Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Jumeirah Sirius returns as an American Express International Dollar Card partner

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This is probably of interest to only around 10 HfP readers, but those 10 people will be very happy.

Jumeirah, the Dubai-based luxury hotel group, was a UK Amex Membership Rewards hotel partner for a short period.  When that deal ended, it remained a partner with the International Dollar Card (click here for why anyone with a very large pile of Amex points should have one of these).

When the Jumeirah loyalty scheme, Sirius, was relaunched this Summer, the conversion option went away.  It is now back, at 4 IDC Membership Rewards points to 1 Jumeirah Sirius point.  This is a little worse than the old ratio (20:1) adjusted for the 7-ish to 1 revaluation of the scheme.

If you have been to Dubai at peak holiday periods, you will know that beach-front hotel prices are eye watering.  Here is an example using Sirius points:

Cost of an Arabian Summer House room at Dar Al Masyaf at Madinat Jumeirah next week including tax:  £913 per night (welcome to super-luxury beach-front Dubai during UK school holidays ….)

Cost in Sirius points:  11,800 points per night

International Dollar Card Amex points required:  (11,800 x 4 =) 47,200 points per night

UK Amex points required, assuming you transfer them to the International Dollar Card on a day when the exchange rate is $1.53:  30,849 points per night

Value per UK Membership Rewards point:  2.95p

You can’t beat that.  You won’t always get such good value out of Jumeirah Sirius, but it is certainly worth a look if you heading for somewhere where they have a property.  The overall quality of their hotels is high – see my review of Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi – although the Burj Al Arab in Dubai is very much an acquired taste …..


best travel rewards credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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 card

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You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

Huge 80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

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Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

American Express Business Platinum

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American Express Business Gold

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Capital on Tap Pro Visa

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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) and NO FX fees Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

Get 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month* Read our full review

Comments (64)

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

  • Adam says:

    Is it standard Oneworld access rules for the QR F Lounge? BA moving the goal posts somewhat with the recent Concorde trend, and hoping QR not following suit…

    • Rob says:

      Rules not yet clear. I imagine it will be like the Concorde Room for F passengers only. They may not even allow BA F in. We will see.

  • Rob says:

    Saw those last night, looked good!

  • Leo says:

    Is it just me or does it look a bit ho-hum? Call me jaded….or just expectations raised too high with the waiting.

  • George says:

    I wonder if the new lounge will allow access to regional First passengers?

  • Brian says:

    Don’t forget that you are only actually getting 2.95p per point IF you would be prepared to pay 913 GBP per night for the room. Surely only crazy people would be and surely there are no crazy people on HfP…

    • Rob says:

      This is the irony of the hobby though! If you usually stay in five star hotels or fly First / Business then your miles are worth more, because using them for such things is a genuine cash saving.

      • Brian says:

        True – but you’d still have to be somebody who stays at particular hotels and flies particular airlines, regardless of cost. Most of us on here tend to take advantage of special offers and deals that bring the cash price right down, like ex-EU flights. Anybody who would be happy to spend 913GBP per room per night at a hotel would be very unlikely to go to the hassle of flying to Copenhagen or Dublin to save 500-1000 pounds on a business class flight.

        • Tom C says:

          I’ve had this discussion on FlyerTalk before and I just don’t agree with you, as I fall into the exact category of who you’re talking about. My next trip is in 3 weeks time to Miami in paid F on BA, which I’m going via Dublin as it was nearly 50% cheaper than directly from LHR. I’m then staying in a £800/n room whilst in Miami. Just because I can afford £1000/n+ on a hotel room doesn’t mean I don’t want to get get the best deal available. Besides, I still have a holiday budget and the more I save in one area means the more I can spend in another, or the more nights away I can spend at better hotels.

          • Brian says:

            Good for you, Tom, but I think you are very much in the minority on HfP – not that it matters one way or the other, really! :))

          • Callum says:

            If you think there is a significant number of people in this category then quite frankly you’re deluded!

          • Rob says:

            Not significant, but a substantially higher percentage compared to the general population, which was the point.

            You need to remember that, to someone on the average £25k salaey and about to lose £2,000 of tax credits, pretty much everything on HFP would be seen as irrelevant.

