HSBC TravelOne swaps luggage for 30,000 miles sign-up bonus

HSBC has launched a new welcome offer for its TravelOne card, with up to 30,000 bonus miles available for applications submitted by 31st December 2026, provided you have S$1,000+ of spend to make by the end of the month after your card account is opened.

The Samsonite luggage that featured in the previous offer is gone, with an extra 10,000 miles taking its place for both new and existing HSBC cardholders. If you never wanted the suitcase, that’s a straightforward improvement.

There’s still no lower spend tier, as there was under the 33,600-mile offer that ran until 30th June. This one is S$1,000 or nothing.

Remember, too, that in late 2024 HSBC devalued KrisFlyer transfers, increasing the points required per mile awarded by 20%.

That means the sign-up bonus converts to only 25,000 KrisFlyer miles. To unlock the full 30,000 miles, you’ll need to transfer into one of HSBC’s ‘2.5:1 partners’ such as British Airways Avios, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, or Air France-KLM Flying Blue.

New to HSBC: 30,000 miles

The latest HSBC T1 card sign-up bonus for those new to HSBC is worth 30,000 bonus miles.

The promotion is valid for applications between 1st November 2026 and 31st December 2026. Your card must be approved by 14th January 2027.

If you’re new to HSBC, the bonus is:

• 30,000 miles (awarded as 75,000 Reward points)

requiring a minimum spend of S$1,000.

  APPLY HERE

Existing HSBC customers: 20,000 miles

HSBC is also offering bonus miles to its existing customers, with 20,000 miles on the table, double what they were offered under the previous promotion.

The promotion is also valid for applications between 1st November 2026 and 31st December 2026, with card approval required by 14th January 2027.

If you’re existing to HSBC, the bonus is:

• 20,000 miles (awarded as 50,000 Reward points)

again requiring a minimum spend of S$1,000.

Do also note that if you have taken out an HSBC credit card as primary cardholder within the last year, you don’t qualify for either the existing customer or the new customer bonus.

Miles instead of luggage

Under the previous offer, new applicants received 20,000 miles plus a Samsonite ZELTUS 69cm Spinner Exp case, which HSBC valued at S$680, while existing cardholders got 10,000 miles plus the same case.

This time both groups get 10,000 extra miles in its place.

As we noted at the time, the S$680 figure was never the realistic one. On a parallel promotion for its Advance and Live+ cards, HSBC offered S$200 cashback as an alternative to a comparable Samsonite case, and with three HSBC cards giving away luggage at once, even that looked like a ceiling for resale.

At a valuation of 1.8 cents per mile, 10,000 miles are worth S$180, so on paper it’s close to the same.

In practice, we think the miles win for most of our readers. They’re more flexible, and you won’t need to collect the case with an SMS code, or sell it on if you didn’t want a large check-in suitcase in the first place.

It’s still not quite as generous as the 33,600 miles on offer until 30th June this year, though. Here’s how the TravelOne’s welcome offers have moved recently.

HSBC TravelOne sign-up bonuses (2026)
Offer period	New to HSBC	Existing HSBC
Until 30 Jun 2026	33,600 miles	21,600 miles
1 Jul – 31 Oct 2026	20,000 miles + Samsonite case	10,000 miles + Samsonite case
1 Nov – 31 Dec 2026	30,000 miles	20,000 miles

New-to-bank applicants are still 3,600 miles short of the first-half offer, but existing cardholders are now within 1,600 miles of it.

Annual fee payment is a must

For both new and existing cardholders, the bonus is subject to:

• payment of the card’s first year annual fee of S$196.20, which will be charged even if you don’t meet the spend threshold, and
• you consenting to receive marketing or promotional materials from the bank during your application, and retaining this consent at least until the bonus miles are credited.

Don’t forget the latter step, which is essential, otherwise no bonus will be coming your way.

