Capital One Travel portal guide

Since launching in fall 2021, Capital One’s travel portal, aptly named Capital One Travel, has continued to innovate in building tools to help book and plan your next trip. The portal provides a seamless way to book trips, hotels and cars with your card and/or your Capital One miles. With access to exclusive hotel programs alongside trip pricing tools powered by Hopper, a well-known travel technology company, the portal can be a great asset when researching and booking your travel needs.

This guide will explain more about the portal, including how to use all the bells and whistles it offers, such as price prediction, price watch, price drop protections and the ability to cancel bookings for any reason. This guide will also help you make the most of your hard-earned rewards and cardholder benefits.

What is Capital One Travel?

Capital One Travel is the travel rewards portal that allows Capital One cardholders to book travel accommodations with their credit card rewards (and cash if needed). The portal is similar to offerings provided by American Express and Chase, among other issuers, to help cardholders more easily book their next trip and redeem their rewards. These branded travel portals act as a travel search engine to help cardholders redeem travel rewards and find better deals in the process.

Access the full slate of benefits at Capital One Travel by signing into your Capital One account. Once you decide on the travel to book, you can choose to pay for it using an eligible credit card or, if you have a bank of Capital One miles, you can redeem them directly for your booking.

Who can use the Capital One Travel Portal?

Any Capital One rewards cardholder is eligible to use the travel portal for their needs, even if your card earns cash back instead of Capital One miles. Many other issuers reserve their travel portals solely for cardholders with a premium travel card.

If you have one or more of the following Capital One credit cards, you’re eligible to use the travel portal and earn elevated rewards on certain travel booked through it:

Additional Capital One cards, such as the Capital One Quicksilver Student Rewards Credit Card, give cardholders access to the portal, but don’t offer elevated rewards on bookings.

Benefits of using Capital One Travel

Capital One has partnered with travel technology company Hopper to power the portal. Together, they have added features to help you book your trip with confidence and provide additional context to your searches. Here are some of the key benefits and offerings including within the travel portal:

Price prediction technology

When searching for flights in Capital One Travel, the tool will help you pay the best possible price by alerting you if the price available is likely to drop or increase. If they do not recommend purchasing at that moment, they offer an easy way to be alerted when the price does drop. With billions of flight price data points captured every day, the issuer claims that this technology can predict flight prices with 95 percent accuracy.

You can use the travel portal’s booking feature to place a reservation for a flight right away or wait for a better price. The price prediction tool will recommend the best time to book your flight, which could help you save up to 15 percent on your flight.

This feature will appear as a helpful information box when available for a given flight search. In the example below, when looking for a flight between New York and London in April 2024, it recommends waiting till closer to the travel date to book that ticket.

Price alerts on flights

Maybe you aren’t quite ready to book yet, but want to start gathering info. Capital One allows you to monitor flights and can notify you via email when there is a price change. These alerts can help you decide when to book your ticket.

For a search for a December trip to Cape Town, South Africa the portal shared that you could save $187 per ticket by waiting and watching this trip for a price alert update.

Price drop prediction

Once you buy a ticket via the portal after using the price prediction tool, Capital One will continue to monitor ticket prices for the next 10 days. If the ticket price drops below what you paid in that time span, Capital One will provide you with up to $50 in travel credit to cover the difference.

Best price match guarantee

Capital One will refund the difference for the price of a flight, hotel or rental car as travel credit if you find a better price on another site within 24 hours of booking with Capital One Travel. Submit a price match claim by contacting Capital One Travel via the help center or by calling them at 844-422-6922. Remember, the refund will come in the form of travel credits to use for future Capital One Travel bookings.

Price freeze

If you aren’t quite ready to book your flight, you can pay a small fee to “freeze” the flight price until you are ready to confirm the booking. Capital One will hold that price for you until the expiration date of your frozen price. Look for the expiration date before you complete your purchase.

For example, you could freeze the price on a ticket from Miami, Florida to Lima, Peru for $9 or 900 miles per person. Be sure to review the terms and timeline for your price freeze on the portal before freezing a price.

