Macdonald Hotels closes “The Club” loyalty scheme – what happens to your points?

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• ian says:

  8 Feb8 February 05:22

  Re: Stolen shoes when placed outside your room for the shoeshine. Same thing happened to me at the Viceroy Hotel in New York. Maybe it’s a bigger issue than I thought.

  • sunguy says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:30

    We have just found a lovely pair of black Loake shoes, size 12 here in the office with no obvious owner (they have been around for at least a year)……

    • Rob says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:35

      I think they were Loake, but 11!

  • Doug M says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:34

    You should both avoid Dartmoor.

    • Alex Sm says:

      8 Feb8 February 23:07

      Hahaha, you read my thoughts! The Hound of Baskervilles is out there for definite

• TheSkintTraveller says:

  8 Feb8 February 06:26

  The BA 100 ad is also being aired on TV at present, try channels like Quest etc.

  • David says:

    8 Feb8 February 06:37

    The BA 100 Advert is almost as bad as their in-flight safety briefing advert. I hope they didn’t spend too much in either. Using so called celebrities is no guarantee of making something good. The Etihad safety briefing is so much better and original, whereas BA’s one is a clear (and bad) rip off. And I really don’t get the 100 Ad. Are they not a world airline? Maybe the ‘making of’ video will be more interesting but I will skip both. I am sure a different agency would help. How about using everyday folk in your ads. Even EasyJet have managed a decent ad with memorable music. Unlike Virgin!

    • David says:

      8 Feb8 February 06:38

      Air France has my favourite safety video!

    • Callum says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:27

      I like it, and they aren’t “so called” celebrities – they ARE celebrities.

      • Rob says:

        8 Feb8 February 09:32

        In the same way that you can argue if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?, you can argue that if I fail to recognise someone, are they a celebrity? …

      • The Lord says:

        8 Feb8 February 11:33

        I recognised 3 of them. How many of them are ‘celebs’ and how many are ‘normal people’?

      • Alex Sm says:

        8 Feb8 February 23:11

        One of them is poised to sweep a few Baftas and Oscars, while another already did that, and one another was the first British woman in space and was my childhood hero even given the fact I was raised in the Soviet Union. Guys, seriously, you need to be less arrogant…

    • Andrew says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:32

      “Everyday folks” has been done to death in banking and supermarket adverts.

      An airline version with everyday crew members has been spoofed as far back as the early 1990s when “Shona Spurtle” was selected to be the face of “Air Scotia” in their in-flight safety video…

      • Gavin says:

        8 Feb8 February 10:08

        Oh Dearie Me.

      • Russ says:

        8 Feb8 February 13:09

        I loved that series. Always remembered Alan Cumming galloping down the centre aisle with the sweet basket under his arm; lobbing sweets to pax in all directions before take off. I can’t remember when I first noticed that stopped.

    • Susan says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:03

      I saw the BA safety vid for the first time earlier this week – godallmighty it was awful. I never thought anything could be as bad as that bloody bunny but just for once BA exceeded expectations.

• Paul says:

  8 Feb8 February 06:49

  The BA ad is very sleek but like BA generally it ends there.

  Can someone please tell me how thecare gettingbaway with 100 year bullshit! KLM AIanca and Qantas are the oldest airlines still in existence. BA was created from the merger of BEA and BOAC and is younger than me!

  At best links back to 1919 are tenuous but in truth reality has never stopped BA hyperbole in the past.

  • Rob says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:03

    Business Travel News did a rant about this recently. It is a bit like me buying our local cafe and then claiming HFP is 40 years old.

    However it is also a legit marketing wheeze to buy a dormant brand and then say your company is 200 years old. Some watch brands which claim to be centuries old are really 20-30 years old, having brought back a dormant name from the 1800s.

    • Callum says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:32

      Not quite, it’s like you merging and rebranding an existing points blog then claiming the combined group is 40 years old (ignoring the fact there was no internet (or airmiles?) back then!).

      Much more reasonable sounding than buying a random business that has nothing to do with you!

    • sunguy says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:35

      I think my least favourite is the “we are moving” posters everytime a brand closes a store down. They just closing the shop down and telling you the nearest.

