Points and miles for South African Travellers

The South African credit card market is unfortunately quite limited when it comes to earning travel rewards, especially compared to international credit cards that convert spend into valuable miles and points. 

Currently the Avios credit card remains one of the few viable options for frequent travellers, particularly for those who fly with British Airways and its oneworld alliance partners.

While the American Express and Avios credit cards, as well as the SAA Voyager card, do offer the ability to earn loyalty points or miles, the value of those earnings can be underwhelming. American Express, in particular, comes with high annual fees, and although points can be transferred to various partners, the overall return on spend isn’t always competitive.

The SAA Voyager card was once a strong contender, but with the airline’s relaunch as “SAA 2.0”, its route network has been significantly reduced. This limits the practical use of accumulated Voyager miles. Many of SAA’s previous destinations are now more affordably served by competitor airlines when paying cash. In such cases, the cost-benefit of redeeming miles versus simply booking with another carrier often favors the latter.

I personally rely on Marriott Bonvoy for the vast majority of my hotel stays. From Hong Kong to Hawaii, and nearly everywhere in between, including Umrah we have stayed at the Mariott Bonvoy. As the world’s largest hotel group, Marriott offers global coverage and is one of the most versatile loyalty programs.

A standout feature is their conversion rate: 3 Marriott points = 1 airline mile, with an added 25% bonus when transferring in blocks of 60,000 points. To put this into perspective, a free night at a hotel in Makkah costs around 60,000 points. This converts to 20,000 miles + 5,000 bonus miles with partners like Qatar Airways. That’s enough to upgrade to Qatar’s renowned Qsuites on the Johannesburg–Doha route potentially scoring the double bed setup with privacy doors, known as “the double bed in the sky.”

Marriott also allows dual earning opportunities with select airline partners. Through partnerships with Emirates and United Airlines, for example, you can earn both miles and points on qualifying hotel stays. Car rentals are often an overlooked source of generous point and mile accruals.

Certain international Marriott properties even offer up to 25,000 bonus points per stay—savvy travelers can maximize these by hotel-hopping. In fact, it’s often more cost-effective to book a high-end suite during a promotional period and earn a large chunk of points, rather than buying them outright. 

Saudia is an excellent redemption partner, offering one-way tickets for as low as 9,000 miles—making it easy to offset more than half the cost of a ticket. While they no longer operate in South Africa, they do fly to Mauritius at the same mileage rate. This opens creative opportunities for maximizing redemptions in the region.