A post-COVID surge together with rising aspiration to journey have fuelled the rising demand for travel-centric credit cards providing advantages like accelerated rewards/air miles and discounted flights amongst others. While most advantages are bundled into premium credit cards, stringent eligibility standards and excessive annual price makes them much less accessible to a sizeable a part of the inhabitants. As a end result, many travellers flip to co-branded journey credit cards.
Credit cards co-branded with airways or motels provide value-back within the type of air miles or loyalty factors that can be utilized on the model’s portal for direct journey bookings.
Most airline/lodge co-branded cards provide complimentary membership to the related model’s loyalty programme.
Apart from airline/lodge co-branded cards, some journey cards are co-branded with well-liked journey portals like MakeMyTrip, EaseMyTrip, Ixigo and Yatra, and provide low cost on flights and lodge bookings made by their respective platforms.
However, co-branded journey credit cards include their very own set of drawbacks. Since rewards are provided in associate miles/loyalty factors, redemption choices are restricted. Some of those cards may lack broader journey advantages round lounge entry, foreign exchange mark-up price, and so on. Travellers, confused whether or not a co-branded journey card could be the proper match for them, ought to maintain the next issues in thoughts:
Compare core worth
The key think about selecting a journey credit card is rewards programme. When evaluating an airline co-branded card to an airline-agnostic journey card, it’s important to guage the full worth you get for spending.
For instance, On KrisFlyer SBI Card, yearly spends of ₹10 Lakh earn 25,000 KrisFlyer Miles, sufficient for 1 economy-class ticket from Delhi to Singapore on Singapore Airlines. However, the identical spend earns 50,000 EDGE Miles on Axis Atlas, transferable in 1:2 ratio to KrisFlyer Miles, leading to 1 lakh miles —sufficient for 4 financial system tickets on the identical route.
Hence, airline agnostic journey cards like Axis Atlas or Axis Horizon might provide better general worth. However, they could come at increased annual price and extra stringent circumstances.
Additional journey advantages
Many co-branded journey cards prolong extra advantages like complimentary lounge entry, considerably enhancing their utility for frequent travellers. It is vital to examine these advantages and see how they slot in your journey routine.
Most journey cards additionally provide bonus rewards, vouchers or different advantages on reaching spending milestones.
Right model partnership
Consumers who’re loyal to a specific airline or lodge can think about getting a card co-branded with most popular airline/lodge. While such cards would provide increased value-back on the related manufacturers, the redemption could be restricted to their very own ecosystem.
Travellers who don’t wish to restrict the advantages to an airline or lodge can think about cards co-branded with well-liked journey portals comparable to Standard Chartered EaseMyTrip Credit Card, Ixigo AU Credit Card and MakeMyTrip ICICI Credit Card.
In conclusion, co-branded journey credit cards is usually a good possibility for brand-loyal travellers who incessantly e-book with a specific airline, lodge chain or journey platform. However, these searching for a single credit card to cowl all journey wants may have to decide on cards that supply advantages with most popular manufacturers with out sacrificing broader advantages. Redemption flexibility, spending limits and general worth proposition are the important thing issues to think about when selecting a card.
(The author is chief enterprise officer, credit cards, Paisabazaar)
Published – March 24, 2025 06:53 am IST
