Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
One more follow up to the couple of posts we have had about expiring points & vouchers, specifically World of Hyatt and
that program not extending points or vouchers. There is confirmation on
several U.S. blogs that you can either call in or online chat via the
mobile app with World of Hyatt to have any vouchers that are set to
expire on December 31 converted into points. The amount of points
awarded depends on the vouchers and according to One Mile at a Time can
range from 500 points for a Club Access award to 20,000 points for
Category 1-7 free night award. I'll be testing this out later today as I
have a couple of Club Access vouchers that are due to expire! (HT One Mile at a Time)
UPDATE: The free points Hyatt gave last December for the wellness video and the points for converting vouchers DO NOT COUNT towards extending your points expiry. If your points are due to expire tomorrow your best course of action is to buy some points right now (we did here at Rewards Canada)
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
There is another Marriott hotel stay bonus here in Canada. This one is for one of their newest hotels that we have featured on Rewards Canada several times over the past few months. That hotel is The Josie Hotel, Autograph Collection at Red Mountain Ski Resort near Rossland B.C.. As a grand opening special they are offering 3,000 bonus points for stays of 2 or more nights. We checked it out and it's one of those offers that borders on being worthwhile or not. Depending on the days booked the bonus point rate ranged from $10 to well over $20 more per night over the Member Flexible Rate. On those days where it is only $10 more it might be worth it to go for the points but on nights where it is $20 or more not so much. Click here for more details & to book this offer.
I wonder if EVA Air hired a new head of loyalty as something is definitely up at the Infinity MileageLands program. The program has been extremely quiet for many years and now all of a sudden they introduce a buy miles option (With an introductory 65% bonus right now), they launch an online shopping portal: The EVA Mileage Mall with options to shop online in 12 countries around the globe and they launch a new member acquisition offer. This new member acquisition offer awards 500 miles just for joining Infinity MileageLands plus an additional 500 miles when you complete your membership profile for 1,000 free miles in total. Simply join by June 30, 2022 to earn the free miles.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Looks like we might have a challenger to the famous StayVancouver promotions that awards Amex gift cards for each night you stay at hotels booked through them. While we have seen many tourism boards provide gift card/prepaid card offers most of them outside of the StayVancouver offer are limited to one card regardless of how many nights you stay. Well it looks like Tourism Kingston wants to challenge StayVancouver as their latest incentive provides a $100 Visa Gift PER NIGHT not per stay when you book at least 2 nights and they award it for up to 5 nights for $500 in total gift cards.
A new Marriott Bonvoy bonus points offer came out this month for stays at the Element Vancouver Metrotown. The offer provides 500 bonus points per night and free self parking for all stays until February 28. A quick check of how the offer prices against the Best Member Flexible Rate shows that this package is slight more expensive. Not a lot and could be worth it if you do need the parking - if you don't need the parking skip the bonus points offer. See the example below.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
We have yet another upcoming reward program change to let you know about. This time Expedia is making modifications to their Expedia Rewards programs and for the most part we have another devaluation on our hands. Changes are being made to the earn rates, redemption rates and elite status qualification requirements.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Aeroplan eStore's Boxing Week event sees the online shopping portal offering up to 5x points at select retailers. The offers are in place until January 2 although I do have a feeling we may see something bigger on Boxing Day itself (just a guess though). Check out the offers here.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Few more updates on the Scene+ program from the Rewards Canada community:
This month saw third party business class lounge provider Plaza Premium open up two new lounges at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. One is a temporary lounge to cover for the renovation of an existing lounge and the other is their new flagship lounge in Canada called the Landmark lounge. This brings the company's total number of lounges in Canada to 14 including the recently opened Air France KLM lounge in Montreal plus one Wellbeing spa.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Here's our next Aeroplan availability alert! There is a bunch of
business class availability showing in April and May 2022 for
flights between Montreal and Zurich on SWISS. The flights operate on all days of the week except Monday and Wednesday. Most of the days we checked they are showing at
least 4 business class seats available per flight in both directions.
There is definitely better availability to Zurich than back but I did find quite a
few days on the return with 4 seats.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Today we updated The Ultimate High End Traveller Credit Card portfolio! This
portfolio is perfect for those who want to travel in style, experience
luxury and get great benefits from an American Express card, a Visa Card
and a Mastercard card. This much needed update of the 4+ year old
portfolio sees the MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard switched out to
the HSBC World Elite Mastercard. This is primarily due to three reasons,
the HSBC card offers No FX fees and has the $100 annual travel
enhancement credit plus the conversion option to British Airways, Cathay
Pacific and Singapore Airlines. Check out the updated portfolio here!
