3 credit card and travel deals that feel too good to last

With travel credit cards and loyalty programs, nothing lasts forever.

Welcome bonuses, benefits and rules are in constant flux. The best deals can last for years or be erased in a matter of weeks.

With that in mind, I’ve identified three opportunities to take advantage of in 2026, all of which seem too good to last forever. If you’re looking for a travel- or credit card-related deal this year, it’s hard to go wrong with these:

In 2025, we saw the release of several new premium credit cards and the overhaul of two luxury stalwarts: Chase Sapphire Reserve® (see rates and fees) and American Express Platinum Card®. Both of these luxury cards were refreshed with increased annual fees and offset by new, complicated benefits.

When Amex increased the Platinum card’s annual fee to a staggering $895 (see rates and fees), it also added hundreds of dollars in new benefits — many of which require extra steps or careful timing to use. Even so, this hasn’t stopped new cardmembers: Account approvals doubled compared to pre-refresh levels, according to Amex’s Q3 2025 earnings report. If increasing the card’s cost and offsetting it with progressively complicated perks is good for business, it’s not hard to imagine this trend will continue.

That’s what makes the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card stand out. Its annual fee is $395, or less than half of what the most expensive luxury consumer cards charge. And the benefits are refreshingly simple. Each year, you receive a $300 travel credit that can be used to pay for Capital One Travel bookings, including hotels, flights, rentals, vacation packages and activities.

Normally, I don’t book through a card-issuer travel site, because I prefer to shop around for the best price. That said, I’m comfortable using the Venture X credit to book through Capital One Travel because it offers an excellent price match guarantee. I price-matched rental car bookings at least six times in 2025, and each time it only required a phone call of 10 minutes or less. As long as the lower price is publicly available for an identical reservation within 24 hours of your original booking, you’ll receive the difference as a travel credit. And for select flights, Capital One Travel offers price drop protection, where you’ll automatically receive a travel credit of up to $50 if the price decreases within 10 days of booking.

The Capital One Venture X also gifts you 10,000 bonus miles each account anniversary, which is worth at least $100 in travel. You can redeem these miles for 1 cent each toward travel (including Capital One Travel bookings) or transfer them to a long list of travel loyalty programs.

With just two benefits, the Venture X is more affordable for me to keep than its cheaper sibling, the $95 Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. It’s also one of the most affordable ways for me to access top-tier credit card travel insurance, such as trip delay coverage that applies to delays of six hours or more (instead of the standard 12-hour delay requirement), primary rental car insurance and travel accident insurance.

The Venture X also has some of the most generous airport lounge benefits. You can add up to four authorized users for no additional cost, and each cardholder receives the same lounge access as the primary cardholder. This benefit includes over 1,500 Priority Pass lounges and a growing network of Capital One Lounges.

However, in what feels like the start of the card’s decline, its lounge access perks are being devalued beginning Feb. 1, 2026. After that date, you’ll need to pay a $125 fee per additional card to grant authorized users lounge access, and all cardholders will lose complimentary guest access. You can unlock two complimentary guests at Capital One Lounges and one complimentary guest at Capital One Landings after spending $75,000+ in a year.

Airport lounge access and a Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fee credit are perks generally associated with credit cards that have annual fees.

The U.S. Bank Altitude® Connect Visa Signature® Card bucks that trend by offering both benefits, albeit in a limited fashion. You’ll receive a Priority Pass™ Select airport lounge membership that includes four complimentary visits per year. Plus, once every four years, you can receive up to $100 back for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fees.

The lounge visits you get with this card are surprisingly useful, even if you already have unlimited complimentary visits with a different travel credit card. That’s because you can use these passes to receive Priority Pass restaurant credit (typically around $28 per pass), a feature that’s been removed from the lounge access you get with most other credit cards.

