Marriott opens Parklane, the first luxury branded hotel resort in Cyprus

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• BSI1978 says:

  18 Apr18 April 08:51

  OT but as bits…any thoughts/views on likelihood of BA running a sale anytime soon? Note that Virgin are running one at present which ends tomorrow, but don’t recall BA having done similar of late and keen to nab a few seats to Nashville in October.

  Cheers for any thoughts on this.

  • David says:

    18 Apr18 April 13:30

    I remember some “Easter” sales in the past, and the double avios promo is book by tomorrow I think, so I reckon there could be a sale launching this weekend (after the window for double avios closes).

    Obviously just speculation though!

• Grant says:

  18 Apr18 April 09:26

  OT Marriot Redemptions at

  Toying with the idea of cashing in all my points for a stay at the Ritz Carlton in NYC. 340,000 points for a 5 night stay seems like a decent deal when the cash rate is c. $1,000 a night.

  Do Marriot allow you to pay to upgrade redemptions stays so you can get access to Carlton Club?

  • Grant says:

    18 Apr18 April 10:30

    Thanks – nothing being offered on the website so I guess I’d need to risk that it would be offered at check-in.

    I’m trying to balance this option against a cash stay elsewhere booked through a Virtuoso agent. The Virtuoso benefits could easily be replaced by Club access, but at what cost?!

  • Simon says:

    18 Apr18 April 11:48

    Grant, I’m a bit of an R-C fanboy and in recent years have stayed at the ones in Hong Kong (old and new incarnations), Tokyo and Kyoto, returning to Kyoto in September. I did, though, take out a travel package at the NYC R-C on Central Park in Dec 2017 — phenomenally disappointing: dated, expensive, underwhelming. And I’d been looking forward to that trip for a year! 😩 The JW Marriott around the corner or the St Regis might be better bets, both offering free breakfasts if you have status. Just my two pennies…

    • Grant says:

      18 Apr18 April 13:44

      Thanks Simon – first hand experiences always welcome!

    • Lee says:

      18 Apr18 April 13:48

      Simon, how do you think RC Kyoto? Booked for this Christmas, looking forward to that.

      • Rob says:

        18 Apr18 April 15:24

        I have reviewed RC Kyoto on here if you search. It is astonishingly good.

        • Alan says:

          18 Apr18 April 20:38

          Had a look out of interest – still about £1k/night and says ‘this property is not currently taking reward reservations’ when you try to search. Settled for Crowne Plaza at 30k IHG/night instead! Obviously won’t be anywhere near as grand but good value for the points and easy underground/shuttle bus ride from the train station!

      • Lee says:

        18 Apr18 April 16:31

        Thanks Rob

      • Simon says:

        18 Apr18 April 21:52

        Lee, it’s utterly SUPERB and my experience chimes with Rob’s review — everything is phenomenal. Also, should you be Platinum or Titanium Elite, you WILL get free breakfast there; I know this is not an elite benefit at R-Cs, and I also know that the R-C Tokyo does NOT follow suit with this, but the R-C Kyoto does offer breakfast gratis — between myself and the missus, that saved us £560.00 during our seven night stay in September. After checking out, I’d been curious why I’d not been billed for breakfast, so I trawled through FT and found a thread which mentioned how this hotel really looked after elites like this. If you have status, Lee, then an email to the hotel in advance may yield further results, too: I did this and bagged a suite. All round, possibly the best hotel experience of my life and, rather sadly, this hotel puts its NYC cousin to shame in just about every way.

    • KBuffett says:

      18 Apr18 April 19:38

      I would definitely recommend JW Marriott Essex House.

  • Dave says:

    18 Apr18 April 21:43

    I have a redemption coming up at the RC NYC. I emailed the concierge about club access. Was quoted $400 per night (2 people).

• Pussy Galore says:

  18 Apr18 April 09:59

  OT: I have a fully flex BA ticket to the US in PE booked through my work travel agent. Business class is only £300 more but my work policies don’t allow it. Is there any way I can call BA directly and pay the difference to book into business class instead?