          • Tom C says:

            I never said there was a significant amount of people in this category. I’m saying that people whom Brian describe do exist, as I’m one of them. A lot of people seem to think that when you earn a high income that suddenly everything is affordable.

  • whiskerxx says:

    You would have to be barking mad or have more money than sense to pay £913 per night for an Arabian Summer House room at Dar Al Masyaf at Madinat Jumeirah at any time of year!!

    • Werner says:

      You would have to be barking mad and/or have more money than sense to pay £913 per night for any room anywhere in the world! But particularly in Dubai…

      • Rob says:

        Get some kids, try finding a good October half term holiday and then come back to me.

        If you’re on £500k+ household income it is not a massive strain. I would say that about half of the HFP readers I meet fall into this category, although this is a self selecting group as I gravitate around the City or Mayfair ….

        • Erico1875 says:

          A lot of the Gold Crown timeshare apartments featured on Apartments4you on Costa del Sol or Canaries come in around 100 a night, many far less. Every bit as good as a 5 star hotel.You can get discount thru Tesco CC boost too.

          • Erico1875 says:

            Thanks. Very interesting.. Resortcerts.com are using the same search engine as Apartments4you so it will be interesting to find out the difference in cost between them both..
            Remember you can convert Tesco CCpoints @ £30 = £100 voucher

          • xcalx says:

            Just looked at the apartments4you site and noticed that the prices are way higher than using a resort cert, the certs cost £182 for a week I checked two hotels for the same room type and date, the cert costing £182 was £303 cheaper for one hotel and £163 for the other.

        • Brian says:

          I agree that it may not be a ‘massive strain’ if you’re earning 500K or more. But if you’ve got two kids and so need two rooms at a total of 1826GBP per night, you’re looking at about 10,000 pounds for 5 nights. Add on the business class flights, food, taxis etc and you’re spending 20-25K for a 5 night holiday in Dubai. That’s a year’s school fees at a good private school. Somebody earning 500K is paying half of that back in taxes and probably has an expensive house and car. Would they really want to spend 25,000 pounds in cash for their 5-night holiday in Dubai? Somehow, I doubt it.

          Clearly, you are in a special position because you can use the points, so the ‘real’ cost for you is much lower. Most people would, I suspect, prefer to get a room costing a fraction of that, but still a very good one at a very good hotel. Obviously, if you are earning millions, then it is a different matter.

        • Leo says:

          Jesus you can go off someone you know!…..

        • harry says:

          Bit of an exaggeration there, Raffles – though the point is sound.

          There are also some (like myself) who left the top echelons of the FTSE100 world for various reasons – lots of us happily – and understand the various luxuries etc of lounges, status, club/ first through experience.

          Nice to get it back for peanuts & a hobby.

    • xcalx says:

      Or have millions of airline miles, a rather large Amex balance and a conveyor belt of people looking for a referral for the Plat card.
      At 18,000 Amex per referral that’s less than 2 referrals a night for the £913 room makes it look a lot cheaper and better value than some other non airmile routes.
      I could see our esteemed leader consider this as an option and if so good on you Raffles you deserve it.

      • Rob says:

        I would bet that this site has a higher percentage of Amex Centurion cardholders / £500k+ readers than almost any other UK site.

        • Leo says:

          Are they the same ones collecting Tesco Club Card points?

          • Brian says:

            Yep – on their way home from their 500K-a-year jobs, they would take a detour for the local Tesco and buy a load of okra for the bonus points, plus 3V cards in the good old days. Then sit at home activating said cards and using them to prepay their electricity bills.

            Or not, as the case may be – if you earn enough money, your time is far too valuable to waste on such a relatively low return.

      • Brian says:

        That’s a good point and clearly Raffles is in an exalted position here – and bully for him. I do think that it needs to be stressed, however, that you are only getting a particular value per point if you are happy to spend the cash.

        • Erico1875 says:

          I think there is more value getting flights/hotels etc that I otherwise couldn’t afford

          • xcalx says:

            I would say that’s the case for most of us on here.

          • Brian says:

            That’s the point – and that’s what the value of sites like this are for – not saving us money that we would have spent anyway, but getting us experiences that we wouldn’t otherwise have wanted to pay the going rate for.

