2 questions about credit card points

[sand piper]

I want a credit card that earns more travel points. I am looking at

Chase Sapphire Prefered

Citi ThankYou® Premier Card

 

I can see the obvious advantages of each as described in their online offers but are there some finer points I'm missing. If it makes a difference I want to use some points to defer airline and hotel costs on my Baltic cruise June 2016. The best flight for us looks like Delta/ KLM.

 

 

The cards say which airlines you can transfer points to. Why is that important? Would it only matter if you already had points with that airline and you wanted to combine the points?

 

TIA

[perditax]

I don't completely understand the questions, but for example I use the Sapphire right now because it has a higher point value per dollar on travel spending than my southwest card, and I can transfer those points at a 1:1 ratio to SW, which is the airline I use most often. In other words, I can earn flights faster on SW with the sapphire than with Southwest's own card.

 

That said, Delta is currently offering an Amex with some amount of reward miles (30-60k, not sure which is current) with a fairly small minimum spend.

Edited September 22, 2015 by perditax

[sand piper]

Why not just use your Sapphire points to purchase the tickets.

Thanks, I'll look at the Delta card.

[sand piper]

With Chase Sapphire I could get 45,000 points and 2 points for travel charges

Citi Thank you gives 50,000 points and 3 points for travel charges.

I want to charge my cruise and use those points along with the sign up points to help pay my airfare. Is this a no brainer or am I missing something?

Niether card transfers points to my chosen airline points program.

Hope my question is a little clearer.

[perditax]

At that point you have to do the math on the real world dollar value per point of each card vs cost of the tickets in real dollars. It probably all comes out to be a wash.

[perditax]

Why not just use your Sapphire points to purchase the tickets.

Thanks, I'll look at the Delta card.

 

This seemed like a reasonable question, so I checked it out.

 

On Southwest, I can get a nonstop flight on the day before my next cruise to FLL for 4000 points (well, it was 4000 when I booked it, it's 4200 now). Going through the Sapphire travel portal, the cheapest similar flight I can find is close to 9000 points, although it looks like they may not even partner with Southwest in the first place. But as it stands, I can buy about twice as much flight per point if I transfer the Sapphire/UR points to Southwest points.

 

Return flights at the end of the cruise are about 10k points on SW, 15k on Sapphire, although to be fair Sapphire offers a nonstop on Delta I can't get on SW, so that might be worth it.

Edited September 22, 2015 by perditax

[sand piper]

Thanks for all your answers.