Welcome to Rewards Canada's 10th annual Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards feature. We're proud bring you the original, most anticipated, highly regarded, often imitated but never duplicated travel rewards credit card rankings for Canadians!!Big changes this year in the rankings thanks to a crazy 2017 that saw several new cards introduced and the loss of some great ones. Not only have the rankings changed, but we've modified some of the categories the cards are ranked in. We have done away with the hotel card category as there are only two cards in our market now and replaced it with the Top Coalition Program Credit Card category. The timing of this category is right with Aeroplan splitting from Air Canada in only two years and while Aeroplan has been considered a coalition program for years it was also considered an airline frequent flyer program. Coalition programs are big in Canada and ranking them separately only makes sense. The other category we modified is the Top Travel Points Credit Card (with no annual fee) and renamed it Top No Free Travel Rewards Credit Card as it now takes into account coalition, airline, hotel and other travel rewards cards that have no annual fee. Once again we run an overall best card category! This is our 3rd year of naming an overall winner and as you all know it is difficult to give one card a title of the best card in Canada but this new category continues to be well received so we are continuing with it! What is the best card? This is our third year of picking overall cards and the reigning king for the past two years has been knocked down a spot by a brethren card. The new number one card in Canada is the American Express Cobalt Card. Why? There were several reasons it knocked the American Express Gold Rewards card down to second spot. First is the super strong earn of 5x Points on Eats & Drinks, a well rounded insurance package and a great sign up bonus. Not to mention the fact that it is a hybrid card which gives you the best options and most flexibility when redeeming for travel. Want to book a cruise and use points? You can do that with the Cobalt Card. Want to convert to hotel programs for hotel stays or further conversion to airline programs? You can do that with the Cobalt Card. Look at it this way, the 5x points is equal to 5% for any travel booking or they are worth 2.5 Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints which we value at nearly 3 cents apiece and those can be further converted to Aeroplan, British Airways and many more airline programs. The potential reward with the last option? 3.14 miles per dollar spent on the card in eats and drinks category. No other card on the market comes even close to this! Don't need the frequent flyer or frequent guest option or shop at places that don't take Amex? You're best bets are the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard, the mbna Rewards World Elite Mastercard or the RBC Visa Infinite Avion cards. In a nutshell, there are cards that definitely stand out above the rest and for some of you these may not be the best option so we advise you to look at our breakdown of top cards in the five major categories we developed to see which one is best for you. What category is right for you? Check out Rewards Canada's Guide to choosing a travel rewards credit card to steer you in the right direction. How do we come up with our picks for the best cards? We look at various factors including cost of ownership, rate of return, the associated loyalty program (co-brand), ease of redemption, partnerships, issuing bank and benefits. Then add in over 16 years of research, answering hundreds of email questions from readers, comments from our readers plus the charts and articles we publish provides us the 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. Will 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 seventh annual ranking, we will help guide consumers to finding the right credit card for them . There are still well over 75 travel reward credit cards available to Canadians! Some are airline only cards that put miles directly into your airline frequent flyer accounts. Some are coalition cards the belong to larger programs like Aeroplan, AIR MILES and More Rewards. 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 created the six categories of cards in Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards for 2018. 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 Hybrid Travel Credit / Charge Cards (with annual fee) 5. Top Airline Credit / Charge Cards 6. Top Coalition Program Credit Cards To see all of the travel rewards credit cards that were considered for this years rankings please see here. Care to comment on what we chose as the best travel rewards credit cards? Want to voice your opinion on the good and the bad of all the Travel Rewards Credit Cards in Canada. Share you views and experiences in the comment section below or on Facebook and Twitter for Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards 2018! Rewards Canada can be found on the following social media channels:
Canada's Top Travel Rewards Credit & Charge Cards for 2018
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