Editor's Choice: Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards

Aside from death and taxes, you can add frequent flyer miles devaluations to the list of certainties in life. With that in mind, if you are tired of constant devaluation of your FF miles, high fuel surcharges and just do not want to do all the leg work in squeezing out the best deal for your money on your miles, then a card like this will fit like a glove. You can earn double points on everything (unlike FF cards where only earn double miles when you buy their airline tickets). You also get 5% bonus points deposited into your account when you use our existing points for travel. To top it off, the card has no foreign transaction fee. And you could also access your FICO score for free as a card member.

For those who do not want to cough out the annual fee, Barclays also offer a no annual fee version of their Arrival card. The sacrifice is that you do not earn 2X points on everything, but just on travel and dining. You still get a 5% bonus on the points you use for travel. For other norma expenses, you will earn 1X. Other features like the absence of foreign transaction fees and free access to your FICO score are still key features that will attract many applicants.

The Capital One Venture Rewards is very similar to the Barclays Arrival Plus Elite World Mastercard in that you can earn double points for every dollar you spend. It also has no foreign transaction fees. Unlike Barclays, you do not get 10% bonus points each time you use them for travel and you also do not get your Free FICO scores. In that sense, Barclays is a slightly superior card. Nevertheless, it is still one of the better cards out there for those who would rather collect credit card points rather than frequent flyer miles which is devaluing at an astounding rate.

The reason this is such a great card for travel is because aside from having a good frequent guest program, you can also transfer Starpoints to frequent flyer partners (mostly at a one for one ratio). They have over 30 partners, more than any other reward program. As a bonus, if you transfer 20,000 Starpoints, you will get a 5,000 bonus miles as well. For those who are members of a few frequent flyer programs, this is one card to consider carrying.

he highlight of this card is that you can earn triple points when you use the card to buy airline tickets. It will suit the true frequent flyer and not just those looking to credit cards to earn miles and points. The Membership Rewards program was one of the first to start partnering with airlines and the ability to transfer MR points into miles remains a great attraction for this card. The key to taking advantage of this is to understand the alliances among the FF programs and transferring it to the appropriate miles to get the best bang for the buck.

The Ultimate Rewards program, which is the reward program of Chase, is quite similar to the Membership Rewards program in that it has several airline and hotel partners. Card members area allowed to transfer points to any of their partners. One of the advantages that this card has over the Amex MR and Starwood program is that it has exclusive partners. For example, United Continental, SouthWest, Hyatt are all UR partners and not part of MR at all. United Continental is a partner of Starwood, but you would require 2 points to get 1 mile. Depending on the airline and your frequent flyer membership, you might very well choose this card over the others.