          • Waribai says:

            That’s definitely the case for me. Our household income is way above the national average but doesn’t reach six figures. However, thanks to HFP we always fly business and can stay at 5* hotels. I thought that was the majority of people here. Maybe not?!

          • Rob says:

            Majority, definitely – never suggested otherwise!

  • Liz says:

    OT: Is there anywhere to find out quickly which flights leave from which terminals at different airports. Our flights back from Houston next year don’t show the terminal on the ticket. Trying to work out if their lounge is covered under Lounge Club – probably not knowing our luck!

  • oyster says:

    Not convinced that there’s many £500k plus households here. When you’re earning £500 per hour for your day job, you’re not going to spend hours queueing at the Tesco tills with your till spit to get a few pounds worth of points and then spend more hours cashing the giftcards in!
    And never forget those of us who only earn a fifth of that are still in the top 1% in a country which is in the top 1%.

    • Tom C says:

      It is not compulsory to read every single article and follow all of the advice on it.

      • Rob says:

        15,000 people read HfP daily, either by visiting the site or getting the emails. Probably 50 people provide the bulk of the comments – it is not representative,

        I can search the 4,500+ name email list easily and I know how many Goldman Sachs etc names are on it. It is a lot. People working 15 hours per day in the City don’t have much free time to comment though! They are running up the air miles and come here for advice on how to use them.

        The other thing to remember is that City boys like a game, like a challenge, like to show how cunning they are. This game suits them.

        • oyster says:

          We all love the game!

          • Janeyferr says:

            I earn under £16k and pointsing is now my main hobby; I’ve done no cross stitch since discovering this blog.

          • CV3V says:

            and my attendance at the gym has dropped off ever since getting into points collecting!

        • GaryC says:

          I agree with the “city boys like a challenge” piece, and fall into that camp myself…points collection is definitely a game to me.

          I don’t work at Goldman’s but you need to be pretty senior even there to be bringing in over £500k – MD level I think whose hallowed ranks they only admit to every other year, though it’s a while since I spoke to anyone I know there about comp.

          And even in the ranks of city people earning £500k I don’t know any who would drop £1000/night on a hotel for a half term break. Maybe it’s the ~40 year old demographic I know, but people often have houses, school fees to pay etc.

          • Brian says:

            So maybe all those Goldman Sachs email addresses you have on your list belong to the PAs and back office staff? :)))

          • Docsdad says:

            Totally OT but that’s just depressing reading – they’re getting that much yet at the same time junior docs are getting £22 (or £50k after 10 years on the job) for doing more hours in a higher stakes environment with more student debt from their longer course – no wonder many of them are thinking of leaving for the USA or Oz for better working conditions and higher salary!

        • harry says:

          Indeed.

        • Brian says:

          I’m struggling to understand where the challenge lies. Once you know about excellent sites like this with all the tips and deals they publish, it’s pretty easy – you just read them and follow whatever advice is valid for you. No challenge there! Fun and rewarding, though!

    • Volker says:

      So much guessing going on here. Rob, maybe you should get a market research company involved. Their anonymous survey among us all would give you and soon after, all of us a fantastic picture of the HFP community, their financial situation, CC collection, travel preferences etc.
      I have not (yet) reached an annual income of 500k+ but thanks to HFP I sit in the same chairs like high-level earners on the plane, in the lounges and luxury hotels. Being a bit smart and of course well informed can get you some perks usually only a considerable amount of money can buy. I find this very satisfying.

    • Zoe says:

      My household income is above the top 1% but well below the 500k mark. Head for Points allows us to pay less than economy prices and mostly travel business class. There is not a chance we would have paid real money for business class tickets for the 4 of us to KL to get us to Vietnam this summer. In our house I tell my husband which credit card he needs to apply for / use this month, he sees this as a hobby for me which upgrades all our travel experiences.
      Slightly OT I have a daughter who will be doing a year abroad at an American college starting next August, its really painful not being able to book any travel as I don’t know exactly where she will be or when it will start. I’ve got used to booking stuff 355 days out so this feels all wrong.
      I have always been happy to ask Raffles for credit card referrals as needed, even before this site as he was really helpful on Paidtoshop.

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