      Or then there was Tesco when they stopped taking cheques – this was supposedly because they took too long for the cashiers to process – have you ever been beind someone counting out all their change to pay for all their shopping……they should ban cash next! (Actually Bank of Scotland tried that in the mid-90s – they opened branches which didnt allow you to bank cash – you can see where that got them – a bail out by the government and Lloyds!)

      • Rob says:

        8 Feb8 February 11:40

        No Cash cafes are getting more common in London now.

      • the_real_a says:

        8 Feb8 February 15:01

        Just got stuck behind an older person “helping” the cashier by finding the correct change… for an eternity. Everyone else in the queue waved their phone/card and was walking along within 2 seconds. Yes ban cash 🙂

      • John says:

        8 Feb8 February 16:51

        Use the self checkout

    • paul says:

      8 Feb8 February 14:00

      I didn’t know that! You do learn something new every day.

      Still givent he describe CW as luxury I should not be surprised that they can be economical with the truth about their age!! Not many of want to claim to be older than they are.

  • marcw says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:26

    It is total BS – only s-t-u-p-i-d people would believe BA is 100 yo and would swallow such a statement.

    It is like saying Vueling is 92 years old! Because Vueling merged with Clickair which was Iberia’s brand in BCN (IB transformed IB mainline operations to Clickair back in 2006). And IB is 92 yo.

• Shoestring says:

  8 Feb8 February 06:52

  O/T Another points scheme that is closing soon (end March) is the one at thebookpeople.co.uk – use them or lose them – I got a very nice £7.99 5-book collection for my 450 points 🙂

  • Boreas says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:05

    The Book People are interesting, thank you.

    If you hold a single share in Bloomsbury Publishing, they offer a 35% discount on the RRP for every book of theirs in print.

    Always worth considering should you ever buy a handful of Bloomsbury titles closer to the usual market price.

• Froggee says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:05

  I noticed the club closing. Heading to a MacDonald property today that can only be booked direct so it was doubly annoying!

  • RussellH says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:27

    I would have expected an e-mail, or something, even though I have no points.
    They used to send me discount vouchers for my birthday, which I was unable to use.
    🙂

• S says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:54

  What a colourful history of previous eBay transactions you have Rob 😉

  • Rob says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:00

    If you can go back a few years you will see a pile of Nokia mobile I bought for £10 at Tesco which came with 1,000 Clubcard points each 🙂

    Rest of it is kiddy stuff …

    • Navara says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:00

      Those were the days

    • xcalx says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:01

      I sold you a virtual peg bag for a virtual pound back in the BMI days. IIRC 5000 BMI miles for 5 purchases. Happy days.

• Adam says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:36

  I notice that EBay is full of the BA 100 badges – I guess we won’t be seeing as many Staff wearing them as BA think we will! 🙂

  • Shoestring says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:54

    What would you do if you got given one and saw HfP’s one had got to £127? 🙂

• Anna says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:42

  OT – Finally taken the plunge and applied for SPG Amex and been accepted instantly (it does seem IME that instance acceptance is more likely if you put in a current Amex number, I sometimes can’t be bothered but will always do so in future!)

  Apart from sign up bonus and spend, are there any other ways of earning SPG points?

  • Anna says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:44

    And staying at the hotels, presumably?!

  • Craig says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:20

    I put an existing number in and am waiting to hear, 7 months since I closed it!

    • Shoestring says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:47

      they were pretty slow last time for us, I got an email about hello to paperless statements after about 7 days but card didn’t arrive for another few days

  • Alan says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:24

    Wish the existing Amex number always did the trick but not had instant acceptance for years with Amex even though normally card just comes through in the post a week later!

    • Mark2 says:

      8 Feb8 February 11:03

      +1

  • Kayleigh says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:25

    Have literally just done the same!
    However I did not get an instant decision 🙁 And I put in my current Amex number – boo!

    • Shoestring says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:40

      We never get instant approval either, it’s not a significant consideration or disappointment, just part of the application process that you should expect (& if you get the instant OK, great but hardly a big deal either).

      • Anna says:

        8 Feb8 February 09:43

        I don’t know what it is then, but I get instant approval more often than my OH who only has a couple of cards and earns 3 times what I do! Perhaps they know I do most of the household spending lol.

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