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Bits: new Nightly hotel site, £25 off SWISS to Geneva, new Priority Pass Sydney benefits

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News in brief:

New hotel booking site – Nightly – with a difference

Nightly (www.nightly.travel) is, genuinely, a hotel booking website with a difference.  And you can’t say that very often these days.

Nightly, which is run from London, is based on the premise that you can save money by switching to a nearby hotel of similar quality during your stay.  A typical hotel booking site may show you, for a Friday to Sunday stay:

Hotel A – £100 per night (based on an underlying price of £75 Friday and £125 Saturday)

Hotel B – £100 per night (based on an underlying price of £125 Friday and £75 Saturday)

Nightly, on the other hand, would look at what was available on each night and recommend:

Friday in Hotel A, Saturday in Hotel B – average price of £75 per night

Another upside of Nightly is that it can show you good value hotels which, because they are only available for some nights of your stay, would show as ‘sold out’ if you tried to book them for the full duration.

Nightly will not recommend more than two hotels per trip, so you are only looking at one possible change of location.

This clearly isn’t something which appeal to everyone.  I did a lot of hotel hopping in my pre-family days but that was mainly to maximise bonus point promotions or because I didn’t have enough points in a particular hotel programme.  If the inconvenience of switching isn’t huge, you might find that Nightly offers you savings you would otherwise miss.

Note that, from a miles and points perspective, bookings via Nightly will be treated as ‘third party’ bookings.  They will not earn you points in any hotel loyalty programme and your status benefits may not be recognised.

Swiss Boeing 777

£25 off SWISS flights to Geneva

SWISS has launched a £25 discount code for flights between London Heathrow / City and Geneva.

The code you need, which must be added to the SWISS website here, is SWISSUKGVA17.

You need to book by 15th July and complete your travel by 15th September.  A minimum spend of £95 is required.

Priority Pass adds seven restaurants in Sydney

Priority Pass recently added The Grain Store restaurant at London Gatwick’s South Terminal to its network, as you can read here.

This is an excellent deal.  You receive a £15 credit at The Grain Store towards food, drink, takeaway, whatever simply by showing your Priority Pass lounge access card.  (It also works with Lounge Club which comes with the free Amex Gold).  If your Priority Pass card allows you to bring a guest for free, which it will if your card is issued by Amex Platinum, you can have £30 of free stuff.

A similar deal has just been launched at Sydney Kingsford Smith International airport.  There are seven restaurants included.  To quote:

  • Mach2, located in Terminal 1, bringing the skill and signature dishes of Sydney’s ‘Machiavelli’ Restaurant to the airport
  • Peroni Bar, located in Terminal 1, serving up traditional aperitifs in a unique concept bar with a contemporary décor
  • Benny Burger, located in Terminal 1, offering gourmet burgers designed by Australian master chef Shannon Bennett
  • MoVida, located in Terminal 2, offering Spanish cuisine and tapas from award winning chef Frank Camora
  • Bistro 2020 & Bar, located in Terminal 2, serving quality Australian beers and wines, as well as a delicious hot food menu
  • Bar Roma, located in Terminal 3, offering a variety of pizzas and pasta, and a selection of local and imported beers and wines
  • Wok on Air, located in Terminal 3, providing customers with fresh and healthy Asian classics, all prepared to order in less than five minutes.

Priority Pass members receive an AUD$36 credit off the final bill at each outlet, for themselves and their guests. Each AUD$36 credit will represent a single lounge visit within their existing lounge visit allocation.

Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Business Platinum

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

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

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

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Category

General

Comments (51)

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

  • Callum says:
    10 May10 May 03:56

    I’m surprised they didn’t restrict it to one restaurant per day in Sydney. If you regularly use the airport and have an unlimited pass you could spend a fortune!

  • Al says:
    10 May10 May 04:11

    Does that mean that 2 (or more) restaurant guests may be allowed in at the “cost” of one visit, if only 1x$36 credit is made?

    • NigelM says:
      10 May10 May 07:56

      I’m sure he means one credit per person charged to the PP, cardholder or guest – otherwise it would just say no guests allowed in addition to the cardholder.

      • Al says:
        11 May11 May 02:10

        The “lounge description” seems to suggest otherwise: “Cardholders and accompanying guests will receive AUD$36 off the final bill per person per visit, valid on any type of meal and/or drinks upon presentation of a valid card.”

        The question is whether a PP cardholder can bring one guest, have each spend <18AUD (for a total of <A$36), and gets only 1x "lounge visit" recorded on the PP cardholder's PP. Based on the above description, it seems to suggest that this is not possible. You + 1guest will get A$36 each in exchange for 2 PP "uses", without any option to have a combined A$36 allowance in exchange for 1 PP "use".

