Emails should start arriving soon, if they haven’t already, in the inboxes of selected British Airways Executive Club members who are not members of Hilton HHonors.
If you get this email, you should NOT delete it!
It will direct you to this webpage. You will see that it requires an activation code which will be in the email, or possibly letter.
This is what you will get:
Instant Hilton Gold status, valid until 31 December 2013. This gets you free breakfast, free internet and an upgrade across the full Hilton family (Conrad, Waldorf-Astoria, Hampton, Hilton etc).
25,000 bonus Avios points when you complete five Hilton stays before the end of 2013!
Hilton Gold extended to March 2015 when you complete three Hilton stays before the end of 2013
This is an exceptionally generous offer. Even if you have no travel plans between now and the year end, it would be worth your while to find the cheapest Hilton Group property near you and book five one-off stays. All you have to do is check-in and go home again, no need to actually stay!
What is not clear from the email is whether you need to set your earnings preference to ‘Points and Fixed Miles’ or ‘Points and Variable Miles’, or whether it is OK to collect ‘Points and Points’. For safety, I would set your Hilton account to ‘Points and Fixed Miles’ and ensure that you select British Airways as your airline partner.
This offer will also work with the other Hilton promotions currently running:
Offer 1:
Sign up here and you will receive 1,000 bonus Avios points for every weekend night you stay, on top of the usual 500 Avios.
Offer 2:
Until Friday, there is a 3-day Hilton flash sale running for weekend stays until the end of the year.
Offer 3:
Offer 4:
‘Winning Weekends’ offers a 25% discount on 2-night weekend stays in London until the end of the year. These rates will show automatically when you try to book.
Offer 5:
For stays of 2 or more nights, you should also sign up for the current global Hilton HHonors promotion, ‘More Nights, More Points’. Here is my post on that. Registration is required.
(To see our complete list of all current hotel promotions for the major chains, click here to visit our ‘Hotel Promos’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Interesting!
My HHonors Gold is currently linked to my Iberia Plus card. Wonder if I’ll hear anything from BA?
No email received yet.
OK So I received the email for Etihad. Instant Gold til the end of Dec and only 3 stays for Gold til March 2015.
Five stays for the 25K.
I’ve logged into the new HH account and it’s asking me to choose an airline partner. Do you think I can get away with choosing BAEC?
Very good question. Probably OK – you’d need to see the rules. However, you’ll need more than 25K Etihad anyway for a decent redemption, so no harm sending the miles from a few stays to them.
So Raffles, how did you get the promo email? You had the HH account already…
I’m curious about this too! This year, it’s looking as though loyalty to Hilton doesn’t pay. I’ll be booking my next few stays with IHG now.
I didn’t. Someone took the Flying Blue version and changed the URL, and voila ….
Not sure this offer would work for me: am central London based and have no unbooked travel plans between now and year end. Being in London I don’t think the strategy of booking the nearest cheap Hilton without staying there works based on the assumption that an avios is worth a 1-1.5p. Any ideas?
Agreed, in London it doesn’t work as a mattress run. But unless you’ve had the email, its not a problem to worry about!
Has any received this via email from BAEC yet? – I’d like to book the LHR T5 hotel for next week.
Raffles are you saying you need to be set to BAEC to GET the email or just to collect the Avios? I’m currently set on Iberia.
You’ll need to have a BAEC account to have a chance of being invited into this promotion. However, if you’ve already got a HH account in the same address as your BA account, its unlikely you’ll be invited anyway!
Is the activation code transferable ? If so, I wouldn’t mind having it.
Can anyone confirm whether BAEC e-mails sent on this? Kind of odd nothing positive reported yet.
They are dribbling out, airline by airline. Etihad and Flying Blue versions definitely went out this week. BA may not have gone yet.