What are Credit Card Points?
Credit Card Points are a type of reward currency that can be earned in exchange for eligible credit card spending Every Card is very different and unique and there are multiple ways to redeem points. You can use your points for statement credits, shopping, gift cards, donations, etc but in my experience the most effective way is the Travel Portal!
My girlfriend and I have always wanted to go to Spain. Mallorca & Madrid we’re at the top of the list The first step is to find a hotel in the area we wanted to travel in. We started analyzing Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt. In my experience, it is beneficial to look for the best point to value conversions and if the hotel has a partnership with other hotels such as Small Luxury Hotels of the world
Most Hotels have a reward chart. For example here is Hyatt’s We found our Hotel called Can Ferrereta in Santanyí. Hyatt rated them a category 7. Their 2nd best reward category. The highest is category 8. We looked at prices and we saw it was almost 750 Euro a Night! So if you started there 4 nights it would cost over $3,000.00! A little out of our range This is where the power of points can be used
For simplicity most people use the term 100 points equals $1 This Hotel was 30,000 points per night so using that conversion this was $300 dollars per night of value! 120,000 points for 4 nights. The value on paper is $1200.00 to get you a hotel worth $2,878.20 that’s over a 2.4x conversion!
Still on the topic of Hotels. I was BLOWN away with the service at Can Ferrereta. It was one of the nicest places I have ever stayed and would go back every year if I could. Just look at this pool. Amazing Lunch & Dinner as well.
This is a good conversion but let’s see where even more comes in. Now it’s time to analyze flights: Flight from NYC to Madrid would have cost $1286.00 a person just to fly economy on Iberia but the point value was 20,000 points per flight.
Our Return flight from Madrid to JFK for economy was listed at $3700.00 a Person in economy! But we dove further and the points analyzed was 28,000 points for each of us. Look at this!
The 2nd flight was a 13:1 conversion Plus using Points we got to pick our seats for no additional charge and in advance. We to sit in a XL row. This provided plenty of leg room. There is also a free luggage bag using points for Iberia no extra costs there. But that’s NOT ALL! We saw back in the fall ( this is where planning matters) American Express had a 30% transfer bonus to Iberia. This means if you move 10,000 Amex points to Iberia in that time frame you would get 13,000 points on Iberia’s website. For our return flight our total points total would have been 56,000 but with the bonus we only had to move 43,000 to cover us both.
Our total costs would have been over 5 figures just for getting to and from Spain. In the end we only had to pay a little more than 500 dollars. (Flights have taxes & fees even with points usage/Hotels do not)
As amazing as our trip was Credit Cards require a lot of discipline and if not used correctly can cause major financial problems for you. Risks included high interest debt, overspending, and damaging credit scores due to missed payments. Please be very careful.