2,500 Membership Rewards points when you spend £250 at Amex Travel

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An interesting promotion has popped up on the American Express Travel website, for anyone who has an Amex card enrolled in the Membership Rewards programme.

Amex is offering 2,500 Membership Rewards points (worth 2,500 Avios amongst other things) if you spend £250 on flights, hotels (pre-paid) or car hire before 1st August.

The Amex travel home page is here – you should see the ad for this promotion on this page.

I am not sure if booking hotels via Amex Travel counts as a third-party booking or not and therefore takes away your chance of earning hotel points, stay credit and elite benefits. It probably doesn’t, since Amex is not a rooms wholesaler like Expedia. However, you may want to be careful here.

The best thing to book is probably a flight, since it will have no impact on the miles you will earn.

This is effectively a 10% rebate if you value Avios points at 1p and spend close to £250, so it is worth seeing if you can find a way to use it.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus.

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Category

American Express Membership Rewards

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Tim_t says:

19 Jun19 June 07:23

I booked a holiday inn stay under the previous Amex promo and I did not get points or stay credit.
Phillip says:

19 Jun19 June 07:37

Am I reading the T&Cs correctly, that for the first £250 you only get the bonus MRs (no base points) and that spend over and above that only gets 1 MR point for every £1 even though it’s booking travel?
- Rob says:
  
  19 Jun19 June 08:51
  
  I wasn’t sure about that either! I think they may be trying to say that, but then you wouldn’t technically be getting 2,500 bonus points, only 2,250!
Sean Brennan says:

19 Jun19 June 09:04

Lovely! I have to hire a car for 10 days. That should do it!
Thomas says:

19 Jun19 June 09:55

Looking at the small print, it says “…you will also receive 2,500 Membership Reward points when you spend a minimum of £250 on your Card on eligible prepay flights, hotels, car hire and experiences at travel.americanexpress.co.uk on your first booking” – does this mean the “first booking” must be a single booking of £250 or over?

Just want to make sure the “first” booking in that case is one over £250.

Unrelated to this – my Marco Polo card expired last month and I did not get a new one automatically. I contacted AMEX and they very quickly came back and informed me they had agreed to extend for another year, and I got my new card about a week later. So if anyone is in the same situation it looks like they dont do automatic renewals but worth contacting them (via the AMEX website).

Thomas
- Rob says:
  
  19 Jun19 June 11:57
  
  No, I am sure it means first booking over £250
Paul C says:

19 Jun19 June 11:48

Earlier this year I booked the Westin Boston Waterfront through Amex travel website, their rate was less than half the best SPG web rate, and it did earn Starwood SPG points and counted as a night’s stay in the scheme.
Interested to know if the same applies to Hilton bookings.
Paul C says:

19 Jun19 June 11:52

Reading the Ts&Cs, does ‘first booking’ mean first booking within the promotion period, ie: you can’t get multiple 2,500 bonuses through this promotion; or does it mean ‘first booking’ ever and so those who have used the service before would not earn the bonus at all?
- Rob says:
  
  19 Jun19 June 11:54
  
  First booking in the promotion period, as I read it
Neil says:

19 Jun19 June 20:27

I’ve never booked through the Amex Travel Portal before but I note that there is also an additional 1 MR point/£1 spend. Does this mean that if paying via the Amex Gold, you would get a total of 3 x MR points (3 Avios) for each pound spent plus the additional 2,500 MR points bonus (Amex Gold has double points on travel spend already)? If so then that’s really not a bad deal.

I assume the 1 x extra MR point is a long standing thing?
- Rob says:
  
  19 Jun19 June 21:18
  
  Logically, yes, I’d say you should ….
  - Simon says:
    
    23 Jun23 June 11:40
    
    Not sure if it’s isolated to my account but my AMEX Gold has stopped giving me bonus points on travel spend recently, Hotels.com and Easyjet which were giving me the bonus are no longer.
    
    I cancelled a Hotels.com booking I made a few months ago which did give me the travel bonus and they didn’t take back the travel bonus points that were awarded for the refund so I’ve only missed out on a few points.
    
    The Hotels.com bookings are still give me an outbound spend bonus that combined with the low number of points means I haven’t followed this up with customer services, I’m not sure if AMEX are aware some sterling transactions give an outbound spend bonus depending on where the retailer is based.
Louie says:

19 Jun19 June 21:20

Do we know which airlines Amex can book?
- Rob says:
  
  19 Jun19 June 21:23
  
  Any legacy carrier, plus budget carriers who pay to be in the ‘distribution systems’ eg easyJet should be there.
  - Louie says:
    
    20 Jun20 June 10:04
    
    I’m thinking of a trip to Dalaman later in the year, so have the choice of Easyjet, Thomas Cook, Monarch or Thomson (lovely!). Nothing came up when I did a search on Amex’ website. I’ll ring before booking if the trip is confirmed.