Bilt Rewards has added a new feature that shows you when it makes sense to book airline tickets through their travel portal, earn extra points, and still have a ‘direct booking’ with the airline that lets you service the booking through the carrier’s call centers.
Everyone wants you to book through a travel portal. The company earns commissions, and they may rebate some of that to you. That’s great, but the portals are also often frustrating. When you book direct, you get customer service from the airline or hotel. When you book direct you get hotel elite benefits, status credit and points.
Portals know the problem. Expedia gives negotiated benefits to its elite members. American Express and Chase has bookings with hotels that count as booked direct, and offer value add benefits. And Rove gives you rebates on direct-booked hotels and so does Gondola.ai.
No one has done more on the direct booking front with rewards than Bilt’s travel portal. You actually earn rewards on airline tickets and those tickets can be serviced directly by the airline still.
- Bilt gives you points on all of your travel portal purchases – even airfare.
- You can use any card that you wish and link to your Bilt account.
- So that’s points-earning in addition to what your card gives you.
Bilt Rewards members will earn 1 Bilt Point for every $1 spent on all eligible transactions that are not charged to a Bilt World Elite Mastercard® and are made through the Bilt Travel Portal.
For transactions made with a combination of cash and Bilt Points, you will receive 1 point per $1 spent on the cash portion of the transaction. Points will be awarded within 5-7 business days of the trip being taken, not at the time of booking.
The following transactions made through the Bilt Travel Portal are eligible: airfare, hotels, car rental & things to do.
For tickets paid entirely in cash, the airline is even the merchant of record on direct booked tickets. (If you pay with Bilt points, Bilt takes your points and pays the airline, but the booking is still eligible for direct customer service from the airline.)
Since the airline is the merchant of record, you still earn full ‘airfare’ points accelerators with your credit card, e.g. 5x on Amex Platinum and 4x on Sapphire Reserve.
Bilt has updated their travel portal so that it’s now 100% clear whether airfare is being booked direct. They flag direct connections in the booking flow:
It makes huge sense to book tickets through Bilt when you’re booking direct. I consider Bilt points to be the single most valuable currency. They have the best transfer partners (as well as the best transfer bonuses). So I don’t want to give up that Bilt point on airfare bookings.
Plus those points count towards Bilt Rewards status. And I really want to keep my Bilt Platinum status – which got me free airport helicopter rides this year and Air France Gold status (free checked begs, priority and free exit row seats on Delta) and Accor Platinum status this year, and qualifies me for the biggest transfer bonuses.
Well, at least someone’s still trying to innovate… now, if only they can survive the 2.0 transition from WF to Cardless… *gulp* What’s the deal there? Are we still all getting screwed soon? Like, Gary, is it gonna be a hard-pull in February? If we have their MC are we gonna be at risk of getting denied by Cardless? *sigh*