The 2023 Bonvoyed Awards | Ep234 | 12-23-23
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we close out 2023, we take a moment to honor those loyalty programs that have dishonored their own members with the biggest snafus, most member-unfriendly changes, or other painful devaluations.
00:00 Intro
01:58 Giant Mailbag
04:51 Card Talk: Marriott Bonvoy Bevy & Bountiful cards
https://frequentmiler.com/bonvoybevy/
https://frequentmiler.com/bonvoybountiful/
10:41 What crazy thing . . . did Air France / KLM Flying Blue do this week?
https://frequentmiler.com/amazing-business-class-to-europe-from-13500-miles-one-way/
21:44 Award Talk: Bilt adds Avianca LifeMiles
https://frequentmiler.com/now-transfer-bilt-rewards-to-avianca-lifemiles/
24:48 Award Talk: IHG allows free point transfers between members....well, *some* members
27:27 Finnair Plus announces new award charts and info
https://frequentmiler.com/finnair-plus-announces-award-chart-changes-to-take-effect-in-march-2024/
38:19 Main Event: 2023 Bonvoyed Awards
The Nominees....
39:19: Marriott Bonvoys free night certificates
https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-rules-for-extending-free-nights/
41:19 Hyatt / MGM marriage goes bust
https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-farewell-cheap-mattress-runs-status-matching/
43:51 Wyndham vacates their high-value Vacasa bookings
https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/
45:41 Delta dumps their devastation
https://frequentmiler.com/delta-elite-shortcuts/
47:52 Chase guts their Pay Yourself Back program
49:07 Air Canada Aeroplan's Etihad alliance goes astray
52:00 Hotels.com becomes 5x less rewarding
56:15 Nominee recap
56:42 Nick's pick for 2023 Bonvoyed Award
59:24 Greg's pick for 2023 Bonvoyed Award
1:02:41 Question of the Week: What is the best thing to do with 80,000 Membership Rewards points before we cancel Player 2's Amex Gold card?
Music credit: Annie Yoder
Mentioned in this episode:
Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the world
This podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:10.7 | Let's get into the giant mailbag. |
| 0:13.5 | What crazy thing did? |
| 0:15.9 | City this week. |
| 0:17.4 | It's time for mattress running the numbers. |
| 0:19.8 | Ready for the main event? The main event. |
| 0:21.6 | Frequent Liler on the air starts now. |
| 0:24.6 | Today's main event, the 2023 Bonvoid Awards. |
| 0:30.6 | We're going to give an award to the program, to the loyalty program that was the most disloyal to its members in |
| 0:38.2 | 23. Why would we call that the Bonvoid Awards? |
| 0:44.4 | We'll explore that a little bit. Yeah. Marriott Bonvoy is the namesake for these awards. |
| 0:51.5 | And once they came up with the term Bonvoy for the rewards program, it quickly became a |
| 0:58.4 | negative adjective describing any time you get poor treatment from a loyalty program, |
| 1:06.8 | basically. |
| 1:07.5 | Then you say, you were Bonvoid. |
| 1:09.6 | And so that is the origin behind the name of our Bonvoid awards. |
| 1:14.6 | Congratulations, Mary. You picked a memorable name. |
| 1:17.6 | So this week we'll talk more about that. But first, I want to remind you, don't forget, |
| 1:22.6 | first to like the show if you like it. If you like it, make sure you hit the thumbs up or the like |
| 1:27.8 | button wherever it is. You're listening or watching. Don't forget to leave a comment down below if |
| 1:33.4 | you're watching on YouTube or leave us a review if you're listening in a podcast platform. And remember |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Frequent Miler, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Frequent Miler and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.