How to Book Flights With Bilt Rewards Travel Portal

For most people, paying rent is one of the largest (if not the largest) of their expense categories. However, as landlords typically don’t allow you to pay your rent with a credit card, most people aren’t earning any rewards on their rent payments. The Bilt Rewards program has solved this problem. If you live in a Bilt-affiliated property, you can sign up for a free account and pay your rent through the Bilt mobile app and earn Bilt Points. Or, whether or not you live in a Bilt-affiliated program, you can sign up for the Bilt Mastercard® and earn points by paying your rent online, up to 100,000 points in a calendar year.

These Bilt Rewards points can be redeemed in a variety of ways. One of the best ways is to redeem them for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal.

In this article, we’re going to explain how to use the Bilt Rewards Travel portal to book flights and how, by using this program, you can get a free flight around the world just by paying your rent through Bilt.

What Is the Bilt Rewards Travel Portal?

The Bilt Rewards portal is an online portal where Bilt Rewards members can pay their rent, view their rewards points balances and redeem those points in a variety of ways. Bilt Rewards points can be redeemed toward your rent payments, toward Amazon purchases, for fitness classes, for home decor and art through the Bilt Collection, toward the down payment for a mortgage, through transfer partners and for travel purchases.

In the Travel section of the Bilt Rewards portal, you have the option to redeem your points for hotels, flights, helicopter transport, car rentals, activities and travel packages. But, for the sake of this article, we’re only going to focus on booking flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal.

Bilt Rewards recently created an entirely new Bilt Rewards Travel portal (powered by Expedia), to which you’ll be redirected if you search for travel through the Bilt website. Or, if you want to access this new Bilt Rewards Travel portal directly, you can visit travel.biltrewards.com.

Who Can Access the Bilt Rewards Travel Portal?

The Bilt Rewards Travel portal is accessible to anyone who is a member of the Bilt Rewards program, regardless of whether or not you have the Bilt Rewards Mastercard.

To join the Bilt Rewards program, visit the Bilt Rewards website, click “Sign Up/Log In” and then enter some basic information. Then, to start earning Bilt points, you’ll need to download the Bilt app and start paying your rent through it. Note that your rental property needs to be a part of the Bilt affiliate network in order to earn points this way.

Alternatively, if the address where you’re currently paying rent isn’t part of the Bilt Rewards affiliate network, you can still earn points on rent and access the Bilt Rewards Travel portal by signing up for the Bilt Rewards Mastercard. This card allows you to pay your rent using an online clearing house payment through the Bilt app and thus earn points on your rent.

How to Book Flights Through the Bilt Rewards Travel Portal

Now that you’re aware of how to access the Bilt Rewards Travel portal and how to earn Bilt points, you’re ready to spend your points on flights. To do so, you can either visit the Bilt website and click on the “Travel” tab, or you can visit travel.biltrewards.com directly. Either way, you’ll end up at the Bilt Rewards Travel portal.

Once you’ve signed into the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, you’ll need to click on the “Flights” tab. Then, you can enter the details of your flight.

You’ll need to enter which kind of flight you’re trying to book (round-trip, one-way or multi-city), your departure and arrival airports, your desired travel dates, the number of travelers and your desired cabin class.

Then, once you click the “Search” button, you’ll be presented with a list of flights that match your search query and their respective prices in cash and in points.

Also, if you look at the left-hand side of the screen, you’ll see that you can filter your search results for specific airlines, number of stops (or nonstop), travel and baggage, departure and arrival time and layover airport. These filter options are extremely helpful for finding the perfect flight quickly.

If you look at the bottom-left corner of each flight option, you can also see how many Bilt points you could earn by booking each flight.

Once you find the flight that you want to book, you can click on that flight and then select the fare class that you want to purchase.

Make sure to pay attention to the baggage allowance, the seat choice and the refundability when choosing your fare class.

Finally, once you’ve selected your flights and fare classes, you can click the “Check out” button and continue to the final checkout page.

Then, you’ll just need to enter your traveler details, payment details and the email address where you’d like to receive your confirmation. Finally, agree to the terms and conditions and you can complete your booking.

Booking With Cash

To book flights through the Bilt Rewards portal with cash, select the flight that you want to book, then select cash as your payment method when it’s time to check out.

If you pay for a flight through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal with a Bilt Rewards Mastercard, you’ll earn 2X Bilt points per $1 spent on your airfare. If you pay for a flight through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal with a card other than the Bilt Rewards Mastercard, you’ll earn 1X point per $1 spent on airfare. These points will take between 5 and 7 business days to arrive in your Bilt Rewards account.

If you book a flight with cash through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal and that flight is eligible for cancellation, you’ll receive a full refund of your cash within 5 to 7 business days if you decide to cancel.

It’s worth noting that you can still earn airline miles on flights booked through Bit Rewards Travel. In order to do so, you’ll just have to input your frequent flyer when checking in for your flight.

Booking With Points

To pay for your flight with Bilt points through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, select points as your payment method when checking out. If you don’t have enough points to pay for the entire airfare, you can use points to pay for a portion of your airfare and then use cash to cover the rest.

Whether you cover your entire airfare with points or only a portion, Bilt points will always be worth exactly 1.25 cents apiece when redeemed for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal. This is good value compared to other credit card issuers’ travel portals. For instance, Capital One Miles are only worth 1 cent apiece when redeemed for flights through the Capital One Travel portal and Citi ThankYou Points are likewise worth 1 cent when redeemed for flights through Citi Travel℠.

