Kaligo.com is a hotel booking site which lets you earn Avios points on every booking, irrespective of the chain.
They have run some excellent promotions in the past and I believe that more are on the way. If you have not used them before and need a hotel over the next week or so, however, you could do worse than take advantage of their current promotion.
You will receive 3,000 bonus Avios points – on top of the standard Avios earned from your stay – on your first Kaligo.com booking.
There is no minimum spend or stay length.
You must book before 31st December but your stay can be at any point until 6th October 2016.
You need to register with Kaligo.com at this page before booking.
Kaligo.com has an excellent reputation for posting points promptly and you will receive your Avios a few days after check-out.
Pricing can vary wildly compared to other sites so do double check other places before you book. Much of the time they match other sites but occasionally it is more expensive. That said, for a cheap one night stay it is unlikely that any price difference would outweigh the value of the 3,000 Avios.
You will not earn points or stay credit with the hotel itself because this is treated as a third party booking. You will also not receive a VAT invoice for stays at EU hotels which may be an issue if you are a small business.
If you can work around the issues above, though, this is a good little bonus to top up your Avios account.
(Want to earn more hotel points? To see our complete list of promotions from the major chains, click here to visit our ‘Hotel Promos’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Our first Kaligo booking (for 5000 avios) was a very disappointing experience. Booked a b&b in Scotland during August expecting a standard room as shown on their website. Ended up in a backpackers economy room with no connecting bathroom (as there should have been). The owner of the b&b said the booking agent had phoned to check availability when we made the booking and was told we could only have this room type but we were not informed even though we had paid for a standard room. My partner complained to Kaligo by email that they had mis-described the room and overcharged us for that room type. She Got a very quick response saying they would raise it with their supplier (Expedia?). Fast forward to today, 3 months later and the complaint is still not resolved. It wasn’t worth the avios and we don’t plan on using Kaligo again.
Nice…..
Yet another Kaligo ad. About time I suppose as it’s been 2 weeks since the last one!
You don’t consider 3,000 Avios on, say, a £50 room booking worthy of discussion? The Kaligo links in the article are not affiliate links as you could have checked in 30 seconds.
It was either this or the Iberia Economist promo again ….
There is a natural bias on HFP about writing about companies which proactively seek me out, are willing to spend time with me discussing their plans and ideas and which I know offer good customer service. That is a statement of the obvious, hopefully – I can’t write about what I don’t know about and I am more willing to support businesses I know are ‘sound’. If a HFP reader ever mentions a Kaligo issue to me, I just give them the CEO’s email and it gets fixed.
Further to my first post – It shouldn’t really be necessary (although I agree it is often the most effective way) to email the CEO of a company to get a customer complaint resolved. Pia Tarrayo Senior Manager Customer services initially responded and then handed over to Yuki Yipp. The most recent email we received was a reminder to themselves to chase with zoomata. Not impressed.
So, either through co-incidence, or possibly since my posting here this morning (first post) Kaligo have emailed my partner this lunchtime offering a 50% refund on our downgraded room, and 3,000 avios as a goodwill gesture. We are happy to accept this (we had only asked for the difference in rate to be refunded). So for the record – Kaligo have now resolved this to our satisfaction and I would echo Rob’s testimonial that they do sort out issues.
We have family friends in south of Thailand we visit regularly but we need someplace to sleep there so we book cheap but clean rooms. My first Kaligo booking was via the amex promo so we got 5200 avios for £60 for 4 nights. Hotel was great for the money; dad will repeat it when he next visits which will be high season so £80 for 5000+ avios. My partner will book something on this offer so another 3000+ avios making at total of at least 13600 avios for a total spend under £200 including a minimum 9 nights hotel!My booking went without a hitch, very happy. I think they use GTA. Always happy to use independent hotels so if Kaligo continue to run such good promotions then they can count on a good chunk of my family business. Would probably not have heard about Kaligo before a recent erihad email if it were not for HfP so no complaints from me, thanks Rob.
Wish this had come out yesterday; I just had to book 8 nights in a hotel that could have earned me around 2400 miles on top of the bonus.
I did search this site’s list of hotels offering avios before booking; I thought I saw Kaligo listed but at the time had no idea it was a booking site rather than a hotel chain. (Worth making clearer, perhaps?)
Might depend on how much you want the Avios versus saving money on the room. Kaligo has a room in Belfast’s Travelodge next June with Avios for £91 – on the Travelodge website I can get a room for £69 flexible rate or £56 saver rate.
I thought I would do a little hotel search after booking my Qatar flights this week. The Raffles hotel in Singapore (Courtyard Suite) is £1052.00 a night and the hotel direct price is £273.00. Maybe the 39000 avios is not worth it for this one.
OTOH, our SFO room was literally half the price of booking.com, and lots of avios earned on top. Regards our cancelling, we had the refund in our amex account literally two days later. As I cancelled our HKT hotel, and regrouped the nights to give us 3 x bonus points of 17400 per each 5 nights , that was a brilliant result.
But our next trip, sadly Kaligo are almost double a night, so we are booking directly with hotel, this time. It’s literally a steal, so, it can vary.
Always always compare is the mantra on this site !
Sebastian and crew have responded immediately, fixed and amended every time. Really good c/s they often contribute on this site. I have had an email from. Kyle this morning too, and replied with an issue over a new booking I want to make.
