Hyatt Gold Passport: latest program to jump on the devaluation bandwagon + MORE Nov 13th

United, Delta, Hilton, Aeroplan, you name it, many popular airline and hotel programs have been updating, enhancing, devaluing their reward offerings over the past 10 months and it hasn’t stopped as last Friday news came out that Hyatt was also changing their reward requirements. The news of the changes came out on Friday, we actually got a Hyatt email yesterday outlining the changes yesterday and while in general some of the changes aren’t so bad there are some that really are! For Canadians it is both not so bad and really bad. First it is not so bad as Hyatt has a very small presence in Canada with only 5 hotels so the Gold Passport program doesn’t hold as much weight as others for travel within Canada however the really bad part is that for Canadians who travel abroad (and also to the Hyatt’s within Canada) the primary source for earning Gold Passport points in on hotel stays. We don’t have a dedicated Hyatt credit card like the United States which you can earn tons of Gold Passport points with…

First update of this short week which maybe one of only a few as we are going to be at the Airline Information Mega Event conference on Frequent Flyer Programs, Ancilliary Revenue and Co-brand credit cards. In fact, Rewards Canada’s Patrick Sojka will speaking in the Co-brand track portion on Thursday. Watch for tweets and instagram shots however during this time from the conference, the Mega Awards (industry awards) and more! News, Tips & Tricks Delta SkyMiles keeps digging themselves into a deeper hole. Bulding on the news from United the previous Friday, Delta announced this past Friday that they will have an interim award chart before there majorily devalued new award chart takes affect in June 2014. Here is how Delta put it on FlyerTalk: This afternoon, you’ll be able to see some updates to our Award Ticket charts on delta.com. To balance continued investments in products and services, we regularly evaluate Award pricing and adjust it periodically. Select redemption levels are changing for Award Tickets booked on or after November 8, 2013, for travel on or after February 1, 2014…

First full day of the Airline Information Mega Event here in YVR. Great turn out this year with over 450 attendees from around the globe representing airlines, hotels, credit card companies and loyalty/ancillary suppliers. Still managing to provide with the daily updates straight from the conference! News, Tips & Tricks Don’t forget to enter week 3 of Shangri-La’s Golden Circle 3rd Annivesary contest to earn up to 1,200 free GC Award Points. Although they state it can take 3-4 weeks to get the points, my points from Week 1 have already shown up in my Golden Circle account! The biggest news to come out in the last day is the settlement of the suit brought against the proposed US Airways-American Airlines merger by the US Department of Justice. What does this mean? It means merger talks can continue between the two airlines with hopes that the American Airlines bankruptcy judge will approve it and then it shouldn’t be too long before the two airlines merge barring any other unknown hurdles that may be put in front of them…

Aeroplan has once again brought back their partner transfer bonus that we saw in April,  last November and last spring. Basically what it entails is transferring points out of other select loyalty programs into your Aeroplan account. Just like in April, the offer is once again cumulative across all participating partners however the bonus maxes out at 25,000 miles instead of 40,000 and there are no financial partners involved this time as well. Basically you can transfer from partners like Starwood, Hertz and more (see the last graphic) and as long as the total Aeroplan miles deposited from all of them reaches one of the bonus target levels you will be awarded the respective bonus miles. And just like the last two versions of this offer, American Express Membership Rewards is unfortunately not included. so chances are I will not use the promo this time (again). If you are a Starwood Preferred Guest collector you can really up the bonus by taking advantage of their 5,000 Mile bonus offer when you convert 20,000 Starpoints into Aeroplan…

If you are taking part in the Air Canada Earn Your Wings The Amazing Race Edition promotion you’ll want to know that a new badge has been released that can earn you even more Race Wings (for details on the promotion overall, please see our post here). We’d love to hear how everyone is doing in the Earn Your Wings promotion! We personally are doing not so good as all of our flights planned over the next few month take to us cities that don’t earn any additional Race Wings other than the 200 for each take off or landing! The new badge is the ‘Speed Bump Badge’ and awards Race Wings as follows: Speed Bump BadgeTake the Speed Bump challenge and get ahead in the race! For every flight booked between November 11 and November 14, 2013 and you can earn 2,000 extra RaceWings and 1,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles for each segment booked and flown. Book between November 15 and November 17, 2013 and earn 1,000 extra RaceWings for each segment and 1,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles for every round trip or two one-way segments booked and flown…