If you hold the Citi PremierMiles Visa or Amex card in Singapore you may be familiar with a number of hotel benefits available through these cards. Last week Citi tweaked a couple of the deals and here’s what you need to know about the changes.
Agoda
The Agoda deal with Citi PremierMiles formerly offered 7 bonus miles per S$1 spent on hotel bookings, subject to some conditions. There’s a continuous play on words here though. It was originally labelled the 9 miles per S$1 offer, which was a bit cheeky as that was the best-case scenario if your booking was made in a foreign currency and included the 2 miles per S$1 you would earn for any transaction in this case.
We first wrote about the offer in April when it was launched as the “up to 9 miles per S$1” promotion. Then in May they extended it by 7 months to the end of 2018, under the “7 bonus miles per S$1 spent” banner.
The good news is that this deal has been extended again, though just by 1 month, and will now apply to bookings made until 31st January 2019, for stays until 31st July 2019.
The bad news is the deal has changed title again and is now the “up to 7 bonus miles per S$1 spent” offer, meaning you’ll actually only receive 5 bonus miles per S$1 spent over and above the regular earn rate based on the card and transaction currency. The applicable terms and conditions can be found here.
This offer is available to holders of the Citi PremierMiles Visa and Amex cards. That means the earn rates are now:
- 6.2 miles per S$1 for a booking paid in SGD with the Citi PremierMiles Visa
- 6.3 miles per S$1 for a booking paid in SGD with the Citi PremierMiles Amex
- 7.0 miles per S$1 for a booking paid in foreign currency with either card
Remember the catch with this one is that it’s “applicable to pre-paid hotels only, of which Agoda is the party receiving and handling the payment from the Cardmember.”
If you pay the hotel directly, you won’t be entitled to the bonus miles.
Expedia
There’s no change here – you’ll still be eligible for either one of the two Expedia offers through the end of 2018 with your Citi PremierMiles Visa or Amex card:
- Earn up to 3 miles per S$1 spent
Visit www.expedia.com.sg/bonusrewards for booking.
Click here for full terms and conditions. - 10% off hotel bookings
Visit www.expedia.com.sg/citibank to book.
Enter voucher code “CITIEXPHOL10”
Click here for full terms and conditions.
The 3 miles per S$1 spent offer includes flight bookings with selected airlines including Finnair, Qatar Airways and Turkish.
Kaligo
There’s no change to the Kaligo 10 miles per dollar offer, which continues to run for now until 31st December 2018. Actual bookings can be for any date as you are awarded the bonus points immediately following the transaction with Kaligo (Citi don’t know what you’ve booked or for when).
That means it’s always best to check Kaligo.com first before Agoda if you’re looking for extra miles from your Citi PremierMiles card for the booking as 10 miles per dollar is an attractive rate. You also won’t have the concern over whether the hotel is pre-paid or not, and which party is receiving the payment, as with Kaligo the bonus miles are credited regardless.
Kaligo is not always the cheapest way to secure a hotel booking, it can be a lot more expensive and the rate at which you are then ‘buying’ miles may be unattractive. However it’s sometimes competitively priced and we have also found examples where the price is identical to the best rate on offer, making it a no-brainer.
Our full analysis of Kaligo including how you can maximise your Citi miles by using it is available here. Full terms and conditions of the Citi / Kaligo offer are here.
Booking.com
The 10% cashback on hotel bookings at booking.com offer, which expired on 7th September 2018, has now been removed from the PremierMiles card benefits and is no longer available.
Stay tuned for more changes from Citi
There are a few more tweaks being made on a range of Citi credit card products in Singapore starting on 1st October 2018, check back for our article tomorrow outlining how those may affect you.
Check our review
Our review of the Citi PremierMiles Visa card has been updated today to reflect these hotel benefit changes. Do check it out to learn about the other features and benefits of the card, in addition to the latest sign-up bonus which runs until the end of October 2018.
(Cover Photo: Donald Tong)
Is everything getting worse after Oct 1st? Or something better may come?
There’s good news and bad news. Check back for our analysis tomorrow!
I used to book my Agoda bookings with my premiermiles until every time they ran a promotion, they conveniently forgot to credit the bonus after the stay. I had had to fish out all my old bills, search for my screen grabs showing I used the correct landing page, and write to them multiple emails (sometimes after I’ve sent the evidence someone would write me again and request for the same thing). It was extremely frustrating I gave up the ability to earn those high rates (miles). That was about a year ago. I wonder if they are better now. Just this week, I was extremely frustrated one of my other Citi cards had its rewards reversed to negative territory. I spent 10 min on the phone getting to a real person, and I asked why that was. They told me my rewards, lets say $x, PLUS another $y, expired, leading to a -$y balance. That’s just dumb…
I’ve lost count of the number of frustrating exchanges I’ve had with them over the years on a range of topics. Citi’s customer service in Singapore leaves an enormous amount to be desired.