If you have an American Express Platinum Card in Canada, you’ll receive an annual $200 travel credit from American Express. We already talked about what you can use your travel credit towards, as well as some important restrictions to pay attention to in our previous post: “The $200 American Express Travel Credit in Canada: A Beginner’s Guide“. So if you’re new to American Express, you’ll definitely want to check that out first! By this point, you should already have some travel goals in mind, and now it’s simply a matter of redeeming your travel credit. So let’s walk through step by step for how to book your travel online.

Login To Your American Express Account

To start, login to your American Express account.

You should see your “My Account” Summary.

Choose Your Travel Portal

From the “My Account” Summary click on the blue “Menu” link in the top left corner > then click on the “Travel” link. From here, depending on what type of travel you want to book, choose from one of the three choices:

1. Book Travel Online: The default American Express Travel portal. Use your travel credit for flights, car rentals, hotels, vacation packages or cruises.
2. Book Fine Hotels and Resorts: A travel portal that features select luxury hotels from around the world that American Express has partnered with. Use this link if you’re planning a luxury hotel stay.
3. Book The Hotel Collection: Stay 2 or more nights at participating hotels and receive a $75 property credit and a room upgrade. Get 2x more points with your American Express Gold Rewards Card, and 5x more points with your American Express Platinum Card.

If you’re looking at using your travel credit towards a hotel stay, I recommend checking to see if the hotel is listed with either the Fine Hotels and Resorts, or the Hotel Collection. By booking through these portals, you’ll receive a number of hotel perks that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with booking through the American Express Travel portal. Learn more about the Fine Hotels and Resorts program here.

Using Our Platinum Travel Credit for a Hotel Booking

In this example, we’ll be using our $200 travel credit towards a 1-night stay at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta, Canada. Since I already searched for the hotel in the FHR Directory and confirmed it’s a Fine Hotels and Resorts property, let’s click on “Book Fine Hotels and Resorts” from the main menu. From here, we should see that our $200 Platinum travel credit is ready to redeem in the top right corner. Yay! Let’s search for our hotel and the dates we want.

Now that the search result has loaded, we can see the additional benefits we’ll get by booking this Fine Hotels and Resorts property using our American Express Platinum Card:

• Room Upgrade upon arrival, when available.
• Noon check-in, when available.
• Daily breakfast for two people.
• In-Room Wi-Fi, exclusions apply.
• Guaranteed 4:00 pm late check-out.
• US$100 Food and beverage credit to be used during your stay

Now click the “Choose Room(s)”, select your room options. A list of available room categories and their rates should be displayed. Select the one you’d like to book and click “Continue”. An American Express Travel loading screen should appear and you’ll be forwarded to an “American Express Travel” booking page.

Redeem Your $200 Travel Credit on the Booking Page

Now that we’re on the booking page, we can confirm our travel details and apply our $200 travel credit. We can apply the credit to our booking by simply clicking on the “Use Travel Credit” button.

From here, the travel credit will be applied to our booking. We can continue filling out the rest of the booking details, and click “Book Now” when we’re ready. The charges will apply to your statement for the full amount, and within 2 business days, you should see the Platinum credit applied to your account as well:

Use Your Platinum Travel Credit Booking By Phone

In the above example, we booked a hotel room using Fine Hotels and Resorts. However, if you’re using the default American Express travel portal for your booking, you may notice that your destination is not listed. This was actually the case when I recently redeemed my $200 annual credit for a 1-night stay at the Watermark Beach Resort Hotel in Osoyoos, BC. If this happens to you, just call American Express Platinum Services at 1-800-263-1616 and they will use their “alternate booking system” to make the reservation.

How To Check If Your $200 Platinum Travel Credit Is Available

If you’re curious if you have your $200 travel credit available to use, from the “My Account” summary page, you can always click on “View and Redeem Points” > Your Points Account > My Redemptions.

How To Check When Your $200 Platinum Travel Credit Expires

American Express doesn’t really make this obvious to find. I’m not sure if there are other ways, as their website can be, um, slightly confusing at times, however, here’s one way to find out: We can see when our travel credit actually expires, by hovering over the “$200 Annual Travel Credit” link in the top right corner of the American Express travel booking portal, when we’re logged in. To get to the travel portal, just click on “Travel” > “Book Travel Online” from the main navigation menu.

American Express has made some recent changes as to when the travel credit will be applied to your account, so make sure you take note of the expiry date, as travel credits can’t be combined, or banked for the following year. On the travel booking confirmation page, we can also see our travel credit expires on the one-year anniversary date of when we applied for the Platinum Card (Monday, October 28, 2019) when we hover over the link:

How do you plan to use your annual travel credit from American Express? Let us know in the comments below. And if you’re curious to learn more about the benefits of this card, check out our review of the American Express Platinum Card in Canada!