Earn More Frequent Flyer Points With Shopping Portals

Make your frequent flyer membership work harder for you, and get you closer to your dream points holiday, through one little change in how you shop.

Airline shopping portals, such as Qantas Shopping and the Velocity eStore, can help you earn frequent flyer points from your favourite brands online when you start your shopping journey in their respective shopping portal.

Don’t fear: shopping portals are easy to use and require only one or two more steps to your shopping journey, and when you are sitting in a Business class or First class seat on your next getaway it’ll all be worth it!

Better still, you can double dip earning points when you shop through these online shopping portals and pay with a reward credit card or debit card that earns you frequent flyer points.

It’s not just airlines which give you the chance to earn more points. Banks have rewards programs too! These programs help you earn rewards points – such as Commonwealth Bank and ANZ Bank, and some hotel chains also have programs where you can earn more points with your everyday shopping and help you get one step closer to your next hotel stay.

How do shopping portals work?

A few tips on how shopping portals work and how to maximise the number of points you earn when shopping online –

  1. Always start your shopping in your chosen airline shopping portal
    Make sure you login with your frequent flyer details and enable cookies so that they can track the points you earn.
  2. Find the shop you want to shop and shop online
    It’s as simple as searching for your chosen store, click through to their website and shop as normal. Easy!

    There are a few brands which may require you to input your frequent flyer details into the respective account before you shop. One example I can think of is Booktopia with Qantas Shopping. but it will state this on the shop landing page in the respected shopping portal.
  3. Consider downloading a points prompter browser extension
    Some airlines have a browser extension which prompts you to log-in to the program when you land on the shop’s homepage. An example of this is the Qantas Points-Prompter.

    Do note that points prompters are opt-in for advertisers so I do recommend starting your journey in the shopping portal.
  4. Let the points roll in!
    Voila! Lots and lots of points for your shopping. Best of all, you didn’t have to wander the aisles of stores to find it all.
  5. Make sure you track your points
    While most airline shopping portals and cashback sites are pretty good with notifying you of your shop to say that it’s tracked, I do keep a notes document on my computer with all my shopping purchases, the spend amount and the date I believe I should be getting my points. This way I can check to ensure every purchase has been tracked and I get all the points!

What’s my strategy?

It’s really quite simple: if I can purchase something online and earn bonus miles, rather than going in-store (and not getting any bonus points), I’ll shop online.

There are a few exceptions, like when I can’t find my size online or one of the cashback sites are running a huge cashback rate on the brand I want to shop; but for the vast majority of my shopping, I will do a click-and-collect so I avoid shipping fees but can get the items routed to my nearest store.

I also tend to hold-off shopping until the shopping portals run a campaign where I can earn bonus points. These campaigns tend to happen every two-month and can be centred around themes like Spring Fashion and Health & Wellness, or by seasonal activities, Valentine’s Day and Christmas/Boxing Day.

With travel off the cards for Australians right now, I’ve been running a little experiment between airline shopping portals and cashback sites to see which offer the best value. Results coming soon!

Bookmark these shopping portals

Here is a list of shopping portals operated by airlines, hotels, and banks. Be sure to log into the portal before beginning shopping to ensure that your rewards are tracked.

Airline shopping portals

Bank rewards programs

Hotel loyalty programs

Share Tweet Pin it +1
About

Nicole is a frequent flying (sometimes) freelance writer with a love of aviation, cultural travel, and affordable luxury. When not studying towards her Masters or planning the next adventure, she works in one of Australia's top advertising agencies.