Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Good Heathrow Rewards sign-up deal – 2,500 Avios, Virgin, Lufthansa, Etihad or Emirates miles

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Heathrow Rewards – the loyalty scheme for Heathrow’s duty free shops – has launched a new sign-up promotional bonus in association with Etihad Guest.

This is one of the most generous sign-up deal that I have seen for Heathrow Rewards.  With this deal, you will receive 2,500 bonus points (= 2,500 Avios or miles) when you spend £150 in one day before 31st December 2017.

A smaller bonus of 1,000 points will be earned if you spend £75 in a single day this year – but you can only earn one bonus.

Heathrow Rewards

Heathrow Rewards gives you 1 point for every £1 spent in Heathrow (1 per £10 on foreign exchange) or on Heathrow Express tickets (online bookings only).  Heathrow Express bookings do count for points but unless you are spending £100 in one go it won’t help you trigger the bonus as you cannot control what date the transaction posts to your account.

You can redeem your 2,500 points for Avios (in either avios.com or British Airways Executive Club), Virgin Flying Club miles, Etihad Guest, Miles & More miles or Emirates Skywards miles.

If you’re lucky, you may even get a conversion bonus.  Lufthansa is offering a 100% bonus until 31st January, for example, and I took the opportunity to empty out my Heathrow Rewards balance to take advantage.

Alternatively, you could take £25 of Heathrow shopping vouchers or Heathrow Express vouchers, or £50 of vouchers towards the official Heathrow car parks.

Full details of the Heathrow Rewards scheme are here.  The offer itself appears on the Etihad website here.

Whilst Etihad is sponsoring this promotion, you are not obliged to send your bonus points to Etihad Guest. You can redeem for any of their airline partners or for something else.

Here is the small print:

The bonus points offer is available to new members of the Heathrow Rewards programme only who join using the above link or register their card and enter promo code EGAPR17 before 31 December 2017. 2,500 points will be awarded when £150 or more of qualifying expenditure is made OR 1,000 points will be awarded when £75 or more of qualifying expenditure is made in a single day 31 December 2017 and the Heathrow Rewards card is used. Only one offer per member. Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other joining offer. Spend at any currency change will not qualify for this offer.

You may well already have a Heathrow Rewards account. If so, you have three options:

open an account for someone else who shares a BA or Avios household account with you, then transfer the Avios to that account

Heathrow Rewards now lets you transfer points between different people – you could get a card in a random name, spend £150 and then ring Heathrow Rewards to transfer the points to yourself

if you have only previously converted to one airline programme, you could open another account in your name (different email, different postal address) and then send the points over to Virgin, Etihad or Miles & More if you usually send them to Avios (or vice versa). Do not use the same Avios number on two accounts.

If your card does not arrive before your next Heathrow trip, don’t worry. Save your receipts and scan or post them to Heathrow Rewards and they will add them manually.

Category

British Airways and Avios, Emirates and Emirates Skywards, Etihad and Etihad Guest, Heathrow Rewards, Lufthansa and Miles & More, Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (110)

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

  • Lee says:
    27 Jan27 January 10:07

    Hi can someone tell me if the ihg 10% points rebate on points redemptions bookings is for Usa card only or Uk as well.

    I have the premuim card

    Thanks in advance

  • Kinkell says:
    27 Jan27 January 10:11

    Gold at 30k MR? Wow. If it’s gold, transfer points out,then close, but you will also lose the lounge passes. If it’s Plat, then, benefits remain for rest of year even if you close account.Various articles already. Look up Credit cards

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:20

      You sure?
      From my experience, if you cancel the Platinum you keep the hotel statuses already gained and the Eurostar benefit but lose the insurance and the Priority Pass access.

      • h1tvd says:
        27 Jan27 January 10:21

        I was under the impression you lost the PP too, might have to chance my arm in March just to double check

      • Keith says:
        27 Jan27 January 14:21

        I did this a couple of years ago – the PP was cancelled, but you still have the physical card with a valid date shown on it. I tried using it a few times, but as almost all lounges now scan the cards, I was refused each time 🙁 No amount of blagging worked!

        I only had one success, by chance the card machines weren’t working, so they were just noting card details – no follow up from that one.

  • h1tvd says:
    27 Jan27 January 10:20

    O/T just registered my BAPP online and it says I will get 18,000 points for £3k spend in 3 months, shouldn’t this say 25,000 points? Will the 25,000 post ok anyway or should I contact customer services?

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:28

      I’d send them a secure message just to make sure as the 25k (26k if referred) offer ends midnight 8 February 2017.

    • rams1981 says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:40

      I had something similar recently on my spg card. it said 10k points for spending 1k but I was referred so expected 11k. In the end 11k posted automatically.

      • h1tvd says:
        27 Jan27 January 10:46

        yes, i had this too with the spg card, difference with the BAPP is the non referred bonus should be 25k or 26k if referred so i would expect it to state 25k but post 26k after spend

  • Anna says:
    27 Jan27 January 10:32

    Back to the Heathrow Rewards card – how does it work? Do you get the sales staff to scan it like a Boots card when you pay?

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:49

      Get the cashier to scan your card or the app on your phone. Points should then post. Also customer services are generally really good and you can send them scanned receipts retrospectively if you forget to scan your card.

