News in brief:
British Airways First Class to Cape Town for £2,026 each – or less
British Airways seems to be dipping its toes into the ‘two for the price of one’ premium ticket sector. This is something that Qatar Airways has been doing for a while, on the assumption that forcing two people to travel together means that lucrative business travellers will find it harder to take part.
The first ‘Dream Tickets’ deal is Cape Town. As you can see on this page of ba.com, you get two First Class tickets to Cape Town from Heathrow in January, February or March for £4,052.
You must book by 18th July. All travel must be completed by 31st March. Full details are here on ba.com. Remember to search for two people to get this price.
BUT DON’T BOOK THIS!
Instead, go here to the BA Holidays premium holidays site. Book your First Class flights and throw in a car rental instead. For a seven night stay in March, the cheapest deal for First Class flights and a car for a week was just £1,822 each! Far cheaper than just booking the flight on its own ….
You can also book a ‘flight and hotel’ package here and make a saving over booking the two elements together, but ‘flight and car’ seems the way to go.
And talking of British Airways Holidays …..
Until 10th July, British Airways Holidays (click here) is offering extra discounts on all packages:
- £25 extra discount on Flight + Car holidays to any destination for bookings with a min spend of £600
- £50 extra discount on Flight + Hotel/Car holidays to any destination for bookings with a min spend of £1,250
- £100 extra discount on Flight + Hotel/Car holidays to any destination for bookings with a min spend of £2,500
As you saw above, BA Holidays can often be cheaper via ‘flight and car’ or ‘flight and hotel’ than just booking a flight on its own, especially in premium cabins. Premium offers can be found here.
Holiday Inn Kingston South rebranding
Just a quick update that the Holiday Inn Kingston South is in the process of rebranding as a Crowne Plaza.
Apparently – and slightly unbelievably, since Kingston is not exactly the centre of the universe – IHG says that “the hotel is considered to be one of the top performing hotels within Europe” and “a finalist for Hotel of the Year 2017 at the IHG Europe Conference”.
Redemptions, currently priced at 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night, are likely to increase once the rebranding is complete so if you are looking to stay there later in the year you may want to lock it in now. I don’t have a date for the brand switch.
(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.)
About Head for Points
Oh tell a lie.
£3,562 .00 !
OT – HH. I’ve noticed that when making bookings for Hilton Hotels I initially get prices quoted on £, but on the booking page the price gets converted to $ and additionally, taxes are added on top. I thought any hotel prices advertised in the EU had to display taxes with the headline price?
e.g. price quoted for 3 nights is £240 per night, so £720 in total, however on the booking page the full price with the taxes added is $1105, i.e. £835.
Double check you are booking hilton.co.uk (it will revert to hilton.com/en). If you are abroad hotel sites have a nasty habit of changing you to the local countries site and then because you have default currency set to £ – converting your payment amount. VPN`s a must for regular travelers.
Will do, thanks Harry. I’m trying to decide whether to stick with Hilton for our mini break to NYC next year or go with the Kaligo offer and pay their slightly inflated prices for a chunk of Avios. The best refundable deal I can get on Kaligo is £1070 for 3 nights without breakfast at a Wyndham hotel, this gives 29000 Avios but is about £200 more expensive than booking direct. First world problems…!
Hilton offered me 4 nights in their W 57th property for £550 for attending a 2 hour timeshare presentation? Anyone been?
The Wyndham New Yorker? I wouldn’t.
My boyfriend and I stayed there, and when we first walked into our shoebox of a room our immediate reaction was “Oh well. It’s not like we plan to spend much time in our room…”
Cough.. Im not Harry BTW 🙂 I predate Harry on here by some years!
The surbiton hotel., I think you are supposed to bike everywhere on the new bike lane outside the hotel.
The flash sale on BA holidays is a bit of a con really…Priced the same flight and hotel in NYC in Nov and it’s gone up by £50 pp, compared to days before the sale was launched. Funny that..