  • Rob says:

    18 Apr18 April 10:21

    You wouldn’t have a fully flexible business class ticket though, I imagine. What happens if you need to cancel or change your plans and your employer wants to refund the ticket? If there wasn’t some risk of this happening surely you wouldn’t have booked a fully flex in the first place?

    • Alex W says:

      18 Apr18 April 11:00

      Shouldn’t the underlying fare remain flexible? Even if you lose the upgrade fee I would hope the original PE fare is still refundable. If this is not the case and BA doesn’t make that clear before paying for the upgrade then that is very sneaky.

  • John says:

    18 Apr18 April 10:26

    I think it depends on exactly the rules your employer sets. Do they say you cannot travel in the higher class (in which case you’re out of luck) or that you cannot book the higher class (in which case you could book the lower class with the travel agent and then call to pay the difference to upgrade yourself). They are 2 different things.

  • Gavin T says:

    19 Apr19 April 04:22

    No, if it was booked through a travel agent BA won’t modify it until 24 hours before, so the only option you’d have is to call the travel agent and get them to put the upgrade/change fee on a personal card. My employer uses CWT for most things and it’s just a non-starter. I usually try my luck asking at the check-in desk.

• kt1974 says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:15

  Just to be clear on the lead story here. The Press Gazette cites a source at the FT. BA has said nothing of the sort. The FT is also well known for pushing through eyewatering price increases to its corporate customers. While it is indeed a PR own goal by BA, until I hear otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised if BA just said no to the price increase and this is sour grapes from the FT.

  Frankly if you are the sort of BA customer who reads the FT, you should’ve already bought your own, rather than counting on getting one in the lounge/plane.

  • ChrisC says:

    18 Apr18 April 11:50

    I’ve seen a few comments in this on other blogs and flyer talk and most of them are just ridiculous with the usual ‘never flying BA again’ plus people who buy the FT anyway complaining about not getting a free copy when they fly …

    Perhaps the FT isn’t all that popular these days with BA flyers and why should BA stock it if there are copies regularly left at the end of each day.

• Crafty says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:20

  The same happened to me and I still achieved the offer without any intervention.

• Chelseafi says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:28

  O/T sorry know loads already said about the Tesco sim offer. Do you need to wait the 9 days or so until points posted before you do the 2nd sim on the Clubcard same account? Many thanks

  • Grant says:

    18 Apr18 April 10:31

    Nope

    • Chelseafi says:

      18 Apr18 April 11:09

      Thanks, one other question, I inserted sim, received 3 welcome text message, added Clubcard received text confirmation, then added rocket pack, rcvd text confirmation. The only thing I couldn’t do was make first phone call to activate even though I bought in store with packs no 20p credit. I assume as I’ve received all the text messages all is good? Didn’t anyone else not make an initial call? Thanks again

      • Grant says:

        18 Apr18 April 11:52

        I didn’t make any calls on the four sims I used.

• John Caribbean says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:36

  I’ve got the email, but not the credit for a non 3C hotel recently. Thought a refunded transaction might have put me back under.
  Then booked another Hilton to make sure, came up as 3C. However now I note that it (Stockton) isn’t on the list, but transacts as Glasgow, which is…

• Andrew says:

  18 Apr18 April 10:56

  hard to imagine BA will ever admit that they are dropping FT to try and bully them into more favourable coverage !

  • ChrisC says:

    18 Apr18 April 11:55

    If BA wanted to ‘bully’ a newspaper / media outlet there are more subtle ways of doing it than this – such as not advertising as much with them for example.

    Plus it is still stocking other papers that also run negative BA stories.

    Of course the way not to have negative stories run about you is not to cause them in the first place!

    BA no longer stocks the Daily Mail but it still and advertises with them

    • Tom says:

      18 Apr18 April 21:35

      Not sure I’ve ever seen a BA ad in the FT. So maybe the only leverage that BA had?

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