It’s another news breakdown! This week on the show, we dig into eight big news stories in travel, from Southwest’s newest lounge (including our suggestions for what Southwest should offer), more new lounges in Salt Lake City, the dramatic return of Australia and New Zealand business class points deals, and some surprisingly good news from both United and Hilton. Plus, Gunnar finally finds a workaround to talk about Canada on the pod … while giving Kyle some editorial control. Teamwork!
It’s another news breakdown! This week on the show, we dig into eight big news stories in travel, from Southwest’s newest lounge (including our suggestions for what Southwest should offer), more new lounges in Salt Lake City, the dramatic return of Australia and New Zealand business class points deals, and some surprisingly good news from both United and Hilton. Plus, Gunnar finally finds a workaround to talk about Canada on the pod … while giving Kyle some editorial control. Teamwork!
This week’s episode is brought to you by Bilt. Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood by visiting joinbilt.com/thrifty. Make sure to use our link so they know we sent you!
00:00 - What’s a staple of a Southwest lounge? Wrong answers only
02:35 - Australia/New Zealand lie-flat award availability is back!
07:35 - A shutdown update: Ground stops, long TSA lines, and all the latest
10:35 - United makes some of its best MileagePlus redemptions cheaper!
14:00 - Southwest gets approval to open a lounge…in Hawaii
18:15 - A word from our sponsor: Bilt Rewards! Earn points on rent and make your entire neighborhood more rewarding with Bilt. Head to joinbilt.com/thrifty so they know we sent you!
19:34 - Salt Lake City opens a new SkyClub and Centurion Lounge…and Gunnar’s rant on the “Digital Immersion Wall”
25:22 - RIP to the best way to book vacation rentals using points
27:45 - Chase news: New benefits & upgrade offers 31:45 - Hilton lowers rates on some of its most egregiously expensive redemptions
34:00 - Introducing the Canada Button – our new way to control Gunnar’s obsession with Canada
36:40 - Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto gets more flights to the U.S., making it the best way to fly to and from Toronto
39:35 - Listener Question: Upgrading to Premium Economy?
42:55 - On the Spot: You can only visit one Canadian province forever, which one takes the Kokanee, eh?
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson. That's Kyle Potter. We're gonna hit eight different news stories today, including news of Southwest Airlines First Official Lounge. So my question to you, Kyle, is what is a staple of a Southwest lounge? Wrong answers. Only
two free checked bags.
How do you get two free too soon?
Two free checked bags, like into the little cu like the fancy lounges that have the cubbies for your bags in the front.
Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. I mean, if they're, if they're trying to go up market, you might as well bring something. The, the one thing that people truly loved about your airline.
Yeah, I love, I love we got news of this, this first lounge we'll talk about a little bit later, but we're both fans of that SNL Sketch from a few years ago when Southwest melted down over the holidays, where they said, essentially the new Southwest lounge is just one of our agents holding down a few tables at Starbucks.
I love that bit. It was very, very funny, but it made me think, all right, some other tenets of a Southwest lounge. For me, every seat in the lounge is exactly the same. So there's just no variety in seating at all. Just very utilitarian. The other one is the lounge isn't actually in the airport. It's just in a building nearby.
Kinda like all their airports are like, you know, satellite airports. Yeah. Like Midway and Hobby and Dallas Love, which are just near the big major airport, you know? Do you like that one?
That's pretty good.
Okay. And then a serious, a serious suggestion for Southwest lounges when they open. Okay.
Southwest always lets, their flight attendants have a lot of fun and like whimsy is kind of a part of their brand, and I really hope that their lounges aren't just the same as every other lounge. You know, I don't need another bespoke anything. I just want like a lounge with some fun, maybe some energy, something a little different and unique, you know?
But what about elevated and curated amenities? You need those,
right? I don't want anything elevated if I'm flying Southwest. Okay. Just gimme the basics.
Okay. I got one more thing. In every Southwest lounge, there's just some guy, like in a trench coat, like creeping around, and if you go up and ask Southwest Lounge Attendant, like, what's the deal with this guy?
It's. That's just Elliot management.
Very inside baseball joke from Kyle Potter. That's awesome. Okay. Today on the show we've got the eight big aforementioned news stories you need to know, including a shutdown update, United in Hilton, making some awards actually cheaper, a pair of Salt Lake City lounge openings, and the debut of a brand new feature on the podcast.
It's called the Canada Button. All that and more. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast.
All right, let's get into our first big story. So Kyle, a few years ago, I coined a term called Booking season, which came about because we noticed year after year, October and November are always. The two best months of the year to book cheap flights. It's usually kinda the perfect combination of holiday travels.
Last gasp winter travel, which is the cheapest time of year to fly is the cheapest time of year to book. And then summer 2026 travels open for booking and especially if you want to use points and miles. The award availability is usually pretty good for next summer, right around this time of year.