Those benefits are already substantial for a no-annual-fee card, but the U.S. Bank Altitude® Connect also features trip delay reimbursement, trip cancellation and interruption insurance and two additional, easy-to-overlook perks: SmartDelay and a complimentary GigSky mobile data plan.

The SmartDelay benefit grants lounge access to the cardholder and up to three travel companions when a flight is delayed by 120 minutes or more. You just need to register at least two hours before your flight departs. The lounge passes are emailed when you have an eligible delay.

GigSky is an eSIM service that keeps you connected while abroad. All U.S.-issued Visa Signature and Visa Infinite cardholders can receive a complimentary 15-day plan with 3GB of data for Visa Infinite cards and 1GB for Visa Signature cards. The Altitude Connect is a Visa Signature, but it exceeds the standard benefit for both cards by offering 5GB of data for 15 days at no cost to cardholders. There is no limit to the number of 5GB/15-day plans you can receive; you just need to wait until the previous plan has expired before enrolling in another.

The enhanced GigSky perk is slated to end in November 2026, although the benefit’s expiration has been extended in the past.

Over the years, one airline after another has shifted from fixed award prices based on zones or distances to dynamic pricing, making it harder to know exactly how much a flight will cost. American Airlines made this shift a few years ago, but its variable award pricing applies only to American Airlines flights. It still has generous fixed reward prices for partner airlines, and many of these flights are shockingly good deals.

You can redeem American Airlines AAdvantage miles for flights on world-class airlines or to far-flung destinations. This includes bucket-list awards with Etihad, Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific and many more.

You can explore American Airlines’ partner prices on its site. Some of the most tantalizing options include:

• 22,500 miles for off-peak economy flights from the U.S. to Europe
• 57,500 miles for business-class flights from the U.S to Europe
• 70,000 miles for business-class flights from the U.S to the Middle East
• 115,000 miles for first-class flights from the U.S to the Middle East
• 60,000 miles for business-class flights from the U.S to the Asia 1 region, which includes Japan and Korea
• 80,000 miles for first-class flights from the U.S to the Asia 1 region

To give you a sense of how favorable these prices are, you can usually earn between 50,000 to 100,000 AAdvantage miles from a single American Airlines co-branded credit card bonus. Right now, the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® has a bonus of 70,000 miles after spending $7,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening.

A one-way Qatar Airways business-class flight from Dallas, Texas, to Doha, Qatar, can easily cost $5,000+ — so with one welcome bonus, you could unlock over $5,000 in value. On top of that, the taxes and fees for these award flights are usually reasonable compared with what other airlines charge for the same flights.

A potential American Airlines partner award devaluation in 2026 is pure speculation on my part, but something happened in 2025 that has me on edge: AAdvantage miles became easier to earn.

American Airlines has long been the lone major U.S.-based carrier not to partner with a transferable travel rewards program. Outside of a brief partnership with Bilt and a previous limited-time option to transfer Citi ThankYou® Points to American Airlines, the only way to accumulate AAdvantage miles with a credit card was by having a co-branded Citi or Barclays American Airlines card.

However, Citi is taking over as the sole issuer of American Airlines credit cards. Along with this change, it has also added the American Airlines AAdvantage program as a ThankYou® Rewards transfer partner.

American Airlines cards are generally subpar for earning rewards on non-American Airlines purchases, but Citi offers several highly rewarding cards. You can earn up to 2% cash back (earned as 2X ThankYou® Points) everywhere with the Citi Double Cash® Card (1% as you buy and 1% as you pay) and 5% cash back (earned as 5X ThankYou® Points) on up to $500 spend on your top eligible category each month with the Citi Custom Cash® Card (then 1%).

Further, the Citi Strata Elite^℠ Card earns 6X points at restaurants on Friday and Saturday nights (6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET) and 3X points at restaurants any other time. Plus, it has a 100,000-point welcome bonus after spending $6,000 in the first three months.

While I love having access to more AAdvantage miles, rewards — like money — can lose value over time due to inflation.

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For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.