentially a 20 % discount. It's a rebate, I guess, not a discount. 20 % of the points back after your trip. There's no reason not to join that if you're booking a lot of award tickets as a family. Unless, of course, you're more interested in the Global Locals community. So this is the other one that will be of interest to many folks out there. You'll get 10 % if you join Global Locals, you'll get a 10 % bonus on status points for international travel. So when you're flying internationally, including your award redemptions, remember with Alaska, you can get a 10 % status bonus on those flights. And also. And we don't know all the details on this yet either. But you'll earn one status point per 25 Atmos points transferred, quote, from an eligible loyalty partner. And we don't know what the eligible loyalty partners are yet. But maybe it'll just be Bank of America. Maybe it'll be built in Bank of America. Maybe it'll just be hotel programs. We really don't know at this point. But we can imagine, for instance, if built counts, then, for instance, transferring 25,000 built points to Alaska Atlas would get you 1,000 status points. So that might be of interest for bridging the gap, for getting to the next level of elite status. Again, all we know so far is that the eligible partners will get this. We don't yet know exactly how that's going to work in practice. Yeah. That Speaker 2 (11:02) sounds really promising to me. Exactly the scenario you mentioned, that like, you know, With most airline programs, when you get close to a level of status and you really want to get there, at the end of the eligibility year, you start booking flights that maybe you... didn't actually need because you want to get that level of status. And this sounds like it could be a really nice alternative is just say, I'm just going to move a bunch of build points over. I mean, assuming you have a lot of them to bridge that gap, that would be great. Speaker 3 (11:35) Yeah. And again, to be clear, we don't know for sure that that's going to be an eligible loyalty partner. So keep your eyes peeled for more information on the blog as we determine exactly what those eligible partners are. Okay, now switching gears a little bit. There's some Chase news out this week. So there is a refreshed Chase Freedom Flex. And we had heard about most of these changes in advance. But then we got one that was unexpected also. So the Chase Freedom Flex card now no longer has foreign transaction fees. So that's a nice benefit for folks who want to be able to use it abroad. Speaker 3 (12:08) downside, I guess you'd say, is it no longer has cell phone insurance. That's what was taken away from the card. I don't know if there were a lot of people using it for cell phone insurance since it only earned 1 % on that anyway. But if you were, then know that you no longer will get that cell phone insurance with FreedomFlex. And they added the eligibility for points boost. You can get up to a 10 % points boost when you're booking your hotels through Chase or potentially flights through Chase Travel. I don't know how exciting that is, because if you've got a Sapphire preferred or reserve or something like that, then you would get a better points boost on one of those. So that doesn't seem like a huge benefit to me. I don't know. Speaker 2 (12:45) Do you feel differently about that? No, I agree. I mean, it's like trading, getting you could just cash out your points and get one cent per point into the bank account, into your bank account and our interest. Or you could keep your points tied up and chase and go through there. an okay travel portal and sometimes spend more than you need to just to get 1.1 cents per point Speaker 1 (13:08) value. Speaker 2 (13:09) Yeah, it Speaker 3 (13:09) doesn't make a lot of sense. And keep in mind that even if Chase had the same price that you could find elsewhere, you might be able to click through a shopping portal and do better than 10 % back. And so there's just so many, so many things, so many reasons why that's not of much interest. Speaking of things. I mean, Speaker 2 (13:25) I was gonna say. get the cash back and book through Rove in order to earn Rove points. Right. Speaker 3 (13:30) Yeah, absolutely. Because that would probably be more valuable for most folks. And of course, keep in mind that there are a number of options for booking loyalty eligible hotels through Rove. So you could book through Rove, earn Rove miles and earn hotel points and elite status credit and everything. It just wouldn't be worth the 10 % points boost over your other best options, most likely. Speaking of things that are not going to be of a ton of interest for most people, Chase is adding even more credits you probably don't want to use on the Sapphire Reserve for business card. So now there are going to be four edit credits on that card, $250, four times a year instead of two times per year. What do you think, Greg? Does that make you excited? No, Speaker 2 (14:10) it's been a struggle just to use my two per year with the personal card. So the idea