News in brief:
How two million Virgin Flying Club miles can get you a trip to space
You may have heard in the news last week that Virgin Galactic finally had a successful flight to the edge of space. On Thursday Virgin Galactic’s vehicle reached a height of 51 miles, one mile higher than NASA’s definition of boundary of space.
Virgin Galactic will continue doing test flights for some time, but will offer commercial flights in the near future. 600 people have already paid $250,000 each to be the first to go on a sightseeing trip to space.
If you consider $250,000 too much, your miles might help you get closer to a flight. As you can see on this Virgin Atlantic page, you can use your Virgin Flying Club miles for a cash discount or potentially even win a full ticket.
200,000 Virgin Atlantic miles will get you a 10% discount on a standard fare for a sub-orbital flight – this is a surprisingly good deal (as these things go) since you are saving $25,000 for spending 200,000 miles, meaning a value of 12.5 cents per mile
2,000,000 Virgin Atlantic miles will get you a free trip with Virgin Galactic. Only ONE Virgin Flying Club member will be allowed to redeem this deal. You need to ring Flying Club to register your interest and, once commercial flights are bookable, Flying Club will randomly pick a winner. This offer is only available to members who have earned two million miles from Virgin Atlantic flights, not from partner activity.
What we don’t know is how many miles you can earn when paying full price ….
How to earn Virgin Atlantic miles from UK credit cards
As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Flying Club miles from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!
Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Flying Club miles. That page is regularly updated with the latest special offers and will still be accurate even if you are reading this article months after publication.
Last call for 80%-100% bonus buying Hilton Honors points
18th December is the last day to take advantage of the long-running Hilton ‘buy points’ offer. 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 / £1,275 for 320,000 with a 100% bonus) 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 $5,260.
Similar deals are available at peak times in other major cities. Conrad New York, for example, costs $1,945 for a five-night stay from 3rd to 8th February, and can easily top $3,000 at busier times. 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 Tuesday.
How to earn Hilton Honors points via UK credit cards
As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!
Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Hilton Honors points. That page is regularly updated with the latest special offers and will still be accurate even if you are reading this article months after publication.
…. and an 80% bonus when you buy IHG Rewards Club points
Slightly less interestingly, until 28th December you can buy IHG Rewards Club – the InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza etc scheme – points with a bonus of up to 80%.
The page to buy points is here – log in and see what is available.
This is not the most generous offer IHG has had, with 100% bonuses occurring 2-3 times per year. That said, if you need to top up your account in advance of a planned redemption, you might as well do it whilst the bonus is on.
(Want to earn more Virgin Flying Club miles? Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)
About Head for Points
Visited the Cathay business class lounge Heathrow T3 this afternoon. Very nice indeed. Beats galleries hands down and spa and nap rooms aside, I don’t think that CCR is that far ahead.
That’s nice to hear, because everyone is complaining that it’s suffered another decline in quality as Cathay switched the lounge operator to a lower cost supplier at the start of the month!
I wonder if any HfP readers will be on Virgin Galactic. Only someone with a Centurion card and with time on their hands, maybe a retiree…
😂
I think the Shangri-La at the Shard is high enough for the pensioners…
I see Curve have changed there limits for both cards for atm abroad its now £400 per month on black card anything else is 2% on top its was £15000 per year in september .