Citi Premium Credit Cards
Oh Citi. You had a golden opportunity and you just let it sail by. After years of indifference, you had finally sparked some interest. There was some love growing for your brand after you finally added the elusive American Airlines as a transfer partner. It seems like you felt like that was good enough. The job was done and it was time to rest on your laurels. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. It was enough to start a conversation, but not enough to end the discussion. You had two chances to keep this fire burning, but both did nothing but extinguish the flames. The Citi Strata Elite was a complete flop, mired in all sorts of calamity. You could of squashed all of that noise with an unexpected mid tier AAdvantage credit card. The problem? The Citi AAdvantage Globe card is not good either. Oh Citi…
Citi Strata Elite Was Dead On Arrival
First up was the Citi Strata Elite. We had hoped that the crew that brought us the amazing Citi Prestige card (at least at launch) would really blow our socks off here. The thinking before launch was that you would need the new $595 Strata Elite card to gain access to American Airlines transfers. That would have been ballsy, but also kind of genius. There would have been no greater selling point for the Elite. Lucky for us you decided to give it to all sorts of cards, even on some no fee cards.
Competition Left An Opening
Even without the American Airlines transfers the market was just begging for a reset. We knew the Amex Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve refreshes were coming out right around the same time. Those card refreshes would include a much higher annual fee and, of course, a multitude of new preppy coupons. At a time when the coupon fatigue has never been higher, and was about to hit a breaking point, you could have changed the game.
Missed Opportunity
How about a card that comes in with a reasonable annual fee, more like what used to be considered premium, with some meaningful TRAVEL related perks? No more crap that will get you some leggings and $250 off a $2500 a night hotel. Give us something that we could sink our teeth into! You know like free golf while traveling a few times a year, select partner airline lounge access, 4th night free stays, improved redemptions through the portal on select airlines etc. Oh damn, did I just give you the Citi Prestige playbook? All you really had to do was take some of the best of your old card and package it into a sub $500 annual fee and you would win the hearts and minds.
Middle Of The Road = DOA
What did you do instead? You went middle of the road on both things. There is no worse place to be then on the level of indifference. How about a $595 annual fee and perks like Best Buy or Live Nation credit? How about some transportation credit? Well Uber and Lyft are taken, so … how about something like Blacklane (don't worry if you have never heard about it – either had Citi). The one creative thing you did was the 6x dining, but you limited it to certain hours on certain days. It was like taking something good and making it as annoying as possible. Select days, fine, but select hours within those days? Come on now, that is a bridge too far to cross. The Citi Prestige still earns 5x on restaurants ALL THE TIME by the way.
You had the playbook already – you just refused to read it.
Citi AAdvantage Globe
After the effort (or lack thereof) put into the Strata Elite I no longer had high hopes for the new American Airlines card. Especially since there seemed to be no teases, leaks or buzz about it until just a few days out. It is almost like they had to slap something together to justify buying more AAdvantage miles from American. Maybe that is how they got the full complement of co-branded cards and to added American as a ThankYou point transfer partner.
The timing of these two premium card launches were unfortunate for Citi. The other premium card refreshes happening around the launch of the Strata Elite stole any thunder Citi would have. Then Alaska Airlines spun up an entire new program AND launched a premium airline credit card right before the Citi AAdvantage Globe card came out. And guess what, Bank of America obliterated Citi's AAdvantage Globe card. Just like the Amex Platinum and Sapphire Reserve refresh did to the Strata Elite.
What Can Citi Hang Its Hat On?
There is nothing of note with the AAdvantage Globe card. Maybe introducing the Globe Admirals Club passes was kind of interesting. That is more trying to fix a problem of their own making, overcrowding in lounges. I bet a majority of these will be used in the same fashion as traditional Admirals Club passes by the way. To be fair, the Atmos Summit card fixed a problem of their own making with their card too. They eliminated the annoying partner booking award fee for cardholders. Maybe Citi did learn something from the launch after all?
More Lackluster Perks
Outside of that, what is to like? The $100 credit on American flights is nice, but people with status won't get much value from it. That is even more true when WiFi becomes free on most flights next year. Is this card not supposed to be for your most loyal flyers? Citi even borrowed the underwhelming splurge credit from the Strata Elite card, and somehow made it worse. Yuk. Even the Turo credits are capped once per month, but they don't give you enough credits each year to even use it every month. Say what?
Where is the creativity? Where is the value for anyone that would pay $300+ for a card and loves American Airlines? Even if you value the American credit at $100, are you paying $250 for 4 lounge passes and $100 in … Live Nation credit? How is this even better than the $95 a year AAdvantage Platinum Select? It isn't.
The Fix Was Somewhat Simple
They could have left all of this junk intact and added some type of multiplier for status. Or dropped half of the useless credits and just added loyalty point bonuses. You know what? People would have gobbled it up. Give a boost with every $5000 in spend or just 10% or 25% more loyalty points for every dollar spent and people would use it. They would use it a lot. Interchange fees is the name of the game after all, isn't it? You had a chance to differentiate this card from your $95 card, but didn't. Why would anyone move up a notch in their annual fee belt from $95 to $350 for this?
Citi Premium Credit Cards: ToP Thoughts
These Citi Premium credit card launches lacked inspiration, uniqueness, value or even a unified plan overall. A good card family should compliment each other. The cards in the family should differentiate themselves enough to clearly see their purpose. It would also give people a reason to carry more than one in the family. The Chase Ink business cards do a great job of this.
Then Citi had to offer something valuable, unique or just downright cheaper than the competition to be successful. These two cards do none of that. They were both clearly mailed in efforts. It just isn't good enough Citi. Adding American Airlines as a transfer partner will only get you so far in this space. As for our readers? Stick to the sub $100 cards in the Citi portfolio. Those are the cards that offer value. Forget about the rest, as Citi seems to have.
