While you may be able to save $1,000 on your all-inclusive vacation if you’re lucky with last-minute Air Canada Vacations offers or less luxurious resorts, it is possible to use credit card points to bring the cost of your dream vacation down to an affordable price!
The best types of points to bring the cost of an all-inclusive trip down are ones you can use to earn a statement credit on any travel purchase. The most popular programs are:
Therefore, you can book wherever you want, either by yourself online or with a travel agent and request the statement credit afterwards. You’re free to shop and find whichever resort suits you and use points to save $1,000 on your all-inclusive vacation.
The programs mentioned above are known to offer generous welcome bonuses, which means you can obtain a boatload of points as a new customer.
The CIBC Aventura® Gold Visa* Card and CIBC Aventura® Visa Infinite* Card are excellent options!
You can redeem 35% fewer Aventura Points with CIBC Aventura when you employ your credit card to pay for any type of travel, including all-inclusive travel.
If you have applied for your cards with our links, you can receive up to 45,000 welcome bonus points on the following sites CIBC Aventura® Gold Visa* Card and CIBC Aventura® Visa Infinite* Card. You can then use these points to treat yourself to an all-inclusive Holiday for less.
So, you can get 90,000 Aventura points or $900 off if you sign up for both credit cards during the offer period and combine your points. In addition to these bonus points, you’ll receive the base points linked to the spending you have to do to unlock these bonuses, i.e. 5,000 Aventura points per card or 10,000 points in all. This brings your total Aventura points to 100,000 points, which is equivalent to $1,000 in credit against any trip, including all-inclusives!
Not bad for credit cards, with four complimentary visits to airport lounges and no annual fees for the first year! Indeed, you will be able to enjoy the various lounges available in Sun destinations.
While not everyone is keen to sign up for new credit cards every year to travel to all-inclusive vacation destinations, you can achieve this goal organically by maximizing the rewards you can earn on your daily spending.
The types of points you should aim for are the same as those mentioned in the previous section. While some cards offer considerable bonuses, others give you a generous accumulation rate on your main spending categories, such as groceries, restaurants, gas, etc.
You can earn 5 Membership Rewards points with the American Express Cobalt® Card on anything categorized as a grocery store or restaurant. To get the best return, you should also buy gift cards at grocery stores to pay for gas and other purchases, such as Amazon, SAQ, Netflix, etc., to earn 5 points per dollar on these non-grocery expenses.
In fact, if you typically spend $1,400 a month on food (groceries and restaurants), which is easy for a family, and $275 on gas station gift cards to fill up your car, that translates into 8,375 Membership Rewards points a month or 100,500 a year. And voilà, you get an annual discount to save $1,000 on your all-inclusive vacation, because you can use those points to get a $1,050 statement credit!
I propose the American Express Cobalt® Card mainly because it requires no minimum income and is therefore accessible to everyone.
However, you can employ the same strategy on your travel purchases with the National Bank World Elite Mastercard which also offers 5X points (similar in value to Membership Rewards points when used as cash back) and is a Mastercard, so it’s accepted everywhere. But, as a World Elite product, you must have a personal income of $80,000 to be eligible.
What about fees that hinder the return on your points compared to no-fee cash back credit cards?
In fact, there are several promotional offers from American Express, and the National Bank World Elite Mastercard comes with a $150 recurring travel credit to offset the fees. What’s more, the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® comes with excellent travel insurance and unlimited access to the National Bank lounge at Montreal airport.
A sustainable way to save $1,000 on your all-inclusive vacation every year is to either aim to unlock signup bonuses, maximize the return on your daily spending or a mixture of both!
There is a surge in the price of travel, but it can still be made affordable without cutting on the quality of your vacation with a less desirable resort or trying to score last-minute bargains to no avail.
Consult our many all-inclusive guides to choose the best hotel for your next vacation:
Savings are here (if you don’t see the sign-up form, please click here):