Qualifying spend period

Whether you’re a new or existing HSBC cardholder, the qualifying spend period is based on the date your card account is opened, as follows:

Card opening date	Qualifying spend period	Bonus miles credit
1 – 30 Nov 2026	1 Nov – 31 Dec 2026	by 30 Mar 2027
1 – 31 Dec 2026	1 Dec 2026 – 31 Jan 2027	by 30 Apr 2027
1 – 14 Jan 2027*	1 Jan – 28 Feb 2027	by 14 May 2027

* Applies to applications submitted by 31st December 2026, where the card account is then opened in early January 2027.

If you open your card account towards the beginning of a calendar month, you’ll have nearly two full months to meet the minimum spend requirement. HSBC then aims to credit the bonus points within 120 days of your card account opening date, which gives the latest dates in the right-hand column.

Oddly, the terms also say qualifying customers will be notified in their credit card statement by 28th February 2027. That date is carried over unchanged from the previous promotion, and can’t work for cards opened in January, whose spend period runs until that same day, so we’d go by the 120-day timeframe instead.

The timing has a seasonal upside too. Open your card account in November and your qualifying spend period runs until 31st December, so your Christmas shopping can work towards that S$1,000, while January openings run until 28th February, covering Chinese New Year.

One small detail worth noting is that your “Card Account Opening Date” is defined as the calendar month printed on the letter that arrives with your card, not your approval date.

Base miles earning is on top

The sign-up bonus is awarded in addition to the base miles you earn on the qualifying spend itself. Assuming transfers to the bank’s “2.5:1 partners”, these are:

• 1.2 mpd for local currency spending; and
• 2.4 mpd for foreign currency transactions.

So S$1,000 of local spend adds 1,200 base miles, taking a new cardholder to 31,200 miles in total, or exactly 26,000 KrisFlyer miles with no points left over.

As with the previous offer, HSBC’s advertised 30,000 miles is the bonus alone, with no base miles padding out the headline figure.

Cost per mile

Since this sign-up bonus requires payment of the card’s S$196.20 annual fee, here’s how the cost per mile stacks up.

Note that these figures treat the fee as though it buys nothing but miles, ignoring the four complimentary lounge visits per calendar year – and because that allowance resets on 1st January, a card approved in November or December yields eight visits in your first membership year (though the first four must be used by 31st December).

If that’s worth anything to you, the real numbers are better than these.

Here’s how it works out:

	Bonus	Cost per mile
New cardholder	30,000 miles	0.65 cents
New cardholder (KrisFlyer addict)	25,000 miles	0.78 cents
Existing cardholder	20,000 miles	0.98 cents
Existing cardholder (KrisFlyer addict)	16,667 miles	1.18 cents

That’s a third cheaper than the 0.98 cents per mile new cardholders were paying under the previous offer (if you placed no value on the suitcase), though still a little behind the 0.58 cents under the 33,600-mile offer that ran until 30th June. For existing cardholders, the cost per mile has halved.

At our working valuation of 1.8 cents per mile, a new cardholder’s 30,000 miles are worth S$540 against the S$196.20 fee, and even KrisFlyer collectors come out comfortably ahead.

The 12-month catch

Before you plan to cancel once the bonus lands, there’s an important clause in the terms to be aware of.

If you close, cancel or terminate the card within 12 months of opening it, HSBC reserves the right to forfeit or recover the equivalent value of the whole or any part of the gift, at its sole discretion.

With the gift now paid in Reward points, that would normally mean the bonus being debited from your account. Transfer the points out first and the terms also allow HSBC to charge you their equivalent value instead, so the sign-up-and-cancel approach doesn’t work here either. You’re committing to holding this card for a full year.

There’s a second trap waiting at the other end of that year. Under HSBC’s Rewards Programme terms, terminating your card account automatically cancels any unused Reward points, and they can’t be moved to another HSBC card account.

So if you do decide to close the card after 12 months, transfer your points out to a frequent flyer or hotel programme before you cancel, not after. Transfers are instant for most partners and free of charge, so there’s no reason to leave them sitting there.