Cancel for any reason coverage

This feature can provide some flexibility to your travel bookings as needed. For a fee, this option allows you to cancel your flight — with no penalties — up to a set time within 24 hours prior to your scheduled departure. Depending on the terms of your booking, you will have the option to receive a refund ranging from 70 percent to 100 percent of your flight’s costs.

How to book with Capital One Travel

Here’s how to book flights, hotels and car rentals through the travel portal:

Book flights in the Capital One travel portal

To book a flight from the portal, select the Flights option from the portal homepage. From there, you can enter the cities you wish to travel between and fill out all the necessary information.

As you go to select your travel date(s), the portal will provide a helpful color-coded guide alerting you of the price variances by day. If you’ve got some flexibility, you can choose from different pricing categories to get lower fares:

You can also filter your results by airline, price, number of stops, time, flight number and other preferences.

Once you arrive at a ticket you’d like to book, you can follow the prompts to choose the fare options you want. Right before checking out, you’ll see the option to freeze your fare until you are ready to book, which you can pay for in miles or cash. If you don’t want to freeze your fare, you can continue to the checkout where you’ll choose your seat and how you want to pay.

Book hotels in the Capital One Travel portal

The process of booking hotel accommodations is similar to booking airfare; simply search for hotels by location and date. From there, you can filter properties for specific amenities, such as parking or breakfast. The search results page will show you a map with hotel locations, price per night and the total price. The portal also provides the TripAdvisor rating of that particular property as well.

Book car rentals in the Capital One Travel portal

You can also book a rental car through the Capital One portal. Once you’ve entered your desired pickup and dropoff locations, you can go through the options to narrow them down based on the rental company, cost or your specific needs.

Should you book travel through Capital One Travel?

Whether you should book travel via the Capital One Travel portal depends on your goals and needs, but there are some common pros and cons.

The portal can be a helpful component of your travel booking process. But even if Capital One Travel becomes your go-to for booking travel, don’t forget to check other booking options to make sure you’re getting the best deal.

Other options for redeeming your Capital One miles

In addition to the travel portal, Capital One offers cardholders additional ways to redeem their miles. Additional options include:

Transfer miles to travel partners

It can be advantageous to transfer your miles to one of Capital One’s transfer partners. This option may save money if your miles pick up more value upon transfer. In fact, Capital One miles are worth just 1 cent each when redeemed through the portal or for statement credit to cover a travel purchase; however, they’re worth an average of 1.7 each when transferred to a high-value travel partner, according to Bankrate’s latest valuations.

Most partners allow transfers at a 1:1 ratio, but Capital One sometimes runs promotions in which you can transfer miles and receive a bonus with the transfer partner. For instance, at the time of publishing, cardholders could receive 1,300 Virgin Points for every 1,000 Capital One miles transferred.

To complete a transfer, you will need to link your loyalty program account to your Capital One account. Once you have your member number, you can plug it into the miles transfer screen, and Capital One will move your miles to the loyalty program of your choice. The transfer process may be immediate or could take a few hours. When the miles appear in your loyalty membership account, you can then book your travel directly through the travel brand where you transferred your points.

Cover past travel purchases

You can use your Capital One miles to cover travel purchases up to 90 days old. Although there’s no guarantee exactly how your travel purchases will be coded, generally, Capital One miles will cover travel-related expenses such as airfare, hotel stays, train tickets, car rentals, limousine services, bus tickets, cruises, taxis, travel agents and timeshares.

The bottom line

The Capital One Travel portal can be a great way to book your next trip. With its price prediction technology, price freezes and other tools designed to make trip planning a breeze, it’s a useful benefit accessible to Capital One rewards cardholders.

Keep in mind that the most lucrative travel rewards strategies, however, usually involve more than one travel rewards currency, so check out other travel rewards cards if you’re on a journey to maximize your credit card rewards.

*The information about the Capital One Spark Miles Select for Business and the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card has been collected independently by Bankrate. Card details have not been reviewed or approved by the card issuer.