How to Book Flights Through the Citi Travel Portal

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All information about the Citi Custom Cash® Card and Citi Double Cash® Card has been collected independently by 10xtravel.com.

Having replaced the now-discontinued Citi Premier® Card with the Citi Strata Premier® Card, Citi is becoming a more and more attractive credit card issuer to travel enthusiasts. This new-and-improved version of the card now offers 10X points on hotels, rental cars and attractions booked through Citi Travel as well as 3X points on all air travel. These are excellent rewards rates for a card with an annual fee of just $95.

Citi also released a no-annual-fee Citi Strata℠ Card and a premium Citi Strata Elite℠ Card in 2025, making the issuer an even stronger competitor in the travel credit card space.

Citi has made major improvements to its Citi Travel booking portal over the last few years as well, making it easy to find the best travel options through Citi and earn rewards for booking them. Additionally, you can redeem Citi ThankYou points to cover the cost of a flight or other travel booking through the Citi Travel portal.

In this article, we’ll explain the process of booking award flights and cash flights through the Citi Travel portal, so you can easily navigate this platform and find the best possible flight deals.

What Is the Citi Travel Portal?

The Citi Travel portal is an online travel booking portal through which certain Citi cardholders can book flights, hotels, rental cars and tickets to attractions. Cardholders can choose to either pay for travel with cash and earn Citi points or they can pay for their travel booking with Citi points. Travel bookings can also be paid for with a combination of cash and points.

With this portal, Citi cardholders can book over 1.4 million hotels worldwide, flights with most major airlines and attractions all around the world.

Who Can Access the Citi Travel Portal?

The Citi Travel portal can be accessed by anyone who has a Citi ThankYou points-earning card. This includes cashback credit cards (such as Citi Custom Cash® Card or Citi Double Cash® Card) as these cards earn rewards in the form of ThankYou points (which can then be redeemed for statement credits, direct deposits, checks by mail, gift cards, travel through the Citi Travel portal and more).

And, of course, you can also access the Citi Travel portal if you have a credit card in the Strata family, including:

• Citi Strata Elite℠ Card
• Citi Strata Premier® Card
• Citi Strata℠ Card

Additionally, those who have now-discontinued ThankYou points-earning credit cards (such as Citi Prestige Card or Citi Rewards+® Card) can access the Citi Travel portal and redeem points for travel.

How to Book Flights Through the Citi Travel Portal

In order to access the Citi Travel portal, you’ll first need to visit the Citi website and sign in using your account credentials. Then, click on the “Rewards & Offers” tab from the toolbar at the top of the homepage and select the “Citi Travel® Portal” option from the drop-down menu.

You’ll then be redirected to the Citi Travel portal homepage, where you can choose whether you’d like to search for a hotel, flight, car or attraction.

If you select the “Flights” option, you’ll be prompted to enter all necessary information for your desired flight itinerary, including your flight type (round-trip or one-way), your departure airport, your arrival airport, your travel dates, your desired cabin class and the number of passengers on the itinerary. You can also click the “Direct only” checkbox if you want to search for nonstop flights only. Once all of that information is entered, click the “Search flights” button to conduct your search.

You’ll then be shown a list of flight results that match your search query along with their prices in both cash and Citi ThankYou points. You can choose to filter these results by airline, number of stops, departure and arrival time, price and cabin class. You can also sort your results by cheapest, best overall, fastest and number of stops.

Once you find a flight result that suits your needs, you can add it to your itinerary by clicking on it and then clicking the “Select” button that appears. You’ll be able to see more flight details and the baggage allowance policies for your flight at this stage.

If you’re flying round-trip, you will repeat this process and select your return flight. Once you’ve done so, you’ll be directed to the “Customer information” page, where you’ll need to enter a gender, first and last name, birth date and nationality for each passenger on your itinerary. You can also enter your TSA PreCheck number here if you have one.

Finally, you’ll proceed to the “Payment” page. At this point, you can choose whether you want to pay for your flight with cash, ThankYou points or a combination of the two.

When using Citi points to pay for either the entire cost of your trip or a portion of the cost, each point is worth exactly 1 cent apiece. So, if you were to book a flight that cost $844, it would require about 84,400 points. If you want to use points to cover $200 of that total cost, you’d need to spend 20,000 points.

Once you’ve entered your payment method, click the “Confirm Purchase” button at the bottom of the page. Then, you’ll be shown a confirmation number for your booking and you’ll receive a confirmation email with this number as well. You may need that confirmation number to check in to your flight.

Booking Over the Phone

It is also possible to book flights with cash, with ThankYou points or with a combination of the two by calling the Citi Travel customer service line at 1-833-737-1288. By calling this number, you can speak to a representative who will assist you through the process of finding a flight and completing your booking.

However, booking through the customer service line may require you to wait on hold if the line is busy. Plus, it can be difficult to understand all of your options when speaking on the phone, making it harder to ensure that you’re getting the best deal. For these reasons, we strongly recommend making your booking online.

Advantages to Booking Flights Through Citi Travel

As mentioned above, the Citi Travel portal has received many improvements over the last few years. In the following sections, we’ll look at a few of the reasons why booking flights through the Citi Travel portal is a good idea.

Book Any Available Flight with Points

The biggest advantage of the Citi Travel portal is that you can redeem ThankYou points for any available flight, regardless of which airline, date or cabin class you’re searching for. If you can buy a flight with cash through the Citi Travel portal, you can also book that flight with points.

