What is the best credit card for travel?

[frugal-one]

The card we were using no longer provides insurance and charges a fee for foreign transactions. Know of any that have these benefits? Thanks! F-O

Answered my own question.... still hard to find ones that provide insurance.
https://www.cardratings.com/travel-rewards-cards.html#creditcarduser

 

[gerntz]

Have a (really) high travel friend who raves about the Chase SP. At my travel level - and I think we travel more than most - doesn't seem worth that much.

 

[audreyh1]

The Costco VISA by Citi now has no transaction fee and still gives 3% rewards for dining, hotels, and travel so that's the one we use most heavily.

If you aren't a Costco member and regular Costco shopper it will not make sense.

Before that I used the Bank of America Travel Rewards VISA with 1.65% cash rewards and no annual fee.

 

[Dtail]

If one has 100k with ML/BOA, then the BOA Premier card gives 3.5% for travel. There is a $95 fee, but you can get reimbursed $100 worth for baggage costs.

 

[bearkeley]

Although I hate Chase bank, Chase Sapphire is amazing. We travel 7 months out of the year, usually internationally and only use our Sapphire Card. It has saved us thousands with a scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef when we had to cancel due to severe colds and a lot on car rental coverages too.

 

[Bestwifeever]

The Costco VISA by Citi now has no transaction fee and still gives 3% rewards for dining, hotels, and travel so that's the one we use most heavily.

If you aren't a Costco member and regular Costco shopper it will not make sense.

Before that I used the Bank of America Travel Rewards VISA with 1.65% cash rewards and no annual fee.

We now have the Costco Visa and were pleased to see that it provides trip cancellation/interruption coverage: “You may recover non-refundable expenses up to $3,000 for each covered traveler if your trip is cancelled or interrupted for reasons like sickness, injury or severe weather.” Not medical evacuation level insurance, but a pretty good freebie. This would cover most if not all of our typical non-refundable travel costs.

 

[brett]

We use and take several. One is good for car rentals. Another does not charge the 2.5 percent uplift on foreign transactions, then we take another one for just in case.

This past May we had to cancel a trip to China for medical reasons. Fortunately we had purchased it with the 'right' card. We got a full refund based on the credit card cancellation.
insurance. We do not live in the US so it would be pointless to name any of the cards. Suffice to say we do pay attention to it since we frequently travel. The cash back rewards do add up.

Review the cards on a periodic basis. They change. And competition brings new opportunities. We are using a different set of cards than we used a few years ago. Cherry pick!

 

[Sunset]

If one has 100k with ML/BOA, then the BOA Premier card gives 3.5% for travel. There is a $95 fee, but you can get reimbursed $100 worth for baggage costs.

I use the BOA travel rewards card, with a ML brokerage account, so I get 2.6% on everything.
It has zero foreign transaction fee.

The one thing it lacks is any trip insurance, so I currently use Barclay Arrival Plus for paying for trips, it gives 2% and has travel cancellation or delay insurance, but has a fee of ~$90.

 

[Sunset]

We now have the Costco Visa and were pleased to see that it provides trip cancellation/interruption coverage: “You may recover non-refundable expenses up to $3,000 for each covered traveler if your trip is cancelled or interrupted for reasons like sickness, injury or severe weather.” Not medical evacuation level insurance, but a pretty good freebie. This would cover most if not all of our typical non-refundable travel costs.

I'm going to have to check this out... sounds pretty good for at least paying for trips.

 

[Fedup]

We now have the Costco Visa and were pleased to see that it provides trip cancellation/interruption coverage: “You may recover non-refundable expenses up to $3,000 for each covered traveler if your trip is cancelled or interrupted for reasons like sickness, injury or severe weather.” Not medical evacuation level insurance, but a pretty good freebie. This would cover most if not all of our typical non-refundable travel costs.

This is good news, I just booked my hotel on Citi Costco card. Just under $3000 limit.

 

[Dtail]

I use the BOA travel rewards card, with a ML brokerage account, so I get 2.6% on everything.
It has zero foreign transaction fee.

The one thing it lacks is any trip insurance, so I currently use Barclay Arrival Plus for paying for trips, it gives 2% and has travel cancellation or delay insurance, but has a fee of ~$90.

Have you looked into the BOA Premier card? It will give you 3.5% vs. the 2.6% with the ML Brokerage account.
The annual fee of $95 can be effectively reimbursed for having $100 baggage fees.
OTOH, not sure if you know that if you book your trip through BOA with your BOA Travel card, you get an additional 1.5% for a total of 4.16%. I don't use this option, as BOA uses Orbitz and I find the direct hotel rates for example to better than the additional savings, but an FYI at the very least.

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

Uber card (and no we don't really use uber service) 4pct cashback on dining, 3 pct on hotels and airfare. No foreign transaction fee, no annual fee, works great all over the world. Plus x amount of free online subscriptions per year i.e. . they cover my netflix bill approx 9 mos of the year. And cell phone ins free!

USAA 2.5pct cashback for everything else. Grandfathered, no longer offered. No foreign transaction fee, no annual fer

 

[Rianne]

My DB talked us into a AAA MC. There are a lot of travel benefits with it.

 

[Goawayrain]

Chase Sapphire Reserve has worked great for us. The annual fee seems steep but once you take into account the credits that come with it, free travel insurance, Priority Pass membership, TSA/Global entry credits, etc, it really pencils out. Plus they have (or had when we signed up), great year 1 spend benefits and points are very usable.

