Sorry, I don't know. I've been lucky enough that when I get good travel offers I can actually purchase stuff in the travel category direct (plane tickets, rentals, hotels). This travel offer I just got is not particularly great - and equals my Citi Premier - so I'll probably not take advantage of it. Could be random, but I've found that sometimes repeat offers keep getting less lucrative or have higher spend requirements the more you take advantage of them. Skipping them when they got pretty onerous seemed to reset it. Ie, I took advantage of nearly 6 months worth of great travel offers up until now, and this one is not as great. Hopefully the pattern continues and after these 3 months I'll get another that is like 10-15x TY points on $600-$800 of spend or such - at which point I can book vacations for next year.

Might be someone discussing this in the thread's history though. If I recall some other cards' discussion though, many airlines gift card purchases may actually spit you out to an external site (that presumably does not code as travel)?