As an Amex cardholder 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 and first class flights. There is simply no debating it – booking business and first 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.
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.
If you’re a business owner or executive, you’re likely charging many high value business expenses, travel expenses, or luxury items to your cards. This in turn, generates a significant amount of revenue for American Express. When it comes to rewarding these individuals, American Express must provide them with something of high value. Something befitting their status as a customer. 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.
We have established that you will receive the best value from your Amex Membership Rewards points by booking business and first class flights. But for the savvy points collector, we can take it a step further.
There are currently 14 membership rewards partners with whom you can convert your Amex points and use them to redeem for flights.
They are:
Most of Amex Membership Rewards partners offer a conversion rate of about 2 – 4 Amex points = 1 air mile when exchanged. You can read all about the recent changes to the Amex rewards conversion rate in our article on its devaluation, read here. What differs with each airline is the value they assign to those air miles points, as each airline prices its reward seats differently – so, a Qantas Frequent Flyer one-way Classic Rewards flight from Sydney to Tokyo in Business class might cost 98,400 Frequent Flyer points (that’s 196,800 Amex points), however, it will be different on Virgin Australia.
The valuation can vary further due to factors such as:
On every airline flight, only a certain percentage of the seats are eligible to be booked with rewards. We don’t know for certain what it is, but we estimate it to be around 20%. The remaining seats are reserved for airline customers who are paying cash for their ticket. This is why it can sometimes be challenging to find your desired seat – and it is especially true at times like these when there are global surges in demand for reward seats.
Your personal reward tier within each reward program also has an effect on flight availability for you. Gold and Platinum reward members are more likely to snag reward seats than those with base level memberships.
Here’s another little spanner for the works.
Scenario: You have found the perfect flight to your dream destination and you have logged into your Amex Rewards dashboard and exchanged the required points into that particular airline’s air miles. But you notice that it’s going to take 5 whole days for that points exchange to process. Because it’s high season, your ideal flight is likely to be gone by then. What you see today isn’t necessarily what you will see next week.
This is what often vexes Amex cardholders who are trying to book their own rewards.
Airlines such as Emirates, Air New Zealand, Qantas, and Singapore usually convert instantly or within 1 business day. Meanwhile, airlines such as Malaysia Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Etihad, can take from 2 – 7 days to convert.
There’s a lot of information to consider and it can certainly be overwhelming. It can also be very time consuming to try and tackle this yourself.
Remember, you should think of your reward points as if they were cash. You wouldn’t pay $10,000 for a product or service that you could get for $3,000, right? So why would you do it with your points? The truth is, it’s sometimes best to leave it to the experts.
Here at The Well Connected Traveller, our consultants book reward seats for our clients all day, every day. We know what factors to consider based on where and when you wish to travel. We use our unique advantages to secure your desired seats. And we know that sometimes, the best way to get from A to B is via X on an airline you may not have even considered.
We consider your rewards tier, we check all your available points balances, and we know how to combine them to get you where you want to go, when you want to go. In business class, no less.
Tell us about your reward points, your travel plans and your preferences.
We get to work researching the best travel options for you for a flat fee of $225 per request.
We will present you the best options we've found and work to finalise your trip details.
We do the hard work for you and book your entire trip as part of our $375 pp booking fee.
We are points experts and we have been doing what we do for well over a decade. Contact us today to book your reward flights.
Fill out our Book With Points enquiry form and we’ll be in touch shortly to discuss your desired travel arrangements.
“The Well Connected Traveller are experts in helping our customers get the best value out of their points, and in addition, they are full service travel agents who are able to assist you and your team with all your travel needs.”
*Disclaimer
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