Bits: double Avios with Shell, good Australia deals, Accor competition

News in brief:

Earn double Avios with Shell Drivers Club

Shell Drivers Club is offering double points on all fuel purchases until 14th February.  Full details are on their website here.

Double points means two points per litre on Shell Fuels and four points per litre on Shell V-Power.

Shell Drivers Club is the loyalty scheme for Shell garages in the UK.  Joining is simple – pick up a card at a Shell station when filling up and register it online.  You earn 100 Avios just for registering your card so it is worth doing this even if you switch to a different reward later.

You can learn more at the Shell Drivers Club website here.

The scheme is simple – 2 Shell points = 1 Avios. As well as Avios, 500 points can be turned into £2.50 of Shell vouchers or £2.50 of Waitrose vouchers. The benefit of taking Avios is that Shell converts (once a quarter) your points in multiples of 20 (ie 10 Avios) with no minimum, unlike the 500 point minimum for other rewards.

The snag is that you are effectively paying 1p per Avios as you could claim a £2.50 Shell or Waitrose voucher with your 500 Shell points instead of taking 250 Avios.  If 1p per Avios is too rich for you (it is too rich for me, I am happier ‘paying’ 0.75p or less) then take the vouchers.

Excellent business class deals to Australia

It isn’t just Qatar Airways which has excellent business class deals to Australia at the moment.

Air India has launched a great fare from Heathrow to Melbourne or Sydney – just £1,825 return.  The fare is available throughout much of 2018.  You will be getting a new Boeing 787 with flat bed seats.

Air India is a member of Star Alliance so you can credit the miles to Lufthansa Miles & More, United MileagePlus, SAS EuroBonus or one of the other main Star Alliance schemes.  You don’t need to credit them to Air India.

If you want to pay even less you can – until TOMORROW ONLY – book a fantastic deal in the Qatar Airways sale.  Oslo to Melbourne / Sydney / Perth / Canberra / Auckland is around £1475 return.  The Norway Qatar Airways sale page is here and my full article on the Qatar Airways sale is here which discusses the best aircraft types to pick.

It is also worth pricing tickets out of Stockholm (Sweden Qatar Airways sale page here).  You may pay a little more but Stockholm is more convenient if you are starting in the regions.

Remember that Europe to Australasia is 600 British Airways tier points (560 to Perth) when you fly on Qatar Airways.

Win in a new Accor daily competition

Le Club AccorHotels, the loyalty scheme for Ibis, Novotel, Pullman, Mercure, Sofitel etc, is running a ‘daily win’ competition until next Sunday.

It is quite generous.  Every day there are 120 prizes of 1,000 Accor points (worth 1,000 Avios or €20 off a hotel stay) to be won.  At the end of the competition, five people will win 100,000 Accor points, worth 100,000 Avios or €2,000 of hotel vouchers.

Here is the link to play.  You need to match up pairs of playing cards within 60 seconds.  Irrespective of whether or not you manage, you get to ‘virtually’ rub off a scratchcard to see if you are instant winner.  Only those who do manage to match the pairs get entered into the final draw to win 100,000 points.

(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.)

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