Right upfront I should say that the Citi Strata Premier is not a keeper card for me. Overall it’s a very good card for someone either starting out or quite experienced with points and miles.
The credit card marketplace is going through a bit of a shakeup at present (Summer 2025) with popular cards like the Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum hiking prices and (mostly) making benefits worse. So it’s worth mentioning that when the Citi Strata Premier was rebranded and refreshed recently the card got objectively better, offering 10x for hotels and cars booked through Citi’s portal and increasing travel protections.
So why ditch it now? I’ll explain.
Citi’s Travel Portal is Nearly Unusable
If the portal hasn’t got flights is it even a travel portal at all? Getting 10x on hotels is all well and good but if all you have is hotels you need to have every hotel in town and beat the competition on pricing. Citi doesn’t do either of those.
After more than a year living in hotels full time it’s hard for any portal to compete with the benefits of booking directly. Citi Strata Premier is very good for paying hotel bills directly, earning 3x where others only offer 2x. But it can’t come close to competing with a co-branded credit card’s rewards. Most of my hotel spend right now is going on a Hilton Surpass and IHG Premier, and I haven’t ruled out additional hotel cards in the future. So an extra 1% on all other rooms until then isn’t enough to move the needle.
Citi Strata Premier Hotel Benefits Hard to Use
Initially I thought spending $500 at once on a hotel would be no problem. With over $18k a year spent on hotels putting $500 into one stay a year on a Citi Strata Premier should be easy.
But if you’re staying in the median non-luxury hotel it takes five nights to reach $500. It might even take 6 in the hotel you want because many properties are priced at levels like $98/night or $119/night, meaning you come in just under that $500 limit on room rates.
I’m also always thinking about retaining status, maximizing promotions, and earning hotel points. Booking through Citi’s portal for five nights or more comes with significant opportunity cost. I can earn enough points for a free night in that time in most promotions making the $100 savings nothing to be excited about.
MY BEST TIP: Learn How to Earn a Free Night While Redeeming Free Nights
There’s not a great way to say this part but: Citi’s hotel partners stink. It will never make sense to transfer points to Wyndham when you can cash them out and earn a free night by paying for your Wyndham room directly. Often if you’re cashing points out anyway, Wyndham is not the best deal. You can get a nicer room in a better chain for similar per point value whether paying directly or buying the hotel’s points.
Transferring 2-1 to Choice Hotels sounds like a great deal on paper, but in reality not so much. There are some sweet spots overseas like the Comfort Inn Roppongi in Tokyo or the Radisson Decapolis here in Lima where you can get a decent room as low as 6000 Thank You points. Using Frequent Miler RRV’s that’s $90, which is only a modest savings from the typical cash price. It’s the same math at a hotel I like and frequent: the Cambria Ft Lauderdale Airport where the amount of Thank You points needed corresponds to their value in cash.
Citi Strata Premier Points Devaluation
Recently the bank announced it would be changing the value of Thank You points when redeeming for cash from the Citi Strata Premier. Instead of one cent per point cardholders will only be able to realize 0.8 cents per point when redeeming for cash.
Given that I’m going loyal to United Airlines for the foreseeable future, and have plenty of other transferrable points, Citi’s would be the first ones I’d be looking to cash out of. I was already leaning in that direction with an eye toward either using those funds to buy hotel points, or paying for room nights directly. Making those points worth 20% less, especially done on its own after the initial rebrand, feels like a big middle finger in my direction.
I know that I could protect the value of those points by getting a fee-free Double Cash card and transferring them there. But at the end of the day I don’t want another Citi card. You can’t be the fourth best bank and the worst travel portal and then devalue your points and expect people to be okay with it.
There are people for whom this card still makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately I’m definitely not one of them. At this point I think I’m better off outside the Citi Ecosystem entirely.
