Does the Barclays Travel Plus Pack make sense for Barclays current account holders?

This is our review of the Barclays Travel Plus Pack, offered as an optional paid extra to Barclays current account holders.

If you have your bank current account with Barclays, you may be interested in taking a look at the Barclays Travel Plus Pack add-on.

In general, buying an ‘add-on’ pack to your current account from your bank is a waste of money.  The services you get will usually not outweigh the cost.

This one, however, is a bit different if you are a regular traveller.

What does the Barclays Travel Plus Pack include?

Full details of the Travel Plus Pack are here.

Travel Plus Pack costs you £18 per month.

In summary, you get:

Worldwide family travel insurance

RAC comprehensive breakdown cover in the UK and Europe

Airport lounge access

I am normally sceptical about ‘free’ travel insurance offers since the cover is often poor and can land you in trouble if you rely on it and have major problems.  Barclays claims that the travel insurance in the Travel Plus Pack has been awarded a 5-star rating by Defaqto, however, so it may well be all you need.  Feedback from readers confirms that the insurance is good and does cover many pre-existing conditions.  This is very rare with ‘free’ policies.

Note that each account holder and their domestic partner must be under 80 years old and the partner must live with the account holder.  All trips must start and end in the UK and last no longer than 31 days.

A series of changes in early 2019 also improved the other parts of the package:

The car breakdown now covers cars of any age (the previous age limit was 11 years) and the ‘five call-outs per year’ cap was lifted

The airport lounge benefit increased from 800 lounges to 1,000, due to natural growth in the access offered by its partner DragonPass

Is the Barclays Travel Plus Pack good value?

To get maximum value, it makes sense to just sign up for six months, covering your main annual travel period.  You would be paying £108 (£18 x 6) for six airport lounge passes and comprehensive travel insurance.  You could then cancel and reapply the following year.

As an airport lounge visit can be valued at £15-£20 (you can rarely buy access for less, and £20 is the ‘additional guest fee’ for American Express Platinum and Preferred Rewards Gold card holders), the travel insurance and RAC membership are effectively free.

Or, put another way, if you usually pay £100 for family travel insurance then the airport lounge passes are free.

If you already have a Barclays current account, you should think about whether the Travel Plus Pack would work for you.  Full details are here.

I wouldn’t necessarily want to keep it all year, however.  The annual cost is (£18 x 12) £216.  This compares poorly with an American Express Platinum charge card which has a £575 fee but comes with unlimited airport lounge access for two people, travel insurance, Eurostar lounge access, Hilton / Marriott / Radisson / Shangri-La / Melia hotel status and 30,000 Avios or other miles for signing up.  My full review of Amex Platinum is here.

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