American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card

I recently applied for the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card as there was a rather hefty bonus of 50,000 Membership Reward points after spending just $1000 in the first 3 months. Unfortunately, the offer seems to have been pulled and currently only the 25,000 MR points offer is available. If you should see it return, at any point, I would advise getting in on the deal.

US Bank Club Carlson Premier Rewards Visa

US Bank recently unveiled their new Club Carlson Visa Card with full details here.  No question, its one of the strongest regular credit card offerings this year, and its a tremendous surprise coming from US Bank, rarely associated with the big credit card offers usually given out by Chase, Amex of Citi! The card offers a tantalizing 85k Club Carlson points (50k after first spend and 35k after spending $2.5k in 3 months), almost good enough for 2 nights at their second highest Category 5 hotels!

While the Club Carlson program requires a large number of points for their stays, it is important to point out Hilton and Priority Club share this very similar feature. To make it easier to collect these huge piles of points, these programs tend to give out more points for spending in specific categories. As a result, points are not as difficult to earn as one might think.

American Express Gold Delta Card

The American Express Gold Delta Card is another one of those cards that has been around for some time and while it used to regularly offer 25k Skymiles, the norm is now 30k with the occasional 40k popping up every so often. Interestingly, Delta gives different offers to different people and to get an idea of what you might get, go here and enter your Skymiles account number.

Delta is part of Skyteam, the second largest of the major airline alliances, and is partnered with the likes of KLM, Air France and Korean Airlines. This makes Delta points more valuable especially if you live near a Delta hub or make frequent trips on Delta and its partners.

Chase Priority Club Card

The Chase Priority Club visa card has been around for a while and although people are sometimes targeted for the 80k PC points offer, the public 60k offer has been available for a long time and can be found here.

80,000 Priority Club points can come in very useful for redemptions at Priority Club hotels which include the hotels of the omnipresent Holiday Inn chain and the more upscale Crowne Plaza and Intercontinental hotels. One of the best uses of PC points is on Priority Club Point Breaks hotels (which change quarterly) which can sometimes be a ridiculously awesome deal.

Barclays Virgin America Card

Barclays has a limited time offer (until August 31st) for a Virgin America Visa Signature card that provides 20000 bonus points after first purchase, up to 5000 points with a balance transfer, $150 off a companion ticket each year and all this for a $49 annual fee.

Obviously, 20k bonus points seems somewhat small compared to the now-regular 50k offers coming out of Chase and Citi but it is worth mentioning that this is coming from Barclays, a bank not known for offering exceptionally huge offers.

Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card

Looks like Citi just launched a new Hilton branded Visa card today here with more competitive features resembling the recent Fairmont card from Chase. With this card however, the complimentary two free nights are restricted to weekend nights (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) so combining your nights with friends/family might not be as easy to do here. However, coming from Citi, this is certainly a highly welcome addition to the party in which Chase has been dominating for the past year.

Two free nights at some of the top-tier aspirational properties can be extremely valuable as regular Category 7 hotels go for 50k points per night, valuing 2 nights at 100k points. Given the terms that the redemptions might be only available at 'select hotels' give me pause as to whether the certificates will be honored at the highest tier Waldorf Astoria hotels and resorts without blackout dates, but if they can, that would give spectacular value at up to 160k worth of points as one resort can go up to 80k per night during high season!

Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Card

It sometimes feels so unfair that Chase has a such a large share of the best travel credit cards in the industry (or at least those with the biggest starting bonuses) so that I can never figure out which to get. The Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card has been around for a while and has been floating around for the past while with a 40k United miles bonus. Recently though, there's been a new link which offers a potential 65k (55k easy) United miles bonus as long as you log in to your United Mileage Plus account in some other tab. To top that off, you also get $50 in cold hard cash applied to your statement.

Given the value of United miles, this is definitely a great deal since you can claim a flight to Europe for 60k miles and a flight to North Asia for 65k on any Star Alliance partner meaning you just need to accumulate a tad more or fly a few more times for that free transatlantic or transpacific flight. On top of that, you get a number of privileges such as priority boarding, free checked bag and 2 United Club passes each year.

