How Do The Reward Travel Credit Cards Work For Your Benefit?

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

You must have heard at least once about reward travel points and benefits either on a television commercial or, if you are a frequent traveler yourself, from your travel agent or airline personal.

How Do Reward Travel Programs Work?

Reward travel is like an incentive or, better said, a reward given to you by the airline because you gave them your business and choose their airline to fly to your destination of choice. Most airlines will issue a frequent flyer a card, which looks similar to a credit card and through which you can add points every time you fly with that particular airline or the one they are partners with.

Travel points are usually calculated by the amount of miles you covered in one flight and are added to your account accordingly. Another way to gather reward travel points is through your credit card, as sometimes the same incentives are applied by your bank or Credit Card Company as well.

What Can You Get From Your Accumulated Reward Travel Points

Once you have accumulated a considerable number of points, you can use them to either purchase duty free items, hotel reservations, car rentals and so on; the list is endless, especially if the reward travel points are accredited to you by your bank and not the airline, as they usually have many more partners affiliated in this program at any one time.

With the accumulated points on an airline frequent flyer card you can usually get flight upgrades, which are a blessing if you have a long flight and are looking forward to relaxing and maybe get a little sleep as well; also, you may be allowed heavier bags than normal without having to pay for the extra weight.

Sometimes, airlines offer free flight for their frequent flyers with an upgraded membership with them; it does not happen often but it does happen and when it does it could very well be you if you start collecting your reward travel points from today.

Conclusion

You can accumulate reward travel points if you travel for business or pleasure and, thus, have the opportunity to shop, stay in a hotel or even fly for free from time to time, depending on the amount of points you gathered and/or the available programs from the airline.

You can start today as the membership and card are free. The only thing you have to remember is to always travel with the airlines that are included in the reward travel program and thus keep accumulating reward points.