Once you pay for your flight with points, those points will be immediately deducted from your account. If you booked a flight that was eligible for cancellation with points, you’ll receive a full refund of any points or cash that you spent on that flight in 5 to 7 business days if you request a cancellation.

You can also earn airline miles on Bilt Rewards Travel points bookings by entering your selected frequent flyer number when checking in for your flight.

Advantages to Booking Flights Through Bilt Rewards Travel

There’s a lot to like about the Bilt Rewards Travel portal. For one, all Bilt points are worth 1.25 cents apiece when redeemed for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, which is better than the value you’ll get through many other credit card travel portals. Here are some reasons that you might like the Bilt Rewards Travel portal.

Redeem Points for Almost Any Available Flight

One of the best advantages of the Bilt Rewards Travel portal is that you can redeem points for nearly any available flight. If you can buy a flight with cash through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, you can also buy it with points.

By contrast, if you want to book a flight with airline miles through a frequent flyer program, in most cases, not every flight is going to be available to book with points. And, even on flights that can be booked with points, not every seat on that flight is going to be available to book with points.

So, if you want a wider range of available flights and you want to spend less time searching for available award flights, redeeming Bilt points for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal is a good option.

Points Are Worth 1.25 Cents Apiece

When redeeming Bilt points for flights, you’ll always get a value of exactly 1.25 cents per point. This is good value compared to many of the other redemptions methods available through Bilt Rewards. When redeeming Bilt points towards your rent payments, towards Amazon purchases, for purchases from the Bilt Collection or for fitness classes, you won’t ever get value exceeding 1 cent per point.

This is also solid value compared to what you’ll get when redeeming points or miles through other credit card issuers’ travel portals. When redeemed through their respective travel portals for flights, American Express Membership Rewards points, Capital One Miles and Citi ThankYou Points are all worth only 1 cent.

When redeemed for flights through Chase Travel℠, Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be worth 1.25 cents or even 1.5 cents apiece. However, you have to have certain Sapphire cards or Ink Business cards to achieve those values (whereas all Bilt Rewards members enjoy a value of 1.25 cents per point when redeeming for flights through Bilt Rewards Travel).

To illustrate, if you wanted to buy a flight that cost $400 with Capital One Miles through Capital One Travel, you’d have to redeem 40,000 Capital One Miles. On the other hand, if you wanted to purchase the same $400 flight with Bilt points through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, it would only cost you 32,000 Bilt points.

Disadvantages of Booking Flights Through Bilt Rewards Travel

While the Bilt Rewards Travel portal is very convenient and offers solid value per point, there are still some drawbacks to the Bilt Rewards Travel portal that you should be aware of.

Potentially Better Value Per Mile Through Transfer Partners

One of the biggest reasons you might not want to redeem your Bilt points for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal is that you could potentially get significantly more value per point by transferring Bilt points to partner airline loyalty programs. However, you should be aware that taking advantage of these transfer partners typically requires more time and knowledge.

Here is the list of Bilt’s current airline transfer partners (all of which offer a 1:1 transfer ratio):

By transferring your Bilt Rewards to these airline transfer partners, it’s possible to find flight redemptions that offer considerably more than 1.25 cents per point, especially because Bitl Rewards has some high quality transfer partners.

For example, one of Bilt’s best transfer partners is Air Canada Aeroplan, and one of the best sweet spots in this program is for flights between mainland U.S. and Hawaii. We found a round-trip economy flight between Los Angeles (LAX) and Maui (OGG) on United Airlines for 12,500 Aeroplan points and 61 Canadian dollars (about $45) in taxes and fees. Thus, to purchase this flight, you could transfer 12,500 points from Bilt Rewards to Air Canada Aeroplan.

If you were to purchase this exact same flight with cash on the United Airlines website (with the same fare class), it would cost you $420.

By redeeming Aeroplan points for this flight (which you can earn by transferring Bilt points at a 1:1 ratio) instead of buying it with cash, you’d be getting a value of 3 cents per point.

As Bilt points are worth 1.25 cents apiece when redeemed through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, you’d be getting more than double that value by redeeming your Bilt points with Air Canada.

Thus, by redeeming Bilt points for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, you may be missing out on more value elsewhere.

The Bottom Line

If you currently pay rent at an address that’s part of the Bilt Rewards affiliate network, then we would recommend looking into paying your rent through the Bilt Rewards app or even signing up for the Bilt Mastercard. For most people, paying rent is a huge expense that they don’t earn any rewards on. By using the Bilt Rewards program, you can earn points and work toward free flights just by paying your rent.

If you do rack up a balance of Bilt Rewards points, one of the best ways to spend those points is to redeem them for flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal. When redeemed this way, Bilt points are worth 1.25 cents apiece. That’s better value than you’d get for most other redemption methods through the Bilt Rewards program. It’s also better value than you’d get for redeeming Amex points, Capital One miles or Citi points for flights through their respective travel portals.

However, the one major drawback of redeeming Bilt points for flights through Bilt Rewards Travel is that you can usually get even more value by transferring Bilt points to partner frequent flyer programs and redeeming them for flights through those programs. But redeeming points this way can be time-consuming and fairly confusing.

So, if you want to keep things simple, booking flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal is a solid way to spend your points. You can also earn points by booking cash flights through the Bilt Rewards Travel portal, which is also a good option if Bilt Rewards is your rewards program of choice.