Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 100% bonus on the transfer of Accor points to Iberia Avios – or not?

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My other article today is about a 25% bonus for transferring hotel points from seven major hotel schemes into British Airways Avios.  Le Club Accorhotels is not included in this promotion.

However, last night Iberia sent out an email which said this:

IB2

Now, the exact wording here is key.

When you click on ‘More Information’, it takes you to this page on the Accor site.

The Accor site implies that Accor points earned from ONE hotel stay up to October 15th (booked before 30th September) will earn double Avios.  Note that the rules stress that you only earn double Avios once.

However, the Iberia email implies that LUMP SUM transfers from Accor will be doubled (‘If you have LeClub points ….’) – allowing you to earn double Avios on your entire Accor balance.

Which is correct?!

My gut feeling is that this only applies to hotel stays, NOT lump sum transfers.  Note the references in the rules to ‘only applies to one stay’ and ‘book by 30th September’.  I doubt that lump sum transfers will be doubled.  On the other hand, if you were planning to transfer points out of Accor anyway, you have nothing to lose by doing it now and seeing if you get a bonus.

As a reminder, the transfer rate from Accor to Iberia Avios is usually 1:1 – so this promotion would get you 1:2.  For weird reasons, the transfer to BA Avios is worse at 2:1, and there is no bonus there either.

Remember that you can transfer Avios from Iberia to British Airways or avios.com via Combine My Avios.  However, your Iberia account must be 90 days old before you can transfer out of it, so if you open one just for this promotion, you won’t be able to move your Avios across to BA until December.


Accor Live Limitless update – April 2024:

Earn bonus Accor points: Accor is not currently running a global promotion

New to Accor Live Limitless?  Read our review of Accor Live Limitless here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our analysis of what Accor Live Limitless points are worth is here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from Accor and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Comments (16)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Tom says:

    Is there any way to top up an Accor balance from other programmes?

  • Nick Burch says:

    F1 and Ibis Budget are both Accor, but don’t take part in Le Club. You’ll need to stay further up their chain list to get points…

  • Sctravel says:

    I’ve just updated my account to auto convert to Iberia, and I have the 3000+ points to needed for conversion. I also have an accor stay coming up this weekend that I booked last night so will be interesting to see what happens. I’ll keep you posted…..

  • Dude26 says:

    Any idea why the “combine my Avios” function does not let me transfer my avios from IB to BA?!

    The IB account exists well over 90 days…and each time I try – it only lets me move avios from BA to IB, but the other way!

    Help?!

    • Rob says:

      Try doing it from inside IB?

    • RogerWilco says:

      If your BA account is a Household account, you can only move from IB to BA via and Avios account. Weird, but that’s how it is.

      • Dude26 says:

        I do have a BA household account. So…I should move my IB to AVIOS.COM and then from there to BA? Like a chain reaction:)?

  • Dude26 says:

    Yes! that’s what so weird…I’m doing it from within IB and still allows me to move avios only in one direction: from BA to IB. bizzare isnt it…?

    • 21h21j says:

      I had a similar problem. I seem to remember I needed to be logged into both IB and BA sites at the same time, but it took a few refreshes before it showed IB to BA

    • Rob says:

      I assume you have a) earned your IB Avios within the last year and b) your IB account is 90 days old?

  • flyoff says:

    I transferred my Accor balance to Iberia – no bonus has been awarded. I also changed my earnings preference to Iberia Avios to try and get double Avios but the points from the stay are showing on my Accor account – it appears this transfer has not occurred either.

    • flyoff says:

      As an update my hotel stay Accor points transferred over to Iberia the next day. These were not doubled either.

      I phoned Iberia who said that Accor should have doubled the points before they were sent to them. Iberia are now looking into the issue and expect to resolve it in a week. I am not sure this is going to be easy to resolve.

      • Rob says:

        Even odder … http://loyaltylobby.com/2013/09/11/update-le-club-accorhotels-iberia-plus-double-points-promotion/ implies via Accor that entire balances should be doubled and that (going back to my original post) the email was right and the Accor site wrong.

        But transfers of balances are not doubling either.

        • flyoff says:

          Interesting – it doesn’t say whether Accor or Iberia are processing the double up. Iberia were clear when I phoned they were not doing. From the Accor process I have seen transferring my balance by setting it to autoconvert, and the subsequent accor point award from my stay I don’t think they would be able to distinguish easily between a transfer and a stay. The stay points were first applied to my Accor account and then swept over to Iberia several days later in a similar fashion as when I set the whole account to autoconvert. As both transfers haven’t worked I am hopeful I will get both doubled eventually.

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