You would think that might be considered a misleading action under the CPUT Regulations. Its lucky we’ve cut public services to the point businesses don’t have to worry about all this red tape now.
agree – maybe there are some genuine discounts there but I am very sceptical after seeing that on the holiday I was looking at. It reminded me that I thin they’ve pulled this stunt before: Hey! Sale! (But we raised prices at the same time…)
BA has to keep documentary proof that they are compliant with UK advertising regulations. If you’re so sure you can prove otherwise, why not try a quick report to the ASA?
OT Looking for some ideas here, I’m planning on spending a couple of months in Australia at the end of the year, very flexible, I can fly from Anywhere in England or Dublin, Belfast or Switzerland, must return to either England or Switzerland. I don’t mind flying to any airport in Australia or NZ, flying out leaving any date after 28th Oct, and want to be back before Christmas day. I don’t mind possibly having a stopover for a few days somewhere else. I’ve got 93k Avios,
Any way of doing this in business class all/most of the way without spending £4k+. As much as I want to fly Business, I can’t justify the £3k+ over an economy ticket.
Air China? not sure if Hainan flies to Oz. Otherwise hold on to your money and watch for a QR sale that with luck, will take you most of the way. If you’re prepared to consider leaving from other European countries you might do even better on price (and you should be prepared to do this given the savings involved). It might even work to bring you back to your preferred country even if you got a much better price by choosing another one to leave from.
I suggest you dig around here on HfP. There’s a search box on the right. You’ll very soon see what I mean, get what you need to know and be well primed.
PS November leaving shouldn’t be a problem but but you might find the best bargains return later in January. as early Dec-Mid or even late January is peak season for what you’re looking for.
Have you looked at leaving from Oslo? Normally about £2.5k in biz, pretty consistent pricing for years.
OT- Virgin Money CC offer
We have two offers in family, Free card with 5k + 6K = 11K bonus
£160 card, with 15k + 18K = 33K VS miles.
Which one should I go for?
Does virgin card has any pro-rata refund?
No pro rata refund so £160 is a sunk cost.
Just had one too.
The extra miles seem v. expensive at £160 unless you want the chance to get other benefits with high spend and have status.
The higher offer is for spending £1k/month, so assuming you can put £10k on the card over the year… £160 cost = +22,000 bonus, +7500 from spend, and the upgrade vouchers.
If there’s a reasonable chance you’d be able to use the voucher then would seem to make sense. A few more factors to consider otherwise
Hello HFP Readers! I’ve got a question that hopefully Rob – or any of you – might be able to help with.
For the last couple of years, British Airways has done a sale for flights to the USA specifically over Thanksgiving & Christmas – that are GREAT deals when doing a flight/hotel or flight/car booking. Two years ago this specific sale occurred in Mid-May – and last year it was mid-June. So far this year, I have not seen this sale being advertised. Head For Points was the publication that ‘broke’ the news for me on this sale over the last few years – so I was hoping someone might have some insight as to if & when this might be taking place this year???? Thanks so much – I really appreciate any help with this. 🙂
Have you tried the low fare finder? Lot of good prices at the moment.
No formal sales for those periods so far, sadly. In the last 2 years we did Washington for Thanksgiving ‘16 in F for <4K including 5 hotel nights and NYC in Club for pre-Xmas ‘17 with 4 hotel nights for <3k on sale fares. Both for 2 people.
Setting up alerts on Google Flights is a good way to go, sometimes you get unpublicised reductions close to those sort of levels but that won’t pick up the holidays deals. Fingers crossed something good comes through for this year.
Hi. Does anyone know – if you book a fly drive (like Rob suggests), but purely for the discount, and don’t turn up to pick up the car, do you suffer any penalty? (Like if you don’t fly one leg of a flight)
no problem at all
I know of one case where Avis made a Euro 50 no-show fee. Unlikely though.