Chase Hyatt Card

Chase has among the best credit cards in the industry and the Chase Hyatt card is no exception. Beginning with 2 free award nights at any Hyatt in the world (including such aspirational properties as the category 6 Park Hyatt Tokyo or the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome) after your first purchase, this card definitely has big drawing power.

In addition, you also get complimentary Hyatt Platinum status, which is their mid-tier elite level, as long as you have this card which offers decent privileges such as room available upgrades, free internet, late checkout and point bonuses for stays etc.

Chase Fairmont Card

Chase just bagged another one! That's right, Chase just collected yet another respectable hotel chain in its massive arsenal of reward-rich credit card offerings. The Fairmont chain is a fairly upscale hotel chain with a decent number of locations around the world but generally more heavily focused on North America with just a smattering of hotels in the rest of the world.

The Fairmont visa card itself (application here) actually offers pretty similar benefits as the current Chase Hyatt card with two complimentary nights at any Fairmont hotel worldwide! To best the Hyatt offer however, they even toss in complimentary breakfast for two on those 2 nights, all for just spending $1000 in the first 3 months!

Chase Marriott Card Review

To be complete, I figured I should write about the lower fee Chase Marriott card as well, the lower priced sibling of the Chase Marriott Premier card I had applied for and was approved for previously. At the time I had also glanced at this Chase Marriott card and concluded quite easily that this card was not as valuable as its more feature-rich albeit pricier sibling.

Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

With numerous valuable transfer partners, no foreign transaction fees and a waived first year annual fee, this is quite simply one of the most valuable cards out there in the market today . The Chase Sapphire Preferred card (referral link here) offers a great initial bonus (currently 50k points) which can be transferred to a number of valuable transfer partners such as Southwest, Hyatt, United Airlines etc. and you can get an additional 5k points for adding an additional cardmember.

While I wouldn't suggest transferring to partners like IHG or Marriott, the ability to transfer to one of the airlines in each of the 3 main airline alliances and also to Hyatt offer tremendous value. In addition, earning double points on airlines, hotels, car rentals and dining with no foreign transaction fees means this is pretty much the go-to card for travelling and eating out.

Chase Marriott Premier Card

I almost feel like I'm addicted to writing credit card posts!  But somehow, they're rather fun and satisfying so here goes with another one! The latest card I wanted to write about was the Chase Marriott Premier Visa card. I had applied for this card last summer in anticipation of my trip to Seoul and it was certainly not a bad credit card to have around, especially with the juicy 50k Marriott Reward bonus point offer after first use (although Chase has occasionally raised this bonus to a whopping 70k points!)

Marriott offers a wide selection of hotels around the world and the Courtyard Marriott Seoul Times Square was just one of the hotels I stayed at using Marriott Reward points. However, it is probably noteworthy that Marriott, like Starwood and Hilton, have recently undergone a round of point devaluation with their category changes thus making their points worth somewhat less than they did a few months ago.

American Express Hilton Surpass Card

*Updated May 7, 2013*

For those who already hold the American Express Hilton Card, there's another card that might be worth considering. The Amex Hilton Surpass Card offers an additional 50k bonus Hilton HHonors points to existing Hilton cardholders and offers complimentary Hilton Gold status for the first year of cardmembership. For new cardmembers, there is a 60k offer available here. It should be noted though that this card also has a $75 annual fee attached which makes this offer a bit less appealing.

The other key difference is the addition of the free priority pass membership which allows access to over 600 airport lounges (but keep in mind you still need to pay a $27 day fee for usage).

Virgin Atlantic American Express Card Review

While this public link has been out for a few days now, I figured I might as well also do a brief review of this credit card while I'm on the topic recently.  This Amex card is offered by Bank of America (that alone should be enough incentive for savvy card point collectors to perk up as most of the amazing deals are offered by American Express Bank, Chase and Citi to some extent).

