Using Citi ThankYou Points to Pay for Meals and Hotel Incidentals

When I saw MilesAbound a few weeks ago, he was talking about his most recent trip to the Maldives. To readers of his blog, this should come as no surprise! Apparently, he was staying at the Park Hyatt Hadahaa using his points. While I haven’t visited the Maldives island chain, I certainly plan to someday and want to maximize my points, as always. Of course, the Maldives are great until you’re stuck on an island where the only places to eat are expensive restaurants at the only resort there, which happens to be an upscale hotel like the Park Hyatt. Most people will pay these expenses out of pocket; they are happy to have redeemed their points for the flights and hotels and eat the cost of the meals there. But MilesAbound used his Citi ThankYou points to pay for his meals in the Maldives. 

The Citi ThankYou Rewards Travel Center lets you order gift checks for hotels such as Hyatt, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton. Not all of these are available at all times, but this was the selection last week. These are referred to as ‘lodging certificates’, but in practice, they are no different from gift cards. The points redeem at 1 cent each so you need 10,000 points to order a $100 Hyatt gift check. Once you are at the hotel, you can simply charge all meals to your room and use the gift checks to settle the bill at the end. This means you even earn points for your dinners! As an example, Hyatt will give you 5 Hyatt Gold Passport points per dollar for all spending on the property. You can, of course, put anything else on the hotel bill – whether it’s spa, room service, resort fee, valet, etc and use the gift checks to pay for those too.

Svetlana and I got in on the 5 point per dollar offer with the Citi ThankYou Card and have been racking up ThankYou points with our grocery store, drugstore and gas expenses. Even though she applied at the end of September with a brochure I found at a local bank branch after the offer expired, all her points are posting for the bonus categories with no problem. My mom, who applied at the end of August, also had her points post. That said, we now have plenty of points to use for our trips and, in particular, we’re going to be using them for meals and spa when we have the opportunity. 

On my upcoming trip to Hawaii, I will be staying at the Andaz Maui Wailea and the Grand Hyatt Kauai. Even though my airline ticket uses miles and my hotel stay uses points, vacations often still turn out to be costly simply because we would like to have nice evening restaurant outings while on these island paradises and these don’t come cheap. In particular, I will be visiting the new Morimoto restaurant at the Andaz Maui Wailea. This will be an expensive occasion so I am ordering Hyatt gift checks with my Citi ThankYou points to pay for all these expenses.

How to Order Gift Checks

To order the gift checks, log into your Citi ThankYou Points Account.

Once there, you can find the lodging certificates under Book Travel and Lodging Certificates.

You can then select your denomination (usually $25, $50 or $100). You enter your address and these are then sent to you for your trip.

Given my Hawaii trip planning was so last minute and planned just two weeks in advance, I was a bit worried my Hyatt checks would not arrive in time for my trip. On the order page, it states it takes 1-3 weeks to ship. I ordered them last Thursday and received an email 6 days later saying they have shipped. They will be here in time for my trip, which is great!

Is this a good deal?

While you can redeem Citi ThankYou points for gift checks at one cent each, this may not be the best use of Citi ThankYou points. If you have the Citi ThankYou Premier card, every Citi ThankYou point is worth 1.25 cents toward airfare. That means that same 10,000 points that you would use to order a gift check would be worth $125 in airfare. I personally have plenty of points so I don’t mind redeeming them at one cent each, but if you don’t, you may want to save them for the higher value flight redemption. Additional reading: How To Book Flights With Citi ThankYou Rewards Points.

Earning Citi ThankYou Points

• The best sign-up bonus right now is for the Citi ThankYou Premier card. This offers 50,000 points, but the card has an annual fee of $125.
• The regular Citi ThankYou card is offering 30,000 points right now.
• Again, I don’t know if sending in old brochures (or if you can still find them at bank branches) will still work, but it did work as of the end of September and expired offers were still being honored. This offer had a 15,000 point sign-up bonus and offered 5 points per dollar for 12 months at drugstores, grocery stores and gas stations.

Summary

• The Citi ThankYou Travel Rewards Center allows us to use our ThankYou points to order lodging certificates for hotels such as Hyatt, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton. These can be used to pay for meals and hotel incidentals.
• Points will redeem at 1 cent each so 10,000 points are needed to redeem for a $100 certificate. Points can be worth at most 1.25 cents each toward airfare with the Citi ThankYou Premier card.
• In my experience, certificates take about a week to ship and a few days afterwards to arrive. They must be ordered in advance of your trip so it’s important to think about how many you’ll need at least a few weeks before your trip!

Other posts you may like:

• How To Book Flights With Citi ThankYou Rewards Points.
• Credit Cards with Drugstore Category Bonus: An Update.
• Miles to Milan: My Stay at Park Hyatt Milan for 22,000 Points a Night.