American Express is offering Premier Rewards Gold Card, Business Gold Rewards, Platinum Personal & Platinum Business cardholders complimentary travel collection by travel leaders group membership. Membership is otherwise $295 per year. The travel collection promises to offer discounts on air travel, car rentals, air & hotel packages and also benefits for booking hotels as well.
Issues With The Program
The major problem with the program is that discounts are either non existent or inconsistent and you can search online you have to call in on 1-877-485-8053. They are also supposed to charge a fee of $39 per ticket/booking, this is currently being waived.
Airline Discounts
For most people they will be most interested in discounts on air travel as it’s typically not possible to get any sort of meaningful discount on these types of purchases (whereas heavy discounts on hotels is extremely common). They advertise discounts on the following flights:
- Aereolineas Argentinas (flights to/from Latin America)
- Air Europa (flights to/from Europe)
- Air New Zealand (Worldwide)
- Avianca (flights to/from Latin America)
- Cathay (Worldwide)
- Copa Airlines (flights to/from Latin America)
- Fiji Airways (flights to/from South Pacific)
- Qantas Airways (Worldwide)
- Qatar Airways (Worldwide)
- United (Worldwide)
American Express already offers discounts on premium cabins via the International Airline Program, but this partnership with Travel Collection offers discounts on economy flights.
You’ll notice they don’t specify what the discount you’ll receive actually is. That’s because theoretically it’s supposed to vary flight to flight. In some cases I found that booking via travel collection was actually more expensive, so please make sure you price compare before booking. You do earn airline miles and 5x on these purchases when using the Platinum card.
Hotel Benefits
Eligible bookings of two nights or more receive the following benefits:
- Breakfast for two (daily)
- Room upgrade on check in, based on availability
- Guaranteed early check in of 1PM
- $50 USD hotel credit
- Complimentary in room WiFi
Some of these benefits are nothing, in room WiFi is usually free regardless and guaranteed check in of 1PM isn’t that great either. I’d suggest most people would be better off booking through other means. It also isn’t clear if your elite status is recognized, if your nights count towards elite status and if you earn points for these bookings. My guess is you don’t.
Our Verdict
I can’t see anybody ever paying $295 per year for these benefits, it’s like that price was made up to try and make it more attractive to American Express members. This is the type of thing I try to get work for a few months and then after not being able to book anything cheaper I simply give up adding it to my booking process due to the annoying way it’s structured.
Hat tip to Miles to Memories
