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For several years now, American Express has presented targeted offers to their card holders via their online portal. Many of these are travel related and genuinely decent deals if they happen to match with your travel plans.
There has clearly been a new emphasis on this feature this last few months, with many more simultaneous offers being presented. As of this evening, I see 25 different offers on my account. I have an American Express gold card which they promote as an ideal card for travellers, so it is unsurprising that around half of my offers are travel related.
How It Works
You’ll need to log into your American Express online account and click on the “offers” tab to see which ones you’ve been targeted for. The mechanics of the offers vary. Most offers require you to “save” the offer to your card. Others involve going to a particular webpage, and others again require the use of a promo code. To give you a flavour of what offers are available, here’s a few of the more interesting travel related ones that are currently sitting on my account.
- Emirates: Spend £800 get £100 back.
Limited to the first 10,000 members to save it to their card. Must depart from the UK.
The great thing is that there is no special website or code, so if you find a UK departing flight on the Emirates website at a good price, you’ll get £100 credit as long as you’ve saved the offer to your amex card and used it for payment. - Trailfinders: Spend £1000 get £200 back
Limited to the first 15,000 members to save it to their card.
Trailfinders specialise in putting together tailor-made holiday packages/experiences. Weirdly they don’t do online bookings, you need to either phone them or go into one of their 29 shops. The website shows that they do sell flights. You’d imagine that they’d have to be reasonably competitive on flights, so well worth checking out if you have £1000+ flights to book. - Hilton: Spend £250 get £50 back
Limited to the first 10,000 members to save it to their card. There is a list of qualifying UK hotels.
Note that the charge must hit your Amex card by the 30/11/16. Be careful with hotel related offers. If your booking is for a stay after the offer expiry date, it’s possible the hotel does not charge your card until after the offer has expired. In particular flexible bookings might not get charged until you stay
In addition to the above I also have offers for Mandarin hotels, Easyjet Holidays, Landmark hotel group and several others. You should dip into your online account regularly to see what new offers have hit your account. It only takes a few minutes to potentially find a discount for something you were going to book anyway.
Hi Any ideas on how to best use Trailfinders offer?
i.e. for future spend is it wise to buy trailfinders giftcards even though it is excluded from offer as per T&C.
How do amex know if it is giftcard or no, especially if it is bought in store?
Usually there’s no way Amex can tell, so gift cards should be absolutely fine (I’ve done this with about 8 different deals/retailers previously). If Trailfinders are fairly competitive for the sort of travel you’d book anyway then the risk isn’t very high regardless so I’d go for it. Given we’re talking a relatively large amount of money though, I’d have to be happy to potentially spend the full amount with trailfinders, just in case.
thanks for the reply.
Have you had any experience in booking with trailfinders for flights.
Even if I dont book holidays with trailfinders I am sure if I was to buy GC, I can use it for future flight bookings.
No worries! Unfortunately not – it might be worth giving them a quick call to price out a few different flights just to make sure they’re competitive. They really should be, but prob best to make sure.
Just make absolutely sure the gift card is sold by trail finders. Many online businesses outsource their gift card purchases to a 3rd party. I can’t see it being a problem with trail finders as it’s an in-store purchase. But just make sure
Worthwhile checking out American Express Connect Offers (https://network.americanexpress.com/connect/uk/en/default.html) if your card has not been targeted for an offer, as they sometimes appear on there too.
I could not agree more Ian!