Citi Devalues ThankYou Points

Citi just made two changes to its rewards program this week—and if you use ThankYou points for hotels or group travel, they could sting.

First, Citi reduced transfer ratios to Choice and Preferred Hotels, according to View From the Wing. Starting on April 19, transfers to Choice will drop from a 1:2 ratio to 1:1.5, while the transfer ratio for Preferred Hotels will drop from 1:4 to 1:2. This one stings for Japan redemptions in particular. I love using Choice points to book hotels in Japan, but those 8,000-point hotels will now cost 6,000 Citi points instead of 4,000 (FYI, Wells Fargo still offers a 1:2 ratio on transfers to Choice for now). Preferred Hotels is more premium, so whatever value there was for luxury stays via Citi transfers will be taking a huge hit. 

Second, Citi will be ending points sharing on May 17th. Points pooling is a powerful way to team up with others to access redemptions, but Citi customers will lose access to that soon.  Thankfully, this move coincides with Choice’s plan to allow points sharing, hopefully sometime this month, so there will still be some opportunities to move points around after transferring them. But that won’t work with every program. Citi’s best transfer partner, American Airlines (more on them below), doesn’t have free points sharing, so this will make group bookings with points trickier than before, when you could combine Citi points then transfer to book from a single AA account. 

Lazy Take 🦥

These aren’t catastrophic changes—but they chip away at two of Citi’s more useful features: high-value hotel transfers and easy points pooling. This doesn’t change my overall view—Citi still has one of the better transferable currencies—but it does make the ecosystem less compelling, especially for Japan travelers and anyone relying on points sharing.

This week on the blog 📝

We released our Lazy Guide to American Airlines AAdvantage—one of the easiest programs to actually get great value without great effort. Coincidentally, this week the airline’s CEO committed to maintaining AA’s value advantage (no pun intended), so I hope the airline will follow through! 

Quick Points of the Week ⚡

Extra points 🪙

1,500 Marriott points for linking to Uber. If you haven’t linked these accounts yet, now you can get bonus points for doing so. (Frequent Miler)

New products & features 🆕

New Capital One Travel app. You can book and manage your trip via Capital One, and find lounges, view their estimated wait times, and join the waitlist digitally. (TPG)

AA offers more flight delay info. The American Airlines app will not only tell you that your flight is delayed, but also explain what is causing the delay and give options for next steps, like rebooking or hotel or food vouchers in some cases. These features will get heavy usage if my AA experience is any indication. (American Airlines)

Devaluations 📉

Delta’s baggage guarantee gets stingier. Delta promises to get your bags to the carousel within 20 minutes of arrival; but now you’ll need to make a claim within 2 hours of arrival, down from 72 hours previously. (One Mile at a Time)

Warning ⚠️

Amex tightens bonus restrictions on Marriott cards. Last week we highlighted a big new bonus on the Marriott Brilliant, but beware: there are eligibility restrictions, and they just got tighter. (Award Wallet)

Sign up bonus of the week 🎯

Links marked with an * are affiliate or referral links, meaning we may earn if you apply via our link. 

I did not see any exciting new bonuses this week. But Virgin bumped the welcome offer on its $99-fee Synchrony-issued MasterCard from the usual 60,000 Virgin Points to 75,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 90 days. That’s a solid increase, but still not enough to make it compelling for most people. Cards like the Sapphire Reserve or Venture Rewards offer similar bonuses and have transfer partnerships with Virgin, plus far more flexibility for other redemptions. But if you’re engaged in the Virgin ecosystem, the card might be worth taking a look at. 

Other great sign-up bonuses this week

50,000 points+ $300 Bilt Cash + Bilt Gold status on the Bilt Palladium (our take: 🔥🔥🔥🔥)

70-125k points on Delta co-branded cards (our take: 🔥🔥🔥 for the Gold) ends April 1

125k pointson the Chase Sapphire Reserve*(our take: 🔥🔥🔥)

175k points on the Hilton Aspire (our take: 🔥🔥) ends April 15

200k points on the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant (our take: 🔥🔥)

70-130k points + free night on the Hilton Honors/Surpass (our take: 🔥) ends April 15

75k points on the Chase Sapphire Preferred* (our take: 🔥)

75k points + $250 travel credit on the Capital One Venture Rewards (our take: 🔥)

60k points on the no-fee Choice Privileges Mastercard (our take: 🔥)

70k points on the JetBlue Plus (our take: 🔥)

Up to 100/175k on the Amex Gold/Platinum (our take)

How we rate bonus offers. 

Lazy Pick ✅ (Sponsored)

For years, I’ve used long flights to catch up on Netflix and language immersion content I can never make time for at home. I download everything to my tablet and use the Flight Flap—a simple, lightweight holder that adjusts into tons of positions—to watch hands-free on board. If you prefer your own content to in-flight entertainment, it can be a great, low-cost upgrade.

Enjoy the weekend! 🦥

Don’t worry, most of the points pathways to Japan are still going strong!

Sometimes we include referral or affiliate links (we’ll mark them clearly). If you use them, we may earn a commission—never at extra cost to you. We do our best to share great offers, but always double-check for the best deal available. Thanks for supporting LazyPoints 🦥