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Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards 2022 - Factors

Posted on January 3, 2023



Factors for Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards for 2023


How do we come up with our picks for the best cards? We look at various factors including rewards earning and value (rate of return), cost of ownership, the associated loyalty program (co-brand), ease of redemption, partnerships, issuing bank, personal experience, reader feedback and benefits. We even look at where your cards can take you (ie destinations), what you can do with your cards (what sort of travel you can redeem for) and more. For example, for many years we didn't rank the WestJet card as high as other competitors rankings due to the fact you were limited to flying in North America but then when WestJet Rewards added redemptions on partner airlines like Qantas and Delta that fly to many places around the globe and then added their own international flights the card shot up the rankings. Then you add in 20 years of research, answering hundreds of email questions from readers, comments from our readers plus the charts and articles we publish provides us the best insight into the pros and cons of each card. As always this has allowed Rewards Canada to form an opinion as to which ones are the best. That's right, it all boils down to opinion. The top cards listed here, are in our opinion, the best cards for travel rewards in Canada. Do people agree? Some yes, some no. Do we make some credit card issuers mad? Yes. Happy? You bet.

As we have stressed in the past, choosing a card is a difficult decision based on many factors including but not limited to rewards offered, benefits offered, cost and the issuing bank. We hope that with this 14th annual ranking, we will help guide consumers to finding the right credit card for them.

What makes Rewards Canada's rankings different from the rest? At Rewards Canada, we are deeply entrenched in the loyalty industry, not just credit cards, so we take this into account for the rankings where it is applicable. Most other rankings on the Internet only look at the credit card itself and not the associated loyalty program or partners, hidden tricks of the programs and much more. In fact many rankings in Canada only list cards that they earn commissions on unlike here at Rewards Canada where we look at any and all cards. For example, in the Airline Cards category we take into account what cities the airlines and/or their partners serve in Canada and Worldwide, whether you can redeem for premium class travel, what the redemption availability is like with their frequent flyer program, the airline partners they have and so on. This is why the Rewards Canada rankings are the highest regarded rankings in Canada with the media, loyalty programs and credit card issuers.

In our rankings we look at well over 70 travel reward credit cards available to Canadians! Some are airline only cards that put miles or points directly into your airline frequent flyer accounts. Some are hybrid cards where you collect points that can be used to book travel through the credit card or put the points into a frequent flyer/guest account. Some are travel points cards, where the points are redeemed for travel through the credit card company's proprietary rewards program while a small number are hotel only cards that put the points directly into your frequent guest program accounts.

It is from these variations of cards that we have now have eigth categories of cards in Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards for 2023.
1. Top Travel Rewards Cards Overall
2. Top Travel Points Credit Cards (with annual fee)
3. Top No Fee Travel Rewards Credit Cards
4. Top Airline Credit / Charge Cards
5. Top Hybrid Travel Credit / Charge Cards
6. Top No Foreign Transaction Fee Credit Card
7. Top Ultra Premium Credit Cards
8. Top Small Business Travel Rewards Credit Card

 

 



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