I was poking around the interwebs this weekend and found a new site, Referaound, that shares information on referral programs.
For example, American Express will let existing cardmembers refer people to the Starwood Preferred Guest credit cards and earn 5,000 bonus Starpoints for each successful referral (log into your account and look for an ad in the lower right corner). You can do the same with the Premier Rewards Gold card. Chase has its own portal for referring people to the Freedom or Sapphire Preferred cards. About the only requirement with such programs is that you must already be a customer.
What I didn’t know is that you could also get points for referring people to cards like the Alaska Airlines Visa. Sure, it’s only 25,000 bonus miles for the person who applies, and offers for this card range from 25,000 to 50,000 miles. But I haven’t yet identified a clear pattern, so 25,000 may be the best available anyway. (Note that this offer doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but I didn’t know it was ever an option. I still recommend creating a “fake” booking and applying on the last step of the reservation process to see the best offer, which usually waives the first year’s annual fee.)
This site isn’t just about credit cards, either. Other referral offers include bonus points for getting people to sign up for a loyalty program or after their first few stays.
Here are some of the travel-related programs I identified. The Marriott bonus is well known, but the other two are new to me. A few others were advertised on Refaround but don’t seem to be currently available. The site may still be worth bookmarking in case new offers appear in the future.
- Earn 500 bonus points after your friend completes their first trip after signing up for Amtrak Rewards
- Earn 1,000 bonus points for each stay your friend completes after signing up for Hilton HHonors.
- Earn 2,000 bonus points for each stay your friend completes after signing up for Marriott Rewards, up to 10,000 points per person (50,000 points total).
