Travelers Need Their Travel Rewards – Or Else

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Travelers are looking for every way possible to cut costs these days, and travel rewards programs are a great way to do it. Looks like Americans are taking full advantage these days…

Twenty percent of Americans polled in a survey commissioned by the Wyndham Rewards loyalty program said they would be unable to take their next vacation without cashing in rewards points, indicating that the current economic climate has increased the importance of travel rewards points in vacation planning.

Rabin Research conducted the survey of 1,040 Americans on June 16, 2009.

The survey found that nearly one-third of Americans (31 percent) belong to one or more travel industry loyalty or rewards program, and almost half of them (47 percent) plan to redeem travel rewards points for their next vacation…

According to the survey, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans say rewards points are either “very important” or “extremely important” given the state of the economy. Twenty-nine percent responded “very important” and 35 percent responded “extremely important”.

via Wyndham Rewards Finds 1-in-5 Couldn’t Vacation Without Travel Loyalty Points – MarketWatch.

In the last few years, I’ve only flown with three domestic airlines: JetBlue, Virgin America and Southwest? Why? Low costs and frequent flyer miles. I haven’t racked up that many miles with Southwest, but they had incredibly low fares on one of my trips from Oakland to LAX. As for JetBlue and VA, I rack up the miles quickly not only by staying with these airlines exclusively, but their loyalty programs are simple to understand, and I earn points faster by using their credit cards. (That isn’t to say I encourage you to get a credit card just to earn points, but if you’re looking for a new card, its something to consider.)

More on airline and hotel rewards programs after the jump…

I’d say the only fault with their programs is that I can only use their points domestically. Quite often, you can use (and earn) points by renting cars through specific allied companies…but I don’t drive so that one doesn’t help me. If only I could use my Virgin America points on Virgin Atlantic…

As far as hotels and restaurant rewards programs, I don’t really belong to any. I find that I don’t often reap rewards fast enough with any of these programs to really bother planning trips around them, thus I just go with the most affordable and convenient options. There are programs that pair hotels with airlines for points, such as WorldHotels, but I’ve found that there are many strings attached when it comes to earning/using rewards points this way. For example, when I stayed at a WorldHotels member in Tokyo last November, I was hoping to get rewards points for Northwest, an alliance member and the airline I was flying on to Japan. However, since I booked the ticket online with an “internet only” rate, it didn’t qualify for anything.

Do you belong to any loyalty rewards programs? How many? How important is it to you to plan your travel around these companies?