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Aeroplan has once again extended their flexible change policy for Aeroplan flight rewards. As COVID-19 cases increase again and recommendations in place not to travel internationally Aeroplan has adjusted the rules around changing flight rewards. The extension now sees Aeroplan waiving change fees on reward tickets until January 31, 2022 and the amount of changes you can make are unlimited. For bookings made by January 31 but changed on or after February 1, 2022 you will have the first change fee waived but any others after that will incur a fee. Applicable change fees will apply to any new bookings that are made on our after February 1. The program does seem to be adjusting these frequently so it is entirely possible they will be extended again in the near future if the pandemic situation doesn't improve over the next month.
As we do each month we bring you the latest set of Miles & More Mileage Bargains (Meilenschnaeppchen)
discounted
mileage awards.This is now the third month in a row we've seen them after disappearing for a year and a half due to the pandemic. Once again there's a lot of them in Economy and
Business Class to choose from and this time we see Calgary and Halifax with huge discounts on the table. Sorry Vancouver, you've been left out of the mix this month.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Finnair has brought back their best ever buy points bonus and since the airline is part of the oneworld alliance this offer may be of use to some oneworld flyers. This buy points bonus has two parts to it – the first is your standard bonus on the points you buy, which in this case is anywhere from 0% to 100% and the second is the awarding of elite qualifying tier points on those purchases as well. They’ve also upped the maximum you can buy this year to 200,000 points from the previous 150,000. This offer is available until December 27, 2021
Here is your monthly update of all the global hotel bonus points promotions that are available. One of the easiest ways to rack up lots of hotel points is to take advantage of these systemwide bonuses that come from many of the big chain programs and also from the lesser known programs. Unless you are staying at a boutique hotel or perhaps an independent hotel most other hotels out there have a bonus. So take advantage of it! Most of these systemwide bonuses simply require you to register beforehand and they do not affect hotel pricing as long as you book a point eligible rate which are most rates out there. Of course booking through a third party site like Expedia or Rocketmiles does not count as most chains only award points on bookings that are made directly with them. Here are all the current promotions that are available to everyone this month:
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
The new Rewards Canada site design is finally here!
Today we soft launched a new look on the main Rewards Canada website
that is fully responsive so it’ll will work great on mobile, tablets and
desktops. Across all those platforms you’ll be able to enjoy the
wealth of information we provide on the website without having to zoom
or scroll in weird ways. We say soft launch, as seeing that we have 20+
years of content on our website, much of which has HTML that isn't
responsive means it's not a quick switch of templates and it will take a bit
of time to make sure every page and every feature is updated to the new
look.
In 2020 Aeroplan partnered with Uber Eats in 2020 so you could earn Aeroplan Points for orders made via Aeroplan's eStore. Then just a few months ago Air Canada launched an offer with Uber Eats whereby co-brand cardholders would receive a free Uber Pass benefit but also at that time announced an expanded partnership with Uber would come later in the year. Well, later in the year has arrived and today we see the launch of the expanded partnership between Aeroplan and Uber.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
The much anticipated Muir, an Autograph Collection Hotel Halifax officially opened its doors a few days ago! Situated right on Halifax's waterfront in the Queens Marque neighbourhood, it is the 8th out of 10 hotels that were due to open this year not including existing hotels that moved over to Marriott during the course of the year. The last two hotels, the W Toronto has been delayed even further to 2022 while the Pearle Hotel in Burlington looks to be opening tomorrow.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Shangri-La Hotels Golden Circle is offering a conversion bonus to several of their airlines. From now until December 31 you'll receive a 25% bonus when converting GC Award points to Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France KLM Flying Blue and several other airlines. Points convert to miles 1:1 so you would receive 1.25 miles for every GC Award point and they have lowered the minimum conversion requirement of 2,500 points to 1,000 points for this promotion. While GC Award points are hard to come by if you don't have a lot of them ie. enough for a free night stay, this option could make sense for you to use up some points that you may never end up using. Click here to learn more.
Cineplex SCENE and Scotia Rewards members rejoice! Your revamped and combined Scene+ program is now here! After some technical issues causing the originally planned launch in November the program went live today.. well some of it was actually operable over the weekend but for the most part all of it went up today.