I think it's safe to say booking season has held pretty true this year. Is this the smartest thing that I've done at the company? I need to do some inventory that's gonna take the entire pod. I'm, I'm, it's up there. It's up there. I'll give you that. I'm glad it wasn't just a resounding instant. Yes. But okay.
The reason I'm bringing up booking season is that we have a new kinda entrant into booking season lore this year because. For some reason, Australia and New Zealand business class awards are back in a big way. Can you explain why
it's really unusual? I mean, just last week, you know, I explained the reason why, part of the reason why we went through Tahiti rather than flying nonstop to either you know, Auckland and New Zealand or Sydney and Australia, was that those live flat business class award availability for those 14, 15 hour flights is really just hard to find.
And it has happened a couple of times within the past few years where we just see wave after wave of availability on some really prized flights to the land down under. And we're seeing it again this fall for, you know, not just off peak to Australia and New Zealand. So their summer is our winter and vice versa.
So we're, you know, we're talking kind of in between May and September or so. That's not what we're seeing. We're seeing even for January, December, February. Really the prime months of when you want to be traveling down to Australia and New Zealand. And we're seeing route after route of, you know, surprising amounts of business class award space, bookable with points.
Yeah, we saw the American Airlines business class suites, the brand new ones bookable from DFW. To Auckland for 83,000 American miles each way. And we saw DFW to Brisbane bookable for 94,000 each way. That's November through March. I mean, that is the full gamut of peak season down under. It's pretty amazing.
And then if you wanted to fly American Airlines old first class seats, you could also book those 85,000 American Airlines miles each way in. First class that was kind of March through May, so kind of getting into fall for them down there. But that's on the LAX to Sydney route. That was another amazing deal we got to send to our members.
And then the best one of all is a little bit more complicated, but so, so fancy Cafe Pacific First class from JFK through Hong Kong to either Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, or Sydney. 142,000. Cafe Asia Miles each way. That's a lot of miles, but man is that experience so fancy. On the super long flight from JFK, you get the cafe First lounge, which I've talked about in Hong Kong, which is just super special there.
So this run of deals has been really impressive and just caught our eye and we thought we might wanna include it in booking season, the October and November, the two best months of the year to book.
Yeah, I mean, it's the peak example of, of booking season and why it's important to be on the lookout for deals because deals like this just do not come around very often.
And, and a big piece of this, I think is, I mean, it's, it's all about supply and demand. Everything is, and you know, booking season as a whole or whatever you wanna call it, is just a byproduct of the fact of, you know, we are two to four months out from the trough of travel season globally. You know, travel is typically at its lowest between, you know, after.
Christmas and New Year's through February and into March. And so if people are planning two to four months out, that puts us in this window right now. But again, I mean, to see some of these, these routes to Australia, it is a function of. Supply of oversupply of just how many flights US and foreign airlines have added between the United States and Australia and New Zealand within the past few years.
Yeah. I, I pulled the data from our Ft. Syria this morning. In January, 2019 until next January, January, 2026, we've seen a 26% increase in business class seats flying from the US to Australia and New Zealand. And even just since last year it's been. We're up 15% from basically 20 January, 2025 to January, 2026.
So that's a lot of extra seats entering the market, and that's why we're finally able to book them using our points and miles. I really hope that somebody out there did. I wasn't able to this year, but who knows? The next deal might be around the corner.
You gotta get that seventh continent for real.
I know.
For real. Okay. Let's move on to an update on the government shutdown, Kyle, for our next big story today. So the shutdowns reaching a tipping point. Federal workers haven't seen a paycheck in a month, and it's safe to say disruptions are becoming more and more widespread with ground stops and long delays, long security lines out.
Flight cancellations and more we're recording this earlier in the week, so things might have changed by the time you listen, but if you're flying soon, you should probably keep your head on a swivel. Right.
I mean, I'll, I'll put it this way, by the time people are listening to this, I'm gonna be trying to fly back home from New York City.
And the operative phrase there is trying to, because I think I am preparing for not just the possibility, but probably the strong likelihood that I'm gonna be stuck in New York for longer than I planned to.
Yeah, I think the Northeast Corridor is always more prone to issues when they pop up in, in US travel everywhere, right?
I mean, it's, it's a very congested area. Lots of flights in and out. But it always seems like, you know, I'm, I'm seeing screenshots of, of the flight aware page for Newark all the time, and it just looks really bad, especially in the evenings. But right now, you know, I'd give yourself tons and tons of time and just honestly.
Prepare for the worst. And if you can, if you can avoid travel through that area right now, I would.
I mean the, this has slowly and then not so slowly built. I mean, you know, we've been talking on, on the show about. Increasing mounting issues for air traffic control centers across the country and, and them spreading to these big population areas where, you know, when you have problems moving through New York and Newark and Philadelphia, and Miami and Jacksonville, that starts to cause major problems across the country.
