How Travel Co-Brand Cards Are Competing for Everyday Wallet Share
By Sarah Langmead, Strategy Director at Pragmatic
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Card marketers understand that consumers typically open travel co-brand credit cards because they already have an affinity for a particular airline or hotel brand. Perhaps they’ve had a few great experiences flying with a specific airline or staying at a favorite hotel chain and want to unlock additional rewards, perks, and status opportunities in the future.
Historically, card marketers have faced a common challenge: Travel co-brand cardholders don’t always use those cards regularly.
According to eMarketer, 17% of U.S. adults have airline co-brand cards, but only 7% use one as their top-of-wallet card. Instead, travel co-brand cards are often reserved for booking flights or hotel stays, while day-to-day purchases flow to other rewards cards that offer stronger value on everyday spending categories.
Key insight: That’s beginning to change. In 2026, we have observed several travel brands altering their benefits to prioritize everyday card usage alongside travel loyalty.
The question is: Why now?
COVID-19 Forced Travel Card Disruption
Six years ago, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, a sea change in card marketing occurred. As leisure travel halted, most travel cards’ core value propositions became unusable. Those unprecedented times forced travel brands to get creative and adjust their approaches to keep cardholders engaged.
One of the biggest challenges during the pandemic was that cardholders couldn’t fly or stay in hotels enough to maintain their coveted elite statuses. Many airline and hotel brands responded by extending elite statuses, rolling over qualifying miles, and/or offering cardholders additional pathways to maintain status through everyday spending. Delta extended its Medallion status and rolled qualifying activity forward, helping members preserve benefits into 2021 despite dramatically reduced travel. United offered similar incentives for its MileagePlus program, allowing members with top Premier status to retain their benefits through early 2022.2
Separately, several travel brands began rewarding cardholder activities happening at home versus on the road. Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton Honors were two programs that presented opportunities to earn rewards points on supermarket purchases during the summer of 2020.
Key insight: These strategic shifts helped generate a sense of goodwill among existing cardholders, as travel brands positioned themselves as helpful partners during a particularly challenging time. Some of these shifts likely cemented many cardholders’ long-term brand loyalty.
Business Travel Has Forever Changed
Though leisure travel has normalized in recent years, the composition of business travel has significantly changed due in large part to the rise of hybrid and remote work. The pandemic caused many companies to re-evaluate the necessity of regular business travel. As a result, many traditional “road warrior”-type roles, once especially popular in sales and consulting verticals, have been reduced or eliminated altogether.
As a result, fewer workers are traveling domestically weekly, which results in fewer miles flown and fewer hotel nights booked. This creates fewer opportunities for travel brands to build loyalty solely through travel activity. In response, travel co-brand cards have increasingly shifted loyalty mechanics from miles flown and nights stayed to dollars spent. Collectively, these changes forced travel brands to rethink a long-held assumption: that loyalty must be earned primarily through travel activity.
Key insight: As opportunities to engage cardholders through flights and hotel stays became less predictable, airlines and hotel brands increasingly looked to the one behavior that remained constant: spending. Rather than waiting for consumers to travel, travel co-brand cards began finding new ways to reward purchases occurring every day.
Shifting From Travel Rewards to Everyday Relevance
Historically, travel co-brands concentrated their richest rewards on flights, hotel stays, and other travel purchases. Today, many are increasingly competing with traditional rewards cards for everyday wallet share, offering bonus rewards on common spending categories such as dining, groceries, and gas. While 3X points on these categories have become increasingly common, some issuers are pushing even further to drive habitual card usage and earn coveted top-of-wallet status.
This trend is perhaps most clearly illustrated in recent travel co-brand card launches. In June, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts launched its first-ever premium credit card: the Wyndham Rewards Earner Premier Card. The card’s $395 annual fee allows cardholders to earn 4X points on eligible dining, grocery, and travel categories, including gas, EV charging, car rentals, rideshare, tolls, and trains.
Wyndham is betting that rewards this rich will encourage cardholders to reach for the card far beyond hotel stays and make it their preferred card for everyday purchases.
