Citi Travel Portal: How To Use It Strategically To Maximize Value

Rental Cars via Strata Premier for 10x is the sweet spot for me since those bookings can usually be added to a loyalty account afterwards with a call to CS so you can use status benefits. And some are even refundable on Citi Travel. Unless Rakuten has a better bonus for direct bookings, I'll book via the Citi Portal.

@Ben - I must have missed it but what exactly qualifies as an “attraction”? Busch Gardens? Movie tickets? Broadway shows? Anything that’s normally on Viator? For the reasons you mention there are practical limits to when you want to use the other categories but this one sounds interesting.

@ Christian -- Great question, sorry for not including that. So on the Citi Travel website you can search attractions by city, and it's a mix of things. Think of it as being most closely along the lines of Viator, with everything from tours, to ground transport, to tickets to select amusement parks.

I'm not sure pricing is necessarily the best, but that's the intent.

Love your posts Ben.

Just wanted to clarify my understanding: AA gives 5x AA miles for each dollar spent (assuming no AA status), even if booked through citi's not-so-great travel site, right? And then I get 5x citi points for the booking via their strata premier portal (6x with the strata elite). As I can transfer citi points to AA, it seems I'm basically getting double points. Do I understand this correctly? I realize I can book the flight directly for 3x citi points with strata premier (oddly only 1.5x with my strata elite), and not have hassles about possible changes down the road, but this is an expensive flight and 2x AA points is valuable to me. I expect citi would work with me if I needed to make changes. Really wish their travel site was better...

Thanks!

Citi Travel uses the Agoda engine.
It's a scam.
Prices are often higher than other OTA including Agoda itself.

The 4th night benefit becomes YMMV benefit. Where sometimes you really save 25% sometimes it costs almost the same.

I recently booked independent hotels in Singapore using my Chase Flex card. Currently, it's 9x points for booking through Chase' travel portal. The portal was 9% higher than booking with the hotel directly.

I have no IHG status and have no plan to change that. I booked a few stays at some intercontinentals through citi. The rates were comparable to booking directly and I came out ahead factoring in the discounts from the prestige cards.

Agree with this comment. I always found the pricing to be more than I could find using other travel portals which effectively erased the benefit of annual cardholder discount. I canceled my card as I found there were other cards offering better value, especially when the travel "credit" was effectively worthless.