Some more news in brief as I try to clear the World Travel Market backlog!:
80% – 100% bonus when you buy Hilton Honors points – save 55% in The Maldives!
Until 18th December, Hilton Honors (the new-ish Hilton Tallinn Park, reviewed here, is pictured below) is offering an 80% or 100% bonus when you purchase 10,000+ points.
The Hilton ‘buy points’ page is here.
I have been offered a 100% bonus but I know some people are only seeing 80%.
Regular readers of Head for Points will know that I tend to value Hilton points at 0.33p each. You are paying 0.38p ($1,600 / £1,222 for 320,000) here if you buy the maximum so the maths in general doesn’t work.
HOWEVER ….. there ARE real bargains to be had at peak periods. At the top end, the Conrad Maldives is usually 95,000 points per night. Via this offer you would be paying under $500 per night which is a great deal. We did a big review of Conrad Maldives here. Remember that you can pool points between Hilton members for free so it is now easier for different people to buy points and merge them together.
Hilton also does ‘five for four’ if you have Hilton Honors status. As Hilton will status match you from any other hotel scheme where you may have status, most HFP readers should qualify for this. Taking 10th – 15th February as an example, five nights would cost you (95,000 x 4) 380,000 points which would cost $1,900 with this deal. A non-refundable cash rate would cost $4,558.
Similar deals are available at peak times in other major cities. Conrad New York, for example, costs $3,693 for a five-night stay from 1st to 6th December. Buying 320,000 points via this deal would cost just $1,600. Conrad New York is an ‘all suite’ hotel which I recommend.
If you are just buying a handful of points to top off your account, 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.
You can buy points via this link. The offer ends on 18th December.
British Airways introduces Pressreader
British Airways has announced a six-month trial of the Pressreader service.
From now until May, BA customers who booked via ba.com, or who are physically in selected BA lounges, will be able to download more than 7,000 newspapers and magazines to their mobile device before they fly.
A link will be sent in your pre-departure email, 24 hours before your flight takes off, and will remain active for 72 hours. The content does not expire, which means that you can download a holiday-worth of pool reading if you wish.
15% off Flybe flights at Belfast City
Flybe is offering 15% off all flights to and from Belfast City which are booked by 16th November.
You can book for travel dates up to 31st March 2019. Routes include:
- Aberdeen
- Birmingham
- Cardiff
- Doncaster Sheffield
- Edinburgh
- East Midlands
- Exeter
- Glasgow
- Inverness
- Leeds
- London City
- Manchester
- Southampton
Here’s the small print:
The promotional code is valid for flights booked between 02.11.18 – 16.11.18 departing between 07.01.19 – 31.03.19 on direct Flybe operated flights to and from Belfast City Airport (excluding codeshare and franchise partners) and is applied against the gross seat price displayed at the point of booking. Valid only for web bookings made on flybe.com. Offer is subject to availability and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.
The code you need to use on flybe.com – and which is case sensitive – is BELFAST15.
Remember that you earn Avios on all flights booked on Flybe. Details of their Avios scheme are here.
About Head for Points
OT: How do I know if I have a Curve Black (my card is black) but I have no tumi-wallet nor do I remember paying £50. The reason I am asking is that the foreign atm withdrawal limits are double and I am currently abroad!
If you didn’t pay, it won’t be a Curve Black. Physical card colour is not determinative.
OT – Hilton / Lufthansa 25 year points.
Since the website maintenance, I’ve had 2 stays, during, and after.
The one during definitely qualifies, but none are shown. (I have a gold myway bonus, despite being silver though!)
The other was a 2 night stay 31 October to 2 November.
Is anyone in the same boat re-points not posting, and secondly, is the stay starting on the last day of the promotion eligible for the 2500 points?
Stays had to have checked out by 31st October
I’m still awaiting one stay c/o 20/10 – all the others posted beautifully!
I had 4 stays (with the Garden Inn brand) over the course of Sept and Oct that show the 2,500 M&M points being awarded by Hilton but they haven’t transferred to my LH account. Ironically the last two stays I made in the last week of October before the upgrade (both DoubleTree’s) have been awarded and transferred to LH.
Hilton are saying all the miles have been sent. LH say they haven’t. Some work required as is often the case in this game.
For the record, my stay on Monday 5th this week is still pending albeit this isn’t valid for the M&M offer. The upgrade has clearly not gone to plan.
I regularly use PressReader on tablet. Some UK public libraries have a subscription which you can use on your own account, allowing you to access the newspapers on an ongoing basis. Some of those subscriptions are geolocked but others are not.
O/T – can someone explain how I can pay Anglia Water on amex? I pay my council tax via Paypoint at Coop but Anglia Water only seem to accept Payzone? All the Payzone retailers in my area are small shops which don’t accept Amex. Any ideas?
You’re stuffed unless you find one that accepts Amex. Had a look at Payzone-accepting stores in my area and on the face of it, none would likely take Amex.
https://www.payzone.co.uk/consumers/
Just leaves Tesco or Virgin points/ cashback card
Whats the maximum single payment you can make with Payzone? Paypoint seems to be £200.
With Paypoint you can pay £1000 or whatever in 1 transaction/ card payment – you just need to get the till agent to totalise 5x £200 etc before paying