tufan

I will be starting a job where I will travel M-Th and wanted to see which cc would be my best option. I have heard that AMEX starwoods is amongst the best (Starwood is our preferred property to use).

Do I get the Starwood AMEX and charge my hotel & flight to that card or get two different cards?

mbece

Make sure you don't need to use a corporate card

tufan

Definately do not!

stainlesspoints

Depends on where you are going and what you want out of your rewards card. The SPG Amex is a good option, in that the points are fairly valuable because they can be transferred to airline miles at a ratio of 20k SPG pts to 25k airline miles. On the downside, there is no bonus categories other than Starwood hotel stays.

I think a lot of people on this forum would say, why only get 2 cards, but it comes down to what you are comfortable with.

Chase Sapphire Preferred earns 2x points on dining and travel, and has some good transfer partners.

Amex Premier Rewards Gold earns 3x points on airfare, but comes with a $175. So are you going to charge enough in airfare to make it worth it?

Barclays Arrival gives a straight 2% cashback in the form of "miles" that can be redeemed for travel expenses.

There are other cards that could be good for you, depending on your specific travel goals. If you are looking for international business class flights, you probably want to focus on earning airline miles (or points that transfer to miles). If you want to take a domestic trip involving 4 or 5 people, it's possible a cashback card would be more valuable to you.

toomanybooks

Citi Prestige will start giving 3 Thank You points per dollar for hotel and airfare starting 10/18/14.

These are worth 1.6 cents each on AA flights and you do accrue miles/status when you use them. If you are Citigold you get a 15% bonus, and that's 5.5% return.

mbece

First, I'd try to get some cards and meet their spend requirements as sign up bonuses are valuable and you'll probably have no trouble meeting the spend.

After that, I'd probably get Amex Gold or Citi's TYP.

LeviFlight

More info on where you will be staying, how you will be getting there, whether you want airline or hotel status and what you want to do with the points would help is give an informed opinion.

tymothy

2.222% effectively, since you get a 10% bonus as soon as your redeem any miles for travel expenses

mnscout

Well, if you're mostly staying at SPG hotels, don't you already have your answer or at least 50% of it?

AMEX SPG works very nicely with airlines, too, since it has unparalleled transfer rates to plenty of airlines, as well as fly and stay packages that can be great under the right circumstances. If you feel like you need more cards, you'll have to tell us more about your preferences.

tufan

Am not a 100% sure about all of the details but I was told that they used starwood hotels. So using the AMEX SPG to charge for the hotels and flights would be my best bet? I would be flying out of ewr for the most part.

biggestbopper

No one can provide a 100% answer to your question since, as several of the above posters have indicated, it depends.

Still, you might consider getting both the Amex SPG personal and business cards with 25K or 30K bonus which usually comes around more or less at this time of year.

Me, I would also get a Chase Sapphire Preferred and would jump on the current Chase INK offer which includes a 70K Ultimate Rewards bonus--a very good offer. Expires Sept. 2.

Get these cards meet the spend on them to get the bonuses and then take a deep breath. Meanwhile read FT a bit and things will get clearer.

IncaFlyer

Ex-Monday through Thursday consultant here. I was a Starwood guy for hotels and my firm used a mix of United/AA/Delta for airlines, but we could book using a personal card.

Simplest solution: get the Starwood SPG card and use it for every hotel stay, but get the Chase Sapphire card for flights, meals, rentals cars (all 2x categories). With $50,000 spend on travel plus $25,000 spend on Starwood hotels, you'll end up with 100K Chase points and 50K SPG points at the end of the year, not including any card signup bonuses or points earned through the airline/hotel loyalty programs.

Slightly more complicated: start to plan out your applications. For year one, consider getting the SPG and Chase cards in the first half of the year, then the Amex PRG and SPG Business cards in the second half of the year. Then add in an airline card (Chase United, Citi AA, Delta Amex) and either the Capital One Venture or Barclays Arrival card. That gets you an additional ~100K in points bonuses. The nice thing about Capital One and Barclays is that you'll have an easy time spending the points on regularly booked travel. Kind of like a 2% bonus for every trip you have to take