Bits: 50 free Avios via Avios Suitcase, Cathay business sale, Plaza Premium in Singapore

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• Neil says:

  4 Jul4 July 07:40

  I have just canx by Amex Plat. Does anyone know if the Priority Pass would still be usable? Thanks

  • Polly says:

    4 Jul4 July 07:54

    No, it cancels the same day, some say it can take a while, but be prepared for a lets charge to appear!
    CX, anyone trying for ex EU flights to Asia, don’t bother, no price differential.

  • Rob says:

    4 Jul4 July 09:34

    No, cancelled immediately as the pass fails when there is no valid credit card stored to pay for extra guests.

    • BP says:

      4 Jul4 July 10:41

      Mine took 6 months to cancel. I kept using it without any issue!

• James says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:34

  Did the sub £900 ex Scandinavia deals finish?

  • Rob says:

    4 Jul4 July 09:36

    Wait a bit, Qatar may bring them back!

    • James67 says:

      4 Jul4 July 19:57

      I suspect more likely to return in autumn or winter, but then anythings possible given frequency of Qatar promotions.

• Philip White says:

  4 Jul4 July 10:11

  Just tried the Avios Suitcase app on FB. It finds it in the search menu but when I click through I get the following error message, “The page you requested was not found”…
  Have we crashed it?

• Stuart Fortune says:

  4 Jul4 July 11:42

  That avios suitcase currency isn’t all that hard to guess. If you are struggling, have a look at the filename of the picture! Bit of a giveaway.

• Adam W says:

  4 Jul4 July 16:06

  Why would you promote the CX fares and refuse to do likewise for a recent promo (that you knew about but chose not to blog about) that would have got your readers the exact same flights to Australia for around £2000?

  And, of course, entirely unrelated to that… what’s your commission through linking to the CX website from readers buying the £2979 fare to Australia?

  Please try a little harder to keep your integrity.

  • Rob says:

    4 Jul4 July 18:53

    It is purely down to what I am sent by the airlines and what HFP space is available on the day. The only connection to the affiliate links is that, if I have links, the airlines send me all their deals. I can’t write about what I don’t know about.

    1% of the ex-tax value of a Cathay flight in the article is about £13. That is peanuts in the context of HFP – it is 1,000% easier to make £10 off an Uber or Get Taxi sign-up! – and has no impact on what is covered.

    It is, anyway, an illogical argument – because the £2,000 Cathay flights which I didn’t bother covering as there was no space on the day would, by definition, have been far more attractive than £3,000 ones.

    • Dan says:

      4 Jul4 July 19:27

      I totally agree with rob here – I think he does a pretty amazing job to run 3 articles every day of the year (including Christmas Day!). Even if he was earning 50% commission from advertising that deal it still wouldn’t nearly cover the amount of money he’s saved me (and lots of others) over the last year! So would begrudge it.

      I expect that choice over which articles to run is just like any other journalistic media – you choose what your readers will want to read about on any given day!

      • Rob says:

        4 Jul4 July 21:28

        We are closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, to be honest – although I still tend to respond to comments ….

  • Kai says:

    4 Jul4 July 19:57

    He has every right to promote or not promote anything as he likes, as long as the information he gives is right.

  • Polly says:

    4 Jul4 July 23:51

    Honestly Adam, you have little to complain about. Best to keep your negative comments to yourself actually, they are not in the spirit of the blog. Raffles updates us even on promos that come in through the day, ESP flight promos which save us all £1000s of £s. So we are actually very grateful for his time and effort. In fact, even we pop in the odd promo that come to us as individual subscribers to airlines, hotels before he gets them,.We all close to share the info, as someone is bound to benefit, including you, am sure. If you don’t like the format then please sign off. He is extremely fair in his advice.

    • Lionel says:

      5 Jul5 July 02:20

      I wonder what the W stands for?

• bob says:

  4 Jul4 July 19:38

  Was at a London Tesco today – Hayes is it? near Heathrow – and saw that there were Pay.coms galore, depleted, though. So they ARE hitting London 😉

  • Rob says:

    4 Jul4 July 21:28

    That’s a very generous interpretation of London in my view! We’re talking about a UB postcode 🙂

    • Lionel says:

      5 Jul5 July 02:05

      I’m from Cornwall, that’s definitely London

• Brian says:

  4 Jul4 July 21:52

  I must say that Adam W has a real chip on his shoulder about Rob and/or HfP. I do wonder why he takes the time to read it and make all these negative comments.

  I wondered why Rob didn’t find time or space to cover the recent Accor 40% off + free breakfast sale, which I felt was definitely worthy of coverage, but I don’t hold it against him for not doing so.

  • Rob says:

    4 Jul4 July 22:33

    Accor stuff gets very low readership levels so I am selective in what I run. That said, there is an Accor article tomorrow and Monday. If I am away then I also rely more on pre-written pieces which means that there is less news coverage and thus the bar for being included is higher.

    • Brian says:

      4 Jul4 July 22:39

      Interesting that there should be little interest in Accor, which is probably the best value hotel chain, in my opinion. Still, each to his own.

      • Lionel says:

        5 Jul5 July 03:00

        not of interest

      • Rob says:

        5 Jul5 July 07:58

        It is not lack of interest in the hotels but lack of interest in a dull loyalty scheme which offers no scope for aspirational redemptions!

        • Philip White says:

          5 Jul5 July 09:37

          The implementation of the Le Club benefits by the hotels in the various chains is hit and miss at best. The only time being a Platinum member appears to be worthwhile is at Pullman or Sofitel properties.

        • Brian says:

          5 Jul5 July 09:57

          Yes, but that just goes to show how a lot of us take the wrong approach and allow us to be a bit blinded by the idea of leverage. If you take an objective look at the Accor scheme, you get 2 Eurocents per point in value – fixed. The points calculator on Accor tells me that I get 620 points for spending 100 GBP as a Platinum member. That’s 12.40 Euros in value – about 9%. So you get 9% worth of value back for your stays.

          Compare that to IHG – you earn 1000 points per 100 dollars or 65 pounds, or about 1500 points per 100 pounds, if my maths is correct. You value (generously, in my opinion) IHG points at 0.5p each, based on using them for an IC. Now, I would say that is very much a top-end valuation – given that I wouldn’t pay that sort of money for an Intercontinental, it’s a theoretical valuation for me and I tend to get about 0.3p per point in real terms. But even so, at 0.5p per point, 1500 points per 100 pounds spent is 7.5% of value. Yes, IHG does bonus points, too, but on a no more generous scale than Accor does.

          So you’re getting 7.5% of value back on your IHG stays in a best-case scenario, and probably much less normally, whereas you get 9% back on your Accor stays. Throw in the fact that ALL points count towards status with Accor and that status benefits with Accor are real at certain properties (Exec Lounge at Sofitel), whereas they are limited to a possible upgrade with IHG, and it’s clear that the idea of ‘aspirational redemptions’ is purely a fantasy.

• Colin JE says:

  6 Jul6 July 23:28

  Err, back on topic ( for which apologies )
  How do I know I’ve linked my Avios suitcase to my account? It says there’s a badge for it. Just worried my account will reset to zero and I lose my 220 points.

  • Colin JE says:

    9 Jul9 July 13:00

    No worries, the Avios have appeared on my account a few days later. Thanks for the tip Adam.

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