HfP EXCLUSIVE: 5,000 bonus Avios with £350 of hotel bookings via Kaligo.com

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• Phillip says:

  25 Jan25 January 07:24

  Yes, there are many cases where Kaligo is more expensive, but to be fair, I have found occasions where it has been the cheapest option. A recent booking for a Hyatt in NYC for example – they were the cheapest and was able to net 30k+ Avios for it. So always worth checking and comparing.

  • Joe says:

    25 Jan25 January 07:48

    30,000 Avios costs £495 if you were to buy them from avios.com. I find it hard to believe that Kaligo were able to award that many points, and still turn a profit at the margin they seem to work to, while undercutting all of the other hotel aggregator websites.

    • Rob says:

      25 Jan25 January 09:03

      That’s not how it works.

      Hotel sells online for £100.

      Hotel dumps rooms to wholesalers for £40 but with a condition that they cannot undercut (or will only undercut by an agreed margin).

      Kaligo uses part of the margin to fund the Avios, on the basis that a smaller profit is better than no profit, assuming you would otherwise have booked elsewhere.

      • Joe says:

        25 Jan25 January 10:39

        Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting that’s how it works, just emphasizing that 30,000 avios is not an insignificant value of points for Kaligo to fund. And I appreciate that Kaligo won’t be paying as much as £495 to fund 30k.
        A few people here are suggesting they have bagged great deals but I challenge anyone to find a live example and share it.

        • Rob says:

          25 Jan25 January 11:02

          …. which is not tricky.

          A random search for London for 4th February puts the Danubius Regents Park at the top of the list. Cost is £226 for 3,900 base Avios, plus of course the HFP bonus 5,000 if you get over £350 with another booking.

          Expedia wants £349. booking.com wants £349. The hotel itself has no rooms left to sell from its own allocation.

          This is just randomly taking the first hotel on the Kaligo list.

        • Joe says:

          25 Jan25 January 17:09

          Trickier than you think…

          It took me 2 minutes to find that hotel for £125 on hoteltravel.com (via tripadvisor). Same date. Same hotel. Same room type. So you’re paying £101 for 3,900 avios points which is terrible for you, and fantastic for Kaligo.

          I honestly think that finding a great deal on that website will be a needle in a haystack if it exists at all.

          P.S. love this website by the way.

  • rich says:

    25 Jan25 January 07:51

    Exactly. I have had times where booking.com has quoted 50% more than hotels.com & vv. Like raffles says. It may not be the cheapest option everytime. But its worth checking everytime because sometimes you can bag a great deal on kaligo

    • Joe says:

      25 Jan25 January 08:00

      I’d be very interested to see a live example of one of these great Kaligo deals.

      • LondonFoodie says:

        25 Jan25 January 08:40

        I didn’t check if live this second, but a few months ago I booked Days Inn Copenhagen airport on Kaligo and it was cheaper than all other websites I checked. I guess a bit of pot luck and good research!

        • Sussex Bantam says:

          25 Jan25 January 08:50

          I picked up 10K Avios (IIRC) from Kaligo through booking Hyatt Madelaine Paris and Sheraton Copley Square Boston before Christmas. Kaligo were basically the same price as other options (I know this as I had to prove it to my corporate finance team !)

        • Lady London says:

          25 Jan25 January 10:44

          Actually I think I did the same for the Comfort Hotel at OSL.
          Maybe Kaligo has some links with particular chains that give them access to better rates from time to time ?

        • Peter K says:

          25 Jan25 January 17:53

          I booked a hotel in Dudley for £51 with 6100 avios given via bonuses! The cheapest I found elsewhere was £46the same hotel. I had to look under Birmingham rather than Dudley to find it on Kaligo . I’m staying there next month.

• Greenpen says:

  25 Jan25 January 07:50

  Hotel prices are very variable and I think hotels will often reduce their price with one on-line agent while keeping a higher price with others. I use Trivago to help get the lowest offers but then factor in other issues like points.
  I used Kaligo in the summer when there was another offer running and got an excellent deal; a couple of pounds more than the cheapest and a load of Avios.