A friendly reminder here about Fairmont Hotel’s Take Your Time promotion where you can also earn triple points on these stays! Take Your Time provides up to a 30% discount for stays at Fairmont Hotels in North and Central America plus you have the opportunity to earn extra ALL Rewards points on those stays.
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles isn't the only program to have an award ticket sale! Air Canada Aeroplan in conjunction with TD have their own they launched today. TD Aeroplan co-brand cardholders can receive a 20% rebate when they redeem their Aeroplan Points for eligible travel rewards. These include flight rewards, car rentals, hotel bookings, Air Canada Vacations and Air Canada gift cards.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Air Canada is embracing the magic of the season with a new spot that shares a message of togetherness for the first holiday many Canadians will spend together in two years. Just like so many of us that have been apart, feeling like we have been living in a bubble, the video shows a story of two people who are separated by their glass snow globe.
Good news came out this week from the team at WestJet Rewards as they have announced a further extension for most vouchers set to expire on December 31. This is a wide ranging extension covering a wide variety of vouchers that are issued by the frequent flyer program from Companion Vouchers to Lounge Access Vouchers to Seat Selection Vouchers and more. The key factor this time however is the extension are not automatic. The onus has been put on the member to check their account to see if they have any vouchers with a December 31, 2021 expiry date and if they do they must register to have them extended.
Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your daily dose (or near daily dose) of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year!
Swiss Chalet®, Harveys®, Montana’s BBQ & Bar®, East Side Mario’s®, Kelseys Original Roadhouse®, Bier Markt®, The Prime Pubs®.
Here are Rewards Canada's Top 5 Cash Back Credit Card Sign Up offers for the month of December 2021. This is not a 'best' credit card list like our Top Cash Back Credit Card rankings but instead a look at cards that have very good acquisition (welcome/sign up) offers. As always when choosing a card you should always take other factors into account other than the just sign up bonus, but when some of these cards are first year free, they can and do pay off even when you grab them strictly for the sign up rewards.
Hyatt's next systemwide Bonus Journeys promotion is here and celebrates 2022 by awarding 2,022 bonus points for every two qualifying nights that World of Hyatt members complete. The great news is that the nights do not have to be consecutive so if you are someone who makes a lot of one night stays you don't have to worry as you'll earn the bonus after your second one night stay and so. Members can earn the bonus for up 20 nights or a maximum of 20,220 bonus points. Registration and booking is now open for stays made between January 15 and April 20, 2022. You do have to register by March 15, 2022. There is also an additional bonus for World of Hyatt credit cardmembers if you happen to have one of those U.S. cards. (see below).
WestJet and RBC have extended the combined offer of 450 WestJet dollars + $0 companion fare on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard. The 450 bonus WestJet dollars are awarded when you spend $5,000 in the first three months and is available on new applications made until January 5, 2022. The $0 companion fare voucher is currently available for applications made until March 7, 2022, it is this latter voucher offer where the extension takes place and confirms our anticipation of them extending it if TD and Aeroplan extended their Buddy Pass offers which they did.
Here are the Rewards Canada Top 5 Travel Credit Card Sign Up offers for the month of December 2021! This is not a 'best' credit card list like our Top Travel Rewards Credit Card rankings but instead a look at cards that have very good acquisition (welcome/sign up) offers. As always when choosing a card you should always take other factors into account other than the just sign up bonus, but when some of these cards are first year free, they can and do pay off even when you grab them strictly for the sign up rewards. This month we see two first year free cards on the list.
Back in April 2020 Mastercard Canada launched new benefits that became available on all Canadian World and World Elite Mastercard. Those new benefits were free global WiFi from Boingo, a short lived stint with Foodora (not Mastercard's fault), a credit with Ritual and Mastercard Travel Rewards. After launching those new benefits and the loss of Foodora the promise of more exclusive offers for World and World Elite cardholders went dormant. For well over a year no new exclusive offers or benefits were added, that is until now. Actually, since about mid-October or so but I hadn't checked the offer page since the summer and now there is one new benefit afforded to eligible cardholders.
The RBC Offers program has once again added and extended half a dozen new promotions this week to bring their complete list of offers to 34.
Be sure to login to your RBC account right away to load these offers (if required) or get the promo codes if required. Personally I received all these offers on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard but I know most if not all should also available for RBC's most popular card the RBC Avion Visa Infinite Card and most other RBC cards.
