More Rewards has officially relaunched their travel booking portal in collaboration with Expedia. The new travel booking portal soft launched just over a week ago and was officially unveiled on March 14. To celebrate the launch of the new More Rewards Travel rewards portal, the program will be giving away 1,000,000 points (the equivalent of over $4,000 in travel) to one lucky cardholder.
As we reported back in December, the loyalty program of Western Canadian grocer Pattison Food Group (Save-On-Foods, Urban Fare and many more) had shut down their in-house travel agency to prepare for a transition to a new provider. At that time we guessed they were switching to Expedia as their stop-gap measure for not being able to redeem points for travel was being able to redeem them for Expedia gift certificates of the same value. We guessed correctly!
For the most part I don’t think More Rewards members should even notice much of difference from the previous travel booking portal in terms of how the booking process and redemptions work. They should however find many more travel options available in terms of airlines, hotels, vacations and activities with the new portal.
Earning Points via More Rewards Travel
Earning points via the new More Rewards Travel is simple and straightforward. Members will earn 1 point per eligible $1 spent on travel purchases. As we see with the majority of loyalty programs, the only spend that really isn’t eligible are the taxes, fees and surcharges that are charged on these bookings.
When you search for travel on the More Rewards Travel portal they will show you how many points you can expect to earn on bookings:
More Rewards no longer has their own co-brand credit card – do you guys remember their old Visa card with Scotia? It held the title of the best no annual fee travel rewards card back in 2017 and 2018! Sorry, went off track for bit but going back to them not having their own card you’ll want to use a card with a travel accelerator and/or good travel insurance coverage to pay for your bookings made via More Rewards Travel.
Some of those cards include the American Express Cobalt® Card which earns 2 points per dollar on travel and just happens to earn 5x points at all More Rewards grocery store partners, the TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege* Card and the BMO AscendTM World Elite®* Mastercard®*.
The BMO card is good for insurance coverage as they don’t have the stipulation that 75% of the travel purchase needs to be paid for with your card, they state pay any portion of the travel booking with it for most of their coverage, so keep that in mind if you have enough More Rewards points to cover your entire purchase you may just want to leave a small cash portion instead of using all your points so that you are covered.
Redeeming Points via More Rewards Travel
The redemption rate of points via the new More Rewards Travel remains the same as the old portal. That rate is 0.42 cents per point redeemed towards any travel option they have. And just like before you can pay with any combination of points+cash or all points should you have enough in your More Rewards account.
Once you log in to your account and before booking any travel, More Rewards will show you how much your current points balance is worth towards travel:
When you search for travel the results will show the total amount of points needed to cover the entire booking however you don’t have to use that many points as you can choose to do a partial redemption (see the next section to learn more about partial redemptions)
Once you select the flights, hotels or other travel that you want to book you’ll be provided the points redemption option where you can choose to pay with any combination of points+cash:
More Rewards Travel Booking Examples
Booking travel with More Rewards is extremely easy. It works the same as going direct to Expedia and virtually any other online booking engine. And is also super easy to use when you want to redeem points towards your booking.
Here’s an example of a WestJet flight between Vancouver and Calgary:
As you can see it provides you with all relevant details (it even included how much you can expect to pay for checked luggage etc). It details how many points you can expect to earn if you pay for the entire flight with your credit card and it also shows you how many points it would cost if you want to redeem for the entire flight (Taxes and fees included)
For comparison here is the same flight if booked with WestJet, it prices the same:
Going back to More Rewards Travel, the next step with them after clicking on the ‘Check Out’ button is to select how many points you would like to use towards the booking:
Here you simply input how many points you would like to use (or none at all) and if you are not paying for the entire amount with points it automatically lets you know how much you still have to pay with your credit card. It also details how many points you’ll earn on the cash portion. And that’s it! The rest is your typical booking process of inputting the traveller(s) details, payment details etc.
Things to be aware of when booking with More Rewards Travel
As with any third party agency, when you book hotels via More Rewards Travel you will be foregoing points and elite status earning in that chain’s loyalty program and you may not receive elite status benefits during your stay. This is no worry if hotel loyalty program points or elite status don’t matter to you.
I do recommend that you check what booking direct with the hotel chain would cost as they often have loyalty program member rates that are cheaper than what you can book via third party agencies. For example the Four Points Kelowna shown above was $171 all in when booking as a Marriott Bonvoy member via Marriott versus the $184 with More Rewards. As with everything be sure to shop around but of course if you are sitting on a stash of More Rewards points that you want to use up, by all means do so if you’ll be saving more cash in the end.
There is also one more item to be aware of with the new More Rewards Travel, which happens to be the same with many other Canadian loyalty and credit card programs who also use Expedia such as RBC’s Avion Rewards, Scene+ and TD Rewards. And that is you cannot book travel to Cuba. This is due to Expedia being a U.S. corporation and the U.S. has an embargo on doing business with the island nation. So if you want to book an all-inclusive package to Varadero unfortunately you won’t be able to do so with your More Rewards points.
Here’s the result when you type Cuba into the search:
You can win 1 Million More Rewards Points
To celebrate the launch of the new More Rewards Travel portal the program is giving away 1,000,000 More Rewards points to one lucky member! Those 1 million points are worth ~$4,200 towards any travel booked via the portal.
To enter you simply need to scan your More Rewards card at checkout by March 27, 2024. I assume by check out they mean at their own grocery stores including Save-On-Foods, Urban Fare, Nesters Market, Buy-Low Foods, Quality Foods, and PriceSmart Foods but not other More Rewards partners.
If you plan on scanning you card by shopping at Save-On Foods don’t forget to tie in the RBC Avion Select Card Linked offer for Save-On Foods! (Learn more here)
Wrapping it up
After a three month hiatus, More Rewards Travel is back and it is being powered by Expedia. Overall the new portal is quite similar to their old one but now with more travel options thanks to Expedia’s global breadth. More Rewards members can earn points on all eligible travel booked via the portal to add their balance of points earned from other partners. On the redemption side, the value of points redeemed towards travel remains the same and remain super flexible in that you can redeem any amount of points + cash or all points towards your travel purchases.