And that's really what we've been talking about too. But to this point, you know, we really hadn't seen major issues at. TSA checkpoints, which, you know, back in the last big federal government shut down in late 2018, early 19. That's, that was the pressure point. And finally, you know, over the weekend we saw 3, 5, 6 hour rates at Houston Intercontinental Bush Airport.
I mean, that's ugly and that is a result of this going on. You know, and by the time we're listening to this, this will have been the single longest federal government shutdown in, in the history of the United States. So, I mean. We're, we're at a breaking point here where I think clearly the powers that be in Washington DC are.
Needing to pay close attention to this before it gets really, really, really bad.
Yeah, I'm thinking good thoughts for you with your travels and for anybody else out there, cross your fingers, do your best control, what you can control, and hopefully it all works out for you in the end. Keep your options open if you're hitting the skies this week
and book that first flight of the day.
Yeah, first departure in the morning. It doesn't matter if it's a 5:00 AM departure, that is the single best thing you can do when things are so uncertain.
Okay, let's move on to our third story of the day. And it's good news, Kyle. So for years, United slowly raised prices that it charges to book its partner airlines.
When you're using United Miles. Those partners are like Lufthansa, a NA, Swiss Tap, Portugal. When you use your United Miles, those rates just kind of crept, creeping up and up. But United did something we don't normally see Kyle did. They just make their program better.
Better. Yeah. Best. No.
But you know what, this is, this is nice 'cause you know, all the time we're talking on the show about airlines making their award programs worse and raising award rates and throttling, award availability.
And it is refreshing to see, importantly, a major US airline actually changed things for the better and not for the worse. So what we saw was that, you know, across the board United has been charging more miles to fly one of these partner airlines than what it charges to fly a United operated flight when redeeming united mileage plus miles.
So, for example, you can fly United Polaris business class from Chicago to Frankfurt for 80,000. United Miles, but if you book that same route operated by Lufthansa, instead, they would charge 88,000 miles each way. And that's what they've been doing for years. And what we saw last week was that they brought this back to parody, which is you know, a surprising change in how United is thinking about its award program.
Yeah. Like you said, it's still not as good of a deal as booking, like through Air Canada, for instance, where you can get a better rate at 70,000, but it is like. Pretty much across the board, 9% drop in these, these partner bookings, which is really good. Is this gonna hold?
I mean, I, I would hope so. You know, to your point.
United has, has always been a, a little bit of a different animal because, you know, I would say unlike American in one world and to a lesser extent, Delta in the Sky, team Alliance, United really has never been one of the strongest award programs in the star lines. There has always been a better option to book for fewer points.
But what has changed at United over the last, you know, just couple months, is that they have started introducing this system. Well, really expanding it where if you have a United card you know, an Explorer card, a Quest card, a United Club card, they will give you. Special award inventory at a cheaper rate.
That's not new, but the volume of those discounts, I mean, I think we saw an example of, you know, if you don't have a united card to fly from Newark to San Francisco in business class, it would cost you 80,000 United Miles. But they tease in that when you search that. Hey, if you had a united card, you could book this for 35,000 United Miles each way.
And so they're doing that more and more trying to incentivize people to get these credit cards, which means they no longer need to cut people a better deal on the award rate front. To Book United instead of one of these partner carriers. So I do think this is gonna stick around because it just kinda logics out that they have what they need in order to incentivize PE people to pick up one of their cards and use United Miles to fly United Airlines rather than one of their partner carriers.
Yeah, I definitely hope you're right about that. And speaking of incentives to get people to open expensive credit cards, Kyle, that brings us to our fourth story that we teased in the open. Southwest Airlines is opening its first airport lounge. Of course, they have not been shy about their desire to get into airline lounges and most importantly to charge.
Extra high annual fees on credit cards that give you access to those lounges. That is the reason why you open a physical lounge in the year 2025. But for more than a year now, they've been teasing this and we were wondering, you know, which airport's gonna get it? Is it gonna be Dallas Love? Is it gonna be Chicago Midway?
Is it gonna be Baltimore? And where did we find the very first lounge, Kyle? It's going to Honolulu. We're going to Hawaii. It's a surprise, right? You know, I think everybody really expected them to do this first at one of their core airports. You know, the, the airports that have the most service. But on the other hand, this is all about premium travel.
It's about getting people to pay more to fly Southwest because they've been hurting financially for the last five, six years. It's about. More importantly, getting people to open up credit cards and open up credit cards that are more expensive. And in order to justify that, you do need to offer something like lounge access.
And so I think ironically Honolulu makes sense for two reasons. One is just that. You can't build an airport lounge if there's not space. And there was a space in Honolulu for them to build a what? 12,000 square foot lounge. That doesn't pop up every day. Even in, you know, big airports like Dallas Love or Chicago Midway or Nashville.
