American Express Travel Portal provides members with various advantages when booking through this online booking tool, particularly those holding the Platinum Card from American Express who enjoy added perks when using AmEx Travel.
AmEx Travel provides its members with a convenient way to book flights, hotels and more using points and cash. According to NerdWallet’s estimates of Membership Rewards points at 1 cent each, AmEx Travel makes good financial sense when used effectively to achieve this value.
Flights
The Amex Travel portal provides a simple, timesaving solution to booking flights, hotels and rental cars using AmEx Membership Rewards points. In addition to offering travel benefits such as room upgrades and resort credits for cardholders, the American Express Travel portal is free for both cardholders and non-cardholders; cardholders may earn additional points when making bookings through it.
The portal’s front page looks similar to any travel booking site, providing search functions for flights, hotels, vacation packages and rentals. In addition to these search capabilities you will also find current pandemic information and links to portal perks such as accessing Amex Centurion Lounges for Platinum and Business Platinum cardmembers.
Searching flights through Amex Travel portal is simple and straightforward, providing options to sort results by price, departure time and Amex recommendation. Filter results by number of stops or departure and arrival cities as well as number of stops between departure and arrival cities. Booking through this platform counts as paid tickets so that you can earn miles or status credits with participating airlines.
Hotel searches on Amex can be more challenging. While Amex often provides decent rates, other travel sites may provide better fares; this may be due to low-cost carriers like Norwegian not being included or perhaps simply providing better search functionality.
Amex Travel can also present problems when searching for travel. Search results can become outdated quickly, without providing real-time flight prices; while this shouldn’t be a major concern when searching for flights. Also bear in mind if earning American Express points through credit cards with airline or hotel transfer partners that earn American Express points more quickly than through Amex Travel redemptions.
Hotels
American Express Travel Portal makes booking hotel stays and earning bonus points easy and offers cardholders exclusive benefits that make for luxurious (but often cost-effective) trips. Before beginning to plan a vacation with this portal, it’s worth understanding its workings in order to maximize its use and experience its benefits fully.
Amex Travel is an online booking portal exclusively available to certain American Express cards that allows them to pay for flights, hotels, cars and cruises. It is an additional service included with certain cards such as The Platinum Card(r) from American Express and The Business Platinum Card(r) from American Express which offer elite status and airline and hotel benefits.
Amex Travel makes finding hotels easy by providing your airport(s), city, dates, number of rooms and number of nights – the search window is user-friendly with results being listed by “recommended.” Additionally, a check box will allow properties from The Hotel Collection or Fine Hotels and Resorts to appear first in your results list.
Amex Travel stands out from other travel portals by counting stays booked through them as qualifying rates for hotel loyalty programs, giving those with elite status an excellent way to maximize the value of their points.
Vacation packages
American Express Travel is an online booking portal for booking travel and vacation packages using points. Customers can use Amex points to reserve flights, hotels, cruises and rental cars through this platform; and cardholders may earn extra points and benefits like the International Airline Program, Hotel Experience Credits and Hotel Collection perks. Although this may not be the most efficient use of your rewards points, American Express Travel may help maximize their value.
Amex Travel website features an easy and straightforward interface similar to that found on other third-party travel booking sites. Users can input their departure and arrival locations, dates and number of travelers before viewing a list of available flights sorted by price with those recommended automatically displayed first. Furthermore, users can search by distance from city or airport. Furthermore, Amex Travel portal provides many packages which may often prove cheaper than purchasing separately.
Amex Travel provides flights and hotels as the two primary products on its site. Amex has partnered with various airlines and hotels to offer competitive pricing options at better rates; however, consumers should always compare package costs with those of purchasing similar items separately.
Amex Travel portal offers cardholders who want to redeem Membership Rewards points an easy and straightforward solution, featuring a vast selection of travel services and earning bonus points on select purchases – plus helpful customer service representatives – however there may be drawbacks such as low points-to-dollar conversion rate and lack of loyalty point transfer partners.
Rental cars
American Express Travel provides an easy and straightforward way to book flights, hotels, rental cars and cruises using points or cash. Exclusive to American Express cardholders, booking through this portal may offer additional perks when using certain cards – trip planning services as well as insurance are also provided by this portal.
Amex Travel website features a user-friendly search engine to quickly locate flights, hotels and vacation packages. Once you select your options from Amex Travel site will display prices and terms. Platinum or Centurion cardholders can even use the portal to book luxury fare classes on international flights!
Amex Travel portal can offer significant savings over booking directly with airlines and hotels for flight and hotel packages, although it’s essential that before making a reservation you thoroughly read through each package’s terms and conditions and compare pricing of individual components of travel packages versus booking them separately.
Amex Travel also allows cardholders to reserve rental cars worldwide through its portal, offering cash or points payments as payment, as well as discounts for specific car types and a useful search tool that lets you narrow options by location, pickup time, type of car (minivan/SUV etc) desired to rent, as well as deals for prepaid rental deals.
Cruises
Platinum card members (American Express The Platinum Card(r), Business Platinum Card or Centurion) can take advantage of the Travel portal benefits and special onboard credits to increase value from points or save money when booking through this channel instead of paying cash upfront.
Just like booking flights, to book a cruise through Amex Travel Portal you must first log into your Membership Rewards account. From here you can select your trip type before searching by destination, dates, sailing duration and cruise line (you can even filter by month of travel!). When done searching you will receive per-person prices with double occupancy; if enough Membership Rewards points exist to cover this trip choose “Use All My Points,” pay with credit card then receive statement credit within 48 hours for what was covered with points!
Though booking through the Amex Travel portal may be convenient, it may not offer you the most value when redeeming your MR points. The conversion rate between points and dollars is often much lower compared with transferring them directly to airline and hotel partner programs; furthermore booking through it reduces their value as it counts as third-party transaction which could decrease their worth significantly if booking an expensive trip; typically your points would only be worth about 0.7 cents each when redeeming them this way for hotel accommodations booked through it.