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How to Use Barclays Arrival Plus Miles for Travel: Your Full Guide

  • Andrew Wan

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    Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers. INSIDER SECRET: Booking a hotel that’s not part of any big hotel chain? Barclaycard Arrival miles can be a huge help because you can redeem them for any eligible travel-related expense.

    Earning miles and points for free travel is an amazing feeling. But have you ever run across a travel expense you had to pay for out of pocket because it didn’t fall under a specific airline or hotel program? Or perhaps your miles didn’t cover certain expenses, like taxes, trains or buses?

    It’s time to make those scenarios a thing of the past, and earning and redeeming miles from the Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard® is one way to make that happen.

    You can redeem Arrival miles toward any eligible travel expense of $100 or more made in the past 120 days. So that charge at a boutique hotel? Train tickets? Airline fee taxes? There’s a good chance your Arrival miles have got you covered.

    We’ll show you how to use your Barclays Arrival Plus miles for travel!

    You can redeem Barclaycard Arrival miles for any eligible travel expense of $100 or more. So that hotel that’s not part of a big chain? You can erase the charge with your miles.(Photo by NDT/Shutterstock)

    Let’s take a look at what Barclaycard Arrival miles are, and how you can earn and redeem them.

    How to Use Barclays Arrival Plus Miles

    Apply Here: Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®

    Read our review of the Barclaycard Arrival Plus

    With the Barclaycard Arrival Plus, you’ll earn a welcome bonus of 70,000 Arrival miles after spending $5,000 on purchases in the first 90 days of opening your account. That’s worth $700 in travel statement credits for eligible travel purchases of $100 or more.

    Benefits of Barclaycard Arrival Miles

    You can redeem Barclaycard Arrival miles toward a statement credit for any eligible travel purchase of $100 or more made in the past 120 days. This comes in particularly handy if you’ve made a purchase that’s otherwise not covered by any of your other travel rewards cards. For instance, what if you wanted to stay at a Marriott hotel, but you don’t happen to have any Marriott points to redeem? This is where your Arrival miles can come in handy because they can cover that expense!

    Or how about this: have you ever booked an award ticket with miles and points, only to find that you still have to pay some fees in cash? You can redeem Barclaycard Arrival miles to cover the cost of a ticket AND fees, meaning you would pay nothing out of pocket.

    Other travel-related expenses could include train tickets, airline ticket fees, cruises and much more. And that’s the beauty of Arrival miles: they’re incredibly flexible because they work on a variety of travel expenses.

    Redeeming Barclays Arrival Miles 

    The best way to stretch the value of your Barclaycard Arrival miles is for statement credits for eligible travel expenses, where your miles will be worth 1 cent each.

    Redeeming your Barclaycard Arrival miles for a travel statement credit can be done in just a few simple steps:

    Step 1. Log in to Your Barclays Account

    Navigate to the Barclays homepage and sign into your account.

    Login to your Barclays account from their homepage.

    Step 2. Click on the “Rewards and Benefits” Tab and Select the Purchases You’d Like to Erase With Miles

    You’ll want to navigate to the “Rewards and Benefits Center” from either location shown below.

    Once logged in, click on the “Rewards and Benefits” center which can be accessed in 2 different areas.

    Step 3. Redeem Your Rewards

    Finally, you can select exactly how to redeem your Arrival miles. You’ll get the most value out of your miles by redeeming for a travel statement credit, although you can also choose from gift cards, shopping, and cash back statement credits.

    If you’re looking to make a redemption for a travel statement credit, you’ll need to start at a minimum of 10,000 Arrival miles. To redeem for annual account fees, you’ll need a minimum of 2,500 Arrival miles. And you can only redeem for travel purchases made in the past 120 days.

    There are a number of different ways you can redeem your Arrival miles, but you’ll get the most value by redeeming them for a travel statement credit.

    What Are Eligible Travel Expenses?

    Barclaycard Arrival miles can be redeemed for a number of eligible travel purchases, so you’re not locked into any single merchant or travel portal. As long as a purchase codes as travel, it’ll likely be eligible for the travel statement credit.

    Barclays defines travel as:

    Airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, campgrounds, car rental agencies, cruise lines, purchase and travel agencies, discount travel sites, trains, buses, taxis, limousines, ferries and the account annual fee as defined by the merchant category code.

    If you’re not sure a purchase will code as travel, you can always try a small test charge first.

    How to Earn Barclaycard Arrival Miles

    So now that you know how to redeem Barclaycard Arrival miles and how valuable they can be, let’s talk about how you can quickly earn several hundred dollars worth!

    Apply for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite Mastercard

    You’ll earn a ton of miles quickly when you open the Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®. You can earn 70,000 miles (worth $700 in travel statement credits) after you spend $5,000 on purchases within the first 90 days of opening your account. You can also continue to earn 2x Arrival miles per dollar on all purchases.

    Read our review of the Barclaycard Arrival Plus for more details of the card’s benefits and perks.

    Utilize the Barclays Shopping Portal

    You can also earn additional points through Barclays’ shopping portal, Barclaycard RewardsBoost.

    You’ll want to log in to verify your card is eligible. Once logged in with an eligible card, all you have to do is find a retailer to shop from, click through to their website and complete your purchase. It’s simple.

    Once you’re logged in to the RewardsBoost website, find a merchant to shop at and then click through to their website. You’ll complete your purchase on that retailer’s website as normal to earn your additional bonus miles.

    Bottom Line

    Barclays Arrival miles are incredibly flexible because you can redeem them for almost any eligible travel expense of $100 or more, including boutique hotels, airfare, rental cars and cruises.

    You can get a jump start on your stash of Arrival miles by earning the intro bonus on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®. You can earn 70,000 miles (worth $700 in travel) after spending $5,000 on purchases within the first 90 days of opening your account.

    Miles earned can be redeemed for eligible travel expenses at a 1 cent per mile, although you can also redeem them for gift cards and statement credits for non-travel related items, albeit at a lower 0.5 cents per mile.

    For more about Barclays Arrival miles, check out these posts:

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    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)