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Earn 700 Virgin Flying Club miles for £3

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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.

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 15,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

A generous earning rate for a free card at 0.75 points per £1 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.)

Category

Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (43)

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

  • James67 says:
    8 Sep8 September 06:36

    I would have thought you would need tostay to trigger confirmation and miles

  • James67 says:
    8 Sep8 September 06:58

    Thinking about this one, I’m afraid it is not sitting cimfortably with me Rob. I appreciate you had concerns too because you would not name the hotel, however, if this goes viral across travel blogs it could end up hurting small businesses in developing countries. While they should still get their booking rate for a no show they will be losing everything else associated with the booking they might depend on such as food, drink, tours, car and bike hire, and even tips to their staff. Our cheap miles may come at a price to a number of busineeses at the lowest prices in a few countries.

    • john says:
      8 Sep8 September 07:01

      +1

      • Brian says:
        8 Sep8 September 07:34

        +2
        I think there are more important things in life than 700 Virgin miles.

    • Nick says:
      8 Sep8 September 08:19

      Agree!

    • Andrew S says:
      8 Sep8 September 10:51

      I think hotels only allocate a small % of rooms to each booking site, so its not like the hotel will be empty. The ultra cheap hotels i have stayed dont have much in the way of “extra services” anyway… Much of India is dry so no bars, few serve meals and breakfast is usually inclued in the rate.

  • Erico1875 says:
    8 Sep8 September 07:08

    Its a booking they would never have had anyway. If you book an off season rate, the hotel would likely be half empty

    • James67 says:
      8 Sep8 September 07:20

      Most businesses at the bottom end of price scale un developing countries are likely small family run hotels with very few rooms or B&Bs. It is impossible to say what their occupancy rates are. If thousands of FC members start booking up the cheapest half dozen hotels in a few countries we may well do them serious harm. Quite apart from the financial cost, can you imagine impact on them of getting a whole bunch of bookings that then turn into no shows. They may incur advanced costs in preparing to service such bookings. This is a step to far, it is unethicals. If it was one or two bookings at one or two hotels it is no big deal but it could easily end up being thousands of bookings after hitting the travel blogs. This is not Mr T taking a small hit here, this is about sma small businesses taking a potentially huge hit.

      • avidsaver says:
        8 Sep8 September 07:24

        I agree100%. Surely none of us need 700 miles that badly! I will most certainly give this a miss.

  • sandgrounder says:
    8 Sep8 September 07:14

    You could always email them after the miles credit and say you aren’t coming, sorry for the inconvenience, keep the £3. Then everyone wins, apart from whoever has to pay for the miles!

  • Oliver Bennett says:
    8 Sep8 September 07:29

    Em… They get the £3 if you stay or not. So they don’t lose out

    • Brian says:
      8 Sep8 September 07:36

      See above. The inconvenience and lost revenue from other sources means they lose out. For what? For some Westerner’s 700 miles. I’d suggest people give this a miss.

    • Billy says:
      8 Sep8 September 10:40

      Less 25% commission which booking.com charge, while strengthening their part of the relationship to push for more concessions.

      Rest assured booking.com do nothing that will cost them anything.

  • Oly says:
    8 Sep8 September 07:45

    If we were planning to no show on a £500 booking I bet you’d change your tune

  • Paul says:
    8 Sep8 September 08:25

    I would like to understand if they will get the money ? Can see why people have concerns but the miles surely are coming from booking.com and the hotel get the money for the booking. Yes there may be a loss of incremental income but these errors and promos are far from unique.

  • Rob says:
    8 Sep8 September 08:28

    I appreciate your concerns and have added an extra paragraph to the original article.

    • James67 says:
      8 Sep8 September 09:08

      Thanks Rob, appreciate it although I am not sure it is reasonable to assume room would otherwise be empty.

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

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