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Bits: new Qatar & Hilton Amex deals, Tesco Clubcard to Virgin bonus confirmed

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News in brief:

New Qatar Airways and Hilton offers from Amex

American Express appears to have launched two decent new offers with Qatar Airways and Hilton.  I say ‘appears’ because they don’t appear on any of my cards or those of my wife.  They definitely do exist though, judging by reader emails.

This is what you may – or may not – have showing on the ‘Offers’ tab of your American Express statement page:

£80 cashback on £800+ spend with Qatar Airways by 30th September (3,000 registrations only, must be a £ booking made on their UK site)

3,000 Avios or Membership Rewards points on a £250 Hilton spend by 3rd November (25,000 registrations only, selected hotels in UK / Europe only, does not apply to prepaid bookings)

Details of other current Amex cashback deals with Melia, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Red Carnation, Thistle and Guoman can be found here.

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Tesco Clubcard / Virgin Atlantic 20% transfer bonus now official

I have now found some official confirmation that the Tesco Clubcard / Virgin Atlantic transfer bonus is ‘official’ – see this page of the Virgin site.  Many readers had been receiving a 20% bonus on their transfers but it wasn’t clear why or how.

The 20% bonus will be added to all Clubcard transfers to Virgin Flying Club made before 13th September.

This means that you will receive 300 Virgin miles per £1 of Clubcard vouchers transferred, instead of the usual 250.

You will also receive 1,000 bonus miles if you amend your Tesco Clubcard account to automatically send your points to Virgin each quarter.  I don’t recommend this, because it means missing out on offers with other partners, but you could turn it on as long as you remembered to turn it off again!

Details of the Virgin / Tesco relationship are here on the Virgin Atlantic site.

You can make transfer via this page of the Tesco Clubcard site.  Neither of these pages mentions the bonus but you will definitely receive it.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

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 comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

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

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Comments (89)

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

  • Alex W says:

    Can anyone post the offer IDs for the Hilton MR and/or Avios deals? Thanks!

  • John says:

    How would they know whether a booking is prepaid?

    • Axel says:

      They won’t know.

      Does anyone know with previous Hilton Amex deals if consecutive spend over multiple stays have counted?

      • Alan says:

        Yes, cumulative spend worked fine with the last Hilton/Amex deal.

      • Rob says:

        It has in the past, yes. I got it on the last one for spending £250 over 3 stays.

    • Rob says:

      Good question! I agree, in general, prepayments are processed by the hotel so would have the same merchant ID number.

  • N says:

    Cleared out my MR account last night in preparation for my first churn. A sad moment.

    • roberto says:

      Or a happy one.. Churn baby churn…

    • Genghis says:

      Why sad?

      • N says:

        It’s taken me a good few years to build up my balance! And now it’s not showing up anywhere while it transfers over to SPG!

        I’ll get over this as soon as I get the new sign up bonus!

  • RussellH says:

    OT

    Just got an e-mail from Vueling saying that they are in the process of changing Punto Punto to Vueling Club, which will use Avios. All supposed to happen within the next month…

  • Tim Millea says:

    Testing my gravatar….

  • Alex W says:

    OT – Virgin Red app. Is this worth bothering with, i.e. can you get Flying Club miles out of it?

    • Dougie Forde says:

      When I signed up for it about a year ago, they were offering 3000 miles. Not sure if that is still the case. If you accumulate enough points within a calendar month you can enter their competitions. There is often one to win 40000 miles. I’ve had a few wins, nothing as big as that, cinema tickets, a bottle of champagne, a tub of ice cream….

    • Mark says:

      my friend won 40k miles, sadly I’m still hoping for a win. SO far i’ve had 4 bottles of wine, ice cream, sunglasses, free access to the first class lounge at euston, lots of BOGOF nero coffees, so over all its not been bad.

    • Michael says:

      I recommend the app as a small distraction which is quite good fun, with targetted offers for those who link their Virgin ‘company’ accounts. As Dougie says, they often run a competition for 40,000 VFC miles, but the odds are against you. It’s not an app to earn VFC miles.

    • Alex W says:

      Thanks guys. It seems the app has just generated a lot of spam and required effort with no rewards so far, but I might pursue it a bit longer then!

  • N says:

    What are the rules on guesting for the Virgin Money lounges?

    I’ve just got round to visiting one for the first time and saw about 6 people in front of me walk in on two swipes!

  • Alexander Smotrov says:

    Thanks for this – will use this for a soft launch of my new @win_and_fly twitter account!

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

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