Currently offered by five issuers, Resort cards offer a way for users to build rewards points with hotel, cruise and casino resorts they already use (or would like to start using), offering the promise of free nights and other redemption perks. In this edition of Credit Card Monitor Report, we look at the different co-branded resort cards currently available from major issuers, looking at the attributes, APRs and earnings potential for each card. In particular, our report concentrates on the following card and card promotion features:

• Are resort card product pages informative and do they include links to their co-branded partners’ sites?
• What is each card’s standard purchase APR, and are any firms offering intro APRs for purchases or balance transfers?
• What are each card product’s standard and loyalty earnings rates?
• Do any cards include initial-use or other bonus earnings opportunities?

The 18 products in this report cover a total of 14 co-branded resort partners, including eight hotel families. These rewards fall into two distinct categories, with some cards contributing points to integrated rewards programs run by their co-branded partners, and others instead generating earning for a standalone rewards program. While the integrated rewards model is more prevalent in the Resort-branded card space, with over 70% of cards feeding earnings into their co-branded partner’s existing loyalty program, the standalone card options can still provide excellent value to users.
In terms of traditional card features, each card we examined offers an APR between 10.24% and 15.24%, and only seven of the cards carry and annual fee that is waived for the first 12 months on many of the products. Introductory purchase APRs are currently being offered on only 22% of card options, though 50% offer such a perk for balance transfers. In our analysis, we came across the following additional Key Findings:

• The Hilton HHonors program is the only resort rewards programs linked to cards from two different issuers
• One co-branded card includes a 10% points rebate on all redemptions made with the integrated partner’s rewards program
• Only one hotel-based card feeds into a standalone rewards program

 Subjects

Marketing, cross-selling

Segment: Credit Cards
Publication date: Thursday, September 30, 2010
# Pages: (32 pages)