As an Amex Card holder and rewards program member, you may be wondering what the best use of your points is. Put frankly, the best use of Amex Points is booking business class flights. There is simply no debating it – booking business class reward seats provides the best value return on your hard earned points.
It does not come from paying off your Amex statement with points, nor from buying retail items or gift cards. Even booking hotels or hire cars with your Amex points doesn’t provide optimum value.
“Of course you’re going to say that,” you might be thinking, “You’re a travel agency.” This is true, but let’s analyse the nature of Amex Membership Rewards for a moment.
The nature of Amex Membership Rewards
American Express differentiates itself from competitors (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) by targeting high net worth individuals who spend large amounts of money with their cards. Naturally, those customers will be the most valued, and therefore the ones who are rewarded most handsomely.
High net worth individuals are quite often business owners, executives, celebrities, etc. They may charge many high value business expenses, travel expenses or luxury items to their cards, generating significant revenue for American Express.
So when it comes to rewarding these individuals, American Express must provide them with something of high value. Something befitting their status as a customer. And business owners, executives and celebrities are likely to want to travel in business class. Therefore, American Express has arranged for the booking of business class flights to represent the best value points exchange over things like small appliances, retail gift cards or economy car hire for example. This is how they reward their high value customers.
