Award Travel Wishlist

At the end of every year I find myself reflecting on the ups and downs of the points and miles world over the course of the year. But I also tend to look forward to the year ahead. What I have booked, what I plan to book, and my game plan for earning more points. In looking ahead to 2024, I thought of some of the things I would like to see changed in the points and miles world. Call it a holiday award travel wishlist, if you will.

My Wishlist for 2024

For the record, I kept this wishlist well within reason. I'm not asking for airlines to undo any devaluations, Chase to abolish the 5/24 rule, or Marriott to unwind its acquisition of Starwood (r.i.p.). With that said, let's check out my award travel wishlist for 2024.

Aeroplan improves its call center

First up for my award travel wishlist, is Air Canada. Air Canada's Aeroplan is a fantastic program with lots of useful partners and an award chart that offers a lot of fun opportunities. Aeroplan points are easy to earn through their multiple transfer partners, and their website is quite good for searching availability and booking awards. You can even book stopovers online without needing to call. And this is a great thing because Aeroplan's call center is simply awful.

Wait times are regularly around an hour or longer. Sometimes they offer the opportunity to request a call back, but this doesn't always happen. When it doesn't, you're stuck listening to hold music. But even if you request a callback, they'll only call you once and if you don't pick up, you need to start from scratch.

To make matters worse, this is the only way to contact Aeroplan for any actual help. Their Twitter team is useless since they cannot help with reservations.

Aeroplan's call center is a glaring hole in this otherwise stellar program, and it would be great to see it improved.

Citi launches a ThankYou business card

Citi ThankYou Points are a terrific program that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. ThankYou Points have a wealth of transfer partners and good transfer bonuses. They also have a great line up of credit cards with excellent earning potential, led by the most underrated card in the market–the Citi Premier.

But unfortunately, Citi does not have a business card that earns ThankYou points. This means most folks under 5/24 who are just starting to travel on points don't get to dive into the ThankYou Points ecosystem until much later. And even for those well over 5/24, having more credit cards that earn ThankYou Points is always a good thing.

It's a shame that Citi doesn't have a business card that earns ThankYou Points, but launching one would be a huge win for award travelers and is high on my award travel wishlist.

Hyatt introduces online points transferring

To transfer World of Hyatt points to another member, you have to print out a form, have both the transferor and the recipient sign it, and send a PDF of the filled out form via email to Hyatt. The transfer then can take any number of days (or weeks) to go through. Pro tip: remember to pause your Napster downloads while attaching the PDF to your email.

This quirk of the World of Hyatt program makes no sense in a time where we can unlock our hotel rooms with our phones. Perhaps now that guest of honor bookings became a milestone reward (and have also been capped) we may see Hyatt introduce online points transfers in the foreseeable future.

Hilton free night certificates become redeemable online

Hilton's free night certificates are the best in the business. You can redeem them for over 99% of the properties in Hilton's portfolio on any night with standard room availability. The biggest downside to these certificates is that they can only be used by calling Hilton's call center.

Hilton's call center is actually quite good–wait times are reasonable and the agents know what they're doing. But taking 10 minutes or so to redeem a certificate is just unreasonable in this day and age. 

If we can redeem points and transfer points online, why not redeem free night certificates as well? Not only is this request on my award travel wishlist, but it's just common sense!

Amex introduces points transfers

Amex is the only major currency that does not allow members to transfer points to each other. The easiest way to get around this is by transferring points to a loyalty program that allows for transferring or pooling points, such as Hilton Honors or British Airways Executive Club, among many others. But it would be helpful to not have this additional step. For this reason, Amex is on my award travel wishlist.

Banks have multiple reasons to limit points transferring, and indeed they do limit them. Chase Ultimate Rewards can only be transferred among members of the same household. Citi ThankYou Points that are transferred to another member expire after 6 months. If Amex were to introduce points transfers but impose some sort of limitation on it, I think it would be a reasonable compromise.

Award Travel Wishlist: ToP Thoughts

I think each of the items in my wishlist above would significantly improve life for award travelers across the board without asking for too much from banks, airlines, or hotel companies. Quite frankly, a couple of these is really just catching up to modern-day technology (looking at you, Hyatt and Hilton!).

Which of these changes would help you the most? What else would you add? Come share your thoughts in our Facebook group!