I'm about the start a new job that will have me traveling quite a bit. I'll mainly fly on Delta and United and have accounts with them. I also have an account with Hertz for auto and Hilton for hotels. I've been looking at Chase Sapphire and Reserve. I'm looking to maximize my points for free airfair, trans, lodging and cashback. I'd love to hear how you guys have it setup.
Travelers of SVT: who has the best rewards programs? (auto, air, hotel, cc)
- Thread starter omj
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AMEX Rose Gold
Think I'll just buy an RV.
This may actually be an option in the future. Right now I'm going to be flying to a lot of varied locations and won't have time to move over the weekend.
I have a chase sapphire, it works really well for me as the way my company does travel bookings is I pay up front and I get reimbursed immediately after which means I rack up points at an insane rate when im travelling for work, between the 125$ per Diem I get and paying out of pocket for travel and lodging and then getting reimbursed later means I am getting a round trip ticket to Europe for free about every 6 months.
For reference I fly out of the country for work about twice a quarter for anywhere from one week to one month.
We use our Southwest card for everything, pay off every month so we never carry a balance. We usually do a couple vacations a year where we have to fly, most of that is free for the three of us.
We get hotel and rental car deals through RCI, our timeshare.
We get hotel and rental car deals through RCI, our timeshare.
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To get status on Delta takes a stupid amount of travel (having a credit card with skymiles really helps), and the perks are really not that great. Delta has some of the best flight schedules, and they know it. I'm also based out of Atlanta, so Delta is definitely the easiest for me (no connections). My buddy flies SouthWest and the perks he gets are much, much better than Delta (this was 2 years ago, not sure what their programs look like now).
I've been happy with the short amount of time it takes to get a free room from the Hilton program.
I'm still searching for a good car rental program. Avis definitely has been the easiest for pick-up and drop-off: you walk out to the car, hop-in and drive away to the exit gate--no line to wait in just to get to a car. I cannot say the same for enterprise, you always have to talk to someone before you get into a car, even in you go to the kiosk.
I use work supplied credit cards, because my expenses are typically way more than I'd be comfortable putting on my own card and waiting to be reimbursed. So, I'm not much help on the cash rewards (my personal credit cards are not used very often for anything).
I've been happy with the short amount of time it takes to get a free room from the Hilton program.
I'm still searching for a good car rental program. Avis definitely has been the easiest for pick-up and drop-off: you walk out to the car, hop-in and drive away to the exit gate--no line to wait in just to get to a car. I cannot say the same for enterprise, you always have to talk to someone before you get into a car, even in you go to the kiosk.
I use work supplied credit cards, because my expenses are typically way more than I'd be comfortable putting on my own card and waiting to be reimbursed. So, I'm not much help on the cash rewards (my personal credit cards are not used very often for anything).
I prefer holiday inns elite for hotel points. I have hilton as well and they are good but Holiday Inn has been more usuable. after a 6 month contract in Pendleton I had over 500k elite points and if you use them for rooms its only 10-25k points per room. NO hotel plan is going to rack up points very fast if you just sleep there and don't eat of spend other money there as well
I understand that. I just don’t like flying or hotels. I’d rather sleep in my own filth.
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I prefer Marriott Rewards (even with the recent IT snafu), relatively easy to make Platinum with credit cards and setting up a hotel meetings, although that might not be an issue if you're on the road for more than 50 nights. Hyatt Globalists have been fairly happy with elite recognition (upgrades, service) but Hyatt properties are limited and on average more expensive. Hilton could work but everyone's an elite since they give it away like candy on Halloween.
Airline loyalty is pretty lame. If you don't have aspirations for international travel, then stick with Delta or Southwest. Delta has generally shit redemption for international travel. United international award can be decent (their fleet is getting updated and should be very competitive, premium seat wise). AA can be pretty decent (currently best international business class of the big 3, on average, although Delta is closely behind with their new suite seats). Southwest/Jetblue/Hawaiian all suck for international award redemption. Alaska is an interesting case. They have great international partners but their domestic foot print is limited (compared to the big 3) so it'll be harder to earn Alaska miles if work isn't located where Alaska flies conveniently (1 layover or less).
Chase Sapphire Reserve is great if you eat out a lot (3x on dining). Otherwise the Preferred is probably a better value. The Citi Prestige card is interesting and becoming very competitive (5x on dining and airfare) against the Reserve and Amex Platinum. Either way, regardless of which bank card you'd choose, you'll probably want to get a co-branded hotel card as those will generally earn more points than anything from Citi/Chase/Amex would per dollar spent, particularly for Marriott and Hilton.
All of this is rather pointless if you don't plan/want to travel internationally....cause that's where you will get the most bang per mile/point redeemed. Citi's cash back card or Coscto's Visa card would be a better choice.
I recently went to Singapore for 5 nights. 4 of those nights were paid using Marriott Points. All 4 nights were upgraded to suites that cost normally $1000/night. This was over a holiday too. Great redemption and use of Marriott Rewards Platinum benefits. A few months before that, I redeemed approximately $12k worth of round trip international first class/business class flights for myself and parents using AA miles and Chase points that were transferred to one of their airline partners. A lot of those points/miles were earned from credit card sign up bonuses. Check out flyertalk.com if you want more resources. Many travel blogs get their info from that forum.
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only part of your post I will disagree with. we went on two road trips this summer and more than half our hotel stays were paid with points. had I wanted to use all my points ALL of our road trip hotels would have been paid for. so domestically points can pay off pretty well. we got free upgrades also. I will grant that international may be a bigger bang but if you don't want to do that they are still worth having
airbnb, look for the high rated ones.
only gripe is: dont do anything shady, there might be cameras. LOL
only gripe is: dont do anything shady, there might be cameras. LOL
I have Marriot and IHG (Holiday In) for hotels, I like Marriot better.
Delta for air.
National Emerald Club for cars.
Most of my stuff goes on an AMEX corporate card.
Sent from my iPhone using svtperformance.com
Delta for air.
National Emerald Club for cars.
Most of my stuff goes on an AMEX corporate card.
Sent from my iPhone using svtperformance.com
Amex Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve. Amex gets you into nicer airport lounges, which is ****ing gold if you fly a lot. Free food and drinks away from the unwashed. CSR gets in lounges through affiliation with Priority Pass, but the lounges aren't always as good. It seemed to be more flexible rewards though, so I went with them. Been a long time Chase Southwest cardholder too, and always earned an easy 3-5 roundtrips a year.
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