Travel Benefits

Dear Annabelle,

I have been looking at our upcoming trips: Orlando in December and then Ottawa after Christmas.  I have also been trying to get my head around where we are at with our minimum spends and whether to get any more cards in the near future.  It seemed to me that the flight prices might line up well with making a minimum spend.

In order to inform the decision I started looking at the actual benefits the various cards have if you book air fare on them.  I was pleasantly surprised by what is available through the Chase Sapphire Preferred card:

• Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance, up to 10K per trip for pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses
• Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
• Travel Accident Insurance for accidental death or dismemberment
• Travel and Emergency Assistance Services
• Lost Luggage Reimbursement for checked or carry-on bags up to 3K per passenger
• Trip Delay Reimbursement up to 500 per ticket
• Baggage Delay Insurance up to 100 a day for 5 days

According to this recent post the benefits are fairly easy to use, except the lost luggage benefit which "requires you to produce almost all of your original receipts for what was in the luggage and the luggage itself, making it much harder to get full value."

What was interesting was that the AMEX Premier Rewards Gold Card (that I was trying to make the minimum spend on) had so few of these benefits in comparison.  They only have car rental loss and damage, global assist hotline, and baggage insurance plan.  

I just applied for my own Chase Sapphire Preferred online.  I didn't get approved right away but if I do then I will be able to have these benefits and be working towards a minimum spend concurrently which would be lovely.  Here's hoping!

Hugs, 

Jen