Citi ThankYou transfer partners are losing some value next month. Starting April 19, 2026, Citi is reducing the transfer rates to both Choice Privileges and Preferred Hotels I Prefer, with the I Prefer cut being particularly brutal at a full 50% reduction.
These aren’t the most popular Citi ThankYou transfer partners by any stretch, but the rate changes are still worth knowing about, especially if you’ve been sitting on ThankYou points and considering a hotel redemption through either program.
What’s Changing With These Citi ThankYou Transfer Partners
Here’s how the rates look before and after April 19, 2026:
| Hotel Program | Current Rate (per 1,000 TYP) | New Rate (per 1,000 TYP) | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Choice Privileges | 2,000 pts | 1,500 pts | -25% |
| I Prefer (Preferred Hotels) | 4,000 pts | 2,000 pts | -50% |
The Choice Privileges rate is going from a 1:2 ratio down to 1:1.5, which is a 25% reduction. Not great, but Choice was already a pretty niche use case for most ThankYou point holders. The real gut punch is I Prefer, which drops from a 1:4 ratio all the way down to 1:2. That’s a straight 50% cut, and it basically eliminates whatever value proposition existed there.
Does This Actually Matter?
For most people holding Citi ThankYou points, probably not much. Choice Privileges and I Prefer were never the headliner Citi ThankYou transfer partners to begin with. The heavy hitters in the ThankYou transfer ecosystem have always been the airline partners like Turkish Miles & Smiles, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, and Air France-KLM Flying Blue.
That said, there was a case for transferring to I Prefer at the old 1:4 rate if you had a specific Preferred Hotels redemption in mind. At 1:2, that math gets a lot harder to justify. You’re essentially getting half the value per point transferred, which means you’d need to double your ThankYou point spend for the same hotel stay.
One Alternative Worth Noting
If you’re specifically interested in Choice Privileges points, Wells Fargo still transfers at a 1:2 rate. So if you have Wells Fargo Rewards points, that’s now the better path to Choice Privileges compared to Citi ThankYou transfer partners. Something to keep in mind if you hold points in both programs.
The Bottom Line
Neither Choice Privileges nor I Prefer have ever offered transfer bonuses from Citi, so there’s no “wait for a bonus” strategy here either. What you see is what you get, and starting April 19, what you get is less.
The silver lining is that the most valuable Citi ThankYou transfer partners remain untouched by this change. If you’re using your ThankYou points for airline transfers to partners like Flying Blue, Turkish, or JetBlue, nothing changes for you. But if hotel transfers through Choice or I Prefer were part of your strategy, it’s time to reassess whether those redemptions still make sense at the new rates.
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