June 22 Update: Norwegian Airlines outlines first Canadian flights from Hamilton & Montreal, a great Iberia Plus promotion and more

We now know what routes Norwegian Airlines will initially fly from Canada when the Ultra Low Cost Carrier launches them later this year. They will launch seasonal service from Montreal to the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in late October and serivce across the pond in March 2019 when they start flying their 737 MAX aircraft between Hamilton and Dublin. Unlike most other ULCC's Norwegian does actually have a frequent flyer program called Norwegian Rewards and the currency is called CashPoints. You can 2 to 12% CashPoints on Norwegian flights plus more on hotel bookings and car rentals. Learn more about Norwegian Reward here. As is always the case when a new airline launches in Canada that has an FFP we'll add them to our bonus offer listing page and provide upgraded news coverage of the program and the airline. Norwegian Reward isn't known for offering lots of bonuses but have had the occasional flight offer over the past few years. Find out more

This may interest some of you if you have travels within Europe or maybe from the U.S. to Europe,  or even want to buy 10 cheap tickets and not fly them, Spanish carrier Iberia is offering a sweet 9,000 Bonus Avios per flight if you book those flights this weekend. They say you have to use to Avios by December 1st so only go nuts for buying Iberia tickets if you know you can use those Avios by then and you quite possibly can as they can be redeemed for flights on oneworld airlines, hotels and so on. We also know that you will get the bonus even if you don't take the flights (just don't cancel them) and they are reports of flights around 33EUR (330EUR total for 90,000 Avios, which is a good deal)  Find out more here.  Thinking of going for it? Iberia is actually one of our travel partners and booking these flights via our link with them helps support Rewards Canada/FFB!

Posts since our last update:

• Transferring Starpoints between Starwood Preferred Guest accounts with the same residential address
  Earlier this week I posted a step by step guide to redeeming points from the American Express Cobalt Card…
• IHG Rewards Club: Earn up to 5,000 bonus points per stay starting with your 2nd stay in North or South America
  IHG Rewards Club has released a nice new bonus that you can stack on top of your custom Accelerate offers…
• Step by Step guide to converting points from your American Express Cobalt Card to Starwood Preferred Guest
  You may recall from our popular post "7 months in and The American Express Cobalt Card is still going strong…

Travel Deals
Hilton Summer Sale - Save up to 25% on weekend stays in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Find out more here

Save up to 15 % on Marriott stays in Canada! Book at a participating hotel by July 1, 2018 for stays until July 31, 2018 and save up to 10% on best available rates!  Marriott Rewards® Members save up to 5% more. Find out more here.

Receive a $100 CAD resort credit each night of your stay at the Kananaskis Mountain Lodge. Book by Jun 30 for stays until Jul 31, 18 Find out more here.

Remember to visit Rewards Canada's Travel Booking site to book travel directly with many of your favourite airlines, hotels and more!

Canadian Bonus Offers
IHG Rewards Club
- Earn up to 5,000 Bonus IHG Rewards Club Points for stays at IHG Hotels in North or South America starting with your second stay. For residents of North and South America only More... Jul 1 - Sep 16, 18

Other Bonus Offers
Emirates Skywards
- Earn up to 6,000 Skywards miles for Sixt car rentals of 3 or more days Worldwide. More... Book by Jul 31 for rentals until Sep 30, 18

Jet Airwys JetPrivilege
- Earn up to 1,000 Bonus JPMiles when you rent a car participating Hertz locations in USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. More.. Book by Jul 31 for rentals until Aug 31, 18

Shangri-La Golden Circle
- Triple GC Award Points for stays in a Horizon Room or Suite at Futian Shangri-La, Shenzhen. More... Until Aug 31, 18

TAP Portugal Victoria
- Double Victoria Miles for all eligible flights on Beijing Capital Airlines. More... Until Aug 21, 18

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Triple Flying Club Miles for all UK and European Enterprise car rentals. More... Until Aug 31, 18

Follow Rewards Canada:

Transferring Starpoints between Starwood Preferred Guest accounts with the same residential address