As we’ll discuss more in-depth later, Citi points can also be transferred to partner frequent flyer programs and redeemed for flights through those programs. However, when redeeming points this way, it can be very difficult to find award availability on your desired airline, dates and route, especially when searching for premium-cabin tickets.

Booking through the Citi Travel portal makes it very easy to find a flight that suits your needs and book that flight with points.

Easy to Use

Another great aspect of the Citi Travel portal is that it makes it very easy to search for flights and find the perfect flight to suit your needs. Whether you’re booking with cash, points or a combination of the two, the Citi Travel portal functions just like any other travel booking engine. By contrast, booking award flights with some frequent flyer programs can be confusing due to difficult-to-navigate web interfaces.

Plus, the Citi Travel portal’s flight booking engine has plenty of helpful filters and sorting tools to help you narrow down your search and quickly identify the best possible flight for you.

24-Hour Cancellation Window for Full Refund

As with most credit card travel booking portals, bookings made through the Citi Travel portal are eligible for a full refund if canceled within 24 hours after booking. This can be especially helpful if you want to secure yourself a seat on a flight that’s in high demand even if you’re not 100% certain that you want to take that flight.

To cancel a flight that you booked through the Citi Travel portal, log in to the portal, click on your name in the top-left corner of the homepage and then select “My bookings” from the drop-down menu that appears.

From there, click on your flight and then choose to cancel that flight. If you confirm your cancellation within 24 hours after you initially made your booking, you should be entitled to a full refund.

Drawbacks to Booking Flights Through Citi Travel

While the Citi Travel portal is a great place to book flights with cash or points for many reasons, there are also some drawbacks you should be aware of before you decide to book your next flight through this platform.

In the following sections, we’ll identify some reasons why you may not want to book a flight through Citi Travel.

Flights with Some Airlines Aren‘t Available

One disadvantage of searching for flights through the Citi Travel portal is that this platform doesn’t market flights from every airline. In particular, many small, low-cost airlines are excluded from the Citi Travel portal.

Most notably, Southwest Airlines flights can’t be booked through Citi Travel, and Southwest flights on certain routes can be considerably cheaper than flights on the same route operated by any other airline. So, before you book your next domestic flight through the Citi Travel portal, you should first check if there are any better or cheaper flights available on that route from airlines that aren’t marketed on Citi Travel.

You Can Often Get Better Value Through Transfer Partners

As mentioned earlier, Citi ThankYou points can also be transferred to partner frequent flyer programs (but only if you have certain Citi credit cards). Here’s the current list of frequent flyer programs to which Citi points can be transferred:

By transferring your Citi points to certain transfer partners and then redeeming the resulting miles for flights, you can often get a value of several cents per point. By contrast, when booking flights with points through the Citi Travel portal, you’ll always get a fixed value of 1 cent per point.

For example, one program to which you make 1:1 transfers of Citi ThankYou points is the Avianca LifeMiles program. So, for example, if you were to transfer 30,000 Citi points to the LifeMiles program, you’d receive 30,000 Avianca miles.

With those 30,000 Avianca miles, you could book a round-trip economy-class United Airlines itinerary between Los Angeles (LAX) and Honolulu (HNL). You’d also have to pay $34 in taxes and fees.

If you were to book the same flights with cash through the United Airlines website, it would cost you about $624.

Thus, factoring in the taxes and fees you’d have to pay for the award flight, this redemption would yield a value of about 2 cents per point, which is double the value you would get through the Citi Travel portal. There are plenty of redemptions of equal or better value available through Citi’s transfer partners.

So, if you want to get the most possible value out of your Citi ThankYou points, you should stick to redeeming them through transfer partners. However, this redemption method requires more time and effort and a certain amount of knowledge to identify high-value flight redemptions through partners. If you’re less concerned with maximizing the value of your points and you’d rather make the booking process as easy as possible, you should stick to the Citi Travel portal.

No Price Match Guarantee

Unlike many other similar credit card travel booking portals, the Citi Travel portal doesn’t offer a price match guarantee. So, in some cases, you may find a flight at a lower price through another booking portal or airline website.

For comparison, Capital One’s travel booking site offers a price match guarantee. This means if you find a flight (or rental car or hotel booking) at a lower price through another website, Capital One will reimburse you, generally with a Capital One Travel credit, for the difference between that price and the price you paid.

The fact that Citi Travel doesn’t offer this benefit is disappointing. And, if you’re concerned with getting the lowest possible price on your travel bookings, you may want to check other booking portals for a lower price before completing a Citi Travel booking.

The Bottom Line

All in all, the Citi Travel portal is a great tool that allows Citi cardholders to easily book flights both with cash and with Citi points. Unfortunately, when redeeming Citi points through Citi Travel, you’ll always get a value of 1 cent per point. By contrast, by transferring points to partner frequent flyer programs and using them to book award flights, you could potentially get several cents per point in value.

So, if you’re interested in maximizing the value of your points, we recommend booking through Citi’s transfer partners. If you’re more interested in finding flights easily and sacrificing some value, then the Citi Travel portal is a hassle free option for booking flights.

The Citi Travel portal remains an excellent place to book flights with cash, especially if you have the Citi Strata Premier Card, which earns 3X points on flight bookings. However, you may want to check if a flight on your desired route is available at a lower price through another portal, as Citi Travel doesn’t have a price match guarantee and doesn’t market flights from certain small, low-cost airlines (including Southwest Airlines).