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Get your HfP Christmas Party tickets – with £3,500 of prizes to be won

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As we announced last week, we are pleased to say that we are holding our second Head for Points reader Christmas party on Tuesday 12th December.

Like last year we are taking over the Dry Martini bar at the Melia White House hotel from 6pm to 8pm.  This is situated just a few minutes walk from Warren Street, Regents Park and Great Portland Street tube stations.

This is a great opportunity for you to have a few seasonal drinks and, more importantly, to meet fellow readers and to share your travel hints and tips – and perhaps even learn a few inside secrets that can’t be written about online.

melia-white-house

Qatar Airways is generously sponsoring the party and underwriting the majority of the bill.

And we have a very cool prize draw too ….

There will also be a prize draw on the night.  Everyone will be given a free raffle ticket on arrival.

One guest will win a Business Class return flight with Qatar Airways from the UK to any Qatar Airways destination!  (Well, almost anywhere – you can’t backtrack from Doha which means North America is excluded and Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, and Auckland are also excluded.)

Regular readers will know that we rate the Qatar Airways business class product very highly – especially the new Qsuite currently being introduced (photo below) which comes with its own door.  The fact that you can earn Avios and British Airways tier points when you fly with Qatar Airways, due to their membership of the oneworld alliance, is an extra bonus.  If the prize winner books themselves onto a Boeing 777 service from London Heathrow they have an excellent chance of being able to try Qsuite!

Qatar Airways Qsuite

Here is the list of all raffle prizes that have generously been offered so far:

The main prize:

  • Qatar Airways:  1 Business Class return ticket from the UK to any Qatar Airways destination (some small print applies, but not much)

And over £1,500-worth of other prizes donated by some of our friends:

There should be another couple of prizes to add before the big night.

We would like to thank everyone above for generously donating the prizes.  As there are only 150 people coming, your chances are good – 1 in 10.  Bring a friend or partner and you’ve got a 1 in 5 chance of winning!

For clarity …. you need to be in the room when the raffle is drawn (probably 7.15 – 7.30) to claim your prize.  Bear this in mind if you think you might have to leave early.

And a goody bag for every guest

Whilst we are still working on the final details, we are hoping that that all guests will receive a goody bag on departure.  No promises though.

If your company would like to contribute promotional material (150 sets needed) to the goody bags in return for a contribution towards the bar bill, please email me at anika at headforpoints.com.

How do I get my ticket?

Because we need to ensure that people who ask for tickets turn up, we are charging £20 per ticket.  This price includes VAT.

However, your £20 ticket covers unlimited house wine and beer between 6pm and 8pm.  Soft drinks will also be available.  Spirits etc can be purchased for cash.  We are not making a penny from this and indeed Qatar Airways is footing the bulk of the cost.  After 8pm, the bar will remain open for cash payments for anyone who wants to stay longer.

To give as many people as possible the chance to buy a ticket, we have decided to sell the 150 tickets in two batches this year.

  • Batch One will go on sale on Friday 24th at 10am
  • Batch Two will go on sale on Saturday 25th at 10am

We have set up two ticket sale pages:

If you are buying a ticket on Friday please use this link

If you are buying a ticket on Saturday please use this link

You can buy up to two tickets but please don’t be nervous about coming on your own.  Frequent flyers are a friendly bunch and always happy to share details of their recent trips and miles-earning tips.  There will be name badges this year to make introductions easier.  We would actually recommend that you do not bring a guest if you don’t think that they will want to chat about travel all night, as it might ruin the fun for both of you.

American Express is accepted.

We look forward to seeing you on the 12th.

Comments (234)

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

  • Nick says:

    Slightly off topic – has anyone called the US Call Centre to nab a 241 recently? Just trying to get an idea of the wait times. Would a Friday be better or worse in others experience? Thanks

    • Andy says:

      I have no experience of it, but I would guess that Thanksgiving weekend will be a busy time for any travel related call centre, either because of a lack of staff or a high volume of calls.

  • Rob says:

    ‪Just secured another £600 of raffle prizes from Virgin Flying Club and Vueling, taking us to over £4,000-worth!

  • Dave R says:

    This is great news.. thanks for the heads up!

  • ChrisC says:

    Airportr no longer serve LCY and haven’t done so for several months

    • Rob says:

      I was wondering about this – didn’t see it on the website yesterday and had it in the back of my mind to investigate. Thanks.

  • The_real_a says:

    Really awesome news!

  • Tony Burns says:

    Would love to have joined you all even though I am retired and a leisure traveller 90% of the time so gutted as flying out on the 11th December.
    Keep up the good stuff as so much useful information on here.
    Finally all enjoy the evening.

  • ankomonkey says:

    Dress code to be inspired by your favourite airline, hotel chain, loyalty scheme or destination. I’m coming as the Turkish Airlines Flying Chef as my VS onesie will be in the wash…

  • TripRep says:

    Rob have you contacted Lauren @ Hilton to try & beg a gift???

    I also think you’d sell a few HeadforPoints luggage tags if you ever got some made & marketed them, esp. if some proceeds went to a charity….

    Have a great time, I’ll be a few thousand miles away thinking of you all.

    • Rob says:

      There is a new Hilton UK person I am meeting next week so we will try them.

      Avios has promised me something but – IAG-style – is taking a while to get it signed off, probably by 10 levels of middle management 🙂 They are not being mean.

      I am getting concerned about the raffle now because even if we whizz through it at 1 minute per prize we’re looking at 20 minutes 🙂 It will keep the drinks bill under control though …

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

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