Polly, many years ago now we stayed in Chancellor Hotel which is just a couple of doors down from the St Francis on top left corner of Union Square. It was very well worn to say the least but clean with quality but dated furnishings etc and somehow still very charming, quirky and very SF. Very friendly staff, family owned I think, endless free hot fresh baked cookies and good coffee in the lobby sitting area, huge old fashioned baths and everybody is presented with a rubber duck as a crazy arrival gift. I have no idea what the score is at that hotel nowadays but you may want to check it out on tripadvisor to see what people are saying if you are not confirmed yet. It wasn’t cheap though, about $170/night plus tax and that was at least ten years ago.
James, thanks for that info, got the Hyatt for a glitch price I think , fab price, and another hotel the Beresford for two extra nights. On Kaligo, so that’s good. But when I tried to increase our stay at the Hyatt to six nights, the price went up to £2k . Totally shocked, so sticking with our original plans so far. Can’t wait to be there. Will have a look at your one too. In SEA our hotel with Kaligo was half booking.com too, so all good so far with the planning.
Def have to look around at prices when booking with agencies tho, as prices vary so much
The extra days might have coincided with a convention at moscone, rates rocket when there is something on. I checked tripadvisor and I see Chancellor is still going strong and customers are still very much in love with it.
Just a guess, have you guys totally gone off my topic???????
Daz, That made me laugh. Why not join in our little chat ?????
Rob,
One issue to beware is Kaligo’s only refund cancelled bookings only 4-6 weeks after the cancellation. That is a long wait and might weigh on anyone considering a high value booking.
William
Just to put some balance here – I’ve had really good experiences with Kaligo. Kaligo were cheaper than my corporate travel agent for recent trips to Paris (Hyatt) and Boston (Sheraton). The rooms were as described and standard for those hotels. The bonus Avios posted within a few days.
I had to cancel a booking and the customer service team were very helpful – replying to emails within a couple of hours. I can’t remember how long it took for the refund to come back to my credit card but it was certainly within a week.
YMMV I guess but I certainly consider them whenever I make bookings now.
I took advantage of the 1,000 bonus avios per booking 2 weeks ago.
Booked a single night, in the same hotel, for 3 nights running and stayed last week. The 5,000 avios have all posted into my BAEC today…must say I am impressed!
Shame I missed out on the 3,000 bonus for new customers, but think I did pretty, pretty well out it – thanks for the heads up on that one Raffles.
I’ve booked with Kaligo on 5 occasions over this year and have managed to net 46,700 Avios. On virtually every occasion, the price was the same as the hotel web site or so similar as to not warrant any kind of hand wringing. I’ve only booked when it’s been 100% certain I am going somewhere so I’ve had no experience with cancelling or changing a booking. All the rooms were what I expected and I never had any issue whatsoever on check in at the hotel. My points have all posted within a week to my Executive Club account. I highly recommend the site! I have forthcoming bookings in January and will continue to use them for my hotel bookings in future.
On the comments above about Head for Points “advertising” Kaligo – for me, I rely on the site to alert me to promotions that I can take advantage of so I see no issue with that at all – quite the opposite in fact.
Cheers Rob, Had a 5000 IHG point break booked near to PRG. Cancelled that and paid £52 for the better Marriott actually opposite the terminal (my preferred overnighter) with 3200 avios. Kaligo price competitive with Marriott direct and the usual Kayak options etc.
My hotel in Moscow worked out slightly cheaper on Kaligo than on the other sites I checked (and bonus points for Kaligo including taxes from the outset!)
How does Kaligo work?
I’m tempted to say it scrapes other booking websites and rather than pocketing a full referral commission, it buys avios/points, passes this on to the customer, and pockets a smaller commission?
I assume this after looking at a hotel (Mercure in Manchester) and finding 23+ listings for types of room for a hotel that actually offers four room types. And the mention of ‘contacting their supplier’ earlier in the comments.
No, that’s not how it works.
The biggest buyers of hotel rooms in the world are 2-3 companies you have never heard of, eg GTA. Whilst Expedia is a ‘public’ wholesaler (buys rooms in bulk and resells to you) the others are mainly trade wholesalers, supplying tour operators, groups etc. Kaligo (and PointsHound, Rocketmiles and indeed the Avios ‘book hotels with points’ offer) taps into these wholesale room feeds.
Because the wholesalers buy at massive discounts, Kaligo can still make a good margin by marking up the room to something closer to the price the hotel is selling it for directly.
A little generous to suggest that Kaligo matches other website prices much of the time. I really tried to use them during the recent Avios promo, but they were more expensive on every single occasion I looked. On a couple of occasions I swallowed the cost, because I wanted the bonus Avios, but most of the time I simply could not justify the exorbitant rates Kaligo charge. Their mark-up is quite simply uncompetitive, which makes me worry about how long they will be in business- and how safe bookings are.
Al, there are times they are very uncompetitive, and others when they really surprise me. But as with this promo I will always check them before deciding if I am actually buying avios with them or getting a bonus. As I say, on our next trip to Asia , can’t book with them. Booking straight with the hotel.. I have decoded that it’s just not worth paying for avios, unless it’s like that huge prom where we earned almost 60 k on one trip, but cost was minimal, as their price was brilliant at that time.