Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Trip.com is a new Avios hotel booking partner at a generous 3 Avios per €1

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British Airways Executive Club has launched a new hotel booking partnership with Trip.com, and there is a decent launch offer.

You might not be familiar with Trip.com but it is owned by the giant Chinese travel group Ctrip, the company which was happy to casually drop £1.4 billion to buy Skyscanner 18 months ago.

You can check out the Trip.com British Airways page here.

Trip.com has just launched PointsPLUS, a new reward scheme which lets you earn airline miles with every booking.  At present, the airlines participating are the Avios ones (Vueling, Aer Lingus, BA, Iberia, Meridiana) as well as Air Asia, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (HK$22 = 3 miles) and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer ($1 = 1 mile).  Full details on PointsPlus are here.

What do I earn?

The standard Avios earning rate will be 3 Avios per €2 spent.   However, as an opening offer you will receive 6 Avios per €2 spent.

Here are the terms:

Book by 31st July 2018

Stay by 30th September 2018

Avios will be received six weeks after check-out

Avios earned are based on the price before taxes and fees

Surname of lead guest must match surname on Avios account

Given the current exchange rate, and adjusting for UK VAT, a £100 UK hotel booking would earn around 270 Avios.

Trip.com earn Avios

But remember ….

Like Kaligo.com, PointsHound, Hotels.com, Expedia, Rocketmiles etc, hotel bookings made via Trip.com will be treated as third party bookings.  This means that you will not earn hotel loyalty points and – with the exception of Marriott bookings – you will not receive any status benefits you are due.

We do not know at the moment if the Marriott policy of respecting status benefits on third party bookings will survive when the merged SPG / Marriott Rewards scheme launches in August.  My personal view is that they would be crazy to let this continue.

This offer works best if you are booking a hotel which is independent, where you do not have status or where you do not care about their loyalty points.

You can find out more about the Trip.com / Avios partnership here.

how to earn avios from credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (June 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

British Airways American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and a companion voucher for spending £20,000 Read our full review

BA Premium Plus American Express card BAPP

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

We also recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (20)

  • Dan.K says:
    4 Jul4 July 04:16

    trip.com has a very bad reputation… better search for reviews on trip.com before you book with them.

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
      4 Jul4 July 06:24

      Sample size of one, but I used them for a hotel booking a month or so ago as they were much cheaper than the other OTAs. Worked fine.

    • John says:
      4 Jul4 July 06:46

      Basically when things go wrong they will be of little help, but usually things go right

      And things can go wrong even when booking direct or with more reputable places, so it’s hard to generalise

      • Alan says:
        4 Jul4 July 08:17

        On this note, I have just booked a Holiday Inn in New York via Booking.com where they stated breakfast was included (5 nights x 3 people). Contacted the hotel to check my booking and they have said there is no breakfast on that booking. No response from Booking.com.
        So, on this sample size, Booking.com don;t appear to be any better than Trip.com

        • Lady London says:
          4 Jul4 July 10:28

          Surely you could just have your breakfast then and approach booking.com for the cost? Quite likely they will be able to sort it out with the hotel.

        • imbruce says:
          4 Jul4 July 12:21

          I have just returned from New York and when I was looking at hotels none of them included breakfast even the big chains did not include it but you paid an lot extra for it to be included. I could pick up breakfast for two quite cheaply. I used a travel agent and well worth using her, as she could get cheaper prices than anywhere.
          Also avoid The Edison Hotel at Times Square its Awful, the rooms are dated and noisy.
          Tips are and additional 18-20% on top of the bill before tax and this comes through as a separate transaction on you card, Curve worked well everywhere.
          If you want a decent brunch and bagels try Sadelles at 463 West Broadway
          Dinner go to Loring Place at 21 West 8 Street

        • Genghis says:
          4 Jul4 July 13:11

          Using Curve in May in NYC, I had multiple different ways of accounting of tips:
          1) Tips going through as a separate transaction and not affecting transaction
          2) Cancelling the original food amount and then putting through the full amount including tips.
          3) Putting through a new transactions food+ tips and not cancelling the one without the tips (supposedly these would have naturally cancelled within a few days but I wasn’t too sure. Curve sorted it out straight away for me after I prompted them).
          So my advice is to do a proper review of what you’re charged.

        • Alan says:
          5 Jul5 July 09:29

          Phoned them last night and said tha tthe offering of breakfast was a “mistake in the listing”. Offered me the choice of paying $15 per person per night for breakfast or to cancel. I opted to cancel.

          I’m glad I contacted the hotel to check my booking. Really don’t want the hassle at check-in.

          Lesson learned. Don’t think I’ll bother with Booking.com again as you can’t really trust them.

        • Alan says:
          5 Jul5 July 09:30

          # and they said that the offering……

    • Sergey says:
      4 Jul4 July 14:40

      While I seldom use them, I never had any issues with Ctrip, both with flights and hotels. In some instances they have much better prices than anyone, though in my experience it is rather uncommon. However they are absolutely trustworthy, like any major Western agency.

  • Roger says:
    4 Jul4 July 05:51

    There seems to offer for BAPP too, for upto 20000 bonus Avios for spending £1000 on hotel booking via Kaligo.com

  • Alan says:
    4 Jul4 July 08:19

    See my post above regarding Booking.com. I advise anyone that has booked with Booking.com to check their booking with the hotel and, when it doesn’t match, don’t expect any assistance from Booking.com.

  • Andy James says:
    4 Jul4 July 09:19

    Disappointing to see know Premium Economy notion in booking pages in web version. Is it the same it the app? This is a pretty basic fail in 2018.

    • Andy James says:
      4 Jul4 July 09:20

      Sorry autocorrect…. NO premium economy OPTION

      • @mkcol says:
        4 Jul4 July 12:30

        Premium Economy? I’m really confused but how’s that connected with the Trip.com offer?

  • Aliks says:
    4 Jul4 July 10:31

    I have a stack of flights in China coming up soon. They were all booked through trip.com at extremely good prices and paid for on Amex in GBP. Given the comments above, I hope it all goes well . . .

    Anyway, looking on the trip.com hotel booking pages, I can’t see any place to enter my Executive Club account number. I did a trial booking all the way down to “confirm the payment” – but could see nothing apart from a field for Promo codes.

    • Wayne says:
      4 Jul4 July 20:27

      I have just returned from China and booked 4 internal flights and a train with CTrip prior to leaving UK and found it a lot cheaper than Expedia etc, extremely easy to book, once you have booked they have all your details for further bookings, passport etc, there were cancellation options and all went to plan.
      Based on my experience they are highly recommended

  • Mark says:
    4 Jul4 July 12:42

    I think booking.com offer 4:1 avios if you go via the BA shopping portal. So would give you more points per pound that way!

    • TigerTanaka says:
      4 Jul4 July 20:26

      Remember that the BA shopping portal is a topic not for discussion on HFP!

  • Sergey says:
    4 Jul4 July 14:41

    IHG Ambassador benefits are also given on paid third-party bookings.

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