15,000 points Initial Bonus: Your first trimester as a cardholder will pay off if you charge at least $1,000 to your card during that timeframe. This total is not Expedia-specific, which means most people can easily meet the threshold with everyday expenses. Doing so will score you 15,000 bonus points that can be redeemed toward reservations at a +VIP Access hotel. You can easily search for +VIP Access hotels on Expedia’s website.
Up To 3 points per $1 Spent: The Expedia Credit Card rewards you with 3 points per $1 in “eligible” Expedia purchases and 1 point per $1 everywhere else. Points are redeemable for a range of options, including hotel reservations, airfare or even donations to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Unfortunately, you won’t get much bang for your buck with most redemption methods. For example, 25,000 points would be worth just $125 unless redeemed for a +VIP Access hotel reservation, in which case it would be worth $250.
Assuming you use the Expedia®+ Card to make the average person’s $32,010 in annual plastic-eligible purchases, spend your entire $1,186 travel budget on Expedia and redeem only for +VIP Access hotel reservations, you would earn roughly $775 — including the initial bonus and 10% bonus for +silver status members (see below) — in the first two years of use, according to our calculations.
Complimentary +silver Status: You’d ordinarily need to book seven nights’ worth of hotel reservations or spend $5,000 through Expedia to earn +silver status and the assorted benefits that accompany it. But you don’t need to bother if you have the Expedia Credit Card, as such standing within the rewards program is a perk of membership.
Silver status scores you “exclusive amenities” such as spa discounts and free drinks at many +VIP Access Hotels, 250 bonus points for each stay at a +VIP Access Hotel and a 10% bonus for points earned on all eligible hotel bookings — among other benefits. You just need to make sure you’re logged in to your Expedia account whenever you book travel, or else you won’t receive +silver benefits on that purchase.
No Annual Fee: You can think of a rewards card that doesn’t charge an annual fee as providing a yearly bonus. After all, not having to pay for your plastic is basically the same thing as receiving an equivalent amount of rewards but better because there’s no lag time or any constraint on where you can use the savings. And with no annual fee to worry about, you will be free to keep your account open for as long as possible, which figures to benefit your credit score given the emphasis placed on the length of your credit history.
Counterintuitive “Eligible” Expedia Purchases: As already mentioned, you will only earn this card’s maximum rewards rate on certain Expedia purchases. The breakdown, which you can see below, certainly isn’t as clear as one would hope and necessitates that you approach booking very carefully.
0% Foreign Transaction Fee: It’s a big world out there, and roughly 28% of Americans travelled abroad in 2018. You have to figure that a considerable number of them used credit cards on their journey, considering there are roughly twice as many credit cards in circulation as debit cards. And if you include everyone in the U.S. who buys from internationally based merchants, that figure would be even larger. That’s why the Expedia®+ Credit Card’s 0% foreign-transaction fee should be taken seriously.
Points Expire Due To Inactivity: If you don’t earn or redeem rewards for 18 months, any unused points remaining in your account at that time will expire. That underscores the importance of frequent redemption and only getting a travel rewards card if you travel often. The Expedia Credit Cardcertainly isn’t the only offer to leverage such unfortunate fine print, but rewards expiration is a practice that does seem to be waning market-wide.
Above-Average Regular APR: Pretty much everyone who gets approved for the Expedia Credit Card has excellent credit. But that won’t necessarily save you from having to pay interest on any balance that you carry from month to month at a rate more befitting of someone with fair credit. Depending on just how excellent your credit is, your regular APR could be between 14.99% - 22.99% (V).
The high end of that range could be above the 23.43% average for “fair-credit” credit cards, according to WalletHub’s latest Credit Card Landscape Report. And even if you receive the lowest option, you might find yourself paying more than the 13.03% average for “excellent-credit” credit cards.
