Loyalty & Reward Programs
Nearly every airline, hotel group, timeshare network, grocery store, investment firm and many other companies have reward programs. Rewards come in different forms, but they all provide a benefit for using their company more.
Rewards generally fall into one of three categories: cash, points, or miles. The cash rewards can help reduce your future purchase or credit card balance. Travel rewards can help you earn free trips or upgrades. You can use rewards to purchase holiday and birthday gifts. You also can also invest the rewards you earn through some credit cards.
Since we’re full time travellers we are most interested in the rewards that can help us save money during our slooow trip around the world. But which rewards program to choose? There are so many out there.
Virtually every airline and major hotel chain in the world has a loyalty program and a credit card to earn you miles that you can redeem for airline tickets, free rooms or upgrades. The number of rewards you can earn varies, and the number you need to convert to a flight, room or upgrade varies by the loyalty program. You may be able to convert rewards between programs, but you may lose some value in the conversion process.
Securing an airline or hotel loyalty program is very simple. You just need to apply online and there are no requirements.
Qualifying for a rewards credit card generally depends on having a good credit score. In general, you need a good to excellent credit score to get a rewards credit card. According to the 850-point FICO scoring model, the one credit card issuers most commonly use, a good score is 670 to 739. A score of 740 or above is considered very good to exceptional. The higher your credit score, the more likely it is you’ll qualify for premium rewards cards—and the better the perks, like intro bonuses and airport lounge access.
Rewards cards may have higher costs than other credit cards. For example, annual fees & higher interest rates are common with rewards cards. You’ll have to weigh if the benefits are worth these costs.
Most cards offer a significant bonus when your application is accepted. You usually need to make x value of purchases within y months to receive the bonus. These deals constantly change and you need a great FICO score to get the best deals. When Shane owned 7 stores it was easy to qualify for these bonuses and rack up huge purchases & points by paying for inventory & expenses with these cards.
Not all rewards are forever. Some programs expire your rewards if you don’t use them within a certain amount of time. Also, most credit card programs will forfeit your rewards if you fall behind on your payments.
Finally, if you have too many rewards reward programs and/or credit cards and don’t have a business to rack up significant purchases, your spread out purchases over several cards will never accumulate enough points to earn you a decent reward. It’s better to just stick with a few airline and hotel programs and remain loyal to them.
With all that said, we have focused on the following rewards programs. Follow the links to learn more about them:
Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
World of Hyatt Loyalty Program
We are enrolled in more programs but try not to spread out our spending capital. Of course you’ll get other programs when you have to fly a certain airline or stay in a certain hotel. But put your focus on the airlines and hotels you most frequently patronize.