Assessing the damage of Hyatt’s devaluation, a first time car rental claim for Greg, Nick’s lessons from canceled travel plans, and more (Week in Review)

As of last Monday, the entire Frequent Miler team is now 40 years old or above. Yes, I finally joined the guys in the over-the-hill club. Symptoms have included lame puns, grumbling about noise levels in public places, and a diligent morning routine of vitamins (even before coffee). Despite these troubling symptoms, I had a wonderful birthday spent doing very 40-year-old activities like camping, stargazing, hiking, and all the things that make me love living in West Virginia. (For those who don’t know, I moved to West Virginia for the remote worker incentive program “Ascend West Virginia” two and a half years ago and have been loving it ever since!)

I’ve had some epic birthdays in the past, including hiking the Grand Canyon with my twin sister and dad two years ago. And thanks to my twin sisters’ diligence in submitting to the Phantom Ranch lottery, I just got the news that our next birthday will be celebrated in the Grand Canyon again! The Grand Canyon is one of my favorite places in the United States (or maybe even in the world), and the wildfires last year that burned the beautiful Grand Canyon Lodge had me worried that my next visit would be long in the future. I’m thrilled that I’ll be making it back there much sooner than I feared!

Speaking of wildfires, Utah is unfortunately tackling both the Cottonwood Fire (the nation’s largest wildfire at the moment) and the Babylon Fire (the second largest) as I write this. Sadly, these are just two of the ten ongoing wildfires in Utah right now, which you can monitor here.

Nick happened to have plans to visit Utah this week but safety is paramount of course, so this trip never occurred. Instead, it served to teach Nick a few lessons about trip cancellations. Check out his article below along with more posts diving into Hyatt’s award chart changes, Greg’s experience with a Chase car rental damage claim, and more.

12 things to know about Hyatt’s devaluation | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep365 | 7-3-26

Hyatt’s new award chart has been live long enough for us to start analyzing just how bad the devaluation was…or in some cases how certain aspects were not quite as bad as we expected. Using Tim’s updates to our “What are Hyatt points worth” post as their guide, Greg and Nick outline the 12 major takeaways from Tim’s post-devaluation analysis.

Which hotel credit card is the most rewarding for big spending?

Some credit cards offer a bonus once a certain, very large amount of money is spent. For example, the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card offers a free night certificate after $30k calendar year spend, or the Marriott Bonvoy® Brilliant® American Express® Card offers an 85K free night certificate after $60K calendar year spend. This post compares several hotel credit cards with “big spend” bonuses like this, comparing their reasonable redemption values, the approximate cash value of the big spend bonus, the value of points generated through spend plus the cash value of the bonus, and the total value / total spend required for the big spend bonus. It provides a pretty thorough examination of the question “Which hotel credit card is the most rewarding for big spending?”

My Chase car rental claim and a botched experiment

Greg rented a car for our team trip to Colorado Springs this past spring, and a rock dinged the windshield almost immediately as soon as we hit the road. That meant he’d unfortunately get to see what a Chase car rental claim might look like. The process started with an incident report when he returned the car, which took a very long time because of a slow and buggy entry system. (This is an important detail for anyone needing to return a damaged Hertz rental – don’t leave it until just before your flight out!) Luckily everything else was easy, straightforward, and ultimately successful.

Takeaways from a trip cancelled at the last minute

Nick has learned some hard lessons this season which remind him of the value of flexible bookings. In this case, the devastating wildfires in Utah required him to cancel a trip, and face the consequences of the non-cancelable bookings he typically tries to avoid. He also describes a particularly confusing situation canceling a string of nights he’d booked at the Deer Valley Suite at Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, which he’d booked individually to use $300 credits across multiple different Platinum cards in his household. The problem is, he didn’t take careful note of which credits came from which cards and were spent on which nights, which made it very hard to figure out which cards he’d have to use to make new bookings before June 30th to retain his January to June 2026 Platinum hotel credits. This isn’t the only lesson he learned, so check out the full post for more.

Speculative Bilt transfer bonuses | Coffee Break Ep112 | 6-30-26

Our audience seems to love a good hypothetical. So on this week’s Coffee Break, Greg and Nick debated which rewards programs they would be willing to transfer to speculatively if a 100% transfer bonus ever showed up with Bilt points. As a reminder, we usually advise not to transfer points speculatively since you never know when award availability or devaluations may cause you to regret an irreversible transfer, but a 100% transfer bonus may just be enough to feel worth it in some rare cases. Find out which cases Greg and Nick had in mind for this particular hypothetical.

What are Hyatt points worth now that the new award chart is live?

Hyatt just launched a five-tier award chart last month, which we expected, of course, to have an impact on their value. To prepare for this, we evaluated the value of Hyatt points before the award chart changes in March to create a sort of baseline we could use for comparison after the new award chart went live. Now that this new award chart has been live for about a month, we decided it was time to do our updated analysis and see how things have changed. What we found was roughly a 10% drop in value, but you’ll want to check out the full post for more specifics.

Is it still worth collecting Hilton points on stays?

When we recalculated the reasonable redemption value of Hilton points, we found that they’re unfortunately not worth as much as they once were. With this in mind, one reader asked, “With Hilton points now devalued to a 0.35 cents per point Reasonable Redemption Value, is it time to stop accumulating Hilton points altogether, and book all Hilton rooms through Rove? I don’t mean Loyalty Eligible Stays, I mean just pure Rove points. Can accumulating more Hilton points through stays or transfers ever pay off now?” Stephen broke down how you might approach answering this question for yourself because, of course, it depends!

How are you using AI for trip planning? | Question of the Week Ep7 | 6-27-26

AI does not seem to be ready for points and miles management yet. We’ve seen it lead people astray when it comes to award booking or credit card questions, but it gets a little more interesting when applied to trip planning and brainstorming ideas or even basic logistics about on-the-ground experiences in a destination. Though that doesn’t always go perfectly either, and the big takeaway here is: make sure you fact-check whatever AI tells you!

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on Last Chance Deals to make sure you grab those ending this weekend.

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