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Bits: 9,000 Thistle hotel rooms in London for £90, Norwegian launching low-cost Gatwick to Vegas

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News in brief:

£90 Thistle Hotel rooms in London – including breakfast

Thistle Hotels is running a four day promotion, starting today, to celebrate the 90th birthday of the Queen.

There are 9,000 rooms available at exactly £90 each including breakfast, spread over the eight Thistle hotels for stays until June 2017.  On peak dates a price of £90 will represent a decent saving.

You should be able to book via this special link from today.

Sister company Guoman Hotels, which runs The Tower by Tower Bridge amongst other hotels, is having a similar sale.  It is charging more but you get breakfast and a bottle of prosecco thrown in!  This deal is bookable until the end of February 2017.  Click here for details.

Norwegian 787

Norwegian launching Las Vegas from Gatwick

I haven’t covered budget long haul airline Norwegian for a while.  I looked at them when they launched their New York service and I wasn’t hugely impressed – the cost savings over BA were modest and the terrible flight times meant that you either lost sightseeing time or had to pay for another hotel night.

The company has continued to expand using a growing fleet of new Boeing 787-9 aircraft.  It now flies to Boston, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Los Angeles and Oakland / San Francisco.

In October it will launch flights from Gatwick to Las Vegas.

I took another look.  3rd to 7th November, for example, is £380 return.  However, adding food (!) and a suitcase takes you to £480.  This compares well with Virgin Atlantic (£612) and BA (£719).

Premier class was £910.  This only comes with 46 inches of legroom – we’re not talking a flat bad here – but does include food, seat selection (which BA charges for), luggage, fast track security and lounge access.

This is not such a great deal, however, when you consider that – ex Dublin – you can buy ‘proper’ flat bed business class to Las Vegas for £1,175 on BA, Virgin or American.  Factor in the Avios or Virgin miles you would earn and Norwegian looks even poorer value.  For economy travel it might be worth a look.

If you’ve ever flown with Norwegian long-haul, please post below – I’d be interested to know how you found it.

Category

General

Comments (71)

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

  • Matt says:
    10 Jun10 June 09:15

    Managed to get a round trip to LA starting in ARN and finishing in LGW for £215 last week. If you book ahead you can get some very good prices. Be sure to always book from the Norwegian (.NO) as you’ll find the prices even after the exchange rate charge around £10 per leg cheaper.

    Subsequently from LA i’m then doing the PTY tier-point run that’ll get me Gold BA….(£595)..So overall, quite happy.

    Even if the product is average, for the price I’m paying, I’m very happy.

  • Ian says:
    10 Jun10 June 09:27

    Norwegian are great on long haul.

    We paid for their premium seats up front. Excellent.

    Nice clean and fast aircraft and you do arrive far more refreshed and less jetlag.

    The other great advantage is for one way flights – unlike all other carriers they do not charge almost double for a single ticket. They just charge half a return. Excellent!! So for anyone cruising the atlantic they are a great choice.

    Sure it was a late flight from a poor FLL airport. But the flight made up for it.

    I would fly them again if I had to.

  • Gavin says:
    10 Jun10 June 09:33

    Would be interested to know how people compare flying BA Y to Norwegian, and how they rate the Dreamliner experience on both.

  • N says:
    10 Jun10 June 09:48

    OT – Any whispers from Curve/Amex on them rekindling their romance?

  • Graham says:
    10 Jun10 June 09:59

    Flew LGW>LAX>LGW with Norwegian on the 787 back in 2014 in economy. If memory serves me correctly, I think I paid £405 return from LGW>LAX.

    I was actually quite impressed by the offering. Super aircraft and crew.

    Onboard upgrades to Premium Economy were being offered by the crew (pay at your seat) for I think 200 USD.

    Though you have to pay for meals and snacks/drinks if you want them, the meal offering put BA to shame based on my recent A380 experience with them which was so bad they gave me 5000 Avios after complaining.

    On the Norwegian 787, they have a very efficient way of ordering drinks and snacks – swipe your debit or credit card at your seat and order on the seat back IFE. It can get pricey but most drinks were delivered within a couple of minutes. The good part was that they clearly reported their systems a long time before we landed in LAX, so I think we only got charged for about half of what we actually consumed!

    Sat in row 6 which is an exit row seat – as far as I can recall it was the same price as any other seat.

    I really had no complaints whatsoever and would certainly use them again if the price was right.

  • Stuart says:
    10 Jun10 June 10:41

    We flew LGW to FL the first summer they did this route. £400pp (there are 5 of us, so was a big saving v’s Virgin etc in August).
    Not sure why, but the Dreamliners cabin I agree with a lot of posts – we all found it much more pleasant than other airlines. The IFE is high quality, but not a great choice – the sky map is brilliant though…played with that for hours…different views from diff parts of plane, and we even flew past Manhatten!
    You have to pay for everything, from blankets t headphones, so go prepared.
    This year we are flying LGW to COP then to MCO….all for £400 in August. The LGW to COP leg will have wifi too…I’ve used that route before, and COP is a good airport…surprisingly big!

  • koroleon says:
    10 Jun10 June 10:59

    Premier class on Norwegian looks more like Premium Economy, except with extra legroom. On BA and VS, premium economy is 2-3-2 in 787-8 with 38 inch legroom – Norwegian offers 2-3-2 with 46 inch legroom (all based on seatguru). Using the low fare finder on BA, it seems that you can go to Las Vegas in WTP for £970. So Norwegian wins here (lower price, more legroom), unless you use BAEC to your advantage (IMHO this is a fairer comparison than ex-DUB fares).

  • The_Real_A says:
    10 Jun10 June 11:03

    Rob – you really need to cover Thomas Cook Airlines (no joke). Their product on the scheduled airline is very good indeed, to the point I now fly them in Economy and Premium Economy rather than BA.

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

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