Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Big news – ‘small print’ of the Avios sale bargains revealed, including the £1 RFS destinations

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The avios.com and ba.com January sales are continuing.  Hopefully the upcoming offers will be more exciting than the half-price World Traveller redemptions to the US and Canada we had on Monday.

(This offer is still valid until noon today – 50% off the Avios needed for economy flights to Boston, Chicago, Dubai, Denver, Shanghai, New York, Toronto and Washington.  Full details here.)

I now know the ‘small print’ of four of the remaining five offers.

25% off car hire

Noon Wednesday 8 January to noon Friday 10 January

This deal will go live today at noon at avios.com and ba.com.  You must book with Avis – paying with Avios points – for any destination.  It is valid for bookings up to 30th September.  I discuss this further below.

50% off hotel bookings

Noon Friday 10 January to noon Monday 13 January

This offer is actually slightly better than I expected.  It is valid for hotels in Vienna, Dubrovnik, Prague, Copenhagen, Berlin, Budapest, Istanbul and Algarve, for bookings up to 30th September. There is a special booking website you need to use, but the selection of properties seems decent.

Here is the key thing.  You normally get 0.57p per Avios when using your points for a hotel redemption as I showed here.  Via this deal, you will getting 1.14p per Avios.  That is a very decent offer.

Reward Flight Saver tickets reduced to £1

Noon Monday 13 January to noon Wednesday 15 January

This deal is not the ‘free for all’ we were hoping to see.  It is restricted to the following routes only: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Jersey, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Nice.

That said, being able to book a flight to these places for just £1 instead of the usual £35 is certainly a good saving.

You will need to fly between 31 January and 31 May.  Economy only.

50% off hotel bookings

Noon Wednesday 15 January to noon Friday 17 January

The same offer as before, but with a different set of cities – London, Venice, Edinburgh, Guernsey, Florence and Milan. There are 103 hotels available across the 6 cities, to give you an idea of the scale.

Again, you can book a stay at any hotel on the special website for stays up to 30th September.

40% off Eurostar

Noon Friday 17 January to noon Monday 20 January

This offer will only run on avios.com.  I do not have the ‘small print’ for this one!  As ba.com does not offer Eurostar redemptions, their sale will simply finish three days earlier.

Today’s new offer

The offer to be launched today offers 25% off the cost of an Avis car rental when you pay with Avios.  This will be live from noon.

You can book for any destination, with the only proviso being that you pick up the car before 30th September 2014.

This may be an OK deal.  As car hire prices vary so wildly, it is difficult to make a broad judgement.  With just a 25% discount, I doubt that you will be able to get more than 1p per Avios of value compared to a pre-paid cash booking however.

If you are interested, you should price up the car on BOTH ba.com and avios.com.  For odd reasons, it has been shown in the past that the sites often throw up different prices for the same set of dates.

The ba.com link to book an Avis car is here.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous 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

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

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

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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 Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Category

Avis and Avis Preferred, British Airways and Avios

Comments (100)

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

  • Eastwood says:
    8 Jan8 January 12:18

    Hi Raffles,

    I tried to post this in the 50,000 air miles back for old 1st class but the comments were closed. Just wanted to say thanks for the heads up. Last night on the flight from SA to London, we were in the old cabin. Phoned customer services this morning and we have got 100,000 back. You have started my year off to a great start.

    You should have a little bar on the side of this page where we can put our air mile totals in on how you have saved or allowed us to earn. Just a counter from people to show a grand total. From me you would be at 220,000

    • Rob says:
      8 Jan8 January 12:53

      Excellent result, glad it worked out. To be honest, I doubt you were inconvenienced much on an overnight from SA anyway!

      • Eastwood says:
        8 Jan8 January 12:59

        No we were not. But since 100,000 is a enough for a business class trip back to SA on a 241. I wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip away.

        • Gaz says:
          8 Jan8 January 23:09

          Hi Eastwood – how did you frame the conversation with BA customer service – did you flat out ask for 50k of Avios per person, or were you more subtle?

          Also wondering if anyone had any luck getting compensation (either Avios or £) for flying in F with faulty IFE? The first 3 or 4 hours of my flight back from GIG was without any entertainment.

