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While Best Western Rewards may not be the hottest hotel program on the market, the new welcome bonus on the FNBO Best Western Rewards Mastercard has increased to a respectable 80,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months. The card might even be worth it for an easy annual spend bonus for those who have some use for Best Western Rewards points (though I only recommend it for those familiar with the program and associated opportunities).
The Offer & Key Card Details
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
None ⓘ Non-Affiliate Not currently accepting new applications.$89 Annual Fee Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. Earning rate: 10X at Best Western properties ✦ 2X elsewhere Card Info: Mastercard World issued by FNBO. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: 40K bonus points when you spend at least $5,000 during each 12 billing cycle period Noteworthy perks: ✦ 10% off Flexible Rate Stays ✦ Platinum Elite Status (get a free welcome snack) |
Quick Thoughts
I’ve stayed at some perfectly decent Best Westerns in the past, particularly in Europe and Australia where I’ve found the handful of properties at which I’ve stayed to be perfectly decent places to sleep at times when the room didn’t much matter to me. In my budget-travel days, I recall eating my face off at the free breakfast at the Best Western Oslo airport once I knew how expensive food was in Norway (in my defense, I’d been living in Berlin for a couple of months and the Ryanair flight to Oslo was only 3 Euros each way, so what did I know?).
And apparently, I have some Best Western points. I hadn’t had my Best Western account linked to Award Wallet, so I just took the time to figure out how to log in to my Best Western account and lo and behold I have more than five thousand points. Goodness knows when I earned these.
On the other hand, I was disappointed to find that my Best Western Diamond status match seems to have expired. No free water for me.
At any rate, we do occasionally see opportunities to book rooms for 10K or 15K points per night and I’m sure that Best Western has some hidden gems out there somewhere. I imagine this offer will only be interesting to a very niche segment of readers, but for those whom it does have some attraction the additional points here are a nice increase over the typical 50K offer. Keep in mind that the issuer in this case – First National Bank of Omaha – may be a slightly more challenging approval for some people.
One nice thing going for this card is that you can earn 40,000 bonus points every year for $5K spend. Since the card earns 2x points on most purchases, you’ll end up with 50K points every year that you spend $5K — effectively similar to a free night certificate in other programs but in this case awarded in the form of points. The additional flexibility of points makes that arguably more valuable for those who know how to use the points well.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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I have been looking at this card for a while since Best Western is the only chain in a tiny Central CA town where my family vacations…but unsure of how likely it is to get approved. I’m at lol/24, P2 is at 4/24 but don’t really want to waste a spot on this…
Would you guess a cpp? I’m going with 0.4.
Our reasonable redemption values has them at 0.58 cents per point. Greg told me that he did a handful of searches earlier and everything came out almost right on that value. Obviously that’s anecdotal, but it was good to see that the tests he did matched our values.
The lack of expiration is a major plus. One really nice thing about BW is that there’s lots of locations in places too small for the bigger chains.
Sorry, lots of locations in Europe.
There are some good locations in Alaska as well where large hotels wouldn’t make it and points stays are extremely limited.
It looks like the annual fee is $89 and not waived the first year. But still a good value.
if this an affiliate link. I would have used yours had I known about it. I searched your page and couldn’t find it yesterday.
app went pending yesterday. 1st time FNBO. I reviewed their hotels. There are some nice ones in places I want to go / could go. Footprint is sorely lacking in certain countries – like Mexico. But lots in Western Europe and USA.
It’s more like 130,000 points after $5,000 spend 1st year. I see value of $750 +/- or so – $90 fee. $660. Respectable. Points never expire.