Earn 5,000 Avios on ANY hotel booking with new BA Amex / Kaligo.com promotion

If you have a British Airways American Express card and are opted into emails, you should have received details yesterday of a tie-up between online hotel booker Kaligo.com and American Express.

It is a very good deal.

You will receive 5,000 bonus Avios points for ANY hotel booking made via Kaligo.com before September 30th.  The stay itself does not have to be made until July 1st 2016.

The stay must be paid for with a British Airways American Express card.

You can only earn the bonus once per person.

Anyone can take part, even if they are an existing Kaligo.com customer.

You must register in advance for this deal via this link here.

You can see that there are some exceptionally good deals to be had here.  For a random July weekday in Sheffield I had no problem finding a number of decent hotels for under £50 – all of which would earn you at least 5,200 Avios points.

If you value an Avios point at 1p, this offer even creeps into ‘mattress run’ territory.  It may be worth booking a cheap room, checking in and leaving immediately with no intention of spending the night.  That said, I’m pretty sure that most HfP readers could divert one night to a Kaligo.com booking over the next few months.

There is also a generous cumulative promotion for bigger spenders which could earn up to 20,000 additional Avios points.

The cumulative bonus is based on your spending with Kaligo.com over July, August and September.  It is based on booking and not stay date, which can be as far out as 1 July 2016, although you will not receive the Avios until after your stay.

The bonus below does NOT require you to use a British Airways American Express card and is open to anyone who is a member of British Airways Executive Club.  The cumulative bonuses you can earn are:

3,000 Avios if you spend £250 – £499

10,000 Avios if you spend £500 – £999

20,000 Avios if you spend £1,000+

This is on top of the 5,000 bonus Avios points you earn with your first BA Amex-funded booking.

As usual with Kaligo.com and its competitors PointsHound and Rocketmiles, you should check competing sites before you book.  They will not always be the cheapest every time, but if you factor in the value of the Avios points then they should be very competitive.  Business users should note that none of the sites above can provide VAT receipts – if that is an issue, you should wait until you need to book a hotel outside of the EU.

You must register for this promotion in order to receive the bonus Avios.  If you don’t have a BA Amex card, you can register for this promotion on its own here.  BA Amex cardholders will be automatically registered when signing up for the ‘5,000 Avios in one stay’ promotion.

If you do not have a British Airways American Express card, you could think of this promotion as an additional 5,000 Avios sign-up bonus.  You would receive your card within 7-10 days of applying which would give you plenty of time to make a booking via this promotion.

My review of the free BA Amex is here and my review of the Premium Plus fee-paying version is here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (September 2023)

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:

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

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.

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.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

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.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.