Alaska Airlines miles can now be used to book Hainan Airlines! Award space is searchable on alaskaair.com, insanely cheap, and widely available to Asia, though there are mild fuel surcharges.

The partnership was announced last year, and the Alaska-Hainan page originally said award bookings would be available in November 2015.

The Starwood Preferred Guest personal and business credit cards from American Express now come with 35,000 bonus Starpoints for spending $3,000 and $5,000 respectively in the first three months of cardmembership.

Links:

Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express (personal)
Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express

The normal sign up bonus is 25,000 points, the twice yearly limited time offer is 30,000 points. This is the highest public sign up bonus ever on these cards.

You can get both the Citi Prestige with 40,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first three months and the Citi ThankYou Premier with 40,000 bonus ThankYou Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months, as long as you apply at least eight days apart.

Meet both minimum spending requirements, and you'll have at least 96,000 ThankYou Points, in one account if you follow the simple steps to combine your accounts.

Here are the top eight ways I would use the 86,000 point sign up bonus for flights in Economy and First

Hilton is increasing the category of 24 hotels and decreasing the category of 15 hotels for bookings effective March 30, 2016.

If the hotel you want is going up in category tomorrow, book the hotel now to lock in the lower, current rate.

Daily Getaways is a series of daily discounted travel packages sponsored by the US Travel Association that starts Monday and runs for five weeks. Every weekday at 1 PM ET, a discounted travel package or packages will go on sale, and the best deals sell out in just a few minutes.

In 2013, I blogged every deal.

The Chinese insurance company Anbang has topped Marriott's latest bid for Starwood, the company that manages these hotel brands.

This soap opera has been ongoing since November when Marriott offered $72.08 per share for Starwood. Anbang and Marriott have gone back and forth with the latest Anbang offer worth $82.75 per share.

I haven't been covering the twists and turns and won't cover them again until a sale is completed.

Last week, during President Obama's visit to Argentina, Argentina suspended the $160 fee required for Americans to visit.

While this is, for the moment, a temporary suspension of the fee (which you can check the official status of here), this is widely expected to lead to a permanent elimination of the fee.

This follows a series of sane decisions by the newly elected government, like letting the currency float freely to eliminate the black market for dollars and terrible distortion to the economy and possibilities for theft by well-connected people.

I paid the reciprocity fee, which is good for ten

This post is part of a series about how to maximize value when transferring your Citi ThankYou Points to airline partners.

Sweetspots with Singapore KrisFlyer Miles #1: Suites Class for as Little as 32,000 Miles
Sweetspots with Singapore KrisFlyer Miles #2: Awards on United and Partner Flights
Sweetspots with Virgin Atlantic Miles #1: 10,000 Points USA to Europe
Sweetspots with Virgin Atlantic Miles #2: Sweetspots on 12 Partner Award Charts
Sweetspots with Virgin America Points: 35,000 Points Roundtrip to Europe in Flat Bed (this post)
Sweetspots with Flying Blue Miles: 30,000 Miles Roundtrip to Hawaii
Sweetspots

The Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite™ MasterCard® currently has a 50,000 mile sign-up bonus after spending $5,000 in three months.

One of the perks of the devaluation that hit American Airlines' award charts March 22, 2016 is the new price of awards from the United States to the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico. It now only costs 12,500 miles one way in Economy during the off peak season for those regions.