On Track to Travel Rewards
Frequent flyer airline cards are not always the best option for finding travel rewards. Yes, they may be the best-known, but there are many other ways to earn travel rewards. You may even decide to toss those old airline cards out once you know more.
You can start by forgetting all you think you know about getting free travel rewards. Airline frequent flyer credit cards are not such a bad deal in themselves, but once you compare them to the other options, they won’t compare for the average consumer.
First of all, they usually carry high interest rates and annual fees. Then, they actually don’t give you as much in return for the dollars you spend as many other travel programs do. Finally, they limit your options.
Airlines are flying fewer planes and offering less expensive fares, yet a record number of people are investing in frequent flyer miles. Ultimately that leads to reward tickets that are worth less. And if you are earning miles on only one airline, you may be severely limiting your vacation options.
Meanwhile, the cost of hotel rooms is setting record highs, but these rooms can now also be earned for free. It’s easy to forget that the average hotel stay often costs more than the airline fare to get there. It may simply make more sense to use a hotel credit card that earns points which can be used not only for free hotel stays, but often transferred to many different airlines.
Some of the best travel reward credit cards are offered by the big names of Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. These cards are generally affiliated with a company, such as Marriott, which owns multiple hotels or resorts. While some of these cards do charge an annual fee, the rewards are substantial enough that the fee is easily earned back. Some of them may even waive the fee for the first year.
These types of travel rewards credit cards can give you the most flexibility for both business and leisure travel. You can get a room in a high-end hotel for as few as 2,000 points with no blackout dates, and you can also transfer those points to a wide variety of airlines, instead of being limited to only one. There is even a card out there that will give you a 5,000-point bonus for transferring 20,000 points to an airline.
When you think about travel rewards or look into a credit card that offers travel rewards, you don’t have to limit your options. Look into earning points towards free hotel rooms as well as airline travel. Once you start researching travel rewards cards affiliated with hotels as well as with airlines, you will find cards that offer double points on purchases at supermarkets, gas stations, drugstores, the U.S. Postal Service and even on wireless phone service. How wonderful to find that you can earn your next vacation just by paying the expenses of your everyday life.
There are even some credit card reward programs that will give you the choice of redeeming your points towards travel, merchandise, or cold hard cash. That way you can make up your mind as you go. As the saying goes, the sky’s the limit!