Spends on a travel-focused card earn the cardholder rewards that can be converted into loyalty points of partner airlines or hotels, or can be used to book flights or hotels through the travel aggregator platform of the bank or card issuing company. One of the key features of a travel focused card is that it earns accelerated rewards on booking flight tickets or hotels. So, for instance, if the base reward rate of a travel card is 1% on all spending categories, it will earn more than 1% on hotel and flight ticket bookings. SBI Card MILES offers just that. The top variant of this card, SBI Card MILES Elite, earns 3% on travel spends, while all other spends earn 1% reward rate.
However, SBI Card MILES falls short on the quantum of rewards on travel spends when compared to other similar cards in the same fee range. In fact, the reward rate is less than other credit cards offered by SBI Card. “SBI Cashback credit card offers 5% cashback on online spends, though there’s an upper limit to how much one can earn. Still, you will earn more on this card when booking flights or hotels than the newly launched SBI Card MILES,” said Tejas Ghongadi, co-founder of The Points Code, a platform that advises credit card users on how to optimise reward points.
SBI Card MILES has three variants—SBI Card MILES ELITE, SBI Card MILES PRIME and SBI Card MILES—with annual fee of Rs4999, Rs2999 and Rs1499, respectively (the fees does not include 18% goods and services tax, or GST). The top variant MILES ELITE earns six travel credits (TCs) for every Rs200 spent on travel categories and 2 TCs on all other spending categories. The value of 1 TC is Re1 when converted into airmiles or hotel points, which translates into a reward rate of 3% and 1% for travel and non-travel spends, respectively.
SBI Card has partnered with 16 airlines and six hotel groups, including some of the major groups such as Vistara, Etihad, United Airlines, Qatar Airways, Accor and ITC Hotels, among others. The reward rate on MILES PRIME and MILES cards for conversion to miles is 2% and 1%, respectively, on travel spends, whereas it is 1% and 0.5%, respectively, on all other spends.
Cardholders can also use the points earned to book flights or hotels directly on the travel aggregator platform of SBI Card but the value of 1 TC reduces to Re0.5 for this option. This reduces the reward rate on all its cards by half.
Credit card experts say there are better rewarding travel credit cards in the same fee range of SBI Card MILES. The two high rewarding cards that cardholders can consider are Axis Atlas and Amex Platinum Travel Credit, as per Gongadi. “Axis Atlas’s 4% rate on non-travel categories is higher than what SBI MILES is offering on travel spends.”
Sumanta Mandal, founder, Technofino, a digital platform that reviews credit cards and other banking products, concurred and said “Both these cards are in the non-premium category as well so the 3% accelerated reward rate on travel spends on SBI MILES really pales in comparison. Axis Atlas offers a 10% reward rate on travel spends and 4% on other categories. Amex Platinum Travel Credit Card can give up to 12% rewards on ₹4 lakh spend.”
The joining fee for Amex Platinum Travel is Rs3,500 and renewal fee, from the second year onwards, is Rs5,000. As for Axis Atlas, the joining and annual fees are Rs5,000. All these fees are exclusive of 18% GST.
Do note that in the case of Amex Platinum Travel card, the cardholder can bag a high reward rate only on reaching Rs4 lakh spending threshold through 25,000 bonus points and a Taj Voucher worth ₹10,000. Mandal said since Amex is not as widely accepted as other card networks on offline spends, cardholders should first put most of their spends up to ₹4 lakh on this card. “That’s the only challenge with Amex Platinum Travel card. Below ₹4 lakh spends, the reward rate works out quite average. The other downside is reward rate after Rs4 lakh reduces significantly as there are no milestone benefits,” he said.
To maximize travel benefits from credit cards, high spenders should use a mix of 2-3 cards, said Ghongadi. “You may not get the desired hotel or airline partner with one card or the preferred hotel partner might give a better conversion rate in a card different than your primary card. Similarly, milestone benefits vary across cards and reward rate on some cards, like Amex Platinum Travel, drop drastically after a certain spending threshold. So, it is advised to use a combination of 2-3 cards to get a decent reward rate. But, in my opinion, SBI MILES doesn’t make the cut in this mix,” he said.
Atlas also offers an almost equal number of complimentary lounge visits–another key offering of travel cards–compared to MILES ELITE. While the latter offers eight domestic visits, restricted to two visits per quarter and six international visits per year, Atlas gives eight domestic and four international visits to the base Silver tier. The number of lounge visits increase as cardholders move up the tiers.