We may find out that there are gonna be opening up airport lounges perhaps even sooner than what we found out about Honolulu. We just don't know. But the other thing is, is that Honolulu makes a lot of sense because. Nothing says premium travel like Hawaii. You know that it, the reason why they started flying to Hawaii in the first place is because they wanted to juice their credit card signups.
They wanted to make their rapid rewards ecosystem more alluring. And by adding something like Hawaii like they did back in 2019, that gets people more excited in Southwest. It's the same reason why Alaska. Bought Hawaiian Airlines because that helps with their loyalty ecosystem because all of a sudden they're not just flying up and down the West coast and some transcontinental stuff, but they have deeper, deeper ties into Hawaii and then more globally too.
So it, it does in a, in a way make a lot of sense.
Yeah. It was a shock. And then the more you read about it and more you understand it and then, you know, I think the, the fact that they were able to. Basically come to a lease agreement for this space, which is in terminal two at Honolulu, next to the airport's famous big outdoor garden space.
Like that big lush area right in the middle.
If you have a view of that, that's gonna be a nice lounge.
I really hope that they do have good, good, solid views of that, but apparently it's in an old, like conference area space, and they're turning into a Southwest lounge. So I'm very excited to see what that looks like.
And it's an interesting move for, for Southwest Airlines. A surprise first move, but I think we're gonna hear about some more Southwest Airlines lounges coming in the next few months and years too.
I just, I have to wonder, and anybody out there listening who considers or considered themself a, a loyal Southwest flyer, does this move the needle for you?
You know, I understand the temptation to do what other airlines are doing and what has made them successful. And you know, there really is two very successful airlines in the United States, Delta and United and the rest. And so it's tempting, especially when an investor is breathing down your back to do what everybody else is doing.
But it's, I just. I don't know. I don't know how this is gonna shake out for Southwest. I don't know that lounges and extra fees and basic economy and no more free check bags is ultimately gonna. Be the answer. Yeah. An assigned seat and a lounge might be enough for some people. It definitely makes it even just slightly more attractive to me.
But I don't see myself flying Southwest to Hawaii anytime soon. Maybe I'll get inside that lounge, but watch out for the guy in the trench coat while you're in there. Alright, we have four more stories to get to, but first we're gonna take a quick break. All right, if you're paying rent every month without earning anything in return, let me introduce you to build the rewards program designed for renters who want to earn something for their largest monthly expense.
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That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L t.com/thrifty. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you All right back to the show. Okay, we're back. And Kyle Salt Lake City Airport got a lot comfier Last week Delta opened its second Sky Club there on the same day as Partner American Express opened. Its 31st Centurion Lounge.
Worldwide. Both of these spaces look really nice and they make Salt Lake City an already really nice and comfortable airport into a super premium one. I just have to say, Kyle, between the two press releases we got Amex and Delta used the word elevate a combined eight times, just extremely on the nose for an airport in the Rocky Mountains.
There were three mentions of the word curate. And only one thoughtful, but zero bespokes. I'm very proud of them. We've moved past bespoke for for airline lounge press releases. I'm so sick of reading that word. Nobody knows what it means. Kyle, you have access to both of these clubs. Which one are you gonna go into for your next flight?
Whichever one doesn't have a line. I mean, it's that simple, right? It is good that both of these lounges opened at the same time because I think if it was just one or the other, it would probably be pretty ugly trying to get in or at least trying to find a seat once you get in there, because Delta is the name of the game in Salt Lake City.
They dominate that airport, perhaps more than any other airport in the country other than Atlanta. And there's a lot of people with either a Delta Reserve card or an Amex Platinum card traveling to, from and through that airport. So it's gonna be busy, but the fact that, you know, there's now a second Sky Club and this new Sky Club that opened just last week.
Clocks in at 34,000 square feet. I mean, that's huge. And then we've also got this new Centurion lounge at 18,000 square feet, which is also pretty large for you know, a, a bank, a credit card lounge. I am hopeful that it's not going to be as bad as it is in some other airports with multiple Sky Clubs like JFK, the lines to get into some of those sky Clubs and the Centurion Lounge there can take hours in some cases.
So I hope that isn't gonna be the case here. And you know, 'cause at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how nice that airport lounge looks or how cozy the artificial fireplace is or how curated and bespoke your beverages and meals are, if you can't get in the door, it's not even worth it.
I was saying in the office to our coworker Nick.
I am a bit of a sucker for an artificial fireplace for some reason. Just a, just a, a shred of ambiance during my, my travel journey. And you can get me with, with a quick little artificial fireplace, even if it's emitting a little bit of artificial heat. Even better.
You're so basic.
I am. I'm so basic, but I love it.