Key insight: Some issuers are encouraging everyday spending through richer rewards. Others are pursuing everyday relevance through lifestyle-oriented benefits. Two other co-brand travel cards added new rideshare benefits to their core value propositions this summer:
- Citi and American Airlines added up to $180 in Lyft credits annually on their Citi AAdvantage Executive World Legend Mastercard.
- American Express and Delta Airlines added up to a $120 annual rideshare credit ($10/month) for eligible Gold and Gold Business members on their Delta SkyMiles American Express Card.
These rideshare benefits are particularly relevant to younger consumers. Gen Z and Millennials are the generations most likely to use ride-hailing services weekly or more, at 16% and 12%, respectively. By connecting card value to a routine mobility expense, travel co-brands can extend their relevance beyond the trip itself and give younger cardholders another reason to keep the card top-of-wallet.
While some issuers focus on driving engagement among existing cardholders, others are rethinking acquisition strategies altogether. IHG introduced a record-breaking one this summer. The IHG One Rewards Traveler Credit Card offered new cardholders 125K IHG One Rewards Points—90K points earned after spending $2K on purchases within the first three months of opening and an additional 35K points earned after spending $4K within the first six months from account opening.
Unlike traditional welcome bonuses that can be achieved quickly and forgotten, IHG’s tiered structure encourages sustained card usage over a six-month period, giving the cardholder more opportunities to establish spending habits.
What This Means for Card Marketers
As travel brands increasingly focus on capturing a larger share of cardholders’ everyday spend, introducing richer earning opportunities, lifestyle-oriented benefits, and compelling acquisition offers designed to keep their cards at the top of consumers’ wallets year-round, the question becomes: How can card marketers respond? Consider the following:
- Loyalty is built through spend, not travel. If a cardholder is choosing a travel co-brand card, he or she has an affinity for the travel brand. It makes sense that brands save their richest benefits for travel-related activities. But if the economics are right, presenting cardholders with everyday benefits on categories like dining, groceries, and gas can go a long way. For marketers, being able to toggle between promoting rich travel benefits and the utility of everyday ones makes a card feel more approachable and therefore easier to position as a top-of-wallet pick.
- Strategize on how to drive habitual card usage. Rich welcome offers like IHG’s tiered bonus structure illustrate the power of rewarding sustained behavior, not just initial account opening. Marketers should explore how acquisition incentives can be designed to encourage long-term usage habits rather than short-term spikes in activity.
- Relevance drives top-of-wallet decisions. Whether through everyday bonus categories, rideshare benefits, or lifestyle credits, the strongest travel cards are finding ways to remain relevant outside their traditional category. Gradually, the battle for wallet share is being won in everyday moments, not just category-specific ones.
- Loyalty programs must continually evolve with consumer behavior. Travel brands were forced to rethink loyalty when consumers stopped traveling as frequently. The lesson for marketers extends beyond travel. Loyalty strategies cannot remain static when consumer behavior changes. The brands most likely to gain wallet share are those that continually evaluate how their customers’ habits, needs, and expectations are changing.
- Promote the experiences only your brand can deliver. One advantage travel co-brand cards still hold over many traditional rewards cards is their ability to connect spending to meaningful experiences. While cash back and everyday rewards can drive habitual usage, airline and hotel brands offer something different: aspirational travel experiences, elite perks, and memorable moments that many consumers actively value. Following the pandemic, younger consumers and families have demonstrated a renewed interest in spending on experiences, creating an opportunity for travel brands to showcase benefits that generic rewards cards cannot easily replicate.
Bottom line: For marketers, the challenge isn’t choosing between everyday utility and travel benefits. It’s finding ways to connect the two, demonstrating how everyday spending can help cardholders unlock future experiences that matter to them.
Ultimately, travel co-brand cards are becoming less dependent on travel itself. The winners won’t simply be the brands that offer the richest travel perks. They’ll be the issuers that can remain relevant during the hundreds of spending decisions that occur between trips. As travel brands continue expanding into everyday rewards, lifestyle benefits, and habit-forming acquisition strategies, the distinction between “travel card” and “everyday card” may continue to blur.
