The best travel credit card can open up a world of opportunities to travel the world.
You can get free hotel, airfare, travel upgrades and much more, just by being a good credit card customer. You’ll notice that when you’re shopping for a credit card, the travel rewards cards range from great to unimpressive.
Not only that, some of the best cards are only for people with excellent credit. There are many cards out there that offer
How can you tell which cards are among the best travel cards? Read on to find out.
Best Travel Cards for People with Good Credit
What’s a good credit score? That will depend on the person looking at your credit score. Generally speaking, around 700-750 is a good credit score.
Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines has one of the best airlines reward programs. You can get a $99 companion fare every year, plus enough bonus miles to start earning rewards as soon as you’re approved.
It’s easy to overlook Alaska Air because they primarily travel to West Coast destinations. That’s no longer the case. With the acquisition of Virgin America and through various airline partners, you can fly to over 900 destinations.
Southwest Airlines
Another card with good credit is from Southwest Airlines. You can earn 40,000 points if you spend $1000 in the first three months of opening an account.
Bank of America Travel Rewards Card for Students
For students who are working to build a credit history, this is the perfect card to use. You can earn rewards at the same time. With this card, you can earn 1.5 points for every $1 spent. You can cash in those rewards for rental cars, hotels, flights, and cruises.
Best Travel Cards for People with Excellent Credit
If your credit score is 750 or higher, you’ll be in the excellent credit score range. That means you should be able to qualify for one of these cards with ease.
Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card
Starwood has one of the best hotel rewards programs. It has a very high welcome bonus, which is 75,000 points when you spend $3000 in the first 90 days of opening your account.
Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite
This card is elite for a reason. Spend $5000 in the first three months, and you’ll get 70,000 miles. This card is meant for international travelers. You don’t have foreign transaction fees and it’s set up with an international chip.
Chase Sapphire Rewards
This is a popular card with travelers, but you need a good credit score to get it. The big reward is the bonus you get in the first 90 days. Spend $4000 in 90 days, you get 50,000 points. The points can be used for flights or hotel, making it one of the most flexible cards available.
How to Get the Best Travel Credit Card
You might have noticed that the best travel credit cards are reserved for those with high credit scores. These rewards cost credit card companies money and they hope to make that up in interest fees.
Offering big rewards to people that can’t pay their credit card bills doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective.
That’s why you want to make sure that your credit score is high if you want to get the best travel rewards. If your credit card score is in the mid-range, you’re better off getting a cash rewards card or branded card to take advantage of travel rewards.
Brand Loyalty Matters
If you’re traveling on a budget, you may already gravitate towards certain brands that offer lower travel rate, such as Southwest Airlines.
With these cards, you’ll get amazing travel rewards, and they usually don’t require high credit scores. They recognize that people who travel on a budget won’t have excellent credit, so they’re likely to have less stringent standards to
How to Raise Your Credit Score Before Applying for a Travel Credit Card
You might look at your credit score and think that you have no chance to get a travel rewards card. Don’t despair, there are things that you can do to raise your credit score so you can qualify for the best travel credit card for you.
Go to AnnualCreditReport.com and pull your credit report. You’ll want to look at your credit history, your payment history, and your credit utilization rate (amount of debt vs. amount of credit available).
If you find that your payment history isn’t great, then you’ll have to give yourself time to get the impact of those missed payments to diminish. You also want to make sure you maintain a great payment history.
If you have a few cards that are close to being maxed out, then work to pay those down as quickly as you can. That will raise your credit score, which will improve your chances of being approved for a travel rewards card. It will give you a better interest rate on the card, too.
What if you’ve never established credit? If you don’t have a credit history, you’ll need to work on building your credit history. You can get a card, like a student card. If you’re no longer a student, that would be hard to do.
You can get a small personal loan, which would help you establish a credit history and get a little cash that you can pay back with a monthly installment payment.
Book Your Next Adventure with Travel Rewards
When you get a rewards card, you’ll learn that they’re not created equal. The best travel credit card will have flexible travel options, a lot of ways to earn rewards and make it easy to cash out those rewards.
Those cards aren’t easy to get. They usually require a high credit score to be approved for an account.
If your score is low, work on improving your credit. You can get a travel credit card for good credit scores and charge a little bit every month and pay off the balance on time. You’ll raise your score and get rewards at the same time.
Are you ready to book your next trip? Check out these luxury vacation ideas.
