What are the best hotel promos for February 2018?

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• Rob MC says:

  31 Jan31 January 10:32

  No bits so OT

  I currently have a Lloyds upgrade voucher. I am looking to go to LAX or LAS in august in Club. I tried to call yesterday regarding starting in DUB or AMS and was asked “is that for cheaper taxes” .. anyway he tried to price it up as I asked for economy on the AMS to DUB flight then use the voucher for the upgrade. He said he couldn’t tell me the taxes as they would need to calculate it by talking to BA .. am I right in thinking this guy just couldn’t do what I wanted or have other people had issues with this? Also is there a bit of movement between the first and second flight allowed i.e a day before etc if so how many days is deemed appropriate for the tax to remain low?
  I’m only wanting to go one way
  TIA

  • Jim says:

    31 Jan31 January 11:03

    We all only want to go one way!

  • Anna says:

    31 Jan31 January 13:02

    Have you checked the Ts and Cs to make sure you can use the voucher for that itinerary? Do you mean you want to fly LON-DUB-LON-LAS/LAX? It’s valid on BA mainline services only so if the route involves a codeshare, you can’t use the voucher on the codeshare segment.

    • Anna says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:06

      And yes you can make your connecting flight to London the day before your long-haul leg, I think the maximum stopover is 24 hours.

• Mark1980 says:

  31 Jan31 January 11:04

  Does anyone know if Hilton still do Gold to Diamond challenges such as x amount of stays in 90 days? I’m Hilton Gold via Amex Plat but very rarely stay in hotels. However I’ve got a week long training course in London next month so I was planning to bounce around various Hiltons doing one night stays in order to maximise the bonus promo. Would be even better if I could incorporate that into a Diamond challenge aswell – if thats possible?

  • mark2 says:

    31 Jan31 January 11:17

    Yes
    Annoyingly I believe that you still have to do the 8 nights for Diamond when you are already Gold, but would love to be proved wrong.

    • Mark1980 says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:14

      Thanks Mark. Do you know how you request the challenge?

    • JamesB says:

      31 Jan31 January 16:11

      I will be giving it a go when I drop to gold in April. I’ll report back.

• Allan says:

  31 Jan31 January 13:02

  Little bit OT but I’ve been offered a very cheap 4 night stay at Marriott’s Playa Andaluza beachfront resort but it’s conditional on attending a 90 minute timeshare presentation. Anyone have any experience of this offer and how hard sell it is?

  • Anna says:

    31 Jan31 January 13:10

    It depends whether you can be bothered sitting through the presentation. We have 2 timeshare weeks and have done a couple of tours as well (as opposed to presentations). It’s good to have answers ready like they are not offering good value, or the one I used last year which was that the exchange rate was too poor to be worth purchasing (it would have been a US dollar transaction). I would think a brand like Marriott would not risk its reputation by being too pushy, though I have no personal experience of it.

    • Anna says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:12

      There are loads more reasons for refusing – they can’t guarantee which property/date will be available, you wouldn’t get enough use out of it, you just lost your job/found out your partner is pregnant (they will run a mile if they think you have no money!)

  • Mark1980 says:

    31 Jan31 January 13:13

    Allan, Ive had the same offer and am going for it but have no intention of buying anything. Seeing as both adults have to attend, my plan is let the 2 kids be as unruly and feral as possible until the timeshare folks cant stand to be in the same room as them for a minute longer. Should do the trick! 😉

    • Anna says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:18

      That’s another good trick lol! Also, if you really want to do your homework, have a look at timeshare resale websites (there are loads of folk trying to offload their weeks/points since the recession). Then you can say to them, “Why would I pay you £20,000 (or whatever) when I can get this unit on a re-sale for £5,000?

      You can tell I am used to batting off the reps when I visit my timeshares each year!

    • mark2 says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:23

      I always made it a point of honour to be asked to leave, but that was in a group session where I kept pointing out the holes in their figures.

  • Louise says:

    31 Jan31 January 13:27

    I’m going next month on an offer I received last year. £219 for three nights, hire car and 50 Euro credit.
    It was fairly easy to get the dates we wanted.
    I will report back how much of a hard sell we get, but I am ready to tell them Im not interested in buying!