  • Rob says:

    25 Jan25 January 09:01

    That’s not quite how it works. Hotels with empty rooms effectively ‘dump’ them very cheaply to a wholesaler who agrees to buy, say, 50 rooms a night but at a 65% discount. These rooms are often resold 2-3 times to different wholesalers, each of whom adds another mark-up which brings the price nearer the ‘official’ price. Kaligo gets its stock from these wholesalers, as does every tour operator, the Avios hotel booking service, Rocketmiles, Pointshound etc.

    The hotel have no idea where the end sale even came from in many cases because it isn’t from the wholesaler who originally bought the room.

    • TravelFiend says:

      2 Feb2 February 18:00

      Hi, is there one that’s better than the other for a combo of Avios and best price – Kaligo, Rocketmiles, Pointshound etc?

      • Rob says:

        2 Feb2 February 22:34

        Not really, depends on hotel and current promos

• IanT says:

  25 Jan25 January 08:07

  Does this promo work with other programmes other than Avios Rob?

  • Rob says:

    25 Jan25 January 08:56

    No, sorry

• luke wingfield digby says:

  25 Jan25 January 08:38

  Nice promo. However, almost every single time I check Kaligo, PointsHouse or RocketMiles, the hotel prices are considerably more expensive than booking elsewhere, to the point that the Avios are not worth it…

• Ben says:

  25 Jan25 January 09:22

  O/T I was told during the week by secure message that I couldn’t have 2 barclaycards. Now i have found this on their website http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/get-another-barclaycard

  • harry says:

    25 Jan25 January 11:32

    Yep already noted – I think somebody @ B got their sorry ass whupped and they’ve made a rapidvolye face

    • Rob says:

      25 Jan25 January 11:48

      It would be easier, of course, if Barclays would deign to talk to me, especially as I am almost certainly the biggest seller of the IHG and Hilton cards outside the relevant hotel websites. But they don’t.

      I am going to a (not free) conference on loyalty credit cards in London in a couple of weeks purely to try to get to grips with this.

      • Waribai says:

        25 Jan25 January 13:06

        Seems a bit weird. Why won’t they talk to you?

        • Rob says:

          25 Jan25 January 14:00

          No idea why Barclays don’t engage. I know why Lloyds refuse to engage – they will not work with anyone who has ever published a word of criticism about them. Which counts me out.

          Different companies have different approaches to HFP. At one end you get people like Air New Zealand who are very happy to use HFP to raise brand awareness even though it doesn’t sell any tickets short-term, and then you have Barclays for whom I probably shift 2,000 credit cards a year and from whom I have never had as much as an email.

        • Waribai says:

          25 Jan25 January 17:06

          That’s a real shame and it seems incredibly short sighted but I guess this is Barclays we’re talking about!

        • Alan says:

          26 Jan26 January 05:41

          Haha hope they enjoy talking to themselves then… 😀

          (although in fairness after some atrocious CS from them earlier this year their escalated complaints team in Fife came through – able to speak to a sensible person who had read the whole complaint file and come to a mutually acceptable resolution, with them accepting fault for their mistakes where appropriate – quite refreshing!)

• Rob says:

  25 Jan25 January 11:44

  Bit of PR here, send an email there ….!

  • Sussex Bantam says:

    25 Jan25 January 12:01

    Funny use of EXCLUSIVE though !

    • Rob says:

      25 Jan25 January 13:57

      It drops through to the HFP landing page.

      The email itself does not mention HFP, I agree. Which is confusing and makes the article here look a bit odd.

      Technically, though, Kaligo is simply using its own email list to promote the exclusive HFP deal!

• VP says:

  25 Jan25 January 11:58

  To be fair the Kaligo email link contains head for points and the landing page clearly mentions Head for Points Flash deal so I think this is really a win-win for both Kaligo and HFP which is great.

• Dominic says:

  25 Jan25 January 13:18

  Just booked two hotels at perfectly fair prices. Both are non-chain ones where I’m not sacrificing getting status benefits, and I’m very happy with what will end up being 7600 Avios (in this particular case) for two sensibly priced hotel stays! Thanks – as ever – Rob.

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