Recently Citi announced that there would be a number of changes made to their Citi Premier credit card. One of the changes was that the Citi Premier would earn 3x points on in travel categories, the biggest news was that they were expanding what’s considered travel with a heap more categories coming in: “airlines, hotels, car rental agencies, travel agencies, gas stations, commuter transportation, taxi/limousines, passenger railways, cruise lines, bridge and road tolls, parking lots/garages, campgrounds and trailer parks, time shares, bus lines, motor home/RV Rental and boat rentals”.
The Citi Prestige also offers 3x ThankYou points on all travel purchases. I thought that it would only be natural for the Citi Prestige to also have their travel categories broadened to include the same categories, especially considering the annual fee on the Prestige is $450 and only $125 on the Premier (which might be reduced to only $95 soon).
I contacted Citi’s media department to see if my intuition was correct and looks like I was completely wrong:
The changes are specific to ThankYou Premier and will not be extended to Citi Prestige.
I really don’t understand this move by Citi. The Premier card has a lower annual fee, a higher sign up bonus and earns 3x points in more categories. The Prestige does come with a $250 airline credit, but even if you get full value out of that the annual fee is still $200 compared to $125 with the Premier.
The Prestige card does come with a number of other benefits though:
- Complimentary 4th Night for any hotel stay (you have to book through them, which means you’re missing out on portal bonuses and online travel agency loyalty points which add up to 17% if you book through Hotels.com). Frequent Miler has an interesting post on using this benefit.
- Complimentary access to nearly 40 American Airlines Admirals Club
- $100 Global Entry application fee credit
Personally I don’t really see how those benefits outweigh the annual fee difference or the fact that the Premier card earns at a higher rate. It looks like the Prestige is being marketed at people with more money than sense, although if the card still has a 50,000 point bonus in a few months I’ll probably pick it up (I’ll be able to double dip on the airline credit to get the annual fee basically refunded). For some reason the Citi prestige is also not offering access to a free FICO score either.
How do portal bonuses and loyalty points come out to 17%? In the Frequent Miler post 14.5% was from Hyatt gift cards, no?
7% through topcashback, 10% through hotels.com loyalty program. Plus whatever CC rewards and coupon codes they are offering. Usually you can get at least another 5% from coupons but I didn’t include those. You could also get 5 URs instead of 7% cash back.
Thank you for clarifying. How does the 10% work? (I’m only aware of 10th night free.) FYI venere usually is 10% on topcashback and sometimes has coupon codes for another 5 or 10%. The site isn’t as useful as hotels.com but the prices are comparable.
I bet that Citi is planning to equate the categories in the future but has not yet informed their front line agents. I can’t imagine why they would want to give the Premier card such a big advantage over the Prestige.
I didn’t speak with a front line agent, I spoke to their Media team, updated that post to make it clearer. In the past when I’ve asked these types of questions, they’ve either refused to comment or said that they cannot confirm at this time. Would be perplexing if they gave me a flat out no when they do plan on changing it in the future.
Working in corporate at a financial institution, I can easily see how something like this would not be communicated to various teams. Let’s just hope the media team was uninformed and they do change over the Prestige earning structure as well.
Fingers crossed, the media team typically double checks with the relevant internal team before putting out a definitive statement like that though. They’ve never given me flat out wrong information before.
I don’t pretend to understand Citi, but if you’re an AA flyer the Prestige’s 1.6x on Thank You Points is key, and the annual fee for Citi Gold is really about $30 if you’re Citi Gold. (You get $250 in airfare credit; another $100 off for being Citi Gold; and then multiply the 0.6% extra mentioned in line one of my post times the 975 Thank You Points per year they give you just for doing AutoSave/AutoDeposit/Bill Pay for another $70 or so). Admirals Club access is pretty key, too. So the Prestige logic isn’t all “dumb money.” Just partly . . . .
And on the subject of hard-to-understand CC benefits decisions,there’s Amex Gold (still high fee even post devaluation) versus the Amex Everyday cards (no fee/low fee).
Forgot about the 1.6x benefit for UA/AA flights, that does make a big difference. I still don’t understand the decision to beef up the categories on the Premier & not the Prestige. I thought the point of realigning the categories to have the same 3x & 2x was to make it easier to understand for consumers, but this just makes it worse.
The other great thing about the 1.6x is that these flights earn elite-qualifying miles when you take the flight. So in some (rare) cases, you can even break-even on TYP cost and result with the same or more in airline miles.
Another good point.