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I trust that most InsideFlyer readers immediately think “cashback” when booking a hotel stay. Topcashback and Quidco are the two main options in the United Kingdom. But sometimes you can find better offers by booking through an airline’s shopping portal. The best example of this is booking Hilton stays via the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club shopping portal – Avios has now been discontinued it appears… – instead of taking the measly 1% cashback on offer elsewhere.
However if you collect American Airlines miles – perhaps to redeem on Etihad First Class flights – you might also keep an eye on the American Airlines shopping portal.
And between now and 16 September, 2019 you can earn 500 bonus miles for each $75 transaction you make (up to a maximum of 2,000 bonus miles).
How do you spend $75 easily? By making hotel reservations via the AA shopping portal! (which for the avoidance of doubt works exactly like cashback – you are booking directly with the hotel chain but earning a bit of commission on top).
You must register for this promotion by logging in to your AAdvantage shopping account – click here.
If you are asked whether you are a European or UK resident, just say NO!
Which Hotel Chains are on the AA Shopping Portal?
At the moment, you can earn:
- 2 miles per US dollar at Marriott Bonvoy hotels
- 3 miles per US dollar at IHG hotels
- 2 miles per US dollar at Park Inn / Radisson hotels
- 4 miles per US dollar at Choice hotels
The Bottom Line
Of course you will want to check and see what you could be earning as cashback, but for those $75-100 stays, I suspect that you would be better off by taking the 500 mile bonus from the AA shopping portal.
Do you collect miles via shopping portals? Or do you stick with cashback? Let us know in the comments section…
Despite using it successfully for a number of years. I haven’t had transactions track on the AA shopping portal in recent times. (IHG and marriott are all my recent attempts)
When I hit the recently added pop-up asking people to confirm they don’t live In the EU I’m proceeding through that, but I’m now wondering if they have further checks going on in some manner.
Will be making any further attempts using a US VPN to see if that helps.
Good to know. Cheers.
I haven’t used it for a few months – once Marriott dropped down to 1/2 miles per $ – but due to this promo I’ve done an IHG booking for next week that should hopefully track and pay out (or not) before I’ve completely forgotten about it.
I’ve also been using Topcashback USA with no issues, so it would have to be specific to Cartera.
I’ll probably load up 3 more refundable reservations that I can cancel and rebook if #1 doesn’t go through…
Good thought on flexible reservations.
Like you have also used TCB USA and others successfully too.