How business owners spend money to get perks

When business owners start earning travel rewards on purchases, their first goal is often to accumulate enough points for a family vacation.

But in addition to those points and miles, you can also earn extremely valuable rewards through loyalty. In some cases, the amount of spending a business generates can lead to some pretty cool perks that a traditional road warrior might need to spend over 100 nights on the road to access.

Let’s take a look at some of the options.

World of Hyatt Milestone Rewards

The World of Hyatt program is unique among major hotel programs in that it offers milestone rewards for qualifying stays you earn. These start out simple, like 2,000 bonus points on your next stay with certain brands, but they become more valuable as you progress through milestones. For example, you can get free nights at some of the world’s most luxurious resorts or American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum status (in addition to your World of Hyatt status).

You’ll start earning Milestone Rewards after your first 20 nights, with new Milestones earned every 10 nights, up to a maximum of 150 nights per year. All nights you book for yourself directly with Hyatt (or through other qualifying channels) count toward milestones and even bonus nights.

While you might think you need to spend a lot of nights out to earn milestone rewards, World of Hyatt credit card holders have access to some very useful spend-based shortcuts.

this World of Hyatt Credit Card (See Rates & Fees) Five qualifying nights per year, similar to some other popular co-branded hotel credit cards. Earn two qualifying nights for every $5,000 spent on your credit card.

besides World of Hyatt Business Credit Card (See Rates and Fees) will help you reach milestones faster. The card rewards 5 qualifying nights for every $10,000 spent.

Spending $300,000 on a credit card just to earn a bunch of milestone rewards may sound a bit extreme (or it may not, depending on your business’s cash flow). But you can at least use this to your advantage to close the gap on any milestone you want to achieve. Plus, you’ll earn your most valuable hotel points in the process.

For example, let’s say you’ve racked up 50 qualifying nights and aren’t traveling this year, but reaching the 60-night milestone does pay off, which will earn you Globalist status, free night awards in categories 1-7, two suite upgrade awards, two Honors guest awards, and My Hyatt concierge service. Simply transfer $20,000 in purchases to the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card (or $25,000 to the World of Hyatt Credit Card) to earn the additional 10 nights you need.

American Airlines Loyalty Points Rewards

The American Airlines AAdvantage program offers another unusual way to earn extra rewards. Similar to Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards program, AAdvantage’s loyalty points program offers rewards for some pretty high spending levels.

You can earn loyalty points by flying with American Airlines and its partners, but there are many other ways to earn loyalty points, many of which are right up your alley as a business owner.

The easiest way is to use one of the American Airlines co-branded credit cards to make your purchase. In addition to all the AAdvantage miles you earn on your credit card purchases, you also earn loyalty points. besides Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® Specifically, (see Rates and Fees) is the best card for earning loyalty points because you’ll earn 10,000 bonus loyalty points after reaching 50,000 loyalty points in a qualifying year. After reaching 90,000 loyalty points in the same qualification year, you will receive an additional 10,000 bonus loyalty points.

You can also accumulate loyalty points by booking hotels through the AAdvantage Hotels portal. It’s important to note that you may not earn points or elite-level stays through hotel programs for these bookings. However, you can earn thousands of AAdvantage loyalty points, which in some cases may be more valuable to you than hotel points.

In addition to hotels, you can also earn loyalty points by booking car rentals, vacations and cruises through the AAdvantage booking portal. AAdvantage also has a shopping portal and dining program that allows you to earn loyalty points.

Rewards tiers start from 15,000 loyalty points and offer basic benefits such as preferred seat coupons, bonus loyalty points and luggage tags. Things get more interesting after reaching 100,000 loyalty points, with rewards including Avis President’s Club membership, a 30% bonus on loyalty point earnings with certain AAdvantage partners, and World of Hyatt Explorer membership.

If you do increase your revenue significantly, reaching at least 175,000 loyalty points, you can cash in on great rewards like system-wide upgrades, $200 (or more) in travel credits, and mileage rebates.

Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards Global Companion Award

The recently launched Alaska Airlines Atmos rewards program (the merger of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines’ loyalty programs) has introduced some new credit cards, and one of them has some pretty amazing benefits. this Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® Credit Card Opportunity to win two Global Partner Awards.

For every anniversary you hold the card, you’ll earn your first Global Partner Award. This effectively provides a 25,000-point discount on any Alaska, Hawaii, or partner award ticket, and unlike other companion awards, there are very few restrictions.

One way business owners can really up their game is to earn a 100,000-point Global Companion bonus when you spend $60,000 or more on the card on your anniversary. This easily covers a one-way business class flight to Europe or Asia.

Honorable Mention: Birt Cash

Bilt Rewards only recently revamped its credit card portfolio, which represents an interesting opportunity for business owners who can spend heavily on these cards.

In addition to earning Bilt Rewards points, you can earn a new currency on your credit card purchases: Bilt Cash. Somewhat similar to AAdvantage loyalty points, this secondary currency can earn you a variety of rewards, including points for Lyft rides, discounts on hotel bookings through the Bilt travel portal, higher earn rates, and even Blade helicopter transfers from major airports.

Since the list of Bilt Cash redemption programs is long, business owners with a lot of credit card spending can earn a variety of rewards throughout the year.

In addition to the points you earn, every new Bilt credit card earns 4% Bilt Cash on everyday purchases. In addition, you can earn $50 in Bilt Cash for every 25,000 points earned (up to $100 in Bilt Cash earned can be carried forward to the next year), and Bilt says it will launch other new ways to earn Bilt Cash in the future.

bottom line

My employees like to say that I have a lot of “isms”—that is, things I repeat over and over again. One of them is “crawl, walk, run”.

When business owners first dive into the world of earning points and miles, the main goal is usually to earn enough points to take a dream vacation. Going from “crawl” to “walk” usually means adding a card or two to maximize different types of recurring spend.

Our goal in entering the “run” phase is to maximize things like Hyatt Milestone Rewards or AAdvantage loyalty points without giving up too much value.