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I find myself in a very strange place regarding travel. After years chasing business class rewards long-haul, OH and I are retiring and finally plan to annoy the cats by getting a dog. So we will be land-based for a couple of years and have no interest in airline rewards.
I have 400k Avios which I plan to hoard, and 200k MRs which I will keep warm with a Platinum-Gold downgrade after a US trip in September. No idea what I will do with the MRs after that. I will cancel the BAPP shortly to avoid fees and start the new SUB timer. OH is about a year form an Amex SUB.
Any travel the next couple of years whilst doggo is still a bit bonkers will need to be dog-friendly, but I am still loath to leave rewards on the table. But what rewards? Would a hotel card be useful assuming some brands don’t hate dogs?
I’ve not found anything obvious in the HfP articles as they all assume rather more adventurous plans.
Just keep collecting MR points. Downgrade to the plain old boring free MR card after the gold and you still get a good selection of cashback offers on it and it’ll keep your MR points safe for when you want to use them.
Marriott have a few nice hotels, including a handful in the UK, unfortunately few in France if that’s where you are proposing to do with the dog.
As a gross generalisation, hotel points are easier to spend and get value from than airline points, especially so if you’ve lost interest in long-haul premium flights. Amex Marriott is pretty much your only choice in the market at the moment.
@memesweeper I would agree but the OP needs something to keep his MR alive next year.
I hold both the MR and the Marriott for long term and it’s relatively easy to hit Marriott plat for free breakfasts if you plan some holidays during the double nights promo mid feb-april. Had decent upgrades too, (in Europe, nothing in the US)
My only issue is Amex’s pathetic attitude in not allowing me to transfer available credit limit from the MR to the Marriott. It’s made things very difficult for me over the past couple of months, been paying off the Marriott a couple of times a week.
Hilton has quite a few dog friendly options in the UK and beyond.
Hilton has quite a few dog friendly options in the UK and beyond.
And a pet filter on their search I see
Marriott have a few nice hotels, including a handful in the UK, unfortunately few in France if that’s where you are proposing to do with the dog.
As a gross generalisation, hotel points are easier to spend and get value from than airline points, especially so if you’ve lost interest in long-haul premium flights. Amex Marriott is pretty much your only choice in the market at the moment.
Either that or the free Amex to collect MRs. Marriott has a pet filter on its search too but they seem to have very choices, especially outside cities. Their FAQ suggests individual hotels may be more generous which is a bit lazy compared to what Hilton has pulled together.
It’s far more hotel-by-hotel than it is brand-by-brand with dogs (and Emails to hotels can sometimes yield different results to official policies) but there are very few locations where there isn’t something reasonable that has at least a few dog-friendly rooms.
AirBNB, Vrbo and the like – particularly pet-friendly properties with outside spaces – may become more useful to you than hotels though.Yeah, an Amex MR and Marriott card seem the two obvious choices (or just the MR card if you like).
Assuming you don’t have an old Barclaycard Hilton card in the back of a drawer somewhere, the non-Amex hotel options are the Virgin Atlantic + card (!!) and the HSBC World Elite card.
For Virgin/Hilton, the 1.5 points per penny then equates on a 2:3 conversion to 2.25 HH points/ penny (i.e. a roughly 0.7425% return); so not great at all for a paid card, as of course you then need to factor in the annual fee as you presumably ascribe zero value to the Virgin voucher in your circumstances.
The IHG conversion rate is so poor from HSBC that … just don’t.
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