      • Anna says:
        27 Jan27 January 11:49

        Cheers Ghengis, there’ll be no stopping me now!

        • Gavin says:
          27 Jan27 January 13:31

          Scanning on your phone is pony, hasn’t every worked for me and the till staff need to type the number, so I recommend using the physical card. They only allow 10 scanned receipts a year so squirrelling for receipts is always an option!

          Don’t forget to use any other loyalty cards e.g. Boots, Sparks etc, I also used to spend Boots / M&S gift cards as well, to triple dip

  • rams1981 says:
    27 Jan27 January 10:43

    OT after the 1 year of the gold amex, how long does the bonus points for hitting spend take to post? It’s almost 4 weeks into next year ans no charge or points from Amex yet on wife’s account.

    Incidentally the 9k points for her referring me to platinum have not posted yet either (I received my card yesterday).

    Which reminds me @genghis do you cancel your spg card and churn that as well?

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:52

      We do ‘his and hers’ on the Plat, BAPP and SPG Amexes. We don’t know when SPG Amex will end but hopefully we can get another in before then.

      • Lawro says:
        27 Jan27 January 12:01

        Has anyone attempted Plat referral from SPG via this method? Due to cancel my SPG but with Plat application due in about a month, I’m wondering whether its worth a go.

        • Genghis says:
          27 Jan27 January 12:11

          Give it a try. I’ve only got BAPP at the moment and no way to refer from that to anything other than the BA Amex family cards.

        • xcalx says:
          27 Jan27 January 15:41

          I got mrs xcalx to refer me for the SPG from her Plat, no referral points as yet and I have had the card 8 days now. Have seen a post on here that said the referral points posted to their account. so still hoping. In the past referring plat to plat the points have credited before the card arrived.

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 10:54

      Referral points normally post very quickly, sometimes even before you get the card. And that was a ‘legit’ referral! Give it a couple of days and if not received, I’d give them a call.

      • Stu N says:
        27 Jan27 January 11:24

        Friend applied for BAPP last weekend and the referral points had appeared on my AMEX account by Wednesday, so <5 days.

    • Genghis says:
      27 Jan27 January 11:53

      @rams1981. You mentioned that you’ve booked your outbound to CPT and plan on booking inbound from JNB. I know you’ve said before that it seems like I’m copying your holidays – it’s all coincidence!

      I don’t believe there’s any difference in the two CPT flights or JNB flights per day. Is that what you found?

      • rams1981 says:
        27 Jan27 January 12:05

        @genghis do you mean the times flown? They are pretty much the same I feel.

        Availability has been interesting for the route. As i type this Cape Town to London is available still 355 days out. Johansssbourg even has first class seats as well.

      • Lawro says:
        27 Jan27 January 12:07

        @Genghis are we to understand from SA reference that Mrs G has given her decision re Q1 2018-hoping to lock in similar in next 12 months or so.

        • Genghis says:
          27 Jan27 January 12:17

          @rams1981. Planes are the same I think. But as far as you’re aware, there’s no reason to choose one over the other (apart from the actual times of course)?

          @Lawro. I had to present to Mrs G on Argentina / Chile, Mexico and South Africa and she preferred South Africa. I want to go to all those places so happy to keep the wife happy. We’re thinking of going in Feb 18 when it’s a bit quieter (and still relatively hot) and then when we come back it should be Spring in the UK. I do like Q1 holidays.

          • Lawro says:
            27 Jan27 January 12:27

            Fair enough.
            I wonder what availability trends are like in Feb. I know I was monitoring for a family member’s trip last week and there was literally no J/F space over about a 7 day period and nothing close in either. I believe traditional wisdom used to be that CPT used to open up in F if there was available space about 48 hours before departure but seems that may no longer be the case.
            Much agreement re Q1 holidays but I wouldn’t bank on it being Spring when you get back in Feb!

          • rams1981 says:
            27 Jan27 January 12:53

            @genghis same I think so will must book what I can. Prob the earlier flight out would be my preference but not that fussed.

          • Genghis says:
            27 Jan27 January 14:13

            Cheers @rams1981.
            @Lawro there has been some availability back from JNB and CPT this week even during the day but I’ll be booking as soon as they come out. Hopefully someone doesn’t beat me to them…

      • Boi says:
        27 Jan27 January 22:20

        Can I just politely request you to go elsewhere as I usually book 5 tickets to JNB to see family? Ps go elsewhere

    • pauldb says:
      27 Jan27 January 15:45

      I’ve not really followed this (in the comments only?) but is there a suggestion a Plat can refer an SPG card or have I got mixed up? Can you tell me how please!

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:
    27 Jan27 January 11:05

    You forgot to add the ‘Heathrow Rewards’ tag to this article 🙂

  • Liz says:
    27 Jan27 January 11:37

    Can you phone up and cancel the “other” Heathrow Reward accounts that you have previously used and no longer actively use or do you just leave them alone with nil balance.

  • Jim says:
    27 Jan27 January 11:39

    OT but related to a comment by Genghis above so thought it was worth posting here.

    I recently upgraded to Amex plat & applied for the Hilton Honors Gold upgrade which I received yesterday. However on the email from Hilton confirming the upgrade it states

    “Your new status is effective as long as you are an eligible American Express Platinum Card Member. ”

    I though hotel status remained for the year if you cancelled the amex plat or has this now changed?

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