The American Express Platinum Travel Card is a one of a kind product for those who like to spend on travel. A mid-tier card, it offers you tonnes of benefits for the price you pay for it. You earn Membership Rewards points for all your spends at the rate of 1 Membership Rewards Point for every INR 50 spent with a few exceptions.
On top of that, you get travel vouchers worth INR 29,500 during the membership year:
- INR 7,700 voucher on spending INR 1,90,000
- INR 11,800 on spending INR 4,00,000
- Taj Vouchers worth INR 10,000 on spending INR 4,00,000
The vouchers used to be an option between SpiceJet vouchers or Amex Travel vouchers and could be used for domestic travel and hotel bookings. So, on INR 4 Lakh spends, you get INR 29,500 worth of vouchers, which makes it a 7% return. You also get four complimentary visits per year to 11 lounges across India per annum.
As a limited time offer, American Express is offering the card for free for those who apply through this link. The best part is, you also get 2,000 bonus Membership Rewards points on spending INR 5,000 within the first 90 days of getting the card accepted.
SpiceJet vouchers being discontinued
American Express will be discontinuing the issuance of SpiceJet vouchers for American Express Platinum Travel Card from August 1, 2020. However, the option to redeem for American Express Travel Vouchers continues to remain. You can use the Amex Travel vouchers to redeem for Spicejet, IndiGo or any other airline of your choice.
Bottomline
In my book, this is Potato – Pota-toh for those members who hold this card, but I never have held this card and hence don’t know everything about the ins and outs of this credit card. I know a lot of people used to be very happy when the redemption option was for IndiGo vouchers but did not like it when the option moved to SpiceJet given the limited network of SpiceJet.
What do you make out of the changes to the American Express Platinum Travel Card?
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Ajay,
The redemption rate comes down with the removal of spicejet vouchers. The domestic travel vouchers have a redemption rate of 2500 points for Rs.1000. The spicejet voucher of the same denomination is available for 2000 points.
This is correct, but honestly, given limited nature of SpiceJet, I preferred the generic vouchers anyway.
Subject to correction, I think the redemption value on Spicejet vouchers was 50paise per point and on Amex travel voucher it’s 33paise per point.