Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: did you win our IHG competition?, M&S off Gate 365, Amex / Harvey Nichols promo

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News in brief:

Did you win our IHG Rewards Club competition?

Thank you to everyone who entered our IHG Rewards Club competition last week.  There was a fantastic response and IHG was very impressed by the level of interest.

The winner was Jean H.  Well done Jean.  I have the codes you need to add the 50,000 points to your IHG account and I will be emailing them to you later.

Don’t forget that the IHG Winter Sale continues until 7th February.

You can save up to 30% on stays at 600 InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza and Hotel Indigo hotels across Europe.  The sale rates are valid for sale until 29th February 2016 and full details of the IHG Winter Sale can be found at this special website.

Marks & Spencer leaves Gate 365 and the Avios e-store

M&S is no longer available on the British Airways shopping portal, Gate 365, or the Avios e-store.  This means that you can no longer earn Avios points for starting your M&S shopping at one of those site.

Oddly, M&S is still available on TopCashback albeit with a minimum non-food spend of £100.  Remember that TopCashback is still offering a bonus of 500 Avios if you sign up this week.  Thanks to Helen.

£20 cashback when you spend £100 at Harvey Nichols

Finally, Harvey Nichols is offering £20 cashback on a £100 American Express spend.

You need to go into the ‘Offers’ tab of your online Amex statement to register, where it should hopefully be showing.  It is NOT on the cardmemberoffers.co.uk site yet so you cannot register via that route.

Lloyds, MBNA, TSB and Barclays Amex cardholders can register via the Amex Connect site.

The offer runs until 6th March and is restricted to the first 15,000 to sign up.

A less glamorous but more practical offer for ASK pizza restaurants is also available to most people!


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (29)

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

  • Fenny says:

    Congrats, Jean. How about a HfP party at your local HIX? 😉

  • harry says:

    Don’t suck it up like a silly poodle – get on the phone & reverse it 🙂

  • Dom says:

    This morning I have had a small amount of avios from a pre-xmas M&S purchase approved. They may well still be honouring old transactions.

  • Rob says:

    No – unless gift vouchers sales are dealt with by a 3rd party. Debenhams gift cards worked this way, but that was clearly flagged because you were taken off the Debenhams website to a parallel site to make the purchase.

    • Mark says:

      Thanks. It certainly looks like Harvey Nicks handle their own gift vouchers from the website. Going to wait till my new year starts on my BA Amex in a couple of weeks time before ordering a few (for use in the Oxo Tower restaurant over the next couple of years!)

  • Andi says:

    Not sure where all the Amex offers go to, but over the past couple of months, I’ve looked constantly but for some reason I don’t seem to get targeted with any of the ones that are mentioned on HFP.
    I do already have a high spend across all my Amex products so wondering if maybe offers are only made where they want to encourage more spend.
    Anyone else had similar experiences?

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

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