EXCLUSIVE: Earn 250 Avios when dining at local restaurants from 1st October

Avios is gearing up for the launch of a new feature on 1st October – a new restaurant-booking portal called Restaurant Circle which will give you 250 Avios points with every table booked.

The system is being run by ResDiary which handles bookings for 5,900 independent restaurants.  It will be branded as Avios or British Airways Executive Club depending on which site you visit from.

The economics is interesting:

Not all 5,900 restaurants who use ResDiary will offer Avios.  It will be restricted to those who pay a £25 per month listing fee.  This fee is chunky when you consider that restaurants can pay as little as £49 per month to ResDiary for a fully functioning online booking platform.

The restaurant will pay Avios £3 per booking in return for awarding 250 Avios points to the booker

Different restaurants may appear on the Avios and BA-branded sites

‘Earning whilst dining’ programmes have been very successful in other countries but have never taken off in the UK.  The attraction for the restaurant is fairly clear:

The ability to attract extra customers to a business which has high fixed costs but low marginal costs

May attract additional business customers who are often less price sensitive than the general public

May attract a wealthier client base, given the British Airways Executive Club demographic

I don’t know if there will be any special launch offers available or not.  More details on Restaurant Circle should become available nearer 1st October.

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