Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: bonus miles with Kaligo hotels, Emirates scraps free wi-fi

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News in brief:

New Kaligo.com hotel deals for bonus miles

Hotel booking group Kaligo.com is currently running a very generous Avios promotion.   You will receive 5,000 Avios with £500 of cumulative spend or 10,000 Avios with £1,000 of cumulative hotel spend when you book before 11th July (your stays can be later). Details are in this HfP article and you can book here.  Both new and existing customers can take part.

If are looking for something other than Avios, Kaligo.com has launched two other offers which are valid with ALL of its airline partners – which means pretty much every major airline scheme going.

Offer 1 – 1,000 bonus miles with your first booking of $300 equivalent or more (click here)

Offer 2 – 20% bonus miles with your first booking (click here)

For most people, the first deal will be the most generous as long are you are spending $300+.  Remember that hotels booked via Kaligo.com are treated as third party bookings so you will not receive any hotel loyalty points on top – it is best used for non-chain bookings or at chains where you do not have status.

Both of these offers are for bookings made by 28th June (the stay can be later) and are for new Kaligo.com customers only.

Emirates A380

Emirates scraps free wi-fi

Emirates has always had one of the most generous wi-fi policies.  You received 10 MB for free and a further 600 MB for a token $1, although the downside of this was a relatively slow service due to the number of users.

From 14th June, it has changed its policy.  In Business Class, wi-fi will be free if you are a member of the Emirates Skywards loyalty scheme.  Importantly, you cannot sign up during the flight itself.

For Business Class travellers who are not in Emirates Skywards, and for all Economy Class passengers, the charges are:

Free – 10 MB of data

$9.99 – up to 150 MB of data

$15.99 – up to 500 MB of data

Unless you are on a very long flight, Emirates suggests the $9.99 package, on the grounds that the speed isn’t good enough for video streaming anyway.


How to earn Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards

How to earn Emirates Skywards miles from UK credit cards (March 2024)

Emirates Skywards does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Emirates Skywards miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.

Cards earning Membership Rewards points include:

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Emirates Skywards miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Emirates Skywards mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it.

Comments (32)

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

  • Joseph Heenan says:

    This seems to match what I saw on flights on 16th/17th, except the free allowance was 20 meg rather than the 10 listed in the article.

    The portal certainly didn’t make it clear it was free for business class (and for unknown reasons was rejecting my skywards username/password).

    The service seemed reasonably fast, at least on the Glasgow -> dxb hop – it was definitely struggling on approach to NRT though, not sure if that was a coverage or capacity issue.

  • Andrew says:

    So they haven’t scrapped free wifi at all then. Rather misleading headline! They have increased the price of paid-for wifi from
    $1 to $9.99-$15.99, but retained the free 10MB and free wifi in J (presumably in F too?).

  • LaserBeams says:

    Totally O/T but do any of the Lounge schemes (Lounge Key, DragonPass etc) allow access into the Virgin Trains First Class lounges in London?
    Thanks!

  • Anna says:

    OT – I’m flying to GCM in August, with a connection from MAN the day before. As I understand it, the long haul flight shouldn’t be affected by strike action. What about the connection? Should I have a back up plan (which is pretty much driving through the night to Heathrow!).

    • Genghis says:

      Have strikes even been announced for Aug? I thought just first two weeks of July? Given many of the previous strikes have been called off last minute, I would worry too much – at this stage.

    • Rob says:

      If the connection is BA, you’ll be fine – they will sort it if things go wrong.

      • Anna says:

        Yes BA, thanks. Ghengis, I am not taking any chances after the recent chaos!

  • PAL says:

    Am I imagining this or could you spend the your emirates miles on hotel bookings – as in globally not just UAE. Some kind of Kaligo looking site. This was a few months back…

    • Rob says:

      Yes, Virgin miles though.

    • RM says:

      You can spend Emirates miles via Rocketmiles, full or part payment. Quite a good way to use up small amounts of miles – I did this myself at Easter.

