This Membership Offers Elite Status and Hundreds of Thousands of Miles. Is It Worth It?

Have you ever heard of ASmallWorld? We hadn’t either, but this membership program offers some pretty interesting benefits. It’s expensive — there’s no getting around that — but for the money you pay you’re entitled to quite a few rewards, including hundreds of thousands of airline miles in a program you choose.

Let’s take a look at ASmallWorld, how much a membership costs, and whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

What Is ASmallWorld?

Somewhat akin to Founderscard, ASmallWorld is a membership program that you buy into. In return, you’ll get a variety of perks. There are 3 levels of membership:

Many of these benefits aren’t super compelling. After all, many folks have an unlimited Priority Pass membership from other travel credit cards and GHA Discovery just launched the world’s easiest status match.

But those airline miles? Well, those may be worth the cost of paying for a membership.

Is It Worth It?

Your choices for which airline miles you’d like to receive will depend on the tier you purchase:

• Prestige: Lufthansa Miles & More, Emirates Skywards, or Etihad Guest
• Signature: Emirates Skywards or Etihad Guest

Lufthansa Miles & More

While Lufthansa’s Miles & More program has monthly promotions to fly business class between the United States and Europe for just 55,000 miles round-trip, you’ll be on the hook for surcharges. These can easily exceed $1,000, so it’s something you’ll want to be aware of if you end up choosing Lufthansa.

Emirates Skywards and Etihad Guest

What’s more interesting is choosing Emirates Skywards or Etihad Guest miles. For those who aren’t aware, both airlines offer incredible first-class products.

They also heavily restrict access to award flights from partner programs, so booking them can be a nightmare.

Neither Etihad nor Emirates have restrictions on booking first class through their own award programs, however. And while it’s pricey to redeem your miles for these flights, it’s also a one-of-a-kind experience.

Emirates and Etihad go all-out when it comes to first class, which means you end up with things like Armani pajamas, Dom Perignon champagne, and even showers onboard. These flights are priced accordingly:

But if you can instead buy the miles for these flights via ASmallWorld, you can end up paying significantly less:

If you purchased the Signature membership, you’d be paying $5,790 for your Emirates first class flight and still have 64,000 miles left over. Check out our reviews of Emirates first class and Etihad first class to see what the experience is like.

Of course, it’s a better deal for the Prestige membership, which doubles the miles you get but only costs $4,200 extra.

At this rate, you’re essentially buying miles for 2 cents each, which is more than we value either Emirates Skywards miles (1.1 cents each) or Etihad Guest miles (1.4 cents each). You also get other benefits, including hotel and rental car elite status, but these miles are the bulk of the benefit — likely the most interesting element for our readers, as well.

Is this expensive? You bet. It’s kind of wild to think about paying nearly $10,000 per year for miles.

On the other hand, it can be really difficult to accrue enough miles to book these first-class tickets. And redeeming them for first class — like in the example above — nets you a redemption value over 8 cents per mile.

That’s well above what you’re paying to purchase them, so there are definitely instances where it can make sense.

Final Thoughts

ASmallWorld is a membership program that allows you to purchase airline miles and elite status benefits. While it’s pricey, you can extract huge value from the benefits you receive — and you can even unlock first-class flights for those willing to pay the price.