Now You Can Book More Preferred Hotels Using Points

In October 2024, Citi ThankYou Rewards introduced Preferred Hotels and Resorts as a new hotel transfer partner, marking the first credit card rewards relationship for the hotel program.

At the time, the number of Preferred hotels that could be booked with points was rather limited. Now, however, members can transfer Citi ThankYou Points to the Preferred Hotels and Resorts iPrefer program, allowing them to book hundreds of hotels with those points.

Here’s what you need to know.

You Can Now Use Citi ThankYou Points To Book a Lot More Preferred Hotels

Citi added Preferred Hotels and Resorts as a transfer partner in October, allowing cardholders of the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card and Citi Prestige^® Card (no longer open to applicants) to transfer points at a 1:4 ratio (1,000 Citi ThankYou Reward points = 4,000 iPrefer points, resulting in a 1:4 transfer rate).

There was only 1 drawback with this new transfer option: most Preferred hotels were not available to book using points.

While the program theoretically allows members to book over 600 boutique hotels in 80 countries using points, the number of bookable properties when the partnership first launched was abysmally low.

Now, that has changed.

If you want to transfer Citi ThankYou Points at a favorable 1:4 ratio to the Preferred Hotels & Resorts’ iPrefer Hotel Rewards program, you now have hundreds of hotels and resorts available to book with points.

How To Book

Preferred Hotels and Resorts’ iPrefer Hotel Rewards program is now officially a transfer partner of the Citi ThankYou Rewards program. This means you can transfer Citi ThankYou Points to the Preferred Hotels and Resorts iPrefer program at a generous 1:4 ratio. And with award rates starting at 30,000, you could transfer as few as 8,000 Citi ThankYou Points to redeem for a free night.

At the time of this writing, a glitch in the iPrefer website prevents award nights from populating, so you’ll need to use the Preferred Hotels website to search for award nights instead.

Here are a few examples of hotels and resorts you can now book with points.

If you want to avoid the cold weather this winter and visit Miami in January, you can book the 4-star Mayfair House Hotel & Garden for as few as 50,000 points per night. That means you simply need to transfer 13,000 points from your Citi ThankYou Rewards account to the iPrefer program to reserve a Studio King room.

With cash rates exceeding $500 per night in January, you would be better off paying with points. Considering we value Citi ThankYou Points at 1.6 cents per point, transferring 13,000 points for a stay here booked with points would result in significantly better value than our valuation.

You can also book Parco dei Principi Grand Hotel & Spa, a beautiful 5-star spa hotel in Rome, with as few as 19,000 points (resulting in 76,000 points due to the 1:4 transfer rate).

Final Thoughts

The new transfer partnership between the Citi ThankYou Rewards program and Preferred Hotels & Resorts’ iPrefer Hotel Rewards program provides some compelling value. With the ability to book hundreds of high-quality hotels and a 1:4 ratio, this new partnership may be worthwhile for your future lodging plans.