Recap Week ending 8/16/26

What a crazy week. I recently moved into a new place and… I just booked an Emirates first class ticket to fly to Taiwan. This week’s edition is a bit more wordier since I provide my own commentary on a few key award travel topics.

Oh, and happy Rakuten payout weekend. I just got 10k Amex points from shopping online + 1 referral (thank you to whoever signed up!!) in the last 3 months. If you haven’t signed up for a Rakuten account, you really should. You can earn cashback in the form of points (either Amex or Bilt) or just straight cash back paid as check or to Paypal whenever you shop online across 3,500+ stores & brands.

If you use my referral link, you can earn $50 in cash back (or 5k points) after spending $50+ in the next 3 months. More details on how Rakuten works and how you can earn points by shopping online on my blog post here.

Emirates first class awards are harder to book for most now after last year’s recent change. Now, only elite members on Emirates (Silver or higher) can book first class awards directly. Partner bookings are now similar where you need status (Qantas, Air Canada). Oh and many partners don’t transfer to Emirates at a 1:1 rate anymore including Amex at a 5:4 rate and Chase dropping Emirates as a transfer partner.

No status? No problem…maybe. There are 2 potential workarounds to use points to book that Emirates first class seat. If you don’t have elite status (yet), these are the workarounds.

One option is booking a business class award (has to be directly booked through Emirates, no partner bookings) and upgrading afterwards. Sometimes, those upgrades can be instant. You can put yourself on the upgrade waitlist if you have enough miles in your account, however I wouldn’t expect to clear until right before the flight if at all. I also know some influencers have said you can try to call or chat Emirates to see if the days you are interested in are eligible for instant upgrade, but I have not had any luck after multiple hours of asking for various dates.

The points cost of the upgrade method can also meaningfully higher than booking directly into first class due to the different business fare classes (Saver vs. Flex Plus). You can save a few thousand points on Saver Business but you can’t upgrade to First until check-in. Spent more on Flex Plus and you’re paying a lot more in points and still no guarantee you get an upgrade into First.

Oh and the upgrade method is cost per segment. So if you are not flying a fifth freedom route (JFK-MXP; EWR-ATH; MIA-BOG, etc.), you will be using an insane amount of points to potentially only fly 1 of 2 segments in first class.

The second option is getting status through a credit card. If you are willing and eligible to open an Emirates credit card through Barclays. The $99/year annual fee card gives you Emirates Silver status for the first year and the $499/year fee card gives you Gold for the first year then drops down to Silver. If you are dead-set on trying to fly Emirates first class, this is probably an option you want to explore. Another reasonable option is flying a short fifth freedom route, like HKG-BKK for ~$1,400-1,500 round-trip.

How I booked? I opened up the $99/year card this week and immediately saw my account get Emirates Silver status. I started searching for dates and saw that Emirates was opening up first class award space from US-DXB around T-28 to T-30 to travel. I am off to Taiwan next month so this worked for me and I booked first class with one segment on the Gamechanger 777 and another segment on the A380 so I could get the iconic A380 experience.

My cost - and hopefully my wife doesn’t see this part - was 258k Amex points and ~$1,250 in tax/fees for a one-way flight. Is Emirates worth it?

I personally don’t know what the detailed economics are for a third-party hotel booking platform are. But I believe the commission can be anywhere from 10-20% of the room rate. That’s quite a nice slice of the pie that people are trying to get and likely why credit card companies and loyalty programs are trying to change your behavior to use their third-party hotel platform (Rove, Roame has a beta program, Amex, Chase, Capital One, etc.).

Chase and Capital One bumped up their annual hotel credits from $50/year to $100/year on the Preferred and Venture cards respectively this year. And it’s not out of their own generosity. They want you to keep using their travel portals!!

Personally, I almost always avoid using a third-party platform for my hotel stays. Using third-party generally makes you ineligible to receive any hotel loyalty perks and points & night credit. Making changes or needing to cancel can also be more difficult.

There are some exceptions. The largest one for me is using credit card coupons for hotels. Many cards provide travel or hotel credit to use every year including Chase Sapphire cards, Amex Platinum, Capital One Venture and Venture X, and some Amex Delta cards to name a few. If you don’t use them, you lose them!

American Express Platinum goes a step further. Amex has the best third-party hotel network in my opinion due to having the Fine Hotels + Resorts (FHR) and The Hotel Collection (THC). These are unique third-party bookings as you can generally earn points + nights towards your hotel status, plus get a few other perks including property credit during your stay; guaranteed breakfast (FHR); or guaranteed 4pm late checkout (FHR). Chase has their The Edit collection and Capital One has Premier Collection, but both don’t have as many participating properties as Amex and doesn’t include 4pm late checkout.

Oh and Amex added 351 new hotels to the FHR and THC collection this past week. Full list on DDG’s site here.

Speaking of companies trying to change your hotel-booking behavior. Capital One is trying to get people to book their Premier or Lifestyle Collection hotels. Some people are getting a 20% off (up to $500) or 20x points when booking your first Premier or Lifestyle Collection hotel by Oct. 31.

This program is similar to the American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection with free breakfast and some property credit. However, No word on if booking through those programs consistently counts towards points earnings + night credits like Amex FHR. I found 2 datapoints. 1 person said they got points from IHG (Reddit) and another said IHG didn’t give them points (FlyerTalk).

There’s a new 20% Air Canada transfer bonus from Chase through September 30. If you have the Chase Aeroplan card, you can get an extra 10 points on the transfer bonus so you get a 30% transfer bonus as long as you transfer 50k+ Chase points. That extra 10 points is also capped at an additional 25k bonus points (250k Chase points transferred).

Air Canada has great award options. Despite the recent award devaluation (my blog post here about it), you can still get pretty great value with Air Canada’s program. East Coast→Europe flights in business class cost as low as 60k points to 75k points. ANA first class can also be booked for 120k points from Chicago or NYC to Tokyo. All before the 20-30% transfer bonus.

Fly on LATAM lie-flat business class from the US to Lima, Peru for as low as 42k points each-way with JAL points or 50k Virgin Atlantic points each way. Or use JAL points and book a round-trip for as low as 80k points.

In theory, you should be able to book these flights for as low as 39k Qatar Avios (MIA-LIM route), but when I search on Qatar, it does not show award availability. I guess you could try calling since Amex has a 30% transfer bonus to British Airways which can freely move to Qatar Avios.