Let’s face it, after a slew of bad news for Aeroplan, they could use some good news. Aeroplan announced the renewal of a multi-year agreement with Rocketmiles. Rocketmiles is a third party hotel booking that allows you to earn miles for bookings. This partnership means that Aeroplan members can continue to earn a minimum of 1,000 miles and up to 10,000 miles per night. Note that Rocketmiles has more than 400,000 hotels in their portfolio to choose from.
I cannot believe that it has been almost 5 years since I last wrote an update on this post. I am frequently asked how I track all my loyalty programs at the same time, because it seems like “so much work”. I agree, if a person is not organized, it is definitely a lot of work and may not feel worth it to sign up for many programs.
Luckily, there are websites and Apps out there that make life a lot easier. But I will discuss the elephant in the room first before getting into these programs. The primary concern of using third party sites to track loyalty programs is security.
I actually wrote a post about this subject two years ago and I thought it was due for a slight update. As you probably already do, a lot of time is spent collecting miles and points so that we can have a First Class treatment when travelling. Basically, the goal is to earn enough miles and points to redeem for a reward that we would not otherwise use out-of-pocket cash to pay.
However, the majority of people who fly are on economy. So today, I will share some of my personal tips on how I make my economy travel more comfortable.
As you may already know, I am a big fan of trains and it is by far my favourite way to travel. Especially in Canada! Unfortunately, there is limited news that I can write about in Canada as VIA Rail has a fairly stable product and rarely do they shake things up, aside from last year’s Unlimited Pass for only $150 that sold out in less than a day.
A Pointshogger reader alerted us today that American Express Canada has revamped its Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card, one day after the Marriott unification announcement. The major change is the elimination of the 20,000 sign up bonus points and changed into a statement credit instead.
Marriott International announced, today, that it will introduce one set of unified benefits across Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest for its members that will come into effect in August 2018.
Personally, I am very excited by what they have to offer. I think that they found a way to merge many of the good aspects of all 3 programs. It’s not perfect, but it does offer a lot of value.
Not much has changed this past month in the cash back scene.
Keep in mind that we also have an going Top Cash Back Credit Cards page which consists of permanent and temporary offers, while this post focuses on temporary offers only.
Note that we also have two other types of recent monthly lists going on:
As Air Canada continues to phase out Aeroplan, they are putting more emphasis on creating their own loyalty program. Air Canada already has an elite qualifying program called Altitude. Some changes were made to their earning options in their Economy fare pricing. Some of the highlights are as follows:
Canadian Tire’s loyalty program, Canadian Tire Money, is introducing Triangle Rewards, a free loyalty and credit card program. Triangle Rewards is a loyalty program that allows you to collect and redeem Canadian Tire Money at Canadian Tire Corporation retailers, including:
Canadian Tire
Sport Chek
Gas+
CIBC has been running a Mexico Contest where you can qualify to win flights for two to Mexico by loading your Air Canada AC Conversion Visa Prepaid Card with at least $100 of foreign currency.
This contest ran from February 26, 2018 to April 8, 2018. The prize is an Air Canada travel promo code for economy class travel for two to a city in Mexico serviced by Air Canada Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received.