Well, if you are lucky (woohoo!), you have gotten yourself a Chase Sapphire Reserve and also got an American Express Platinum Business card. Now in the rewards game, things are pretty exciting if complicated, here’s a short list and you can see how when you start with one program, you often get a cascade. That is, if you have United 1K then you get Marriott Gold, so you get SPG Gold so you get China Eastern Elite. You get the picture. Here’s a list of some of the chains:
American Express Platinum
Don’t just get the card, you have to spend 30 minutes or so hitting the enrollment sites to get all the benefits which include:
- Boingo membership (for those pesky airports that limit you like Boston)
- 10 Gogo inflight wifi vouchers
- Priority Pass Select. You actually have to fax this in, but that’s pretty easy, fill out the for and use a free fax service
- Hilton Gold status. You have to call for this and it isn’t listed as a benefit, but it is there
- $100 credit for random charges from a specific airline
- Access to the Centurion Lounges and to Delta lounges if you are flying them
- 5x points for air travel. Hard to beat that! That’s nearly 10% back.
- National Emerald Executive Club
Chase Sapphire Reserve
- Priority Pass Select
- $200 travel credit on any travel related expenses
- 3x for travel broadly defined, so use for all your other travel
- National Emerald Executive Club (really for Visa Infinite holders)
United 1K
If you have this, remember to sign up for:
- Marriott Gold status (just short of Platinum)
- Then link your Marriott to SPG to get Gold there too
- Hertz President’s Circle
SPG
They have a bunch of other programs so now the fun really begins, but note you have to be Platinum for it to work, but the main thing to do is to link the accounts together
- SPG Golds get one point for every mile they fly on Delta
- SPG for Uber points. Get 2 points for every dollar spent on Uber while you are staying at Starwood and 0.5 points otherwise if you stay once a year at a Starwood’s hotel. Note that JetBlue also has a promotion like this as well
- SPG to China Eastern. This is mainly for platinums but again if you like your Gold account, you get priority boarding on China Eastern.