Earlier this week I posted a step by step guide to redeeming points from the American Express Cobalt Card (or any Membership Rewards card for that matter) to Starwood Preferred Guest. This is all in anticipation that the conversion ratio will be changing when SPG and Marriott Rewards become one program in August. In that post and my previous post that began this process "7 months in and The American Express Cobalt Card is still going strong - we've earned a LOT of points and huge value organically" I mentioned that after I converted my Membership Rewards Select Tier points to SPG I would then transfer them to my wife as she is the main SPG earner and elite status holder in our family. SPG and many other hotel programs have great liberal options of moving points to other members so long as they have same household address as you.  Note that your accounts must have the same addresses for at least 30 days so if you are thinking that you can just change the address on my account and transfer to anyone tomorrow that won't work but you could do it 30 days from now - beware that SPG does reserve the right to request proof of residency so it is probably you reserve this transfer option to people who do actually live in your household.

Here is the process for transferring SPG points between accounts

First you need to go to SPG.com and login, then select Redeem Starpoints from the top navigation bar

Then click on More Options

Scroll down to Pass the Starpoints, please, click on the little down arrow beside the title and then click on TRANSFER STARPOINTS.

You'll be presented with this form:

In my case I selected to transfer 98,000 Starpoints to my wife's account since you can only transfer in increments of 1,000 points. Once I selected the transfer it stated it would take up to 5 business days to complete and I also received the following email confirmation:

The actual transfer took four calendar days from the time I requested it, here are the screenshots from my account and my wife's account

There you have it! That's how you transfer points between Starwood Preferred Guest accounts that have the same address! The new combined program will also have a transfer process but we don't know if it will follow SPG's option or Marriott's. Marriott's only allows up to 50,000 point transfers per year however they can be transferred to anyone for $10 fee or if you and your spouse are looking to book an award stay you can use points from both accounts to cover the stay.

IHG Rewards Club: Earn up to 5,000 bonus points per stay starting with your 2nd stay in North or South America

IHG Rewards Club has released a nice new bonus that you can stack on top of your custom Accelerate offers to earn even more points for stays in North or South America this summer. The bonus kicks in with your second stay and awards 2,000 to 5,000 bonus points per stay depending on which brands of IHG hotels you stay at.  For example if you complete one stay at an InterContinental Hotel and one at a Holiday Inn you'll get 2,000 points but if you have one at that InterContinental and one at a Kimpton you'll get 5,000 points.

Offer details
Earn up to 5,000 Bonus IHG Rewards Club Points for stays at IHG Hotels in North or South America starting with your second stay. Full details, online registration & booking. (Registration is required) Jul 1 - Sep 16, 18
For residents of North and South America only

• Get 5,000 bonus points per stay at InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton® Hotels, Hotel Indigo®, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts and EVEN® Hotels

• Get 2,000 points at Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®. Holiday Inn Club Vacations®, Holiday Inn Resort®, Staybridge Suites® & Candlewood Suites®

Member will only receive bonus points for one offer for each Qualifying Stay (i.e. – a member who is registered and completes a Qualifying Stay at a Holiday Inn Express® hotel will only be eligible for the 2,000 point offer for that stay). Maximum bonus award is 30,000 bonus points per member during this campaign. 

Find many more IHG Rewards Clubs bonus point offers here

Step by Step guide to converting points from your American Express Cobalt Card to Starwood Preferred Guest

You may recall from our popular post "7 months in and The American Express Cobalt Card is still going strong - we've earned a LOT of points and huge value organically" that I mentioned I would be converting the Membership Rewards Select Tier points over to Starwood Preferred Guest. I went ahead and conducted that transfer last week and wanted to share how the process went. 

If you are considering this transfer please note that SPG will be combining with Marriott Rewards come August and we don't know what the future transfer rate will be. We are speculating it will be lower so you have a little over a month to complete this transfer and ensure that you keep the potential value of your points intact. I don't think the rate will get better in August so at the very least if they keep the same transfer ratio you will have not lost anything. As a reminder all Starpoints will convert 1:3 to the new program when it is combined.

Related:  Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest come together with the announcement of one set of benefits

Related:  Further details to the combination of the Marriott Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest and Ritz-Carlton Rewards Programs

Now onto to the step by step guide!

