In April 2017, Avios launched Restaurant Circle, a restaurant booking site that lets you earn 250 Avios with every reservation you book.
The system did not work well from the start. The initial launch was delayed, and when it did launch the selection of restaurants was not as comprehensive as, say, OpenTable or even ResDiary, the company that runs Restaurant Circle.
The problem was partly self-inflicted, because Avios was charging restaurants a monthly fee to be included on the Restaurant Circle website despite the fact that they were already paying be on the parent ResDiary site. This did not prove popular.
ResDiary has now decided to pull the plug on Restaurant Circle. In a statement it said:
While it’s been beneficial for some, we know other venues had trouble justifying the Avios listing fee and we’ve been attempting to permanently remove it. Unfortunately, Avios have decided it’s a non-negotiable condition of the program, so we’ve taken the decision to stop the partnership. This will happen on the 20th February 2018.
But you can still earn until 20th February ….
To earn Avios from your meals out, you need to create a Restaurant Circle account and add your Avios or BA Executive Club membership number to your profile. If you live in Ireland, you can add an AerClub number. There are a large number of Irish restaurants included.
For every booking you make via the Restaurant Circle site, you will receive 250 Avios. As long as you turn up for your reservation (!), the Avios will be added to your account within two weeks. You can search for restaurants on the Restaurant Circle website by postcode, city or restaurant name.
You can read more about the partnership, whilst it lasts, on the British Airways website here.
(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.)
About Head for Points
Are you sure it’s not stopped already? Just tried looking to see what was available in London for tonight with a 10klm radius and nothing came up!! I seem to recall this was the problem before as well.
You have Register for it to work
Will earning avios with the main ResDiary site cease on 20th Feb or will that continue?
It all ceases I believe.
I imagine this will have been costing restaurants a fortune to be a part of. One of the reasons restaurants use Resdiary for their online booking system is that it’s a very cheap, fixed monthly fee to use. The system is pretty badly designed however. The main rivals, Opentable and Bookatable charge per cove.
Opentable used to charge 25p if people booked through the restaurant’s website or £1 if booked through the Opentable site for standard bookings. I’d guess that the restaurants were being charged more than the value of the 250 avios to be a part of this, which is why so few signed up, especially as the main reason they’d be on the Resdiary system is to lower their costs.
Please remember that through Iberia Plus and The Fork you can get 250 Avios for booking restaurants in many countries like France, Spain, NL, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium… they have a big choice of restaurants everywhere so if you are on holiday or travelling for work and planning on visiting a restaurant, have a look on the website to see if you can book. Make sure you visit using the IB+ link iberia.plus.eltenedor.es
Thanks for the tip re iberia.plus.eltenedor.es!!
Special offer of 350 avios until 28 Jan. Sadly, will not be in Madrid until March…
I didn’t realise until I logged into Avois yesterday your can add you credit cards and debit cards and anytime you use a partner it automatically credits your account with the avois instead of you having to go on and click through the website. I even added the company credit card.
Is that the in store thing? If you use the same partner over and over it drops your earning rate down to 1 per £