Southwest, long the stalwart of leisure travel, is entering the realm of business travel with the launch of the new Rapid Rewards Business program. The program is designed to reward businesses by offering their travelers an opportunity to earn Rapid Rewards points. 

The companies can now earn Rapid Rewards points that can be applied toward travel on the company’s behalf.

The infamous 2020 is soon coming to an end (and, if you ask me, its about time!). Although we still aren’t clear what travel is going to look like for 2021 and beyond, now is the time to at least start thinking about what you would like your travel goals to look like.

If you’re like many travelers, you may not be focused on much international travel.

The bonuses on all of the personal Southwest cards are generally the same:

So if you spent $12,000 within the first year on your new personal Southwest credit card, you'd end up with at least 72,000 Rapid Rewards.

You have two more days (including today) to transfer hotel points to Southwest for the purposes of earning a Southwest Companion Pass. Friday, March 31 is the cutoff. After Friday, any points transferred to Southwest will not count as "qualifying" towards the Companion Pass. That includes Marriott Travel Packages.

The Southwest Companion Pass, if you're unaware, is one of the best deals in travel. If you have the Southwest Companion pass, you can designate a companion who flies for just the taxes on every Southwest flight you fly.

There are lots of obvious reasons why miles are better than cash, like the ability they give us to book mini palaces on planes that look like this...

...or the loose routing/stopover/open jaw rules of some programs that allow us to see more places on one trip.

But what about the smaller perks we often overlook? Like free or nearly free change and cancellation fees?

Southwest has mildly devalued its Rapid Rewards points by about 3%. What's alarming isn't the size of the devaluation, it's that:

Southwest gave no notice, only some sleuthing by FlyerTalkers sussed it out
This is the third devaluation in third years, something which is completely unnecessary for a revenue-based program like Southwest

The Devaluations
Southwest points used to be redeemable for any "Wanna Get Away?" fare at a rate of 60 points per dollar of the fare.

Southwest currently has a purely fixed-value rewards program. For every dollar of the base fare, you have to redeem 70 Rapid Rewards to get your ticket (plus you pay a $5.60 per direction government tax on each redemption.)

That's about to get worse, much worse in my opinion.
Current Rapid Rewards Scheme
Let's look at an example. Here are the pries for tickets from Los Angeles to Tampa this March. They vary greatly by day from $207 to $334 to $607.

If you select a day with $211 fares, not all fares that day are $211.