Earn 700 Virgin Flying Club miles for £3

Reader Rich dropped me a line with details of an interesting Virgin Atlantic offer via their Shops Away online shopping mall.

Online hotel booking site booking.com is currently offering 700 Virgin Flying Club miles for any hotel booking made their site if you click through from Shops Away.

Anyone who collects Flying Club miles should be able to get £7+ of value out of 700 miles.  This means that it is a pretty good return on booking, say, a £100 hotel room.

It is, of course, an even better deal if you book a £3 hotel room.

The strength of booking.com is that, unlike Expedia, it has a lot of relationships with hotels at the bottom end of the value chain.  If you search for a city in, say, India and rank the hotels by price, you should find something at £3.

A B&B I found, which I won’t name because it is unfair to focus lots of ‘dead’ bookings at the same property, is only £3 for example.

I have made a £3 booking in India and I will report back when I get my miles.  The transaction is showing as ‘Pending’ with 700 miles due.  Rich has already received his so it does seem to work OK.

The link to the Shops Away online mall on the Virgin Atlantic website is here.  You need to search for booking.com once you have clicked through and logged in.

PS.  Some readers have shared their concerns, in the comments below, that this is not necessarily in the best interests of the hotel involved.  You need to decide – are you are helping the B&B by booking a room which would otherwise remain empty?  Or are you hurting the B&B by depriving them of selling the room to someone else who would actually turn up and spend additional money of food, tours etc (but would then want a breakfast and their room cleaning)?  I am personally OK with this one or I would not have run it but you should make your own decision.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (September 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):

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.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.

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

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to up to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 80,000 Virgin Points. You will receive 8 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to up to 40,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 40,000 Virgin Points. You will receive 4 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. The card is FREE for your first year. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

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.)