      • PAL says:

        I dô not think this exists any more the option has disappeared…

  • Barry cutters says:

    Iv just sold my printer cartridges in one bulk order. Here is the breakdown on how i did;
    28x £16.50 =£460

    I sold them for £250
    Postage was £10
    I assume i will lose about £40 on Ebay and paypal fees.
    so an overall cost of £260

    so i earned 28,460 Tesco points.
    Which converts to either;
    71,150 virgin miles (0.35p/mile)
    or
    68,304 Avios (0.38p/mile)
    Plus an additional 690 virgin miles from virgin black card

    I never spend points for less value than 1p/mile. And will likely add most of this to my 80k virgin balance to allow 2 return trips in first to Beijing on air china.
    Great result!

    Many thanks to Rob for highlighting this deal.

    • JamesB says:

      A great deal only if you are realising your 1p/avios value after factoring in cost of an alternate revenue flight, avios (and status, if personally important) earned on that revenue flight, and cost of your time in purchasing, collecting and selling the cartridges. I suspect your return might be much greater were you to use your clubcard points at Hilton for example.

      • Barry cutters says:

        Time don’t bother me . Was a case of buying them- listing them on eBay, once sold picking up from tesco express in my village, walking straight in to the post office next door and sending them .
        I think 1p per avios is very difficult not to achieve . To put it in perspective a direct first or business class ticket would cost me £2000 to Beijing . -£500. Taxes these flights will save me £1500, not bad for £260 and at best an hours work. As for more value from Hilton I have no use for more hotel points . I can’t use what I earn every year. It’s great getting maximum value but I’d rather get very good value on something I need

        • JamesB says:

          All comes down to where you are using the avios. From your comments it appears like you are flying exLON so that gives you a head start on value since direct flights are available and attract a premium. This compares favourably with my need to redeem for one-stop flights from the regions for which the maths can be very different. Taking zone 7 as a median example for the far east, I’m looking at a minimum 150000 avios plus about £700 tax and fees in CW. This compares to a readily available revenue J fare of around £1500 on KLM (or less on the likes of AY or TK in sales). Thus, at best I’m only getting around £800 of value for 150000 avios, and that’s even before value of miles earned on KLM or another carrier is factored in. Using miles from the regions seems generally less attractive although there can be exceptions. For this reason clubcard to hilton seems a better option for my circumstances although I’m gambling on keeping the clubcard currency until such times as points or miles are actually needed. I agree with you regards the time, it’s really all part of the hobby and the fun so is probably best written off.

          • Genghis says:

            We use a 241 on LH which changes the maths somewhat.

          • JamesB says:

            @Genghis, we are now departing INV as opposed to EDI which helps too. We enjoy going to Inverness a few times each year anyway so happy to write cost of that off or see it as a ‘freebie’ for APD saving. Did you make a decision on your Scottish break yet?

          • Genghis says:

            We’re doing a short break start of Oct. Fly LCY-GLA after work on the Thu, Barra day trip on the Fri, whistle stop Highland tour on the Sat, head to Edinburgh Sun morning and then fly EDI-LCY on Mon evening. Should be a good trip. Looking forward to it!

          • Genghis says:

            Your tips proved very valuable and if my wife likes it, we’ll go back to Scotland to explore a bit more.

          • JamesB says:

            Hope you both enjoy, it will be good for a quick overview with a unique experience thrown in witb your Barra flight. Hope you are lucky witb the weather as that makes a huge difference. If autumn comes early this year you may even get some colour up north.

  • Jay says:

    No they didnt scrap free WiFi, they increased it. You now get 20MB free and the skywards members get free WiFi when travelling in J and F Class.

    • jamie says:

      How do I find out what class I am? I recently upgraded an upcoming trip to Business with my skywards miles fro LHR to MEL in September.

  • Gareth says:

    For the attention of others-got my 10k extra points yesterday on the free ihg credit card. I put a few small transactions through and it seamed to trigger the points.i applied via ihg app offer and never had the barclaycard ihg.

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

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