Vistara has been creating new ways to earn and burn points, and now they have launched Cash & Points redemptions which enable Club Vistara members to buy tickets partly in cash and partly using points. With the new Club Vistara Cash and Points feature, you can make part payment of your flight ticket using your accumulated CV Points and the remaining in cash.
Unlike Award Flight bookings where limited seats are available within each cabin class, Cash + Points allows members to use their CV Points to make a booking for all the available seats for a particular flight. It also enables you to book any available seat for your nominees (you can add them by logging into your Club Vistara account).
How to make Cash+Points Bookings using Club Vistara?
Vistara has amended the options available on their Indian home page to allow for booking searches using Money, Miles and Money plus Miles. However, you can book for any country of origin, as long as you are on the Indian home page.
You need to log-in to your CV account and initiate a booking. Select ‘Cash + Points’ before entering your journey details, select your and/or nominee details and choose desired CV Points + Cash. You can use a slider to determine how many points you want to redeem and the corresponding cash value you can reduce from your ticket. After that, you can pay the rest of the ticket amount in cash to complete your booking.
What fares are eligible?
Cash + Points bookings are not valid for special fares such as Senior Citizens, Students and Defense Personnel. Ancillaries can only be purchased in cash while booked using Cash + Points. The booking can only be made for a CV member or nominees by logging on our website airvistara.com for flights operated and marketed by Vistara. Cash + Points bookings can be upgraded using One class upgrade vouchers or CV Points as per sector and as applicable. However, Cash + Points can not be used to upgrade existing bookings.
What are the special conditions attached to these bookings?
Cancellation can be made by contacting the Customer Service Centre and penalty will be as per the revenue booking class fare rules. Modifications can be done online as per the fare rules in cash only (Credit/ Debit card). In case the cancellation fee is more than the amount paid in cash, then the remaining part of the cancellation fee will be charged in CV Points. Remaining CV Points will be refunded to the member’s CV account. Failure to utilize a flight, i.e. “no show” will result in the airline’s cancellation of any onward or return reservations and CV Points cannot be re-credited for all such flights in the itinerary.
Refunds for tickets purchased partially or entirely with CV Points: Completely unused tickets will be refunded in cash for the portion of the tickets purchased with cash, plus taxes and CV Points will be returned to the account holder who made the booking if their validity is still valid on the application date for the refund. Partially used ticket will be refunded in cash for unused flight segments and taxes, but CV Points cannot be refunded.
Do these bookings earn Club Vistara points?
Members will earn CV Points and Tier Points for the cash portion of the base fare. The number of CV Points and Tier Points earned will be calculated on the base fare paid in the applicable currency. If a member chooses to convert 100% of the base fare (excluding surcharges), the booking will not be eligible to earn CV Points or Tier Points. All bookings will be considered for the number of flights of our Tier Evaluation Criteria on completion of travel. Cash + Points bookings will be considered for the number of flights criteria upon taking the flight successfully as per the tier evaluation criteria.
What value do you get using your points in Cash + Points?
20 Paise. INR 0.2. Yes. That is the value you get per CV point used for a Cash & Points redemption. I would say that is not the best use of your points as per me.
I tried out with cash & points booking on a travel date I already have booked in cash, just for comparison sake. For a ticket worth INR 5,132, I could only use at most INR 3,970 in points with the rest being cash.
At any use of the slider value, I was being asked for redeeming 5 CV points to get one INR value, which is truly not great value, given on this same sector, for instance, just with 18,000 points, I can book a Business Class ticket using an Award seat.
Unless you are rolling in points and are making more Vistara points than you can use, this won’t be the best use of points you gathered to keep your cash costs low. However, I can understand that there is a target market for this, for people who don’t have the patience to screen through for award tickets and just want to save some cash and use their points for instant gratification.
Bottomline
Vistara’s new Cash + Points booking feature is now live, which allows you to use your Club Vistara points to redeem against any seat on the plane, domestic or international. However, the value you get by using this feature is just INR 0.2 per Club Vistara point, which, when compared with the commonly available low-fares in India, or the redemption chart values, are not the best use of points.
What do you make of the new Club Vistara cash + points booking feature?
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One of the worst redemption programs I have come across. You purchase one point for Rs.1.25, and get a value of 30 paise on cash+points redemption. Absolutely regret converting my CC points to CV Points. Will definitely opt out of this FF program.
Just tried redeeming through this option. Shocking!!!
It’s only fit to burn a few orphan or expiring miles.
It should be named Cash+PointLESS
Oh! I miss Jet Airways.
Hi Ajay, I got the email from Vistara yesterday regarding Cash+Points and was eager to see your take. As usual, thanks for keeping it crisp and clear.
I’m facing a weird issue where it just says no fares available when I choose Cash+Points. If it’s a bug, I hope they rectify it soon but with the disappointing valuation of CV points, I anyways don’t see much use case for planned travels.