          • Rob says:
            9 Jan9 January 08:16

            Yes, they normally compensate for faulty IFE – 10,000 I think.

          • richie says:
            9 Jan9 January 12:59

            i had 10k for flight to dubai with faulty so would imagine a little more if it is in f

          • Nick says:
            9 Jan9 January 09:50

            Newbie question here, and a bit off topic…. but I’m always lost when people use codes for ticket types. For example, what is “flying in F”? I’ve googled it and can find some sites that set out the ticket types generally, but is there a guide for BA-specific codes?

            Thanks!

          • Rob says:
            9 Jan9 January 10:16

            Sorry, I do work hard to keep acronyms out of posts but they do creep in to comments.

            F- First
            J – Business Class
            W – Premium Economy
            Y – Economy

            These are generally the fare codes for fully flexible tickets in those classes, but are generally used on Flyertalk etc to describe any ticket in that class.

            Technically, a cheap sale ticket in Club World will be I or R, not J. I think cheap sale First Class books into A?

  • Elena says:
    8 Jan8 January 12:30

    I wasn’t very keen on this car rental but it actually works very well for me. AVIS price on Avios gives me £220 for a rental of luxury car in UAE instead of the £830. Quite a saving

    Quite happy with this. I wish the rest of the offers were as good!

    • Boon Koh says:
      8 Jan8 January 13:59

      Have you compared the car hire rates you can get at a car hire aggregator, like carhire3000.com? That will show you the “best in market” prices you could get (might be non-Avis) and is a better judge of value.

  • creampuff says:
    8 Jan8 January 13:41

    Hmmmm. Could book a RFS ticket to Amsterdam and get the cheapie ex-AMS J tickets on offer.

  • richie says:
    8 Jan8 January 13:56

    Recieved my Twinnings Tea hamper today from the BiG Christmas Giveaway.
    Did anyone else win anything?

  • trickster says:
    8 Jan8 January 14:10

    Really disappointed by this. I was hoping to use the RFS sale to book something. I find RFS really good travelling from Manchester without status. I’m less enthused about traveling via LHR in economy without lounge access.

  • Elena says:
    8 Jan8 January 14:56

    Anyone else having problems to check availability beyond May? It was ok in the morning now all the system seems down.

  • Luke says:
    8 Jan8 January 16:44

    Hi,
    How long does it take for tesco points to transfer to BAEC or Avios.com accounts? Also can you transfer points to someone else’s account in another name (If they are on your tesco club card account (My wife in this case)?

    • Rob says:
      8 Jan8 January 16:47

      They normally go across in 1-2 days.

      If the surname and address match, you may get away with a transfer to a different BA account. It won’t work with avios.com, though, as the transfer form does NOT ask for your account – it automatically searches the database and tries to find a match.

      • Luke says:
        8 Jan8 January 16:51

        Ah ok. Thanks for your help. My wife is short about 600 Avios. I’ll try and transfer to BAEC and hope it works. I guess if it doesn’t they will just bounce back and I won’t lose the vouchers?

        • Rob says:
          8 Jan8 January 17:04

          Yes, they bounce back and will be reissued with your next statement.

  • James67 says:
    8 Jan8 January 19:48

    What this promotions, lack of conversion bonuses etc say to me is that BA is confident both that the market is looking up and that they are reliably pedicting and meeting demand. This redemption sale simply doesn’t compare to that last winter, the latest MR redemptiin bonus was relatively poor and we nearly cannot recall the last tesco bonus. Added to that retiring744s mean fewer premium seats and is not helped by most aircraft on order being 787s and a350s. All points towards a fortcoming relatively lean era for premium redemptions on BA at least. Fortunately, effects in some markets offset by benefits of Qatar, MAS and Sri Lankan joining OW. I fear the biggest disappointmebt is yet to come in the shape of devaluation. However, it is interesting to note that those have so far affected *A and ST and not OW. While carriers of the former have been catching up and in cases surpassing OW carriers it would be nice if OW carriers could get one over *A and ST by resisting devaluations.

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