Starting December 20, 2020 Citibank's PremierMiles, which is one of the best attainable travel credit cards in the Philippines, is getting a downgrade to its rewards program. Citibank will make 3 big changes to redeeming cash credits, paying with points, and points transfer.
As a traveler the change to the points transfer is a big blow as you'll need more PremierMiles to redeem airline miles. I've been raving about how its got the best redemption ratio compared to credit cards from other banks with its 1:1 ratio, but not anymore.
You can't deny that this is a direct impact from the pandemic as businesses are struggling, especially airlines. Let's not forget that these miles have a corresponding Peso value within banks and airlines with this new change clearly an adjustment to losses over the past months.
What you can do
The change won't come into effect until December 20 this year, so you've got until the day to somehow come up with a travel plan and strategically transfer all your points to the airline you're planning to fly with in the future.
This is particularly tough right now because the future of travel is still up in the air (see what I did there?) and very uncertain without a vaccine yet. Even I can't make any concrete plans for next year as we don't know which countries will lift their travel ban for us Filipinos. Just make sure you transfer your points to an airline before the deadline so you don't lose value of your current points.
Another thing you can do is product change. Although its a huge downgrade to the Citi PremierMiles card, its still a good travel card. Just no longer great. If you totally disagree with the new changes then you can call up Citibank and request to change your cards to the ones in the chart below.
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