The best use of Citi ThankYou points is to strategically transfer points to airline and hotel partners in order to book high value awards. Your best bet is usually to wait until you find a great hotel or flight award before transferring points. If you have at least one premium card such as the Citi Premier or Prestige card, most points transfer at a ratio of 1:1, but Citi regularly runs promotions where they offer a transfer bonus to a specific program. For example, we’ve frequently seen 25% bonuses for transfers to Avianca LifeMiles and to Air France / KLM Flying Blue.
Transfer Tips
- Wait to transfer points: Don’t transfer points until high value awards are available and you are ready to book them. Transfers are one-way only. Citi ThankYou points are valuable for their flexibility. Once you transfer, you are locked into a single program that may or may not have awards available.
- Watch for transfer bonuses: Citi sometimes offers improved transfer ratios through limited time transfer bonuses.
- Move points from one account to another (even to friends’ accounts): You can freely move up to 100,000 points per year to any other Citi ThankYou Rewards account. The catch is that once points are moved, they expire within 90 days. Make sure you have immediate plans for those points before moving them.
- Always have at least one transferable account: With a few exceptions, ThankYou Rewards are transferable only from Citi Premier and Citi Prestige accounts. If you or a friend has such an account, you can move points to that account from any other account before transferring to an airline or hotel program, but you are limited to moving 100,000 points per year this way. Another option is to pool points among your own accounts. For example, if you have the Citi Rewards+ card and the Citi Premier card, you can pool points between them in order to make all of the points transferable.
- You can keep points alive by downgrading to a fee-free card: If you don’t want to keep your Premier or Prestige card due to annual fees, consider downgrading to a fee-free ThankYou card instead. Downgrade options include the Custom Cash, Rewards+, or ThankYou Preferred. Doing this will keep your points alive. If you later want to transfer points to an airline program, you can get a new Premier or Prestige card, upgrade your fee-free card to a Premier or Prestige card, or move points to a friend who has a Premier or Prestige card.
Current Transfer Bonuses
If there are any current transfer bonuses from Citi ThankYou Rewards, details will appear here:
| Transfer Bonus Details | End Date |
|---|---|
| Get 25% bonus when transferring Citi ThankYou points to Air France/KLM Flying Blue | 2023/06/17 |
Transfer points to airlines
For flight awards, our post “Citi ThankYou points sweet spots for high value redemptions” details the best value uses of Citi ThankYou points.
Best overall airline transfer partners
| Rewards Program | Best Uses | Citi Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|
| Air France KLM Flying Blue | Monthly Air France Promo Awards often represent very good value. Air France miles can be used to book Sky Team awards, including Delta awards. Air France often offers very good business class award pricing between the US and Europe & Israel. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Avianca LifeMiles | Avianca LifeMiles can be great for Star Alliance awards. They offer reasonable award prices and no fuel surcharges on awards. They also offer shorthaul awards within the US (for flying United, for example) for as few as 7,500 miles one-way. Best of all, their mixed-cabin pricing can lead to fantastic first-class award prices. See this post for details. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Cathay Pacific Asia Miles | Cathay Pacific has a decent distance based award chart, but they no longer allow stopovers longer than 24 hours. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles can be a good option for booking American Airlines flights with a distance based award chart, especially if other OneWorld Alliance miles aren't available. For long distance flights, it is possible to reduce the cost of a premium cabin award by adding on a lower cabin segment. See this post for details. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
Useful airline transfer partners
| Rewards Program | Best Uses | Citi Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|
| British Airways Avios | While flights on British Airways itself often incur outrageously high fuel surcharges, many BA partners charge low or no fuel surcharges. Excellent value can be had in redeeming BA points for short distance flights. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 via Qatar (1 to 2 days) |
| Emirates Skywards | The best use of Emirates miles has been to fly Emirates itself. Unfortunately fuel surcharges can be steep. See: Emirates Sweet Spot Awards - First class from 30K miles round trip. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Etihad Guest | Etihad offers a distance based award chart for flying Etihad and another for its partners. Points may offer good value for expensive but short-distance flights. | 1 to 1 (~1 hour) |
