Citibank is perhaps making a flanking manoeuvre in the travel space in India, ever since they got out of their co-branded card with Jet Airways. The Citibank PremierMiles credit card already used to offer 10 PremierMiles/Rs. 100 since last year for making a reservation with the airlines directly. This year, they’ve added GoIbibo.com and Yatra.com to the list of partners in the travel space who give you 10 PremierMiles / INR 100 this year. There is also Expedia.co.in, however, only for hotel bookings and Redbus.in for bus bookings. And now, there is MakeMyTrip.com being added to the list of partners where 10 PremierMiles can be earned per Rs. 100 spent, till 15 January 2014. The following category of bookings are…
Credit Cards
Category Archives for Credit Cards.
Which is the best Indian mileage-earning Credit Card?
The quest for the best Indian mileage-earning credit card has been on going. No one throws 50K miles our way to sign on a credit card here. Back in January, I created a calculator for everyone who wanted to figure out which was the best credit card according to their usage of credit every month, for travel and everything else. At last count, I had over 1,000 people using that calculator to make their assessments or validate their choices on which credit cards to pick for earning miles in India. Things change all the time, such as mileage earned, so I’ve tweaked the calculator accordingly. Here is the new version of the calculator, accessible from my Google Drive. The earlier…
Bonus miles on the ICICI Bank Jet Airways Visa credit cards for sign-up and use
ICICI Bank and Jet Airways, when they launched their co-branded cards last year, had a huge focus on pushing the American Express versions, and they were (still are), offering upto 9 JP Miles for regular spend. This is a promotional offer limited till October 2013. ICICI Bank, a couple of days back, however, launched a new promotion, where there is a higher sign-on bonus for the Visa version of their credit cards, in case you sign up till October 31, 2013. Here is how it works: Sapphiro (highest): 15,000 JP Miles for sign-on instead of 10,000 JP Miles. Also, 8 JP Miles/INR 100 spend till October 2013, and a free economy ticket code on Jet Airways domestic flights. Rubyx (medium):…
Jet Airways extends Bonus on Points to Miles conversion promo to to 30 Sep 2013
Trust Jet Airways to give me egg in my face when I am trying to help you guys sometimes. Jet Airways started a promotion to offer a 20% bonus on converting your credit card points to JP Miles in June, and it was initially scheduled to last only till July 15, 2013. Just when I posted a reminder call yesterday, I got a new mail from 9W, revising the dates. Anyhow, under the extended promotion, you can transfer your various credit card points to Jet Airways JP program right until September 30 to be eligible for a 20% bonus. I did a small test transaction shifting around some of my Payback points, and everything seems to go just fine.…
Reminder: 5 days for Amex MR to Avios
In May 2013, American Express and British Airways started to offer a joint conversion bonus, which offered a 30% bonus on converting American Express Membership Rewards (for cards issued in India), to Avios. Amex MR usually convert to Avios @ 2MR = 1 Avios, however, with this promotion, it goes down to 1.54 MR = 1 Avios. The deadline to convert to Avios is by 15 July, so if you’d like to ride on this conversion, I’d advise you to move your MR to Avios within the next day or two. Amex to BA conversions usually take about 24 hours to reflect in the Avios account. You could find the details in the above mentioned post. In June 2013, Jet…
Your Jet Privilege conversion promo questions answered
Last week, I posted about Jet Airways offering a 20% bonus on converting your credit card points to Jet Privilege miles. I got a few queries about the transfer process and/or output, and I thought I’d answer them here in public interest: I got a question on Twitter, asking me if the 20% JP Miles bonus could be stacked with the 10% discount on web redemptions at Amex Membership Rewards. The answer to that, is No. The Amex Membership Rewards web redemption discount is not applicable on all categories, and Airline miles is one of them. So, you’d just transfer the applicable points currency from your credit card account and Jet Airways would credit the appropriate number of miles to…
SPG Gold for 1 night stay for MasterCard members in Asia Pacific
Starwood Preferred Guest, the loyalty program of Starwood hotels, has offered via a tie-up with MasterCard for Asia Pacific card members, SPG Gold status for one year just on completing one stay in the past. This promotion has just returned for the period till 12 July 2015. Here is how it works: For those of you who have an SPG account, or sign up with a new account, with an address on file in the Asia Pacific region (ex-Japan), you can benefit from this promotion if you have a World MasterCard or a WorldElite MasterCard issued in the Asia Pacific. You basically need to make one qualifying stay (revenue stay) at a participating SPG hotel, the list is here, and…
Reminder: PremierMiles website undergoing maintenance June 2-4
A quick reminder for those of you who maybe did not read this post before. Citibank will be performing maintenance on the PremierMiles website from Sunday June 2, 2013 0000 IST to June 4, 2013 2359 IST. This means, for the 72 hours period you will not see the website live and won’t be able to make any travel bookings, redemptions or cancellations to your existing reservations. What is really happening at the backend, common sense says, is a switch of vendor who powered the ticketing (Cleartrip). There may be more changes but I don’t know about these yet. Anyhow, if you are a Citibank PremierMiles user, and you want to be making any travel reservations or changes to existing…
Singapore Airlines Business Class: my best PremierMiles redemption till date
Not like I’ve been swarming in PremierMiles, but I’ve been able to make some good transfers over the past 18 or so months to get the best value out of my PremierMiles. And while I’d encourage you to participate in this poll where I am trying to figure out how do you guys use your miles, here is a flight I just stepped off which is perhaps my best redemption of PremierMiles till date. I spent the past week travelling to the other side of the globe for the Boarding Area Conference, and then, on the way back, got a flat tire, and also stopped by in NYC for a bit. On the way back to Mumbai, I wanted to…
Citibank PremierMiles enhances mileage earning from June 2013
I’ve been an ardent fan of the Citibank PremierMiles Credit Card. I believe its a secular mileage-earning credit card, and pays you a good amount of miles for your travel spends, specifically airline bookings, and I rate it high up there in my mileage earning CC 101. However, I’ve been disappointed a bit this past year, since they lost Jet Airways as a mileage transfer partner, and capped off the limit for mileage earning on tickets to Rs. 500,000 per annum, amongst other devaluations. However, seems like some of these changes are out of the window, and there are some real ‘enhancements’ in the true sense of the word and not how rhetorically airlines/credit cards/loyalty programs use the term these…
Win 86,400 JPmiles with referral contest for Jet Platinum Amex
In case you have no qualms about spamming your Facebook friend list, here is a referral program for you which could get you up to 86,400 JetPrivilege Miles. Jet Airways and American Express, who joined hands to launch the Jet Privilege American Express Platinum Credit Card, are up for an interesting referral contest on Facebook. It is a 3-step contest, on every day from 8 am to next morning 8 am India Standard Time, where the person who refers the most number of applications wins. The contest is on till 11th May 2013. Step 1: Apply for the Jet Airways Amex Platinum for yourself and play a scratchcard kind of game, which gives you up to 1,000 JP Miles just…