So a few of the other details here. So the Sky Club, like Kyle said, 34,000 square feet, massive floor to ceiling, windows facing the mountains that looks like it's. The case for both clubs. The Centurion Lounge has an outdoor terrace too, facing the Wasatch Mountains beautiful there. The Sky Club has a dirty soda bar, which is very popular among Utah residents.
It's also getting more popular nationwide, and they have this thing. That I'm at least skeptical about. Kyle. The Sky Club has a digital immersion wall and I will quote the release. It surrounds guests with panoramic visuals of Utah's iconic landmarks, paired with nature Sounds for a calming four D experience now.
What are the chances that there are gonna be a dozen or so people sitting in chairs really just soaking in the natural immersion sounds? No, it's gonna be vested bros. With AirPods closing deals on their MacBooks. It's gonna be ratchet idiots like me coming off a day at the ski hill, trying to eat as much food as they possibly can and and scarf down two red wines before they get on their flight.
Like the, I just think. You're giving the lounge. The lounge creature. A lot of credit for them taking the digital immersion wall seriously. But I digress.
I find that dry chicken thigh tastes a little bit better when you're immersed in nature sounds in Utah's iconic landmarks. So I don't know. Speak for yourself.
That one. That's a, a questionable one. I hope I'm wrong. I hope the, the lounge class gets into this one.
We're gonna, we're gonna take some video of you sitting in front of that just in a day. It's like, oh my gosh. It's even better than it was in person.
Yeah, exactly. All right. Another couple things.
In the Centurion Lounge, they have a blue roast coffee bar, and they also have a recovery room where they've got those like reclining lounge chairs with compression boots and massage guns, and quote. Health conscious bites for an elevated wellness experience and some shower suites. So I think the centurion might be getting my business 'cause it seems like they're catering to the the wary skier who's fresh outta the mountains and ready for his flight home.
This, this piece is interesting to carve out this additional space for. Compression boots, massage features, whatever, because at their other centurian lounges, like namely in Dallas and also in JFK, they did away with these things because they just needed more space to seat people. So I have to wonder how long this is actually gonna last.
Again, you know, the fact that there are now two Delta Sky Clubs in this new Amex Centuri lounge hopefully buys them some more space that they don't have to worry about this. But it wouldn't surprise me to get, you know, a year or less from now and see, oh yeah. That, that stuff isn't here anymore. Right.
How many Peloton bikes have we seen in a press release that are you know, in storage three weeks after the lounge opens,
sold on Facebook Marketplace for $380?
All right. That's good on Salt Lake City. Now we need to go to some bad news. So probably the best redemption in the kind of lesser discussed Wyndham Rewards hotel program is the ability to book Vac Casa vacation rentals using your Wyndham points.
And if you're just learning about this now, I have some terrible news for you, Kyle. What's the update with Wyndham and Vac Casa?
Yeah, they, they are shutting the door and on the one hand they're not saying this is done. Now they're saying you have until December 1st to book something. But in doing that, they're only letting you between now and December 1st book one of these Vac Casa vacation stays with Windham rewards points.
Through January 31st, checkout dates people who already have something booked who had something booked before this was announced. If it's in February, if it's in June of 2026, you're fine. But this, this kinda stinks because it wasn't just one of the. One of the best ways to use Wyndham Rewards points if you have 'em.
You can also transfer points from Capital One cards and city cards to Wyndham to do this. And it really did become one of, if not the best ways to book bigger vacation rentals using points. So, you know, when my friend and I went out to Whitefish, Montana, we booked a vac Casa rental doing this, and we booked, you know.
A two bedroom place at the time for 15,000 points per night. It was an amazing deal, and we really needed that space because it was like negative 40 the entire week in early January that we were there. But this is a bummer because you know, you can still use Capital One miles to, you know.
Charge an Airbnb stay, for example, to your Capital One card and then go back and erase it and, and that that works, but you're not getting kind of that extra value. Especially, you know, if you're trying to go skiing in somewhere like Park City and you want to get a bigger vacation rental or trying to book.
You know, something on the island of Kauai or one of the other Hawaiian islands and the hotel prices or points, options just aren't doing it for you. This was a great opportunity and, and it's coming to an end pretty quickly here.
Yep. It's too bad Looks, it was too good of a deal. Someone wasn't making money on it and now sadly, you have until the end of the year to make that work for you if you have some Wyndham or some city or some Capital One points.
Alright, let's move on to our next story. It's a two-pronged bit of Chase news today. The first of which is a quick one. So as of now, all Chase Sapphire reserve card holders get access to the card's new benefits. So this went live on October 26th, but what are some of these benefits? I'm talking about Kyle.
Yeah, so you get the, the first of your $250 twice a year. Twice a year, annual hotel credits to book the edit, which comes with additional benefits. Really importantly, that requires a. Two nights stay minimum in order to be eligible for that $250 credit. You get one of your $150 dining credits with the Sapphire Reserve dining, which is at this point a relatively small portfolio of eligible.