Year two is a fairer deal, at least. Pay the S$196.20 again for 30,000 Reward points (up to 12,000 miles), a reasonable 1.64 cents each, or spend S$25,000 for an automatic waiver with no points.

What counts as qualifying spend

Your S$1,000 minimum spend has to be made up of ordinary retail purchases. The sign-up promotion’s terms rule out the following:

• Foreign exchange transactions
• Quasi-cash, gambling and lottery transactions
• Payments to financial institutions, brokerages and dealers, including securities, investments and cryptocurrency
• Money transfer services, including PayPal, CardUp, ipaymy, SmoovPay and Skrill
• Top-ups or purchases of credits for prepaid cards, vouchers, stored-value cards and e-wallets, including EZ-Link, Transitlink, NETS FlashPay and YouTrip
• AXS and ATM transactions
• Instalment plan amounts, whether monthly instalments or the total purchase under HSBC’s 0% Card Instalment and PayLater plans
• Balance transfers, fund transfers, cash advances, finance and late charges, and any fees charged by HSBC
• Court costs, fines, bail and bond payments
• Anything unposted, cancelled, disputed or refunded

HSBC’s Rewards Programme has its own, considerably longer list of exclusions that earn no Reward points at all (see our TravelOne review for the main categories). The two lists do different jobs. The Rewards Programme list governs whether a transaction earns you points; the one above governs whether it counts toward your S$1,000 spend.

Categories like insurance premiums, school fees, utilities, tax payments and hospital bills appear in the Rewards Programme list but not in the sign-up promotion’s – so on a plain reading they do count toward your S$1,000 spend, but earn you no base miles for the privilege.

We believe that reading is right, but there’s a difference between being right and getting your bonus.

If HSBC’s systems apply the same exclusions to both calculations, which would be the simpler way to build them, an insurance premium (for example) may never register against your threshold at all, whatever the terms say.

Our advice, therefore, is to play it safe on both counts. Hit the S$1,000 with ordinary retail spending, and treat anything on the Rewards Programme list as excluded.

About the HSBC TravelOne card

If you’re new to the card, here are its headline features:

• 1.2 mpd on local spend and 2.4 mpd in foreign currency (1 mpd and 2 mpd for KrisFlyer)
• 20 airline and hotel transfer partners, with free and mostly instant conversions in 2-mile increments
• Four DragonPass lounge visits per calendar year, which can be shared with guests
• 30,000 Reward points (up to 12,000 miles) for paying the annual fee from year two
• Complimentary travel insurance, including S$150,000 of overseas medical cover
• Points pool with your other HSBC cards, including the Revolution

The catch for Singapore-based readers is KrisFlyer, which now converts at a lousy 3:1 rather than 2.5:1.

We’ve covered the card in full in our HSBC TravelOne review, including earn rates, points rounding, every transfer partner and how it pairs with the Revolution.

Terms and conditions

Full terms and conditions for this sign-up promotion are available here:

 HSBC T1 Sign-Up Promo T&C

HSBC has dropped the Samsonite luggage from its TravelOne welcome offer, adding 10,000 miles to the bonus for both new and existing cardholders instead.

For new-to-bank applicants that means 30,000 miles at 0.65 cents each, a third cheaper than under the previous offer if you placed no value on the suitcase, though still short of the 33,600 miles available until June. Existing cardholders do even better relative to last time, with their bonus doubled to 20,000 miles.

On paper, 10,000 miles and the suitcase are worth roughly the same, but the miles are more flexible, and come without a collection trip or a resale listing.

There are still some catches. You’re committing to 12 months or risking the bonus being clawed back, there’s no lower spend tier, and anyone who has opened a principal HSBC card in the past year is excluded altogether.

As ever, the card is at its best for those willing to look beyond KrisFlyer, for the best transfer ratios.

If you’re taking the plunge, remember to consent to receive marketing materials during your application to be eligible, and apply by 31st December 2026.

  APPLY HERE

(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)