August 20 Update: IHG Rewards Fast Track to Elite Status offer & earn 100 bonus AIR MILES when you buy a $150 Sobeys Gift Card

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.

 

IHG Rewards has extended their Fast Track to Elite Status promotion. This offer was set to end on August 31 but the registration period has now been extended to November 30. After you register for it you will receive Gold Elite Status after only 2 nights or Platinum Elite Status with only 5 nights. You do have to complete the nights within 90 days of registering for the offer so do keep that in mind in terms of timing your stays (ie this may not be an offer to register for right away like we usually advise). For example you could wait until November 30 to register to cover any hotel stays you would have until February 28, 2022. Learn more about and register for this offer here.

Best Western Rewards - Earn 2,000 bonus points on your next stay

 
Earlier in the week you may have seen the post discussing my feeble attempt at lowering my Best Western Rewards account but in fact growing it from 26,000 to over 41,000 points (read that post here). That was thanks in part to a lot of bonus offers that BW has and funny thing is I received an email not long after that post offering me 2,000 points on my next stay and I'm sharing it here so that you can give it a try well. These offers are meant to be targeted but personally I wasn't targeted for some of those bonuses I received on the last stay so go ahead and register, give it a shot but do remember YMMV.

It's finally here! You can now convert American Express Membership Rewards points to Air France KLM Flying Blue

 

For those who saw this several years ago the wait is over. American Express Canada has added a new airline program to their Membership Rewards frequent traveler participants! This is the part of the program where you can convert Membership Rewards points to airline programs and the two most popular up to today have been Air Canada Aeroplan and British Airways Executive Club. Now you can add in a third program that may prove to be popular and that is Flying Blue - the frequent flyer program for Air France and KLM! We say the wait is over as a few years ago Flying Blue did show up for a couple of days in Amex Canada's list of airlines probably as a test but then disappeared until now!

August 19 Update: What to do if you don't receive an Amex multiplier, Cobalt multipliers for YYC Food Trucks & a couple of AIR MILES bonuses

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.

 
Here is a reminder to everyone using an American Express card at merchants that could or should be considered part of one of their spend category accelerators but only earn 1 point per dollar instead of 2, 3 or 5 points. If this happens to you you can reach out to American Express and have them look into it, in fact American Express encourages it as this is what they asked us to pass onto our readers back in 2017:

Summary of global hotel systemwide bonus points promotions – August Edition

 
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. In fact, right now it should be rare for you NOT to earn a bonus. 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! 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:

Earning Stories: As hard as I try, I can't get rid of my Best Western Rewards points balance!

 
Best Western Hotels are a brand of hotels we here in the Rewards Canada family don't visit very often. Typically we only stay at one here in Alberta but also ventured to one in San Francisco many years ago and it was that latter expensive stay that helped us build up a decent amount of points in our Best Western Rewards account. The problem with that was that we were sitting a nice amount of points and not many places to really use them since we don't stay with them often. There was always the option of converting to Aeroplan points or some other airline but seeing that Best Western points don't expire it was best to leave them be until the time was required to redeem for a stay or convert to an airline. So I did just that, redeemed some points for a couple of free nights several years ago (read about that here) in Stony Plain Alberta as that seems to be the only BW we stay at. Even after that redemption I still had over 26,000 points in my account so when plans had us going up to Stony this August it was ripe for us to use some more points and bring that balance down. However best I tried that just didn't happen! Read on to find out why!

August 18 Update: Receive a $75 Visa gift card when you stay 2 nights in Victoria and another Cobalt Multiplier for those in Manitoba

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.

We came across another one of those regional tourism offers! This one comes is from Tourism Victoria and it offers a $75 Visa gift card when you book and stay two or more nights at participating hotels in Victoria.  This offer is good for new bookings until September 30, 2021 Click here to learn more about and book this offer We have also added it to our post that covers all these offers from coast to coast. See all those offers here.

Air Canada Aeroplan partners with LCBO - members will be able to earn and redeem points for LCBO purchases

Back in February LCBO made headlines as they announced they were leaving the AIR MILES program after participating in it for 23 years. At the time they mentioned a plan for a future loyalty program. Thoughts were they might start they own program but that doesn't appear to be the case with today's news. LCBO will now partner with AIR MILES' biggest competitor, Air Canada's Aeroplan! The multi-year partnership will launch later this year and provides one more avenue for Aeroplan members to earn more points for their future travels.

Top 5 Cash Back Credit Card Sign Up offers for August - These cards provide the best value out of their welcome bonuses

Here are Rewards Canada's Top 5 Cash Back Credit Card Sign Up offers for the month of August 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.r

Receive a 100% bonus when you buy Hilton Honors points

 
Hilton’s bonus for buying points is back again! You can earn a 100% bonus for buying Hilton Honors points until September 30, 2021. This time they have doubled the annual limit of points you can buy up which means you can buy 160,000 points. That 160,000 does not included the bonus points so if you max out this offer and buy 160,000 points you’ll receive 320,000 into your account. As well to earn the bonus you must buy a minimum of 10,000 points in one transaction.