High end, I would say restaurants in, in major cities across the country, but you can use that first $150 credit. Same goes $150 through the end of the year through StubHub. You can sign up for Apple TV Plus and Apple Music and get the cost of that comped with your card. And then whenever your card renews next, it's gonna clock in at that new hire $795 annual fee.
So that's the first bit of news is that. All Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders now have access to the new benefits. And the second bit of Chase news here is that the bank looks like it's gonna try and give Travelers with the lower level Chase Sapphire preferred card, the chance to upgrade with a good little bonus soon.
Right?
Yeah. So chase started an a, like an official account on Reddit. Their social media team did and they did like a, a big thread ask me anything thread in the Chase Sapphire sub Reddit where. Somebody asked the question, you know, I have a Chase Sapphire Preferred. I would really like to upgrade.
When are you gonna start offering bonuses? Because, you know, the Chase Sapphire Reserve has been out for almost a decade now, and we have never seen you know, chase tout these bonuses of, you know. Upgrade to our higher end Sapphire Reserve card and we'll give you some bonus miles. They just haven't done that, which is really different 'cause all of the other big banks do that a lot.
Amex does it with its Amex Gold to the Amex Platinum. They even do it with all the Delta and in some cases Hilton cards too. So this is big news. I mean, they're. There's a big question here. I mean, two really. One is what is this bonus gonna look like and when is it gonna happen? Because we just don't know if, if it's poultry, it's really not gonna move the needle.
So we're gonna have to wait and see as these roll out. But two is the question is why are they doing this now?
Yeah, it's interesting. I'm, I, I really hope that the offers are like, pretty aggressive. You know? Why not? I mean, especially after. It, the signup issues that they had with the Chase Sapphire Reserve and people being confused about getting that first bonus.
And I really hope that they do something to, to crack the door open for people like me or for reserve curious travelers out there. Okay. You got anything more on this?
I just wanna say. I have had a Chase Sapphire preferred card for almost a decade now, and I don't know what it would take them bonus wise to convince me that it's worth upgrading to the Sapphire Reserve card.
So, you know, we put together these spreadsheets that we've talked about to help people track all of their benefits, and I am telling you. That the Chase Sapphire Reserve is now one of the most complicated and convoluted cards on the market. I mean, the number of rows that the spreadsheet for the 2026 Chase Sapphire Reserve card has and benefits.
It's more than a hundred things that you have to keep track of. There's a lot, and I just, I am not, I. It's, it's not, it's gonna take something huge to move the needle for me.
It would take a, a, probably a six figure bonus offer. But I mean, I don't know. I've got, I've got your spreadsheet now. I can make my annual fees back.
You put all that time into those spreadsheets and now I feel like I could probably handle it, but I don't, I also, I don't want to. It's a lot of work. Let's move on to our next story and. This kind of goes back to Kyle's declaration on this podcast that Hilton might have eclipsed Hyatt as the best hotel rewards program.
It was about 30 episodes ago that he made that big grand declaration, Kyle. It was one of the fastest souring takes in the history of the show, if not at all of travel. Since you convinced me and I picked up a Hilton credit card and started to swim in your Hilton pool, Kyle Hilton pooped in the pool, drained the pool, bleached it, and I'm still standing there inside covered in poop and bleach.
Is Hilton starting to fill the pool back up? What happened? What's the newest development with Hilton?
I can't think about anything other than the visual of you in the bottom of the pool. Like Carl Spackler from Caddy Shack. Let me, let me take a minute with that. What was your question?
Is Hilton back? Are they filling the pool back up?
Some of these redemptions got better, right?
No, they're, they're not. They are starting to clean the pool to continue this awful, awful metaphor. What we've seen is on a really limited scale, so a couple of examples that we caught within the last week or so the Grand Yle, a Waldorf Astoria property.
In Maui had shot up to 160,000 points a night, and we're now seeing it as low as 110,000 points a night. My beloved, my Sweet Hermitage Bay on the Caribbean island of Antigua which I booked. Basically a year ago for 130,000 increased several times over to as much as 250,000 Hilton Honors points per night.
That's now down to 230,000 points per night across the board, which is an improvement, but not a huge one. The Conrad in Orlando went from 105,000 points per night to 90,000 points per night. I mean there's, there's a couple more examples, but it is limited so far. It's promising in that maybe Hilton has realized it has gone too far with some of these award rate increases.
But this, this isn't enough to declare that the tide is turning. I think we're all rightfully pretty sour on Hilton. And my take still looks pretty awful.
Yeah, I don't know. I was trying to give you a, give you an off ramp there. Now I'm mixing metaphors too. We need to get outta Hilton. All right. Kyle, this is our final news story today, and this segment is so self-indulgent.
