How to Get Started with Travel Credit Cards: An Intro Guide

So you want to start getting free travel but don’t know where to start? This is a comprehensive and straightforward beginner’s guide on how to maximize credit card rewards for the purpose of travel.

First step: read my post here for some context.

Now that’s out of the way, before you apply to cards, it’s important to understand what type of traveler you are and what type of experiences you want (and how much effort you want to put in to achieving them). In the travel card game, there are two buckets of people:

1. Quick & Easy Traveler. You want to reduce cost of flights and hotels and just get to cool places for cheap.
2. Aspirational Award Hunter. You want to fly in business / first class (usually internationally) for seats that would be hard (or impossible) to stomach with cash. This is a significantly higher time commitment, but part of the fun is in the chase.

I go back and forth between 1 and 2 – if I want to fly from NYC to SF, it’s a six hour flight, so I don’t really care as long as I’m not in the middle seat. If I’m taking my precious vacation days to fly 18 hours halfway around the world to Thailand, well – business class with a lie-flat seat is obviously the preferred choice here (and better for the legs, I mean gotta look out for your leg circulation on the longer ones). As a general rule of thumb, I think any flight over 8+ hours for me starts to get painful physically, especially if overnight. This is when using points for long haul travel can really help out for a little (or a lot) more legroom.

There are two main categories of award travel cards:

1. Airline / Hotel Co-Branded Cards (these appeal more to traveler #1)
   • There are many options, but for US flyers, all major US airlines will have their own credit card(s): United, American, Delta, Southwest, Jetblue, Alaska (RIP Hawaiian).
   • Large hotel chains will also have their own cards, which can be solid value in many cases

Airline / Hotel Co-Branded Cards are best for travelers who want quick and easy options. You may not get the absolute best rates, but it’ll be guaranteed that you spend less cash on travel, and more important it’s quick and easy.

For example, let’s say you’re a flyer based out of SFO. United is your best bet, since SFO is a hub. You don’t want to complicate your life, so you just get the United Explorer card. With that, you get points and priority boarding, among some other perks. You come out ahead, and you’re paying less for cool travel experiences. Also – aspirational (i.e business / first class) travel is still very possible here, just with less options than with bank cards. Some airlines have stronger frequent flyer programs than others (i.e Alaska is great. Delta Skypesos… not so much).

2. Bank Cards (these appeal more to traveler #2)

• There are many options, from the usual US banking suspects: Chase, Citi, Capital One, and American Express

If you want to maximize cent per point, these are generally your best bet. This is because these programs have *many* different airline transfer partners with all sorts of different options.

For example, for American Express alone, you can transfer you Amex points to the following airlines (with their respective alliance after, if any):

• Aer Lingus (OneWorld)
• AeroMexico (SkyTeam)
• Air Canada (StarAlliance)
• Air France/KLM (SkyTeam)
• ANA (Star Alliance)
• Avianca (Star Alliance)
• British Airways (OneWorld)
• Cathay Pacific (OneWorld)
• Delta (SkyTeam)
• Emirates
• Etihad
• Hawaiian (tbd with the Alaska adquisition)
• Iberia (OneWorld)
• JetBlue
• Qantas (OneWorld)
• Qatar Airways (OneWorld)
• Singapore Airlines (Star Alliance)
• Virgin Atlantic (SkyTeam)

Looking at this list, as a US-based flyer, your initial thoughts may be, this is nice but not that practical for routine travel (outside of Delta and Jetblue). However, the key thing to remember is that *you can book flights on other airlines than the frequent flyer program you’re booking through*. For example:

A. You can book American Airlines from LGA – DCA using Qatar Airways Avios (OneWorld)

B. You can book United Airlines from SFO to Las Vegas using Avianca LifeMiles (Star Alliance)

C. You can book Delta Airlines from JFK to Reykjavik using Air France FlyingBlue Miles (SkyTeam)

Basically, think of all these programs as on-ramps to fly on a specific airline alliance. The big three in the world right now are Star Alliance, OneWorld, and Skyteam. For US member equivalent, Star Alliance has United, OneWorld has American, and Skyteam has Delta.

Not all frequent flyer programs are created equal, but the key thing to remember is that just because it’s some random Airline halfway across the world, you can still use their points to book a short-haul flight on a domestic airline if they are a partner. You can also use those points to book some really cool luxury travel experiences in first and business class.

Alright, so you understand the basic mechanics and you’re sold. How do you get started?

Time to apply to some card(s). Note for any travel credit card, the majority of the initial value comes in the form of a sign-up bonus. Usually these are structured as “spend $X within 3-6 months to receive X points.” Note if you wouldn’t have spend this money in this time frame, then travel cards are NOT for you (you’re not ending up ahead here). You can then earn a points per dollar spend, of which the structure changes by card. Some cards have different multipliers for different categories of spend, like 3x for groceries (Capital One Savor) or 5x for plane tickets (Amex Platinum) or 2x on everything (Venture X).

For travelers who fall into the quick & easy group, I’d recommend just starting off with the co-branded Airline credit card you fly most. There are no-fee and annual fee versions, so make sure to know which you’re getting into.

For travelers in the aspirational award hunter bucket, I’d recommend the Capital One Venture X (Apply HERE to see if you’re pre-approved). This is by far the best premium credit card on the market in terms of benefit-to-cost.

If you’re completely new to the game and just looking for a no-annual fee credit card, it’s hard to beat the CapitalOne SavorOne. Furthermore, if paired up with a Venture Card, you can actually transfer your cashback back-door into Venture travel points, leading to some pretty lucrative earning rates with the CapitalOne SavorOne. Apply HERE to support the blog and to apply for the no-fee CapitalOne SavorOne with a potential sign up bonus.