    • Anna says:

      31 Jan31 January 13:42

      Obviously no-one should but if it’s not a fantastic deal like ours were, but it’s only fair to point out that our two were the best investments we ever made and we’ve used them to travel all over the world. We’ve now settled down to using them to visit the Cayman Islands every year as it ticks all our boxes, often with an add-on to a US city, with air travel in style thanks to HFP!

  • Jon says:

    31 Jan31 January 15:17

    “I’m just here because the offer says I have to be. I don’t like you and will never buy your rip-off product. You can sign that I’ve attended and let me leave now or we can stare at each other for 90 minutes and then I’ll leave. What shall we do?”

    Someone I know is a regular of the Vegas timeshare sales pitches uses pretty much this line every time. Works a treat apparently.

    • Rob says:

      31 Jan31 January 15:35

      Might be less effective in Europe as an approach!

    • RussellH says:

      31 Jan31 January 19:48

      We tried pretty much that approach in Barbados many years ago. The deal was that we had to be there for 90 mins, so we sat there staring at the floor for around 45 mins after seeing the first half of the presentation.

      But we did get the voucher for a free meal for two, which turned out to be **excellent**, and I got a free T-shirt too (which was not – it was size S).

  • JamesB says:

    31 Jan31 January 16:15

    TripRep and I have both done this with Hilton and it was quite relaxed. No idea about Marriott version. There is an article on here someplace, search Hilton Craigendarroch.

    • RussellH says:

      31 Jan31 January 19:51

      I regularly get offers for Craigendarroch, but never taken them up on it, not least because a family member had a hotel a mile down the road. But now they have sold up it might make more sense…

• Jeremy says:

  31 Jan31 January 13:44

  Sort of OT: Is there anyone with extensive experience of Rocketmiles? I’m only just looking at using them for the first time and I’m struggling to understand how for a booking of £857 for 3 nights (£3 less than the same room on Booking.com), they are able to reward me with either 13k avios, 16k Heathrow Rewards points, $225 amazon voucher or $220 uber credit…?! I realise there must be some sort of promotion on but that seems a bit bonkers…

  • Jeremy says:

    31 Jan31 January 14:11

    A little bit of digging tells me that Uber credit can only be used in the US, and that USD amazon gift cards can only be used on Amazon.com (though I could presumably order something from amazon.com with a slow delivery to the UK). I still don’t understand how Rocketmiles is able to offer such enormous bonuses without increasing the prices. Anyone know?

    • Rob says:

      31 Jan31 January 15:38

      They buy their rooms wholesale and then mark them up to the current price charged by the hotel.

  • Rob says:

    31 Jan31 January 15:41

    Average Expedia commission for smaller hotels is 25% and I assume Rocketmiles via its suppliers gets the same. Some rooms come from wholesalers and get marked up – look at, say, Tourico who supplies Rocketmiles.

    A hotel will sell Tourico (for eg) 500 room nights per month at a fixed price of say £75. Most of these are resold to tour groups. Some get resold and end up on channels like Rocketmiles where they are marked up to whatever the prevailing nightly rate is.

    I promise you that when you check in the hotel has never heard of Rocketmiles. Sometimes rooms are resold multiple times before they end up with you.

• Phil says:

  31 Jan31 January 15:19

  Rob – do you have your Curve card yet?

• Bob says:

  31 Jan31 January 16:04

  OT: Anyone else having problems trying to transfer avios OUT of Iberia Plus? I initially tried to transfer to BA, that didn’t work, so i tried Avios.com and that didn’t work either? It is only allowing me to transfer avios INTO my Iberia Plus account only?? Any help appreciated. Thanks.

  • JamesB says:

    31 Jan31 January 16:19

    Pull them over to avios using your avios.com account.

• Bob says:

  31 Jan31 January 16:07

  Oh, i forget to say, yes, i’ve had my Iberia plus account for more than 90 days and it has had regular activity. Thanks.

• Bob says:

  31 Jan31 January 16:50

  Many thanks JamesB, I hadn’t thought about that and it worked! Another HFP reader saves the day! 🙂

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