The first thing that is required to complete this transfer is to add your Starwood Preferred Guest number to you American Express Membership Rewards account.  If you have multiple American Express cards, such as The Platinum Card and Cobalt Card, you will have two separate Membership Rewards accounts. The Cobalt Card comes under Membership Rewards Select Tier. This means when you are on the Membership Rewards website and logged in you'll want to click on 'Your Points Account' and choose 'Switch Account' to access the right one - in this case "MR Select Tier' for the Cobalt Card.

 Once switched over you'll want to click on the 'Travel' tab and select 'Frequent Traveler Participants'

 At this point you should see the following:

Click on Starwood Preferred Guest and you'll find the following:

Click on Add Another Account and complete the following:

Note that for Canadian American Express Membership Rewards accounts the name from the other loyalty programs must match that on your credit card so you cannot transfer to family or friends. Once you add that the account must be verified by American Express and this can take a couple of days before you have access to transfer.

Once confirmed, go back to your Membership Rewards account and follow the first couple of steps to get to your MR Select Tier account and click through to Frequent Traveller Participants and then underneath SPG click on 'Transfer my points'

 You'll then input the transfer amount and your security details for the card

Then you'll have one more step to confirm and click on 'Complete Transfer':

 and your confirmation:

The website states up to 5 business days to complete the transfer however the points were transferred and completed in roughly 24 hours.

There you have it - a pretty simple process.  As you can see I transferred 145,000 Membership Rewards Select Tier points to 72,500 Starpoints. Here is a screenshot from my SPG account:

I will follow up with another post showing how I transferred these over to my wife as SPG allows family pooling! That's the Internal SPG Point Transfer seen in the above screenshot.

As I mentioned at the start of this piece if you are thinking of making this transfer option from your Cobalt Card (or any other Membership Rewards card)  I would start planning it out now and complete it soon. Given that it can take a few days to have your SPG account confirmed and up to 5 days for the points to transfer you'll want to make sure you have leave enough time to have the transfer completed before August.

Have you completed this transfer? Let us know how it worked out for you! Or are you considering it here in the next month? Let us know as well in the comments below!

June 19 Update: Fly lie flat business class between Halifax and Montreal for 15,000 miles, get 20% More Rewards back when redeeming for gift cards & more

For the summer season Air Canada is flying an internationally configured Airbus A330 once a day between Montreal and Halifax. If you have never flown international business class before then this is a good opportunity to do so. Sure it's only about 1-1/2 hours but it is a short haul redemption meaning it costs only 15,000 miles one way + $90 in taxes. The same revenue ticket is $530, which gives you about a value of 2.9 cents per mile redeemed. Not great but not bad as well! If you think you would never get enough Aeroplan miles to try business class on a long haul flight then this is your other option to say you have tried a lie flat seat!

The A330 will be flown on the route until October 27th. Here is the schedule for this flight:
AC664 YUL1340 – 1607YHZ 333 D
AC669 YHZ1730 – 1806YUL 333 D
(Source: Routes Online)

There are several other routes where you can experience the international aircraft configuration for as little at 15,000 miles in business class:
- one flight per day between Toronto and Montreal where the A330 is flown
- one flight per day between Toronto and Ottawa where the 767-300 is flown

More Rewards is offering 20% back in points when you redeem points for select gift cards. If you are looking for value from More Rewards then gift cards are not the way to go, even with 20% back. However if you don't collect many points to redeem for travel (even though you can redeem any amount of points towards travel and pay the rest with cash) then this gift card option gives you something and you're getting a bonus for it. Find out more here.

Posts since our last update:

• Starwood Preferred Guest: Save 35% when you buy or gift Starpoints (until July 20, 2018)
  In what will most likely be the last time ever, you can once again buy or gift Starpoints with…
• Lounge Review: Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club - Kahului Maui
  Flying Hawaiian Airlines First Class gave us access to the only airline lounge at Kahului airport, Hawaiian Airlines Premier…
• Hotel Review: The Westin Nanea Ocean Villas (Maui)
  The Rewards Canada family has been hitting up Maui for the past 10 years and each time we've gone…
• On this week's Podcast - Summer points and miles tips!
  June 15, 2018 - Episode 44 - Summer points and miles tips; redeeming for last minute travel, earning the…
• 30% Transfer Bonus for RBC Rewards (Avion only) to British Airways Executive Club is back until July 31
  Many of you have been asking when this bonus would return as you took advantage of that great RBC Avion…

Travel Deals
Hilton Summer Sale - Save up to 25% on weekend stays in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Find out more here

Save up to 15 % on Marriott stays in Canada! Book at a participating hotel by July 1, 2018 for stays until July 31, 2018 and save up to 10% on best available rates!  Marriott Rewards® Members save up to 5% more. Find out more here.