I've had to talk you out of this segment for like three weeks in a row, and you just found a way to get it in this show.
That's exactly right. Okay. We're debuting a new feature on the podcast and it's called. Canada button as you see on our table. If you're watching on YouTube, this big red button in the middle.
Okay, I'm gonna explain what it's for. So I'm a little bit obsessed with Canada. I'm slightly obsessed with our neighbors.
How much of that has to do with K in its price?
K is just a, a perfect beer. The price of that beer is also perfect. But you know, it's, it's where you drink the K Kyle. It's the beautiful, beautiful sight and sounds you see up north and the loveliest people on the planet.
So you and the rest of the Thrifty Traveler team have helped me slowly realize that Canada travel might not be as important to the rest of our audience as it is to me. It's a lesson that I've learned very slowly over a long period of time. So for the podcast, at least we've come up with a compromise.
I still get to occasionally talk about Canada on the show, but we've equipped you with this big Red Canada button and you get to smash it at any time. To help me start stopping to talk about Canada. Okay, so it's gonna work in, in two ways. One push. One push gives me a warning to make the story relevant or to start to wrap it up, right?
It's kinda like playing the music at an award show. Two button pushes instantly ends the segment. Mercifully, for all the listeners out there who don't care about Canada, but for those of you who are with me, I promise I'm gonna try and make it relevant and keep it going. Does that seem fair? Do we like the rules of engagement here with the Canada button?
I, I accept your rules. I just wanna point out to everybody listening that the reason why this has come to a head is Gunner will fill in on weekends or like when our Chief Flight deal analyst, John, goes on vacation. And inevitably within 24 to 36 hours, you'll all get a deal. You premium members and us on the team will get a deal to Yellowknife Canada.
It's like, oh, gunner's doing premium this week. All right, we're back. So this is, it's a, it's a source of friction. Let's call it.
It's Halifax Vancouver Island. Play the hits.
We need this. Play the hits. Sure. We need this button to reign you in.
Okay. Can you, can you test the button quick? No. If, if you heard that, it's just Kyle saying no.
All right, we ready?
We're good.
Okay. Let's give this a shot. Let's see how far I can make it through. All right. Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport. No, it's way too early. No, you can't do it yet. You can't do it yet. Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport. Code YTZ is a city airport located on an island right across from downtown Toronto, so it's.
Practically in the shadow of the CN Tower, you can take a free 92nd ferry over to the airport. That's 90 seconds of a ferry ride over to the airport. Or you can walk through an 800 foot pedestrian tunnel to get into the airport too. It's very cool. You should look at it on a map. Every flight from the airport is operated on a dash eight propeller airplane Because of the runway size limitations, and only two Air airlines operate out of Billy Bishop relative newcomer Porter.
Which operates most of the service and Air Canada, which only operated two routes from there until last week when it announced a bunch of nonstop flights across the border to Chicago O'Hare, Washington Dulles, Boston, and LaGuardia, which joins Porter's routes to Boston, Newark, Dulles, and Midway. So Kyle, we have lots of Canadian subscribers and readers who might be interested in what's going on at Toronto Island.
Are you at all interested? And what's going on at Billy Bishop?
Yes and no. Certainly not as much as you, but that's impossible. I, I would love a nonstop to Billy Bishop because I, I have not been to Toronto. I would like to visit the idea of going to an airport that's so centrally located. You can get on a 92nd ferry or walk across a pedestrian bridge to get into the town itself.
Is really promising. I don't know if I have it in me to deal with the Pearson Airport from everything I've heard and read and you know, understand about it. Having not been through myself, it's not the most convenient airport to deal with. So if and when you know, there is a visit to Toronto in the books, which again, I would like to make happen, I would love to be able to fly there nonstop.
Whether that's gonna happen here in Minneapolis, I don't know. But it's encouraging to see more service to this airport.
Yeah, I think Pearson is a known disaster. The city airport's really convenient. No,
that, that's raining in. This is fine. This is the Oscar's music.
Last one. The most important part of all this is that they're building a US pre-clearance facility there that opens in November, which is why Air Canada jumped in with these routes.
So you're gonna be able to take the pedestrian bridge across clear customs and then get on a quick propeller flight down to wherever US destination is from Billy Bishop. I'm excited that they're building out this airport and I also. I'm really interested in the competition between Air Canada and Porter.
Now that both airlines have major US partners with Porter signing a deal with American and air Canada, of course, being very close partners with United. Hey, I made it all the way through the story.
You, you did it. You're not even crying or anything. Way to go.
All right, good. This is a good test of the Canada button.
I'm glad. You let me finish at least the first one. And this also lets me get some more Canada related stuff into future episodes. Hopefully.
Yeah, we'll see about that.
Alright, let's answer a question from a listener. Listener, Carrie, who has a question about a booking strategy to fly premium economy to Australia.
