News in brief:
3,000 American Airlines miles per Ramada or Days Inn stay
I don’t cover Wyndham Rewards, the loyalty scheme for Ramada and Days Inn, much on HFP. I did write this overview here if you want to learn more.
Despite this, there are a fair number of Ramada and Days Inn hotels across the UK and many are pretty cheap.
Outside the South East, sub-£30 prices at Days Inn hotels on off-peak dates can be found. This makes this promotion interesting.
Wyndham will give you 3,000 bonus American Airlines miles, on top of your base miles, for your next five stays at any Wyndham hotel.
This means that you can earn a maximum of 15,000 bonus AA miles.
There are no minimum stay requirements. You have until 29th February to book and until 7th March to complete your stay.
Even better, according to the small print, you can get credit for up to three rooms per stay. You could book three rooms at the same cheap Days Inn, check in for all three and get bonus miles for them all.
At a suitably cheap hotel (eg daysinn.co.uk has Days Inn Chesterfield is £21.25 on 20th December) you would be paying around 0.6p per AA mile. Not bad!
You can register for the promotion here – don’t forget to set your Wyndham Rewards account to ‘earning AA miles’ as well. Thanks to xcalx.
Cathay Pacific launches Gatwick to Hong Kong – a new Avios redemption option
Cathay Pacific has announced a new ‘four flights a week’ service to Hong Kong from Gatwick. This is in addition to the existing services from Heathrow and Manchester. From September 2016, it will mean Cathay is operating 43 weekly flights from the UK.
Cathay will be using a brand new Airbus A350 on the route, configured with Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy. You can find out more on the Cathay website.
As a oneworld alliance member, you can redeem Avios points on this route. Availability should be pretty good as Cathay is known for being generous in opening up space on non-prime routes.
Remember that BA charges ‘peak day’ pricing every day for partner airlines, which means you will need fewer Avios if you book the British Airways service on an off-peak day. For peak day travel, however, I don’t see why you would bother with BA unless you had an British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher to burn. Cathay is generally seen as a superior airline in every respect.
If you live outside London, it is worth looking at redeeming on Cathay services from mainland Europe – assuming you can connect from your local airport – due to the HUGE tax savings. Here is an example I wrote about on the Dusseldorf service.
Sale on purchasing Melia Rewards points
Finally, Melia Rewards is running a sale on buying its own points. Until 28th February (it is a pretty long sale!) you will only be paying €5 per 1,000 instead of the usual €8. If you are looking to top up your account, this is not a bad opportunity. You can buy Melia points here (if the link does not work, log in and then click the link again).
(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Promos’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
That’s a good way to top up AA miles! Shame there’s nothing like that price anywhere near me!
Is there a requirement to check out, or could one just check in and not return and still get the miles etc?
No need to check out, just leave key in room.
I am doing this at a Holiday Inn on Monday!
Is there a way to search flexible dates, for the lowest possible price??
There is for the Ramada & Days Inn that are operated by welcome break.
If you go to the welcome break website and click on hotels and enter some dates it comes up with a week to view.
Make sure you book via days inn and not welcome break though as they operate on different systems even though it’s the same hotel and operator.
You say you can earn AA credit for up to three rooms at a time. Does this contribute to the 5 stays? I.e. Three rooms on one night would net 9,000 miles and leave you with 2 stays under the promotion. Or would you have a further 4 remaining?
As I read what Raffles has said, you get 3000 miles per stay AND can book up to three rooms for the same date and get credit for each of these rooms.
That would leave two rooms to book, together, for a different night to maximise the 15000 miles on offer
That is what the small print says, and I am just repeating it! I don’t pretend to be an expert on Wyndham Rewards.
Unless BA has an Avios discount (such as the recent Y for 11000 Avios), CX redemptions will be cheaper overall even on BA’s off-peak days as long as the price of oil doesn’t rise.
Massively OT: I have 2,750 Marriott points that are apparently going to expire at the beginning of Feb 2016 under the new rules. If anyone can use them, I’ll gladly transfer them over for the price of the transfer fee (about $10, I think). I’d rather someone gets the use of them than they just go to waste.
Hi Fenny – if you still have them then I would use them – email me at robc_hunt {at} yahoo.co.uk
Thanks !
OK, will do.
OT bits
https://network.americanexpress.com/connect/uk/en/secure/campaign_detail.html?campaign=tcm:618-142947
Get your Justin Bieber tickets in the pre-sale, good for MS
Big fan or just planning to sell them on?
Not sure Bieber is that big these days to justify the risk!
I think day 1 @ O2 is straightforward enough 🙂
These were clearly only pre-sales, but they had already sold out of the premium tickets stock @ 10.15am, possibly more released tomorrow?
and just checking, I see they have reduced max tickets from 8 to 6 since this morning…
anybody without the password just ask (it’s the free phone number on your Amex card)
The clue was MS 🙂