My thoughts on the ‘Avios Hotel Sale’ debacle and why I think it happened

By the time you read this, the 2nd ‘50% off hotel bookings’ sale on avios.com will be over.

(The final offer, 40% off Eurostar bookings, is still running until Monday – see this article from yesterday for details.)

I am still trying to make sense of what happened with this promotion.  However, this is what we know to be true:

This sale was an avios.com sale and not a ba.com sale.  Whilst the offers did appear on ba.com as well, they were NOT emailed, tweeted or actively promoted.  You would not have known they were on ba.com unless you followed Head for Points or Flyertalk.

The average avios.com collector has a far smaller balance than the average BAEC collector, reflecting its history as a ‘frequent shopper’ scheme.  (Remember that, whilst we are happy to move our points around via ‘Combine My Avios’, most avios.com collectors do not do this.)

Avios was prepared to lose a little bit of money on these sale offers.  We saw this from the Reward Flight Saver £1 deals – Avios still has to pay the Air Passenger Duty to the Government for these flights, for example.

This is how I think the hotels promotion was MEANT to go:

Someone decided that offering a range of – and this is the key bit – fairly expensive hotels (Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental etc), at a 50% discount to the Avios points usually required, would be a clever deal.

They imagined that demand would be relatively modest.  After all, a £200 hotel – even at 50% off – would still require 17,500 Avios per night.  For the average avios.com collector, this is quite a lot of points.

Somewhere along the line, though, someone also decided to reduce the cash alternative by 50%.  There is logic here – because there was a sliding scale of ‘cash vs Avios’ prices, it would have been difficult to reduce the Avios element without reducing the cash element.  The big mistake was to not restrict the discount to a ‘100% Avios’ booking.

The sale then launches.  Head for Points probably played a part in the huge flow of traffic it got, because the list of participating cities had been leaked to me earlier in the week and people knew what was coming and were able to line up flights, check for time off etc.

As soon as the scale of the discounts was clear (you could save £1,500 over the cheapest hilton.com price for a week at Conrad Algarve during peak Summer, or get the Four Seasons in Budapest for Valentines Weekend at half-price), people rushed in.  Flyertalk and similar sites also picked up on it.

Because you could book most rooms for 100% cash (or just a token amount of Avios), you could book as much as you wanted.  Had it just been 50% off the ‘all Avios’ rate, the week at Conrad Algarve would have only been bookable for 125,000 Avios points – which would have cut back the number of bookings dramatically.

Let’s look at profit margins.  It is widely known that Expedia Special Rate hotels generate a 25% margin for Expedia.  The typical travel agent hotel commission is 10%.  BA’s hotels are supplied by a wholesale group who would have a margin closer to 25% than 10%, albeit that the wholesaler and BA would be sharing that 25% profit.

Realistically, for every £100 spent on ‘50% off hotels’, BA / avios.com will have lost around £80.  This is based on you getting a £200 room, which would cost BA £180 or so, for £100.

BA EXPECTED to lose this money, of course.  However, they only expected to generate a handful of bookings – because the original plan was to offer low balance avios.com members hotels which required a high balance to book!  In the end, they took a bit of a beating.

Someone then realised, of course, that the second round of the sale was going to be even worse.  The locations in Round 1 were a little esoteric (Vienna, Dubrovnik, Prague, Copenhagen, Berlin, Budapest, Istanbul, The Algarve).  Round 2 was going to include London – letting people freely book 5-star hotels in London for the entire Summer at a 50% discount was going to lead to a huge financial hit.

At the last minute, the discounts were changed.  London was cut to a 15% discount, which was effectively no discount at all.  Most of the other cities also ran sub-50% discounts.

The original wording on ba.com makes it clear that this is NOT what was meant to happen.  It said:

“Today’s Thank You is 50% off Avios for hotel stays until 30 September when making a booking in Edinburgh, Guernsey, London, Florence, Milan, and Venice.  You can also pay with a combination of Avios & Money where you’ll receive 50% off both the Avios and the money.”

No reference at all to ‘up to’ 50% off.  The discount was clearly meant to be a full 50% in all cities.

Remember that everything I wrote above is only my best guess.  However, I have been around this business for long enough to know how it works.

All in all, though, we cannot complain about the Avios sale.  Whilst the first offer (20% off a handful of long-haul economy routes) was woeful, the £1 Reward Flight Saver deals were a huge success.  If you managed to get a hotel at 50% off in the initial round, you also got a fantastic deal.

The nature of the ‘miles and points’ game has always been ‘win some, lose some’ (well, more like ‘win a lot, lose the odd one’).  Nothing has changed!

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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 Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 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

30,000 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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.