        Another un-answered issue: does this promotion apply if you opt to order A$36 of food/drink as a takeaway? 😛

  • Hingeless says:
    10 May10 May 04:53

    I notice this yesterday on the PP app, its fantastic news.

    Mrs H got her PP card yesterday and is flying through T1 on Friday – perfect timing as she has no status

    I’ll be in T1 tomorrow so will pop into 1 of the venues to give it a quick try.

    Movida is very good

    Mach2 is Landside in departures, great option for waiting for all those annoying visitors we have.

    • Polly says:
      10 May10 May 05:17

      Hi H, are you and Al in Asia ATM? We are on short hop to HKT, v humid. Great news on PP tho, and yes, was thinking the same thing about SYD Callum! What a hoot. Wait till HFPointers get going…

      • Hingeless says:
        10 May10 May 05:28

        I’m in Sydney, will be airside in international tomorrow.

        Just had a thought, you don’t need a boarding pass or ticket to get airside in T2 & T3 (these are domestic only terminals), so could try those out any time !!

        • Hingeless says:
          11 May11 May 10:51

          I’m In peroni bar in Sydney, they are still building the place. No problem with priority pass, they know all about it and have had about 20 people a day using it for the past week. They explained that I had $36, but I’m only having 1 drink then returning to the qantas first lounge 🙂

  • PeacefulWaters says:
    10 May10 May 05:27

    Good news about Sydney.

    Pizza before I fly to Brisbane for the first test match then!

  • Trev says:
    10 May10 May 06:40

    Presumably you could search via Nightly and then book directly with the hotel(s) to retain benefits and earn points?

    • Andrew says:
      10 May10 May 09:24

      I was just thinking that… It’s essentially what I do anyway on Trivago, Expedia and so forth by stepping dates forward.

      When booking a single-city split-stay, I try and book a cancellable night for the middle stay.

      I’ve found, over the years, that if I make it clear at check-in that I’m going to check-out 2 days later, stay in a better priced competitor hotel, then check back in again there is often suddenly rooms available at an attractive price direct from the hotel for the relevant nights.

  • Gill says:
    10 May10 May 07:43

    OT
    I’m sure I read somewhere about using Lloyd’s upgrade between wt and club on flights where there is no wt+ cabin.
    On the off chance that is a thing that I didn’t randomly make up, any advise for finding there routes?

    • Gavin says:
      10 May10 May 07:48

      It will be routes on the Mid Haul A321, Moscow and perhaps some Middle East routes like Beirut

      • Gill says:
        10 May10 May 08:28

        Thanks. Will dig around. Moscow would be good if visa’s weren’t such a pain.

    • Rob says:
      10 May10 May 08:57

      This has now changed I believe. Used to work on Amman, Beirut etc which use the old 2-class BMI planes with ‘proper’ business seats. The system now charges you WTP even where it doesn’t exist.

      Upside is you can use the voucher on the LCY flight to New York now, because they can calculate a theoretical WTP cost even though the plane is ‘all business’.

      • Simon says:
        10 May10 May 14:05

        I thought flights from LCY were excluded from the voucher

        • Rob says:
          10 May10 May 15:15

          BA Cityflyer flights are exempt from the voucher. City to NYC is not operated by BA Cityflyer – it is mainline, run by Gatwick crews (who must report for duty at Gatwick and then drive to City, unbelievably).

          • Anna says:
            10 May10 May 19:38

            Does that include the new routes from Manchester then? I was hoping to use mine on one of these in the future 🙁

          • Rob says:
            10 May10 May 21:06

            Not heard any reports on this but presumably it would be.

  • Kevin says:
    10 May10 May 08:03

    The LoungeKey app is also showing those seven restaurants in Sydney but no actual lounges! Don’t know what it had before or whether this is a glitch.

    We used Grain Store in Gatwick on Friday after the No 1 Lounge turned us away. We were impressed with it.

    • Kevin says:
      10 May10 May 08:16

      For Lounge Club at least, it doesn’t look like there were any options before this move.

    • Nate1309 says:
      10 May10 May 11:53

      I have used PP at the grain store a couple of times and also had good experiences. Last time I was there with just the wife we spent over £30 and I just got the waiter to put myself and guest on my PP card and my wife on her card. My PP is via AMEX Plat. So potentially is an evening flight for 2 could have a nice 3 course dinner and drink for £60 for free.

  • Ro says:
    10 May10 May 08:18

    Hey Rob i think you need to edit the example for nightly. Currently says friday night for both hotel A and B cost £75 and saturday for both is £125

    But thanks for bringing it to my attention… definitely a site id find useful

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

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