Receive a $100 CAD resort credit each night of your stay at the Kananaskis Mountain Lodge. Book by Jun 30 for stays until Jul 31, 18 Find out more here.

Remember to visit Rewards Canada's Travel Booking site to book travel directly with many of your favourite airlines, hotels and more!

Canadian Bonus Offers
British Airways Executive Club
- 30% Bonus Avios when you convert RBC Rewards Points earned on Avion cards to British Airways Executive Club. More... Until Jul 31, 18

Other Bonus Offers
Best Western Rewards
- Double Rewards Points for stays of 2+ nights at the Best Western Plus Deerfield Beach Hotel & Suites. More... Until Jul 31, 18
- Double Rewards Points for stays of 2+ nights at the Best Western Bowery Hanbee Hotel New York. More... Until Dec 31, 18
- Double Rewards Points for stays of at the Surestay Plus Hotel By Best Western Poteau Poteau. More... Until Apr 1, 19
- Double Rewards Points for stays of 2+ nights Sun-Thu at the Best Western Webster Hotel, Nasa. More... Until Dec 31, 18

Ethiopian ShebaMiles
- 50% Bonus ShebaMiles for all hotel stays booked via Kaligo. More... Book by Jul 17 for stays until Dec 31, 18

Miles & More
- 20% Bonus Miles & More Miles when you convert Radisson Rewards Points to Miles & More. More... Until Jun 30, 18

Radisson Rewards
- Up to 50% Bonus Points when you buy Radisson Rewards points. More... Until Jul 18, 18

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- 2 Bonus KrisFlyer Miles for every US$1 spend on hotel bookings made via Agoda. More... Until Jul 31, 18

Starwood Preferred Guest
- Save 35% when you buy or gift 5,000 or more Starpoints online. More... Until Jul 20, 18

United MileagePlus
- Earn up to 1,000 Bonus MileagePlus miles when you shop online via the MileagePlus shopping portal. More... Until Jun 24, 18

Follow Rewards Canada:

Starwood Preferred Guest: Save 35% when you buy or gift Starpoints (until July 20, 2018)

In what will most likely be the last time ever, you can once again buy or gift Starpoints with a 35% discount. Why is it the last time, well in August SPG will be combined with Marriott Rewards and Marriott isn't known for selling points with a discount or bonus.  Will they have sales in the future? Perhaps but you won't be buying Starpoints! Your yearly limit remains at 30,000 Starpoints so if you haven't bought any yet this year this could be the time to do. This offer brings the price down to US 2.28 cents each or just above US 1.82 cents per airline mile if you take advantage of SPG's 5,000 mile bonus when converting 20,000 Starpoints at a time. A pretty good price seeing that you can get higher value out of the points if you redeem strategically either for hotel stays or award flights!

Offer details
Save 35% when you buy or gift 5,000 or more Starpoints online. Buy Starpoints here. Until Jul 20, 18

Find many more SPG Bonus offers here!

Lounge Review: Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club - Kahului Maui

Flying Hawaiian Airlines First Class gave us access to the only airline lounge at Kahului airport, Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club. Access is only granted to those flying business/first class or hold HawaiianMiles elite status. Having flown from Maui so many times and never having lounge access before as our flights were on AC and WestJet we were curious to see if this would be a good place to relax. If you have ever been to OGG you know it’s not the best of airports for services or general seating. The lounge itself is located on the departures level across from gate 17.

And.... the lounge wasn’t any better than the rest of the airport - actually it may have been worse. It’s small to begin with and for amenities it has free wi-fi, tea, coffee and pop machine. Want food? They had the nuts and bolts packets they hand out on the plane. That’s it. Seating wasn’t very comfortable and they had a hospital type curtain you could use to make one area private.

We had a quick drink in the lounge and made our way to Sammy's Beach Bar and Grill to have a bite to eat before our flight as a just in case the food on the plane wasn’t good. Other than that there’s not much else to say about this lounge!

Related: Rewards Canada's Guide to Business Class Lounge Access