Bits: Avios launches new Financial Times partnership, last chance to buy cheap Hilton and SPG points

News in brief:

Avios launches new Financial Times partnership

Avios has launched a new partnership with the Financial Times offering you bonus points if you take out a subscription.

There are no great deals to be had here however.

• 10,000 Avios with a £447 Premium Digital subscription
• 10,000 Avios with a £452 Premium Digital & Print subscription
• 10,000 Avios with a £374 home delivery print subscription

This is surprisingly weak.  The margins are clearly there to offer at least double that in the first year.  Given the strong profit margins on renewed subscriptions, even 30,000+ Avios would have been affordable, especially on the ‘no marginal cost’ Premium Digital subscription.

Full details can be found on ft.com here.

Last call to buy SPG and Hilton points cheaply

Friday 16th is your last day to take advantage of two ‘buy points’ offers.

Hilton:

Hilton Honors is offering an 80% bonus when you purchase 10,000+ points.  The Hilton ‘buy points’ page is here.

Regular readers of Head for Points will know that I tend to value Hilton points at 0.3p each.  You are paying 0.39p ($800 / £566 for 144,000) here so the maths does not look good.  That said, the strengthening of Sterling means this is a better deal than when it last ran in December.

Five star Hilton, Conrad and Waldorf-Astoria hotels typically run to 80,000 points per night.  In this sale you would be paying $444 for 80,000 points which is often more than you would be paying for a five star in a major city.  This is not a bargain.

However, Hilton Honors IS a decent deal at cheaper point levels.   To dig out my ‘usual suspect’ example, the Hampton by Hilton in Sheffield, for example, is 10,000 points per night on most nights.  At 0.39p per point you would be paying roughly £39 per night if you bought the points.  That is a 61% discount on the typical nightly rate of £100.  Hampton properties include free breakfast as well.  Let’s be clear though – deals like this are few and far between.

Starwood:

Starwood is again offering a 35% discount. The link to buy is here.

At the top end, 30,000 points will cost you $682.50 (£480).  Assuming that you convert them to airline miles with the 25% uplift for moving chunks of 20,000 at a time, these can be converted to 37,500 airline miles in the majority of programmes.

This works out at 1.28p per airline mile.  This is not a great deal most of the time (you can often pick up Avios for 1.0p) but it might make sense with some other programmes.  You cannot buy Lufthansa Miles & More miles directly so being able to get them for 1.28p may well work for some people.

30,000 Starwood points would also convert into 90,000 Marriott Rewards points.  If you are working towards a Marriott Travel Package redemption – and they are great value as this article explains – then buying the full 30,000 Starwood points may well make sense.

In both cases, if you just buying a handful of points the price per point doesn’t matter anyway.  If you a few thousand short of a redemption then this is a decent opportunity to buy them.  The Hilton page is here and the SPG page is 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.)

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