| EVA Air Infinity MileageLands | If you want to fly one of the best business class products in the sky, the best way to snag EVA flights is with their own miles since they release more award space to their own members. One-way business class flights from the US to Taipei cost 75K to 80K miles. Fuel surcharges are very low on these routes. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Iberia Avios | Iberia offers very low award prices on their own flights and a very reasonable 25 Euro cancellation fee. Partner awards can offer good value under some circumstances as well, but these are usually nonrefundable. Fuel surcharges are sometimes lower when booking with Iberia rather than British Airways, Aer Lingus, or Qatar. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 via Qatar, BA (1 to 2 days) |
| JetBlue | JetBlue points offer the most value when cheap ticket prices are available and when award taxes are high relative to the overall cost of the ticket (more details can be found here). The JetBlue Plus Card and the JetBlue Business Card offer a 10% rebate on awards, so you can get more value by holding one of these cards. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Qantas Frequent Flyer | Best use is probably for flights on El Al with no fuel surcharges. Also useful for short AA flights. Qantas offers distance based award charts similar to Cathay Pacific. Both are OneWorld Alliance members. I recommend comparing award prices across both programs before transferring to either. Qantas offers round the world business class awards for only 280,000 points (but with many restrictions) | 1 to 1 (~1 day) |
| Qatar Privilege Club Avios | Qatar has reasonable award prices for flying Qatar itself. Points are now transferable 1 to 1 to British Airways (and from there to Aer Lingus or Iberia) | 1 to 1 (1 to 2 days) |
| Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer | Use to book Singapore Airlines First Class awards (generally reserved for their own members), Alaska Airlines economy awards, or for Star Alliance awards (including United Airlines). | 1 to 1 (~1 day) |
| Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles | Miles & Smiles offers a number of awesome sweet-spot awards including 7.5K one-way anywhere within the US, even to Hawaii. Many awards cannot be booked online but can be booked via phone or email. See: Turkish Miles & Smiles Complete Guide and Turkish business class sweet spots from the US. | 1 to 1 (~1 day) |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | Virgin Atlantic offers a few great sweet spot awards including US to Europe on Delta One business class for 50K points one-way. See: Best uses for Virgin Atlantic points (Sweet Spot Spotlight). | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
Other airline transfer partners
| Rewards Program | Best Uses | Citi Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|
| Aer Lingus Avios | Fuel surcharges are sometimes lower when booking with Aer Lingus (Avios.com) rather than British Airways, Qatar, or Iberia. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 via Qatar, BA (1 to 2 days) |
| AeroMexico ClubPremier | AeroMexico is a SkyTeam partner. Club Premier points can be used to book flights on AeroMexico, SkyTeam alliance members (such as Delta or Korean Air), or on select partner airlines. Unfortunately many have reported that awards are extremely difficult to book through AeroMexico so we do not recommend transferring points to this program. If you want to fly AeroMexico, look to transfer points to another SkyTeam partner (such as Air France) and then book AeroMexico with that program. | 1 to 1 (~6 days) |
| Jet Airways Inter Miles | JetAirways JetPrivilege miles are useful only for a few very specific cases such as certain flights to Hawaii for as low as 15K (30K business) one-way, or to the Caribbean or Central America for as low as 10K (20K business) one-way. Details can be found here. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Malaysia Enrich | Given Malaysia's award chart devaluation in June 2017, I'm not aware of any good uses for these miles. | 1 to 1 (1 to 2 days) |
| Thai Airways International Royal Orchid Plus | I'm not aware of any good uses for these miles | 1 to 1 (3 to 7 days) |
Transfer points to hotel programs
One fantastic option is to transfer points 1 to 2 to Choice Privileges in order to get great value when booking Preferred Hotels & Resorts, Ascend Hotel Collection hotels, Cambria Hotels, and Nordic Choice Hotels. Another great option is to transfer 1 to 1 to Wyndham to book Vacasa Vacation rentals for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. See: Wyndham Vacasa – Great Value is Real!
Indirect Transfer Partners
In some cases it is possible to transfer to an airline or hotel program in order to then transfer from that program to another program. In most cases this is a bad deal, but it’s cool to think about the possibilities.
| Rewards Program | Citi Indirect Transfer |
|---|---|
| Hilton | 10K to 15K via Virgin Atlantic |
| IHG | 10K to 10K via Virgin Atlantic |
See Also
Plus, check out the transfer partners of other popular programs:
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I was going to transfer 57,000 points to Flying Blue yesterday, but would only get 44,000 miles for them. So it is NOT a 1-1 transfer right now. Any idea? I need to move them very soon since I will not be continuing the Citi Prestige.
Air France Flying Blue transfers 1 to 1 from Citi, so you should get 57,000 miles with the transfer.
It’s possible that you accidentally selected the JetBlue TrueBlue transfer (due to the similar program name) where 1,000 ThankYou points -> 800 JetBlue points. In that case, 57,000 ThankYou points would become 45,600 JetBlue points.
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