My current top pick for best travel rewards credit cards is the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™  World Elite MasterCard® . For one, it has a great sign up bonus of 40,000 miles and unlike other rewards credit cards, you can redeem the miles for any airline or hotel AND with any discount travel site (OTA).

You can get the 40,000 mile sign up bonus after spending $3,000 within the first 90 days of opening an the account and while there is an $89 annual fee, it’s waived for the first year. Not bad for free travel especially considering you can use the miles to redeem free flights or hotel stays.The points even out to about $440 in free travel that you can basically to book through any airline portal, hotel website or any other travel website even if it’s a site like Kayak or Orbitz. You can even rent a car or purchase train fare with the points. Most credit card rewards have limitations as far as which airlines or type of travel reservation you can book with your awards, but the Barclay Arrival Plus MasterCard doesn’t.

There are a couple of really good perks of the Arrival Plus card as well. For one, you don’t have to worry about blackout dates. With airlines miles and hotel points, programs allot a restricted amount of award seats and hotel stays and have blackout dates preventing bookers from making reservations on certain dates. However, booking an award with the Arrival card, you are not subject to hunt around blackout dates–they don’t exist.

Another perk of the card is that whenever you redeem your miles for travel, Arrival will honor you a rebate of 10% of your miles back for travel made within the last 90 days. So if you spend 10,000 miles, you will be given 1,000 miles back.  On top of all of that, every purchase earns you 2x per $1 spent, not just on travel expenses which makes this a top reward earning card if you’re looking to build up points quickly.

Application Link: Barclaycard Arrival Plus™  World Elite MasterCard®

Here are all of the card’s details:

• Earn 40,000 bonus miles when you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 90 days – that’s enough to redeem for a $400 travel statement credit
• Earn 2X miles on all purchases
• Miles don’t expire as long as your account is open, active and in good standing
• Chip card for increased confidence and convenience to pay abroad as easily as you do at home
• Book the travel you want – airfare, hotels, cruises and more and earn miles on your purchase
• Get 10% miles back to use toward your next redemption every time you redeem for travel statement credits
• No foreign transaction fees on anything you buy while in another country
• Complimentary online FICO® Score access for Barclaycard Arrival cardmembers

How Long Does it Take for the Points to Post?

Once you have met the minimum spending card for the Arrival, which is $3,000 in 90 days, you can expect the points to post to your account immediately, but because the terms and conditions of the Arrival doesn’t specify a time frame, it may take a couple of months. The best thing to do is to call a Barclays representative and confirm that you’ve hit the minimum spend and want to know when the points will post. This may speed up the process. For this reason, you shouldn’t wait to hit the minimum spend for the last minute because if you are planning to use the miles or points on an upcoming trip, it’s not guaranteed that you will have them in time.

How to Book Awards With Arrival Miles?

Redeeming travel awards using Arrival miles is fairly simply. First make sure to make all of your travel purchases using the Barclay Arrival MasterCard and follow these quick steps after the purchase has been posted to your account.

1. Log on to your Barclaycard account and click the “Manage Rewards” option.

2. To search for travel options, click on “Pay Yourself Back for Travel.” This section covers travel redemption, gift cards and statement credits, so anything travel related, you would come to this section.

3. A list of all the travel purchases you have made within the last 90 days will appear and you will have the option to “Redeem” the purchase. The redemption has to be a minimum of 2,500 points ($25) and after redeeming up 10,000 points you will receive $100 back thanks to the 10% rebate for travel expenses.

4. Once you’ve selected every travel purchase that you want to redeem with your Arrival points, go ahead and check out and place your order. You’ll instantly receive a confirmation of the redemption and the 10% mileage rebate.

…And that is how you book awards using Arrival Miles!

**Disclosure: I may earn a referral if you apply for any credit cards through my links, if you decide to use them the support is always greatly appreciated and keeps the blog going!

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