Should I leave my Citibank points where they are or transfer soon?

Hi, I have just over one million Citibank points which in about 2yrs time I’d like to use for a RTW (about 4 months) with my husband when I retire. Have never touched the points but need to know whether best to leave them and use Citibank Travel service, transfer to Krisflyer or to Velocity. Which will be better for our trip? I know the points transfer value from Citibank changes soon and as you can likely guess I’m fairly new to all this.

Don’t use the Citi travel service as you will get very little value out of those one million points. I don’t know the exact cost (because it is so poor value that I don’t even bother to look into it!), but I suspect you’ll be lucky to get 1 RTW in economy class.

Yes, you are right. From Mar 18, the transfer rate to both KF and VA will reduce from 1.5:1 to 2:1. So your 1 million point will drop from 666,667 points to 500,000, an instant loss of 166,667 points, which in KF term, is about 1 round trip in business class to Europe or USA. So most of us holding Citi points are planning to transfer out of Citi into either KF or VA points before Mar 18. At 667k miles, you can easily do business class for 2 from AUS-Europe-USA-Asia-Aus.

Depending on your circumstances, personally I would transfer to KF. KF generally have lower redemption rate and has the ability to redeem SQ suites which is not available to other partners. But KF miles expires in 3 years. So if you decide to transfer to KF, make sure you use it within 3 years.

VA on the other hand doesn’t expire as long as you keep the account active. But it usually requires more points to redeem although it doesn’t have fuel surcharge (unlike KF). Also VA doesn’t allow stopovers and do not have RTW redemptions, so if you are planning for RTW, you need to do segments by segments.

Hope that helps.

Two great answers there for you Sixty plus .

I hope you can find dates and availability that suit you and have a great trip ,cheers to retirement.

Thanks folks for pointing me in the right direction. Being able to use KF in the US will be great as sister is in Conneticut and then we want at some point to reach LA after a bit of travelling around. So the ground rules are laid and I just have to reach the right age which is creeping up pretty fast. I’ll keep reading the posts on the site as they are so helpful.

Bye for now.