Bowman’s Travel Brief: Cashing in Points

That feeling when you cash in points for a trip can be one of the best parts of the travel experience.

That flight or that room is now “free” in my eyes. Sure, you can get technical on how much we had to spend to get those reward points to begin with, but why focus on that when you can let the joy of not seeing money withdrawn from your bank account sweep you away to a new destination?

There could be a change when it comes to the points for airlines though.

New proposed bipartisan legislation called the Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Competition Act is threatening airline reward points, according to Airlines for America. They say it would increase the costs associated with being a member of these rewards programs.

This would no doubt be a crushing blow for many casual and frequent flyers. Others have the bank accounts to withstand increased costs – we’ve seen plenty of examples of that over the last year as inflation grew and people didn’t stop spending money on travel.

Of course, cashing in points has been a big part of the travel bounce back. So many of us sat on these points as the world shut down travel. As soon as people felt safe to traverse the world again, they began using the points they built up throughout the pandemic.

Rewards points are such a fun part of travel. Increasing costs just to build up the points would negatively impact the travel industry because fewer people would see the world. A flight to Europe or Australia is expensive. They’re dream destinations for many Americans who won’t ever travel there unless they can use reward points to help offset the immediate travel cost.

I recently cashed in points for flights to Michigan and Las Vegas. Seeing what the flight prices were and then using points instead felt so good.

What are you saving up your airline points for next?

Let me know your thoughts on Twitter and Instagram: @EricBowman_