7 places I’m going as a Hyatt Diamond, a hotel CEO on devaluing points, and a million point offer

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the past week of travel information – here’s a recap of what you may have missed from Points With a Crew over the past week or so

As always, if you’ve enjoyed some of these posts, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or sign up for our our once-daily email

Featured stories

One of the big stories of this week was the news that Marriott was buying Starwood Hotels.

There’s a lot we still don’t know, but here are 3 things we know about the Marriott / Starwood merger

You might also be interested in a video from Marriott’s CEO talking about the merger.

The money quote – “Devaluing points or member benefits is NOT the way to preserve and strengthen these programs” (we’ll see about that!)

There are 2 increased offers on Chase credit cards

First is the Chase Sapphire Preferred 50000 point offer – best offer on this card I’ve seen

Second is on the Chase Freedom card – it’s an increased signup bonus (to 15,000 UR) AND an increase to 10% for the 4th quarter cashback.  There were some who took exception to my framing of the Freedom bonus offer, so I also posted about a new offer that gives you ONE MILLION POINTS*  (*after spending $1,000,000)

But if you’re a credit card churner (like I am), you probably won’t be approved – learn about the Chase 5/24 rule to find out what Chase cards that churners still can get

American Airlines announced changes to its AAdvantage program starting in early 2016

Here’s a breakdown of the American Airlines devaluation: Earning, Status and Award Chart – what you need to know

You might also be interested in the top 5 worst American Airlines award chart devaluations

Late last week, @HyattConcierge posted on Twitter looking for people interested in swapping loyalty programs.  It turned out that many people were just being comped to instant Hyatt Diamond status

While (I think?) the opportunity is now over, it didn’t stop me from listing the 7 places I’m going with my new Hyatt Diamond status

There’s a new instant win sweepstakes game from SPG – SPG Design Hotels

While I didn’t have much luck with some of the other SPG sweepstakes, I already won 10,000 Starpoints on this one! (and I’ve read at least 5 reports of others winning 10K instantly)

If that’s not enough free Starpoints for you, you have until Tuesday to get 200 free Starpoints from opting in to email communications

Here are the rest of this week’s stories:

• You only have a few days left for an award sale going to Brazil or Chile on United.
• Alaska Airlines miles can now fly you on on a new partner – it’s another way to get from the US to Europe
• I got a (possibly targeted?) offer for 5000 points after making only a single purchase!
• There are 19,500 miles in shopping portal bonuses ending THIS WEEK  (one already ended on Friday, but you still have a few more days for some of them)

If you’re still up for more travel reading, here’s last week’s recap: Being embarrassed by credit cards, merchants violating their CC agreements, Alaska status matching changes

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