RBC Infinite Avion conversion rate: Financial vs. Travel rewards

By the way, when I got my card, they said I would get enough points (15K) for a short-haul flight, worth up to $350. That tells me that buying travel rewards with my RBC points will give me a better value on the dollar than to use my points to buy financial products (RRSP or TFSA) but I could be wrong?

The regular "travel" rewards are like you suspected, 100 points = $1, but I think you need to book through them to claim the points, it's not like Amex or Capital One, for example, where you book travel whichever way you want, and redeem points later.

Flight rewards could be a better way to use the points, but fees and taxes are still payable in cash, so whether it's worth it depends on your itinerary.

I just noticed they have an even worse conversion rate on gift cards: it is 14K for $100 gift card (ESSO, BestBuy, Canadian Tire etc.) which is $1 = 140 points.

greenmoon wrote: ↑The regular "travel" rewards are like you suspected, 100 points = $1, but I think you need to book through them to claim the points, it's not like Amex or Capital One, for example, where you book travel whichever way you want, and redeem points later.

Flight rewards could be a better way to use the points, but fees and taxes are still payable in cash, so whether it's worth it depends on your itinerary.

Interesting, thanks! So it is 100 points = $1, which is what I was suspecting. But like you said, I would still have to add taxes and fees which will end up being the same if not worst than to convert the points to their financial products.

BTW, I think the reason the conversion rate for their financial products is better than gift cards (120 to 140) is due to the fact that when you buy their financial products (RRSP, TFSA, mortgage voucher etc.) you are most likely keeping the money with them, so they get to benefit in the long term as well.

when you redeem points for travel you earn frequent flyer miles as well. This slightly increased the travel redemption rate further.

The best use of avion points is to convert them to Avios points to be used on British airways and their partners (American Airlines , Iberia, LAN etc). They have 50% promos a few times a year. Converting 100 avion points gives you 150 Avios.

Return flight to Chicago is 9000 points or only 6000 rbc avion points. Chicago is about $300 return. So your return rate is 300/6000= 5%.

But you are restricted on what airlines and only if they have reward flights available. I flew my family of 4 to Miami for a cruise all on points, cost me 170 in taxes total.

I value them as follows:
1 Avion=1.5 Avios
1.5 Avios*0.017USD/Avios*1.25CAD/USD= ~3.2%
Of course it all depends on how much you value Avios miles

The potential reward can get above 2%, when using the Avion redemption schedule (not the standard 100=1).

https://www.rbcrewards.com/travel-rewar ... tion-grid/

If you manage to hit the top of the tier (i.e. 750$ ticket for 35000 points) you can get 2-2.1%. Unfortunately that 750$ does not include taxes and fees, and can only be for economy tickets. Find me a North American coach flight for 750$ before taxes and fees, and I'll eat my hat.

The best thing I find is doing multi city itineraries for a flight reward redemption.. For 35,000 points you can add as many segments you want within Canada and the States to make up $750 before tax.

Transfer the RBC points to frequent flyer programs using transfer promos. There always seems to be a 50% bonus promo going on with this card.

So 35,000 (or $35,000 in spend) gets you anywhere in NA with a ticket worth a maximum of $700 before taxes and fees? That means you max out at 2% return for a ticket you probably won't be able to find anyway because that is an expensive base fare.

If you transfer 40,000 points using a transfer promo, you could fly to Europe on Avios and pay only the taxes and fees (with ways to avoid as much as possible). You also would only need to transfer 17,000 points to redeem for an Avios ticket from coast-to-coast (Vancouver to New York) and maybe $100 for taxes and fees. You could travel something like Toronto to New York for 6000 points + $50..... That's like a $400 flight... so $6000 in spend for $350 in return = 5.8% return... Yeah, I'm pretty sure these transfer promos are the way to go as long as you can deal with limited flexibility on reward tickets (hard to find availability).