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

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.

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.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 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:

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

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

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(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.)