With the incredible success of CIBC’s Aerogold Visa, the other credit card companies have had to scramble to come up with their own points program. At first they tried offering merchandise, but as we all know, travel is the most desirable reward. So now, virtually every bank has its own version of a travel points program—usually connected to their Gold and Platinum cards. While these plans do have some advantages over Aeroplan and other traditional frequent-flyer programs, there are important issues to consider.
First the advantages. Unlike airline points plans, credit card travel plans have no "blackouts." Also, in theory, you can travel anywhere and on any airline with most credit card travel reward programs.
That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, it is not quite that simple. First of all, the credit card travel plans have dollar-based awards. For example, 30,000 points on a program typically gets you about $750.00 worth of airline tickets in North America. You may be lucky enough to find a ticket under that price in some cases, but if you are travelling in peak season, booking at the last minute, or travelling somewhere that has restrictions on their best airfares that you don’t qualify for, you may find that you have to “top up” the award to the tune of hundreds, even thousands of dollars! So much for it being a “free” ticket.
Secondly, unlike airline programs, credit card award programs cannot be managed by your professional travel consultant. They have their own, in-house travel department, located who-knows-where. So you are not going to be dealing with an experienced, skilled agent who understands your travel market. These call centres are staffed by entry-level agents, leaving you with a novice to handle your all-important vacation. Add to this the fact that an inexperienced agent is very unlikely to find you the lowest airfare, which means you may well be getting poor service combined with a higher airfare!
Finally, most experienced travellers like to reserve their frequent-flyer points to travel business or first class. It is a treat they’d not normally pay for, and they know that they are getting better value for their points with a premium class award. This is a great idea with airline plans, but it is a disaster with credit card plans. Again, because the awards are dollar-based, you must top up any costs that exceed your award budget. For example, that same 25,000-point award valued at $750.00 does not go a long way to pay for a $3000.00 business class ticket!
With regular frequent-flyer plans, on the other hand, you typically get 500% greater value out of a business class award level for about 60% more points. (Eg. a typical round-trip economy ticket to/from Toronto costs about $650.00, while business costs $3200.00; but the difference in points levels in Aeroplan is 25,000 vs. 40,000.)
Credit card programs such as “Aventura” claim to offer a business class option, but it is at an enormous cost in points. For that same business class ticket to Toronto mentioned above, it would cost a total of 280,000 points! *
Two credit card programs we would recommend are RBC’s Avion Platinum card and Amex Rewards. Both of these do have a frequent-flyer program option. That is, in addition to their own (not-so-useful) in-house program, with Amex you can transfer your points to Continental Airlines’ or Delta Airlines’ frequent-flyer plans (as well as Aeroplan); and with RBC Avion you can transfer your points to the American Airlines’ or British Airways’ programs. Our recommendation, then, is if you want to own a second credit card anyway, maintain enough points (say 30,000 or 60,000) in one of these programs to pay for two economy tickets within North America as a backup to your Aeroplan account. That way, you will always have a second option when your Aeroplan (or other frequent-flyer program) fails. But, for big-ticket items—such as a business class ticket to Europe or Australia—keep building your points in a traditional airline frequent-flyer program.
(Next month: other than Aeroplan, what is the second best frequent-flyer plan?)
*30,000 points = $750.00 budget. A $3200.00 business class ticket will be $2450 extra. You can use additional points at a rate of 10,000 points per $100. This means you’d have to spend an additional 250,000 points to “pay” for the extra cost of the ticket!
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