Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 15% discount on hotel and car hire bookings made with Avios – worth it?

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British Airways Executive Club has emailed some, not all, members with a special deal.  Until 30th September, you can book a hotel or car with your Avios and save 15% on the usual price.

Stays must be completed by 31st December.

Because it is a targeted offer, you won’t see anything online to prove that it is actually working.  Trust me, it is if you got the email.  If the results of your search look poor, it is because this deal IS poor.

Under this promotion, you will be getting 0.66p per Avios redeemed.  This is poor in my book, although better than the standard rate which works out at around 0.57p per Avios. 

As the cost is 29,850 Avios or 1,000 Avios + £190, you are saving £190 by using a net 28,850 Avios.  This is (19000/28850) 0.66p per Avios.

Even worse,  the stays will be non-qualifying so you won’t receive any hotel loyalty points or status benefits either.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

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

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year 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.

Comments (65)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Shoestring says:

    In case anybody missed the comment yesterday, the £15 off £25 @Amazon is working for a second time on the same Amazon a/c – deadline has been extended to end October. I used it multiple times on different family a/cs – all had used the promotion once already, about a year previously. Other HfP readers confirmed they could also get it to work twice. I deleted all existing cards on my Payments page then put back my latest Gold and Plat cards. Worked automatically with 5 a/cs but I had to enrol the Gold card for the 6th a/c.

    https://headforpoints.com/2018/08/26/15-off-25-amazon-purchase-amex-gold-platinum-holders/

    • Oh Matron! says:

      it’s on the web page when purchasing: extended to 31/10/2018

      Also, just submitted the code, and “You successfully redeemed your promotional code” came up

      Great timing: The battery on my Parrot Zik 3 stopped working 🙂

  • pauldb says:

    Think you were switched off when you wrote the hotel/0.66p bit. 0.66p is the pretty-sensible price you are paying if you “buy-back” your 28850 avios from AGL by opting for 1000+£190 instead of 29850.

    The value you are getting depends on the cash price of the hotel: either price divided by 29850 or (price-£190)/28850.

    • pauldb says:

      … sorry (price-£190)/1000 at the end!

      • pauldb says:

        Except, contrary to your process, there may be cases when avios redemption is poor value but avios+money makes sense. e.g. if the hotel above had a cash rate of £220.

      • pauldb says:

        I’m also getting myself in silly knots trying to use my IB 90k for a bunch of shorthaul redemption. Normally I’d swap a 7500 redemption for the 4000+cash option they’re offering me, but since I’m not exactly sure how many bookings I’ll make before December the avios bought-back may (or may not!) be lost.

      • Genghis says:

        Good point. Might see if I can amend the calculator.

    • Rob says:

      Not really, because the hotels are bookable for cash outside of avios.com for usually the same price so it is technically a straight redemption for something that would otherwise cost money.

      • pauldb says:

        But you’re never getting 0.66p per redeemed avios (unless by real fluke). If the cash rate is over £230 it’s probably a good deal (about 0.75p) and if the cash rate is over £200 the 1000+£190 option is a good but marginal-worth option.

  • Al says:

    I have the Economist deal appearing in my ba executive club app (25.2k avios tor 3yrs), in the popular ways to collect section on the landing page. But when I click through it shows a lower, probably original avios earning for just 1yr subscription?

    Launching glitch?

    • Rob says:

      Not sure. I checked the Economist / BA page yesterday before I wrote this up and it was only showing the standard points. I wouldn’t have bothered with the AerClub deal otherwise.

      • Rob says:

        You need to post the right-click link and NOT the resolved link, or it doesn’t work. I learnt that yesterday!

        ba.com only shows the 4400 Avios deal.

      • Greg says:

        I’ve emailed The Economist about the BA offer (showing 25.2k Avios for 3 year subscription) but have yet to receive a reply.

    • Greg says:

      I called The Economist subscription line (01444 475647) and they have a ‘promo code’ for the 3 year subscription with 25.2k Avios.

  • Craig says:

    I assume the Economist subscription is for new members only, i.e. having taken out the 12 week trial for 1050 Avios I won’t be eligible?

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Doesn’t;t seem to work that way I take out the 13.2k for 1 year sub every year

    • FlyUpTop says:

      Be careful with any of their 12 week redemptions, they charged me today in week 9 for the whole year sub. A call quickly resolved the issue and full refund.

  • Mike says:

    What are the cancellation terms on the Avios / The Economist subscription offer ? Previously they have been pretty lax

    • Rob says:

      No longer. The Avios deals have no refunds beyond the usual 14 days cooling off period.

  • Brighton Belle says:

    Following the comments here I got my library card out and got subscribed to a digital version for free courtesy of the library. t took a trip to library to sort out the access. I expected the format to be poor for a free version but actually it turned out just fine in text on an iPad and iPhone So now I can download the Economist every week and read through the articles of interest without it costing £. Paying for a subscription to read 3 articles a week was just not on. We had the paper version for a year but they sat unopened piling up.

    • Shoestring says:

      Which online version are you using? I use http://library.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx which gives free access to Daily Telegraph and Viz amongst many thousands of titles – but I can’t see The Economist. Use a random 8 or 9 digit number something similar to this 800147185 to get in free.

      • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

        You want a magazine platform, not a newspaper platform (Despite how The Economist self-identifies). I use RBDigital for example.

      • BJ says:

        Local authority content varies by Authority, some have a huge range of titles while others do not.

  • Matt B says:

    I need to book 2 redemption seats using my iberia promotional Avios, probably in the next 48 hrs, however I’m 3k short. Worst case I could split the bookings to iberia/Ba but that would leave 5k Avios going to waste in iberia when they expire, and I’m tight and not exactly Avios rich.

    I’ve been trying to combine from my Ba household account via my old Avios account but that has stopped working.

    Following the guide here from a few weeks ago I opened an AirLingus account which gave me a new Avios account, however I kept getting the ‘details do not match’ message. The only difference between the addresses is where the county is abbreviated but when I change this on Avios and try to save is says I have an incorrect format postcode, which I am not even changing! I have tried re-entering with and without a space or in caps but nothing let’s me update my address.

    Can I call anyone to get this done?

    • Max says:

      I also had similar problem before. Just open the chat on Avois.com to sort it out. Turned out my email address for the two account doesn’t match.

    • pauldb says:

      If it’s a simple booking, can’t you just go for one of the avios+money options that will require a few less avios. You pay a little cash but maybe only £20-25 to shave off 3000 avios, which is decent value unless you have millions in BAEC.

      • Matt B says:

        Yes just did a dummy booking, the +money option isnt too bad, better than BA. Its offering a 2000 Avios reduction per person for an extra £15 each which seems decent.

  • Thomas Howard says:

    Does anyone have a contact number or email address I can use to chase up my bonus Avios from Iberia? I’ve tried the number on website, been referred to a number in Madrid who also tell me they can’t help.

    • Shoestring says:

      Go to the relevant Iberia threads on this subject on Flyertalk and you will find all the contact details.

    • Tracy says:

      I had same issues. I badgered the Iberia twitter account with direct messages. At the start they were reluctant to do anything, stating they were social media only but eventually they caved in, took my details and hey presto the avios appeared. Still took a couple of weeks from first twitter message to them though……clasica email was useless for me.

      • Crafty says:

        Whereas I got mine through repeated emails and nothing else. Bit random I think owing to terribly organised customer service dept.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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