Bits: DragonPass accepted in T5 and Gatwick Regus, 20% off gift cards at Tesco

News in brief:

DragonPass lounge card now accepted at Heathrow Terminal 5 and Gatwick South Regus

DragonPass, the Asian-based airport lounge access business (a clone of Priority Pass) is beginning to make inroads into the UK market.  With the demise of Airport Angel, they have picked up the lounge access deal offered to Barclays current account holders.

Without telling anyone, DragonPass has launched a deal with the Regus business centre in Terminal 5 arrivals at Heathrow and the South terminal (landside) at Gatwick.  This is a small coup given that Priority Pass does not have such an arrangement.

Regus in Terminal 5 is a business centre more than an airport lounge.  There is no free food but there is a free Nespresso coffee machine.  There are two sofa chairs, plus two ‘pods’ for working and a shared table of six seats best suited for working.  There are no newspapers but there are some magazines.  The photo below shows you how it looks.

It is not somewhere to ‘lounge’ but, if you need to work before or after a flight and do not have British Airways lounge access, it is not a bad place to go.  I was working in there yesterday before catching an afternoon flight to Finland (more on that soon).

20% discount on selected Tesco gift cards

Tesco is currently offering a 20% discount on selected gift cards via their online gift card shop.  It is not clear if this offer is also available instore.

The retailers included are:

• Pizza Express
• iTunes
• Mitchell & Butlers
• New Look
• Monsoon
• Accessorize

The deal is only available on ‘plastic’ gift cards and not digital gift codes.  This means that you must pay for postage which will add at least £1.50.

The key thing to remember is that you will receive 150 Clubcard points for every £50 you spend on gift cards (excluding Tesco-branded cards).  That is 360 Avios.  You need to spend £50 after taking into account the 20% discount and your order must be in multiples of £50 – ie if you spend £100 there must be a theoretical way of separating the order into two lots of £50, otherwise you just get one lot of bonus points.

Pizza Express cards come in a £20 denomination and the others as £25.  The cheapest route is therefore 2 x £20 Pizza Express and 1 x £25 from elsewhere, total £65, which reduces to £52.  Postage adds £1.50 or more if you want recorded delivery.  This means that you are paying £53.50 for £60 of gift cards plus 360 Avios points.

The deal ends on 22nd November.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (March 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

Until 9th April 2021, American Express is running the biggest sign-up bonuses ever seen on a UK payment card.

You will earn 100,000 Membership Rewards points on American Express Business Platinum (apply here) and 50,000 Membership Rewards points on American Express Business Gold (apply here) which is FREE for your first year. Points transfer 1:1 into Avios. Here are links to our reviews:

Here are your other options. There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

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

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

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)