The travel credit concept is like the Amex card travel credit. If dont travel at all you can buy an airline gift card and sell it or you use it for future travel. You can get up to 100 Travel credit so you are $5 positive after the annual fee. I guess that's why there are no retention offers for this card. I use this card heavily for places that I would only earn 1 point per dollar on my Gold Amex. I treat this card as 2.6% cash back card.