 

[Chuckanut]

It appears that Citi Bank will soon pull the travel services offered on its Costco Visa card and other cards as of 9/22/2019. Very sad.

Here's what popped up:

Effective September 22, 2019, Worldwide Car Rental Insurance, Trip Cancellation & Interruption Protection, Worldwide Travel Accident Insurance, Trip Delay Protection, Baggage Delay Protection, Lost Baggage Protection, Citi® Price Rewind, and 90 Day Return Protection will be discontinued and will no longer be provided for purchases made on or after that date. Coverage for purchases made before that date will continue to be available, and you may continue to file for benefits in accordance with the current benefit terms. Roadside Assistance Dispatch Service and Travel & Emergency Assistance will be discontinued and will not be available on or after September 22, 2019.

 

[Red Badger]

Chase Sapphire Reserve has worked great for us. The annual fee seems steep but once you take into account the credits that come with it, free travel insurance, Priority Pass membership, TSA/Global entry credits, etc, it really pencils out. Plus they have (or had when we signed up), great year 1 spend benefits and points are very usable.

Yup. We grabbed it a couple years ago when the signing bonus was 100K points. Some of the PP lounges are mediocre, but a lounge still beats the terminal options for hanging out.

Overall, we like the card perks very much.

 

[erkevin]

Chase Sapphire Reserve for several reasons: the lounges, the $100K in air evac coverage, decent points that transfer to other programs, and trip cancellation insurance. We had to cancel two trips this month due to illness. One trip, we received 100% of our losses, the other is still TBD but it looks like most will be reimbursed.

 

[frugal-one]

It appears that Citi Bank will soon pull the travel services offered on its Costco Visa card and other cards as of 9/22/2019. Very sad.

Here's what popped up:

Where did this pop up? I did not get any notifications?

 

[rpguy4]

If you have Amazon Prime, the Amazon Prime Visa card is not bad :

no annual fee
no foreign transaction fees
Travel and emergency assistance - (read the fine print though)


https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Rewards-Visa-Signature-Card/dp/BT00LN946S

 

[kaneohe]

It appears that Citi Bank will soon pull the travel services offered on its Costco Visa card and other cards as of 9/22/2019. Very sad.

Here's what popped up:

You might want to check w/ a Citi Costco rep..............I was told that other Citi cards would be losing those benefits but not Costco...........at least the car rental insurance part of it anyway.

 

[triangle]

I don't know what it covers in regards to "Travel Accident Insurance" but I like using my Capital One Quicksilver card. The two things I most like about it are:

1) you do not have to contact the credit card company before traveling aboard and using it. I have never been denied making an in store purchase using the card where the card is physically used in a chip reader. Though I have been initially denied a few times when making an online purchase, where it sends an alert that I have to clear/acknowledge before trying to make the purchase a second time.

2) Foreign exchange rates seem reasonable-to-good when checking against the rates quoted online. I have no way of comparing this card to other cards except to note that exchange rate was noticeably better than my Bank of America Visa (when I used it once during the same day) and is always better than the "friendly" foreign merchant who volunteers to do the forex conversion to USD before submitting the CC charge.

 

[audreyh1]

I don't know what it covers in regards to "Travel Accident Insurance" but I like using my Capital One Quicksilver card. The two things I most like about it are:

2) Foreign exchange rates seem reasonable-to-good when checking against the rates quoted online. I have no way of comparing this card to other cards except to note that exchange rate was noticeably better than my Bank of America Visa (when I used it once during the same day) and is always better than the "friendly" foreign merchant who volunteers to do the forex conversion to USD before submitting the CC charge.

All VISA cards use the same foreign exchange rate before tacking on fees. So VISA cards with 0% foreign transaction fees will all give you the exact same exchange rate on any given day. VISA exchange rates change daily. You can find them at the VISA exchange rate calculator https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html.

 

[triangle]

All VISA cards use the same foreign exchange rate before tacking on fees. So VISA cards with 0% foreign transaction fees will all give you the exact same exchange rate on any given day. VISA exchange rates change daily. You can find them at the VISA exchange rate calculator https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html.

Good to know, I have wondered how much of this was controlled by Visa or the issuing bank. Though this calculator has the caveat "get an indication of the rate you may receive".

Though I was comparing a BoA Visa against a CapitalOne Mastercard from a couple of years ago. And the transactions were made hours apart. Whether using a CC or ATM card I sometimes wonder how frequently the exchange rate is updated. Whether it fluctuates in near real time based when certain forex markets are active, or the actual cost of the exchange when it gets reconciled.

 

[audreyh1]

Good to know, I have wondered how much of this was controlled by Visa or the issuing bank. Though this calculator has the caveat "get an indication of the rate you may receive".

Though I was comparing a BoA Visa against a CapitalOne Mastercard from a couple of years ago. And the transactions were made hours apart. Whether using a CC or ATM card I sometimes wonder how frequently the exchange rate is updated. Whether it fluctuates in near real time based when certain forex markets are active, or the actual cost of the exchange when it gets reconciled.

VISA provides the exchange rate service to issuing banks. They charge issuing banks 1% of the transaction for this service. So issuers of 0% foreign transaction fee are giving you an extra 1% benefit.

MasterCard has a different method, but I doubt a large obvious difference or people would talk about it.

VISA updates their exchange rate once a day using one of the US time zones it seems. It’s based on the prior business day exchange rate spread, so doesn’t change over weekends - well I guess until Tuesday.