Back in November of 2020 WestJet released the news that new benefits were set to come for WestJet Rewards members who have a WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard and members who hold Gold or Platinum Elite status. One is the ability to convert the companion voucher earned on the Mastercard to lounge passes and the other for the elite members is the gifting of elite status. The good news is those two new benefits officially launched today on February 10th.
Let's take a look at these new benefits:
Trade a companion voucher for lounge vouchers
Those WestJet Rewards members who have a WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard now have the option to convert the annual companion voucher received from the card into lounge access vouchers. One companion voucher will net you 4 lounge access vouchers. Is it worth to convert your companion vouchers? It can be, if you know you won't be utilizing the voucher you can convert it to the lounge access vouchers as they take the companion voucher that is closest to expiring if you happen to hold more than one. Note these lounge vouchers will hold the same expiry date though. Also if you may never travel with a companion then it totally makes sense to convert the companion voucher to lounge access as that way you are actually getting some value out of it. Speaking of value if we take WestJet's flagship Elevation Lounge in Calgary as an example where they charge $59 per adult if flying on a WestJet flight this puts the value at $236 for your companion voucher. Using the lounge vouchers at third party lounges (Aspire, Plaza Premium etc.) will see the value hover around $160-$200 in total for the four vouchers.
It's nice to have this option especially for those single travelers who have this credit card and have never been able or would never use the companion voucher benefit.
Learn more about and/or register your card for the lounge exchange here
Gift of Gold
Gold and Platinum WestJet Rewards elite members can now choose to exchange their milestone awards to gift Gold elite status to friends or family for one round-trip flight.
- With Gift of Gold vouchers, you can give Gold status to another member so they can travel like a Gold member on one round-trip flight, even when not travelling with you.
- Gift of Gold vouchers will be added as a milestone award option
later this year, but you can get started now by exchanging available
milestone awards you’ve already earned for two (2) Gift of Gold
vouchers. The following are eligible for exchange:
- A WestJet-wide companion voucher earned at $6,000 in qualifying spend.
- A milestone award (which includes a choice of WestJet-wide companion voucher, four guest lounge vouchers, or six guest advance seat selection vouchers) earned at $8,000 or higher.
- Until May 31, 2021, members who have already selected their award for a milestone award earned at $8,000 or higher but have not used the selected voucher(s) may also exchange the applicable voucher(s) for two Gift of Gold vouchers. In the case of lounge or seat selection vouchers, all vouchers must have been associated to the same milestone award when selected and must not have been redeemed.
- All requests to gift Gold status (whether made at the time of exchanging your award or later) must be submitted a minimum of 14 days prior to the recipient’s planned date of travel.
- Gift of Gold vouchers and upgrades to Gold will have the same expiry date as the award exchanged. If you have multiple awards of the same type, the first to expire will be exchanged.
- The recipient must take their round-trip flight before their Gold status expires. Once the upgrade is processed, the benefits will automatically apply to the member’s next round-trip flight and when travel is completed they’ll return to their former tier.
Again this option seems well suited to the single traveller who may not make use of companion vouchers and not be in the need of lounge or seat selections vouchers but know people who may travel on WestJet that they can give the gift of gold to.
Learn more about converting your milestone awards here
Ultimately these are great additions to the WestJet Rewards program - yes these conversion options may provide less value than what the original vouchers or milestone awards can provide but if said vouchers and awards go unused then there wasn't any value to begin with. Now there is the option to extract value out of them rather then letting expire and go to waste.
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