Why I Think The Citi Strata Premier Is The Most Underrated Travel Credit Card

Earning points is only half the fun—the true excitement begins when you start dreaming of how to use them. I’ll tell you some of the ways that I love redeeming my Citi ThankYou Points and what I’ve gotten in return.

Transfer Partners

Like many credit cards, the points you earn with the Strata Premier will be transferable to a list of travel partners. With almost 20 options between airlines and hotels, there’s nearly no place on the planet you can’t reach.

For hotels, I like sending points to Choice Privileges Rewards, as 1,000 Citi ThankYou Points nets 2,000 Choice points. That means that you can redeem your points for hotels in the Preferred Hotels & Resorts program at a substantial discount.

Some amazing properties I’ve stayed at as part of the Preferred Hotels & Resorts program include the Farmhouse Inn in Sonoma County, California, the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. and the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia.

The Watergate Hotel, with rates starting at 53,000 points and the Grand Hotel Victoria, with rates starting at 37,000 points, are both exceptional values. Since points transfer in at 2:1 ratio, you can get two nights for the points price of one. The Farmhouse Inn comes in at 75,000 points, but even then, with room rates topping $800 a night, only using 37,500 points for a free night provides an excellent value of more than 2 cents per point.

With airlines, Citi’s partnerships with Emirates and Etihad open up two of the world’s most exclusive first-class products. Other airlines like Qatar offer access to great business-class seats and domestic redemptions are possible with American Airlines and Alaska airlines via their Oneworld partnership.

Qatar offers business-class amenities in its Q Suite on long haul-flights to and from the United States. If you’re traveling with a partner you can even get a double bed to sleep together in the plane. On a recent flight back from Doha to Seattle, we were treated to a multicourse meal including a starter, a main, dessert and even a three course breakfast. All were plated on bone china with freshly baked bread and a wide variety of cocktails and wines.

The flight was a steal at 70,000 points, but flights can be hard to come by. Luckily, once you log in to the Qatar website, you can search for flights in the calendar view to get a view of multiple dates at once.

Photo by Jon Nickel-D’Andrea

Travel Portal

If you’re not familiar with transfer partners or simply find them complicated, don’t worry. You can use your points directly in the Citi Travel portal to offset the cost of your trip. Since using your card at the bonus categories mentioned earlier helps to rack up points quickly, offsetting your travel expenses is a breeze.