News in brief:
2,000 Avios for under £17 via Groupon Spain
(EDIT: the 2,000 Avios package is sold out. The other packages are still available.)
The Groupon ‘cheap Avios’ promotion in Spain, with Iberia Plus, is back again. Click here for details.
The cheapest – and best value – 2,000 Avios package was still in stock last night. You are only paying €19 for 2,000 points, which is 0.84p each. That’s not a bad price if you know you will get 1p+ when redeeming.
Here are the other prices, which are less of a steal:
- 4,000 Iberia Plus Avios for €54 (1.2p)
- 8,000 Iberia Plus Avios for €99 (1.1p)
- 15,000 Iberia Plus Avios for €189 (1.1p)
- 20,000 Iberia Plus Avios for €249 (1.1p)
- 35,000 Iberia Plus Avios for €439 (1.1p)
Whilst these deals were administratively messy when they first appeared, I get fewer complaints these days. The IT seems to be working better now. Of course, all of the information is in Spanish but Chrome can translate the page for you.
The Groupon Spain page you need is here.
Get 1000 Avios or €20 credit at selected UK hotels
Accor Hotels, which own Novotel / Ibis / Mercure / M Gallery / Sofitel / Pullman / Raffles / Swissotel / Fairmont etc, is running a generous promotion to earn 1,000 bonus Avios or €20 from just one UK stay.
This offer is ONLY available to Gold and Platinum status members in Le Club AccorHotels. You are also restricted to a small number of hotels:
- The Savoy
- Fairmont St Andrews
- Sofitel London Heathrow
- Sofitel London Gatwick
- Pullman Liverpool
- MGallery Woughton House
- MGallery Queens Hotel Cheltenham
- MGallery Castle Hotel Windsor
- MGallery Francis Hotel Bath
You will receive 1,000 Accor points, worth €20 of Accor hotel vouchers or 1,000 Avios (or a variable pile of other airline miles), if you complete a stay at any of the hotels above between 2nd January and 31st March.
You must book your stays between 17th December and 27th January. You need to book via the Accor website or a corporate travel agent. Stays booked via hotel wholesalers such as Expedia, Hotels.com, booking.com etc will not count. Existing bookings do NOT count. These need to be cancelled and rebooked.
More importantly, you MUST register for this promotion via the offer website. All you need to do is to go that page and log in.
The bonus is dropped into your account in the form of 1,000 Le Club AccorHotels points. These would convert into. amongst other options:
- Flying Blue 2:1
- British Airways Executive Club Avios: 2:1
- Iberia Avios: 1:1 (so don’t convert to BA!)
- Emirates Skywards: 2:1
- Etihad Guest: 2:1
- Miles & More: 2:1
However, whilst 1,000 Avios is certainly attractive, you need to remember that by converting to Avios in the Iberia programme, you are effectively ‘paying’ 2 Eurocents per Avios compared to taking €20 in Accor hotel vouchers. You will get better value from the hotel vouchers.
You can find full details of the offer, and the link to register, on the Accor website here. Remember that bookings must be made by 27th January even though you do not need to stay until the end of March.
(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
OT: I would appreciate thoughts on a few BA options I have?
I fly into JNB using the recent sale pricing, this will earn me 280TP, I already have 10 and have an Economy flight to CPT earning 5. This leaves me 5 short of Bronze with 3 months until TP collection year expiry.
1. I could upgrade the economy flight for around £400 (£200pp) which would give me enough TP for Bronze and access to the Slow lounge in JNB. We have a 5-hour layover but with an Amex Plat would have lounge access anyway.
2. I could cancel an Avios booking from PLZ-JNB and book in economy, this would effectively cost around £200 (£100pp) after forfeiting the fare and paying for the economy flight but would recoup 15500 Avios.
3. Hope to be able to book a return BA economy flight over the next few months.
My gut feeling is option 2 but have I missed anything obvious?
Thanks.
Seems a very expensive way of getting 5 TPs, especially for just bronze. In your shoes I wouldn’t bother / go for option 3 if you really want to (cheap day return to LUX?)
I don’t know if it’s 15,500 Avios then personally I’d py the c£200 cash and earn the 5 tp for hitting bronze. It’s a useful status if you travel ba alot.
Any reason why you cant keep one and only pay cash for the other? If you always book with your partner you both get the bronze benefits. Only really worth both hitting status if it was silver/gold and you needed lounge access for 4
Not sure Mrs S would be too happy if I’m in business and she’s in economy?
Genghis, thanks, I know Bronze isn’t worth much but it seems a shame to be so close and not go for it?
5tp is the lowest number you can earn on any tp earning flight.
Have a look around for the cheapest one-way deals you can find – either in Europe or domestic. Remember about partner airlines too…. you could probably get something for next to nothing…
For example – Return to Glasgow on BA from Gatwick on 8th Jan – £92 – this should get you 10tp and 250avios:
London (LGW) to Glasgow (GLA) — Tue, Jan 8
British Airways 2956
Dep: 7:20 am
Arr: 8:50 am
Airbus A319
Economy (O)
Glasgow (GLA) to London (LGW) — Tue, Jan 8
British Airways 2959
Dep: 1:40 pm
Arr: 3:05 pm
Airbus A319
Economy (O)
Amsterdam return for £40-50 at times
But there’s the 15500 Avios too.
They are worth c£150. So it’s effectively costing £25 each to make them revenue flights rather than redemptions.
I know what I would be doing here.
Or of course even cheaper – a whole host of days to many destinations at £47 one way and an RFS back (or vice versa) – would be £64.50…..
the points have a value…
If all else fails, ring BA close to your year expiry and ask them nicely if they will gift you the 5 TPs. I remember from a couple of years ago that they were willing to gift me 20 TPs as a Silver (or extend my year by 2 weeks, so that I could earn the TPs I was missing). Perhaps someone who has done this recently might confirm whether BA still entertain such requests?
They offer 2 weeks extensions pretty routinely I believe. Not sure they’re quite as keen on gifting TP though, haven’t heard as many successes on that front.
Totally missed the dead Qatar Airways Milan to Bangkok business class deal, though convincing the good lady wife to route LHR-MXP-DIA-BKK would never happen (and I couldn’t blame her). Coupled with the Amex offer, tier points and Avios was certainly an attractive offer.
Anyway, it was a far easier proposition to convince my wife to go for the Swiss / Lufthansa deal which we are doing in April, LHR-ZRH-BKK return for a bargain £2.5k all in. After a bit of research we settled on booking seats 1D and 1F both ways on the ZRH-BKK section and first time we’ve ever flown indirect to LOS but saved at least £1.1k over direct flights.
And thanks to Rob for running that article back in August otherwise I would have been none the wiser.
Is that in F delbert? I ve convinced the wife to fly LHR-AMS—LHR-BKK-LHR- dropping the last leg for 1.25k eachin CW which I didn’t think was too bad
Apologies as should have clarified it’s in business, Tom H. Notwithstanding, first class isn’t available.