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Good news, your Citi Thank You Points are now more valuable.  The bank inked a deal with Emirates, allowing cardholders the ability to transfer their points into Emirates Skyrwards miles, which yields another fantastic way to turn daily spending into luxury travel, or just travel in general. Here’s why this is great news.

Emirates Skywards Miles

Emirates offers a fantastic flying experience, from private suites in first class to a bar in A380 business class and also some of the biggest screens, widest seats and best legroom in economy. The Emirates Skywards loyalty program unlocks any and all of those things, but the catch is that the program requires often insane amounts of miles for the top end experiences.

Here’s a few ways to maximize Emirates Skywards miles.

With Citi’s newly inked Emirates points transfer deal, you can now transfer your points from all the major US bank points programs into Emirates, which makes it easier to mix and match all points towards one goal. You can now transfer your points from Amex, Capital One, Chase and Citi into Emirates Skywards miles, which makes it much easier to reach your ultimate goal.

Got a few in one bank and a few in the other? They can all be combined into Emirates Skywards miles, if you wish. Citi Thank You Points now convert into Emirates Skywards Miles at a 1:1 ratio.

Travel Will Return And Points Will Be Epic

There’s an unfortunate correlation between the success of airlines and the happiness of their loyalty program members. The better business is, the less airlines tend to care about loyalty, the worse it is, the more they do.

With planes flying empty and business travel unlikely to ever recover to previous volumes, more seats will be available using points. Emirates was already pretty stellar at releasing seats with points for members using Emirates Skywards (it’s free to join) miles, and that’ll only continue.

To incentivize people to participate in the loyalty program, and help fill planes, some airlines are even dropping or lowering fuel surcharges which add cash costs to using miles. Basically, it’s a wonderful time to earn points, even if you can’t use them now, and this Citi x Emirates move makes it easier.

Gilbert Ott

Gilbert Ott is an ever curious traveler and one of the world's leading travel experts. His adventures take him all over the globe, often spanning over 200,000 miles a year and his travel exploits are regularly...

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3 Comments

  1. Do we know if this is a global partnership, or just in certain markets? I’m based in Hong Kong, Citi’s redemption site doesn’t show Skywards quite yet.

    Thanks!

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