AMEX travel credit questions and reviews

[desafinado74]

Hello everyone,
I have an AMEX Explorer card, and i used last year's $400 travel credit for a hotel stay at Hilton London Heathrow in late July this year.

1) I would like to know if anyone had problems with their hotel bookings booked with their travel credits ? Or everything went smoothly ?

2) I have a new amount of travel credit to use, and was thinking of using it on some Experiences activities in Europe. I would like to know if you can combine various Experiences activities to push over the $400 mark ? Even though the dates of the various activities will be different ?

 

[Renato1]

As far as I know, you just book whichever activities you want and pay for each with your Travel Credit at the Amex Travel site - and the availability of that credit and how much it is should appear somewhere at the top of the page.

I booked a night at the Grand Hyatt in Bangkok for a forthcoming trip using the Travel Credit, having tacked on that night to a Luxury Escape trip that starts the next night at that same hotel. The hotel emailed me that they will pick me up a day earlier, in lieu of when they were going to pick me up. It all seems smooth enough so far.

Just make sure that you clear the cache in your browser, or use a browser on which you haven't accessed Amex before. As I pointed out in another thread here, when using my regular browser without clearing the cache, I wasn't getting any specials showing up in the hotel price. Which was priced around $100 less than what the browser was originally showing.
Regards,
Renato

 

[desafinado74]

Renato,thank you for the tip about clearing the browser cache. I have also emailed Heathrow Hilton about my booking, and they have indeed confirmed it.

 

[BriarFlyer]

In 2016 I booked 2 x London hotel nights, same hotel on consecutive nights, using 2 separate Amex travel credits. I contacted the hotel directly and asked for the 2 bookings to be linked and had no trouble at all.

 

[desafinado74]

Sounds great Briar

 

[Pleb Status]

I use my travel credits for SQ flight bookings. Same price as the SQ website and you save on the SQ CC surcharge as well...

 

[desafinado74]

Sounds like a great plan Pleb

 

[davidj]

Are people finding the airfares quoted with AMEX travel are usually inflated by AU$50-100 per pax (after converting fx). Makes the travel credit a bit more like funny money.

 

[mick]

Are people finding the airfares quoted with AMEX travel are usually inflated by AU$50-100 per pax (after converting fx). Makes the travel credit a bit more like funny money.

Yes, I have - I've been trying to book BA flights using my credits but the fares are wildly more expensive via Amex. I gave up and purchased the fare via the BA website.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Are people finding the airfares quoted with AMEX travel are usually inflated by AU$50-100 per pax (after converting fx). Makes the travel credit a bit more like funny money.

Not when I looked at European fares. Seemed to be the same, except for EK where they are partners and have small discounts on fares. But I’ve only looked at QF and EK. Plus for European fares, one pays in A$ so no currency conversion fees as would be if booked direct through QF or EK.

 

[davidj]

I found Lufthansa was coming up about $40 per pax higher.

SIA was $100 higher on a $420 fare on the SIA site! Surely a 25% markup is excessive.

Sounds like a great business model by AMEX, give pax funny money then charge more to offset the freebie.

 

[Dr Ralph]

1) I would like to know if anyone had problems with their hotel bookings booked with their travel credits ? Or everything went smoothly ?

I booked a room in Niagara Falls in Sept 2017. No problems at all to report.

 

[JFi]

For me, I've always found them to be the same as booking direct and you save on the CC fee. One time the fare was actually $200 cheaper than booking direct!

I've only had one time where it was more expensive and because I wanted to use my travel credit, I called them to ask why. They could see the cheaper fare on the airline website but couldn't get that price in their system and said they'll call me back. 10 minutes later, they called back and said they got it by needing to change the booking class on one of the legs. So managed to get the same price and used my travel credit.

 

[aerotravel]

Yes - the Amex Travel site seems to charge a lot more. I called them to see if they can price match but they couldn't and say that, that's the price the airline has worked out with Amex Travel to sell. Back then I was booking MH for SYD-KUL on Economy. It makes the travel credit a joke. The price difference was $200. I used Skyscanner to see what the cheapest OTAs were offering.

 

[Dr Ralph]

Yes - the Amex Travel site seems to charge a lot more.

Perhaps. But only sometimes. Definitely not 100% of the time. I've seen prices equal and on a small number of occasions cheaper than available elsewhere. You'll have to do your own research as to where to find the best value. But there is no need to pay more using the AMEX credit.

 

[robbo135]

I've used about $1,500 of AMEX travel credits (across 2 cards) in the last 2 years and have always found amex to be on par with the likes of Expedia et al. My only complaint is that they don't offer LCC flights nor do they have options to a number of full service carriers.

 

[jinks485]

Concur with what some of the others have said, I used my travel credit to book a car the other day and it was a little cheaper through Amex Travel than other OTAs or even going direct. A nice surprise!

 

[pangwen]

Just used my Amex credit for an upcoming hotel booking - was $218 directly with hotel via their website (non-refundable advance saver), $220 through Amex. Slightly more, but not enough to make me annoyed.

 

[aerotravel]

Would be nice if Amex allowed the travel credit to be auto deducted for any items that are identified as travel like the US versions of the card where the credits are applied on Uber, flights... rather than having to use all the travel credit at once...

 

[SOPOOR]

My experience
Especially for asia

Not sure about last minute hoteks
But advance one's amex is usually up to 100% more expensive generally 50%
Hoeever if you look hard enough you can Ge tone for the same as the Expedia price

That's when I pounce

Also be aware that if your hotel dates have different prices. If you book In one block they simply multiply the highest rate x number of days So it can screw you up