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It’s another week in the miles and points world and unfortunately, we’re starting with news of a devaluation which hit late on Friday and which affects holders of the Citi Strata Premier® Card and the premium Citi Strata Elite℠ card.
Effective 19 April 2026, Citi is significantly changing its transfer ratios to two key hotel partners: Choice Privileges and I Prefer Hotel Rewards.
The devaluation: By the numbers
Let’s look at the damage. If you’ve been sitting on a stash of ThankYou points specifically for hotel redemptions, your purchasing power is about to take a massive hit.
To put this simply: If you wanted to book a high-end Preferred Hotel property that costs 40,000 I Prefer points per night, you currently only need to transfer 10,000 Citi points. Starting 19 April, that same room will cost you 20,000 Citi points.
Your points are literally losing half their value for that specific redemption overnight.
This hurts
The Death of the I Prefer 1:4 Ratio
The I Prefer program (the loyalty wing of Preferred Hotels & Resorts) was arguably one of the better-kept secrets in travel.
At a 1:4 ratio, you could get great value at independent luxury boutiques that usually cost $500–$800 a night. By cutting this to 1:2, Citi has brought the ratio in line with Capital One, effectively removing any competitive advantage Citi had for this specific transfer partner.
If you’re not a die hard Citi ThankYou loyalist and enjoy staying at Preferred Hotel properties around the world (like the Fullerton Singapore shown in this article’s main image), it may be an idea to see if any Capital One cards work better in your wallet than whichever Citi card(s) you have.
The Choice Privileges Squeeze
Choice Hotels may not get a lot of love from the miles and points community, but the chain’s Ascend Hotel Collection and its partnership with Strawberry Hotels (formerly Nordic Choice) in Scandinavia has often offered very good value in places like Oslo and Stockholm, where a basic hotel can easily cost $300 per night.
Booking a $300 property with 16,000 Choice points (not hard to do) has been a very good deal and with a 1:2 transfer ratio, that booking has been available for just 8,000 Citi points.
At the new 1:1.5 ratio, that cost jumps to nearly 11,000 points. It’s still reasonable value, but it’s no longer the “no brainer” it once was and it may make some people look to Wells Fargo (a bank which recently entered the transferable points space) which continues to offer a 1:2 transfer ratio to Choice.
Finally, it’s worth keeping in mind that this disappointing news comes on the heels of Citi announcing the end of Points Sharing (effective 17 May 2026), so it seems like Citi is in the middle of a major program rethink, and unfortunately, it looks like the “rethink” involves making things worse for ThankYou points collectors.
Let’s hope that there aren’t any more bad news stories to come.
What should you do?
If you have a trip on the horizon and you were considering a transfer of ThankYou points to Choice or I Prefer, now is the time to act. You have until 18 April 2026 to lock in the current rates
Don’t transfer speculatively. As a general rule at TFM, we never recommend transferring points without a specific booking in mind.
However, if you know you’re going to Scandinavia (where Choice Points can be super-useful) or if you know that you will be booking a Preferred Hotel property in the next 12 months, it might be worth pulling the trigger before the 19th. Just remember: once the points leave your Citi ThankYou account, they cannot be transferred back.
Don’t forget, however, that this isn’t the end of the world. This is just another devaluation and devaluations come as part and parcel of playing the miles and points game.
Yes, ThankYou points are becoming less useful for transfers to hotel loyalty programs (an issue that Chase fans may also be about to face if the upcoming Hyatt devaluation is a disaster), but Citi still has a few useful airline partnerships (e.g. with American Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, and Flying Blue) and, for now, these all remain 1:1 transfer partners, so there’s value to be had there.
Bottom line
This is a classic devaluation with Citi taking a hatchet to the transfer ratios of two of its hotel partners. While a 1:1.5 ratio for Choice is still better than the 1:1 offered by Amex or Chase, the 50% hit to I Prefer will probably be a big blow to anyone who has been making the most of the great deals to be had through that program.
If you’ve been eyeing a stay at a Preferred Hotel property or at a Choice Hotels property, you have a little under a month to book your stay(s) at 2025 prices. After 19 April, the transfer ratios will look a lot worse than they do right now.
