Banks have offered bonus reward points to cardholders for booking through their respective travel portals for a while now. It helps the banks when cardholders are captive customers, which is why AMEX, Capital One, Chase, and Citi all require using their portals to redeem benefits, like travel credits or free nights.
However, the bonuses aren’t created equal and some portals are better than others when awarding points to cardholders.
Citi recently launched a revamped travel portal called Citi Travel. Rocket Travel, part of Booking.com, powers the new portal.
Besides a new portal, Citi increased the bonuses for ThankYou Points earning cards when booking with Citi Travel through June 30, 2024.
- The Citi Prestige (no longer available) and Citi Premier will earn 10X points for hotels, cars and other travel-related items, like tours or attraction tickets.
- The Citi Rewards+ card will earn 5X points for the same charges.
This mimics the offers from the other banks when using their travel portals.
- Chase offers Sapphire Reserve cardholders 10X points for hotels and cars and 5x points on flights booked with Chase Travel. Sapphire Preferred members earn 5X points for flights, cruises, hotels and activities. Chase Freedom cardholders receive 5% back for the same categories as the Saphire Preferred.
- Capital One Venture X cardholders get 10X points for hotels and cars and 5X points on flights booked with Capital One Travel. Venture, Spark and cash-back cardholders get 5X or 5% on hotels and rental cars.
Citi moving to a new booking platform is a big deal since I still have the Citi Prestige card. You must book through Citi’s portal to take advantage of the fourth-night free hotel benefit. My experience showed the cost for 3 nights at a hotel using Citi’s portal was almost the same as I’d pay for 4 nights at a discounted rate from the hotel website.
I have to explore more to see the prices now that Booking.com has taken over. Maybe I’ll keep my Prestige card if the 4th-night free benefit is once again worth the extra cost of the card. It could also make a difference if you want to use the $100 credit for stays over $500 paid for with the Citi Premier card.
Small changes, like the engine behind a travel portal’s website, can sometimes make a big difference when determining if it’s worth using a 3rd party for your reservation.
So why did Citi revamp its travel portal and partner with Booking.com? Their move follows the relaunch of the Capital One Travel Portal in 2021 using Hopper for its searches.
These changes may result from Chase’s purchase of cxLoyalty in 2020. While the news seemed insignificant then, we didn’t know that cxLoyalty ran several travel portals, including those of Capital One and Citi. Why would those banks want to pay Chase to run their loyalty travel portals? Besides that, Chase would have access to all loyalty booking transactions.
I have no inside info, but Chase’s fumbled move to use Expedia in 2018 for its portal and the subsequent purchase of cxLoyalty caused a significant shift in the travel portal marketplace. With Capital One becoming an investor in Hopper and Citi hooking up with Booking.com, the game is on for which company can provide the biggest bonus for using their travel portal. At the moment, they’re happy to match each other’s offerings, except for American Express, which is sitting this one out with their travel portal which focuses on Platinum and Centurion cardholders.
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