While the card supposedly offers 65k miles, only 45k-50k are relatively easy to get. The first 20k can be had after your first purchase and a further 25k can be attained after $2500 spend in the first 90 days (3 months). Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles are mainly useful to fly to and from London, meaning that only if you are a frequent visitor to that city does it really make any sense to collect those miles.  Mileage point redemptions compared to other airlines for such transatlantic hops (from the US) or Asia-London hops are relatively low, however the taxes and fuel surcharges can be quite hefty.

Citi Hilton HHonors Card

I'm a big fan of the Amex Hilton card as I outline here, but I also wanted to introduce the Citibank version of the Hilton HHonors card. As per this FT thread, you can find an application link for 50k HHonors points after spending just $1500 in 6 months but since that doesn't show the actual offer, you'll have to trust in the FT thread. You can probably also find the standard 40k offer here.

Hilton's HHonors program, IMHO, gives the best value for points than almost any other program as I explained here. Here's a sample of a Category 5 (moving up to 6 on April 30) Embassy Suites Montreal hotel. Without rehashing all the details I've already gone through with the Amex card, I'd like to highlight some differences between these two cards so that you can decide whether this makes sense for you or not.

US Airways Barclays Mastercard

Just recently applied and got approved for the US Airways Barclays Mastercard which offers a 60k mile bonus (40000 easy) as per this public link.

This is the best offer Barclays has put out for their US Airways Mastercard and while its not as competitive as some of the other 50k, 75k and 100k offers that came out in 2011, this might be good to consider for broadening you card issuers (especially if you're heavy on the Chase and Amex and even Citi cards). Also, Barclays typically pulls from the Transunion credit bureau which is usually pulled less and thus shouldn't dent your credit scores at other bureaus.

Chase British Airways Card

British Airways is once again back with their 100,000 Avios point bonus although slightly less lucrative this year due to the heavy spend requirement. Additionally, due to the revaluation of the new BA Avios miles, this deal is not as good as last year particularly if you don't live in a Oneworld hub city or you tend to fly long distances (as their new award charts are more based on distance).

At the current redemption chart rates and assuming you can accomplish the $20k spend, you can still get 2 roundtrip tickets from the continental US to London for 50k Avios each.  Flights with partners though can get pretty pricey as the distance begins to go up.

American Express Hilton Card

*Updated May 7, 2013*

I had done a review of the American Express Starwood Card a little while back (as it is one of the most flexible travel credit cards out there) but I'd like to also point out that American Express also offers a competitive alternative in the Hilton HHonors card for those loyal to the Hilton brand and are looking for a no annual fee travel rewards card.

While the credit card bonus for the Hilton, at 40k points, seems larger than the Starwood bonus, it is also important to determine the value of the points and the earnings rate of the card as well as any annual fees you might get hit with. Again, before we go into the details, I'd like to just point you at an example of what 35k Hilton HHonors points can get you - this was my stay at the (then) Category 5 Embassy Suites Montreal.  This was an excellent hotel with a great downtown location and superb rooms. One night would have cost about $250 USD after taxes and fees.

American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Card

*Updated May 7, 2013*

Given that I do a little bit of travelling every now and then, I thought some readers here might be interested in the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card.  There are a wide variety of credit cards out there (such as the Amex Hilton card) and picking and choosing between all those choices is sometimes a bit difficult.

Before I get into a huge analysis of points, fees, rewards and whatnot, I'd like to point at one of the stays I made recently with Starwood, at the Westin Chosun in Seoul as an example of the possibilities out there for redemption.  This was one of the top tier hotels in Seoul, very centrally located near Myeong Dong and definitely a superb place to stay when travelling..

At the time of my travels, one night would have cost almost $300 USD after taxes and fees.  At that rate, a 5 night stay would have cost a pretty penny (~$1500 USD)!  Using Starwood points however, this particular stay only cost me 40k SPG points (This category 4 hotel would have cost me 10k SPG points / night but by using the 'redeem 4 nights get the 5th free', only 40k points was required).  As to how I got those 40k points, I will detail that out below.