She says hello from a long time subscriber and podcast listener. Earlier this year, we traveled on Singapore Airlines flight from Newark to Singapore and Premium Economy after reading Gunner's article and Thrifty Traveler. It was a great trip and reinforced the idea that on really long haul flights, it's worth the cost to go to premium economy.
I wanted some advice on how to get the cheapest premium economy seats to Australia. When you have pretty specific dates you need to fly. Is it best to purchase economy when it's on sale and wait and hope for a decent price on the upgrade? Or should I also track premium economy pricing on Google flights and buy when that price dips?
Thanks, Carrie. Okay. What do you think about Carrie's strategy here? Kyle, what would you recommend? This is tough because the general rule of thumb, and there are exceptions which we can get into, but the general rule of thumb is that you should typically just book the seat that you want because banking on a cheaper or reasonable upgrade is not always a winning strategy because not every airline.
Plays nice with those kinds of things. You know, with the example of Singapore Airlines for example, you can find pretty readily cheaper you know, award rates in their premium ECA economy cabins far cheaper than what they charge for business class. And so, you know, if you're talking about trying to use Miles to do this.
I would probably just default to booking that premium eco economy seat. And you know, Singapore Miles in particular are so easy to earn. They transfer from Chase, American Express, capital One City, all of the major banks. So there's a relatively easy pathway to get the miles you need to book premium economy versus a standard economy seat.
We could kind of stop there because I, I don't know that, that all of the other ones are worth pursuing. I mean, there have been rumblings about Delta resuming flights to Singapore, and if that happens, then I start to feel a lot better about the prospect of upgrading, because especially on its new routes where Delta is trying to make a buzz, it either sells.
Award tickets even in the front of the cabin, be it in Delta one or premium select for significantly lower rates, but also the upgrade rates for premium economy from a main cabin award ticket, like from Seattle to Taipei, are always a flat $495 each way. So for two people to be able to bump up into a premium economy for less than a thousand dollars each way.
Certainly not the worst deal in the world, but you still gotta do the math and figure out if it makes sense to do that and wait for that upgrade offer or just to book that premium select or premium economy seed outright from the beginning.
Yeah. I think that, that's really good advice that watch that Delta News closely.
We'll, we'll obviously talk about it here if if and when they announce that route, but, I think if, be honest with yourself, are you actually willing to fly economy? That's the only way in which I would say just go ahead and book the economy and wait on an upgrade offer because you don't want to pigeonhole yourself and then all of a sudden you're in the economy seat and you're sad about it.
Like you need to wrap your mind around the fact that you might actually be flying economy if you wanna pursue that strategy. Otherwise. You gotta book the seat that you wanna fly. That's our best advice to every traveler out there. Thank you, Carrie. If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com and we might feature it in next week's show.
It's time for our closing segment and it's on the spot. And this week it's Kyle's turn to put me on the spot. What do you got?
Against my better judgment, I'm going to indulge you perhaps for the last time in your Canada obsession. If you have to pick one Canadian province to go to, you can only pick one to visit for the rest of your life.
Where are you going and why?
British Columbia a hundred times over. It's just it, it's the most beautiful place in North America for my money. Everything there is is so pretty. It's like you have the city of Vancouver and then you have all the way out to the East. Revels Stoke, which is one of, is, is my single favorite ski area of all time.
You also have of course, Whistler, which is probably in my. Top three or four ski areas of all time north of Vancouver. The city of Vancouver's my favorite in the world. I've said that on the show before, and there's just a lot there I've yet to explore too. I need to go to Vancouver Island and I need to go see a little bit more of the interior BC and those mountains there.
And it's just so vast and so pretty and there's a lot more I need to see and do in that enormous province. But that is the one I would let all the others go just for another chance to go to bc.
Saskatchewan's a close second.
Yeah. Sask E the people. You can't beat the people on Sask e but you can beat the scenery, you can see the back of your head on a clear day.
I, I have driven through a good chunk of British Columbia. I've also have been out to Vancouver Island. V Victoria is one of my favorite cities in the world. So I'm with you there. BC is pretty special.
Awesome. That was a good one. Alright. Thanks so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast.
Rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice and like, and subscribe to the show on YouTube. So you can see this big red Canada button that we have now in the studio. Send this episode to someone you know. Is
this, is this, this is gonna stay here now?
This is going to stay here? Yes.
Okay,
fine. I might, I might get like a Canadian flag sticker to put on it or something.
We'll decorate it up a little bit. I need you too. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. Could use our tips. If you have feedback for us. Send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. I'd love to hear from you there. Too much Canada, not enough. Canada. I need to know this stuff.
Email me please. Okay, Kyle, tell us about the team.
No this episode was produced by your favorite host, your favorite yellow knife, love and host, Gunnar Olson. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited on video by Kyle Thomas. No relation. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week.
See ya.