Originally Posted by
donniegood
Any idea on how the bank of America travel card rates for redemption
I'm not familiar with that specific travel card. But based on other travel cards I know about, it's probably just a cashback card with either the "cashback" equivalent restricted to travel or as a slightly better-valued option when used for travel.
In other words, the number of points you need with a "generic" travel card like this varies proportional to the cash cost of the flight. I don't know the exact "cashback" equivalent of this particular card, but the best ones max out at about 2.2% I think and many are lower. And with a "generic" travel card, there may no other way to earn points other than with the card. And so, to earn $400 in travel with a "generic" travel card that earns at about 2%, you'd need to spend $20000 on that one card.
On the other hand, the number of miles you need with a "real" airline program in most cases tends to be fixed, but sometimes there is availability and sometimes there isn't any. (With miles of the airline you're acutally flying, there may be a "twice the miles" option that gets you the "last seat", but that's not available when you're using a partner airline's miles to fly on another airline, which would be the case if you were using Avianca miles to fly on UA or Korean miles to fly on Delta.)
But with Aivanca miles, for example, you have more ways than just the credit card to earn the miles. So if you can use some of their partners to earn more miles, than you may earn the miles faster.
See, here's the big difference between an airline miles card and a "generic" travel card. The airline miles card earns miles that are
transferred to the airline program. The can then be pooled iwth any other miles earned in that airline program (for example, for any paid flights you take on a partner airline, for car rentals or hotel stays, for shopping portal purchases, etc). A "generic" travel card's points stay with the card, they don't get transferred to anywhere. So unless the "geneirc' travel card's program has such partners (some have at best just a shopping portal, some don't even have that), there's not much in the way other ways to earn those same points.
How much spend do you think you would be putting on the card (whichever card you get) in a typical year? (Think about which things you can pay, without any "convenience fees" added, with a credit card and which things you either can't pay with a credit card or it isn't worth it because it costs more if you pay by credit card.)