Changes To American Express Membership Rewards Redemption Starting June 28th

American Express are making a number of changes to the value you receive when you redeem membership rewards points. Before anybody freaks out, this will not affect any travel transfer partners. In fact most of the options that are changing are options that most people would never consider in the first place. Regardless, let’s have a look at the changes that will be taking place on June 28th, 2015.

Negative Changes

Below is a list of all the negative changes, this is where American Express are reducing the value you get when you redeem MR points for this option. If you’d like to exchange your MR points for these options, I’d recommend doing this before the June 28th, 2015 (12:00am MST) deadline:

Product Current Value (per 10,000 points) Future Price (per 10,000 points) Decrease
Express Rewards® Gas Card $77 $50 $22
OpenTable® $80 $70 $10
Express Rewards® Golf Card $66 $50 $16
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts $83 $70 $13
Marriott® $83 $70 $13
The Ritz-Carlton® $83 $70 $13
Reserve Prepaid Hotels $75 $70 $5
Take Cruises $75 $70 $5
Plan Vacations $85 $15 $70

Positive Changes

Below are a list of all of the positive changes, this is where American Express are increasing the value you get when you redeem MR points for this option. If you’d like to exchange your MR points for these options I’d recommend doing this after the June 28th, 2015 (12:00am MST) deadline.

Product Current Value (per 10,000 points) Future Price (per 10,000 points) Increase
ARIA Resort & Casino $83 $100 $17
Bellagio Las Vegas $83 $100 $17
Best Western $83 $100 $17
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts $83 $100 $17
Hyatt Hotels and Resorts $83 $100 $17
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino $83 $100 $17
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group $83 $85 $2
MGM Grand Hotel & Casino $83 $100 $17
The Mirage $83 $100 $17
Wynn® Las Vegas $83 $100 $17
Facebook $79 $85 $6
iTunes® $74 $85 $11
SpaFinder Wellness 365 $83 $100 $17

Thoughts

These results are actually quite interesting, most of the increases are for gift card redemption. This makes sense as American Express are able to purchase these gift cards at a deep discount, so they’ll want to encourage as many cardholders as possible to redeem for this option. Where as for prepaid hotels and cruises they probably receive a much smaller discount, so they’ll want to discourage this as much as possible.

You can redeem 10,000 points for $60 in statement credit, so I am not sure why anybody would redeem for anything under the 0.6¢ per point valuation. Personally I try to redeem my points and get more than 1¢ in value, this is possible by transferring to travel partners (especially when they are offering a transfer bonus) or for gift cards when they are offering a bonus as well (e.g recently I got 1.25¢ per point when redeeming for AirBnB gift cards)

American Express Transfer Partners:

American Express Membership Rewards Transfer Partners
Airline Partners (1:1 Unless Otherwise Noted)
Delta SkyMilesAeroMexico Club Premier (1:1)Air Canada AeroplanKLM/AirFrane Flying Blue
Alitalia MilleMiglia ClubANAAsia MilesBritish Airways Avios
EmiratesEL AL Israel Airlines (50:1)FrontierHawaiian Airlines
Iberia PlusjetBlue (1.25:1)Singapore Airlines KrisFlyerQantas
Virgin atlantic flying clubEtihadAer LingusAvianca Lifemiles
Hotel Partners (1:1 unless otherwise noted)
Choice PrivilegesHilton Hhonors (1:2)Marriott (1:1)

The other thing I found interesting is that of the travel gift cards that are increasing in points required, all of them are transfer partners of Chase apart from Four Seasons. Chase is American Express’ biggest rival, so this makes sense but at the same time Hyatt gift cards are improving so chances are American Express weren’t able to reach a deal with the other travel companies for discounted gift cards. I still have my fingers crossed that Four Seasons will end up with a co branded credit card at some stage.

One added bonus is that American Express have made it much easier to navigate to see what you can redeem points for, this can be viewed by clicking here.

Hat tip to farnorthtrader from Flyertalk

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6 Comments
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Mel
Mel (@guest_88647)
March 16, 2015 12:02

Under positive changes, do you mean “after” not before?

amar
amar (@guest_88632)
March 16, 2015 09:35

Think you have a typo…under “Positive changes”, you say “I’d recommend doing this before the June 28th, 2015 (12:00am MST) deadline.” I think you mean to say AFTER

thanks for the good info

Shashubhai
Shashubhai (@guest_88628)
March 16, 2015 09:12

you have “before” the deadline twice, for both negative and positive changes…surely that is a typo.
You should only redeem after the deadline for the positive changes that are going into effect