More Hilton Honors McLaren factory tours announced for points redemptions

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• Ian M says:

  17 May17 May 07:10

  Any idea what routes the 787-8’s are being moved to which these A350’s are replacing?

  • Mark says:

    17 May17 May 09:25

    I’m starting to wonder whether the initial route choices are partly down to ongoing 787 engine issues.

    At some point, directly or indirectly, these are going to have to free up 747 airframes for retirement. So far the only planned operation that does that directly is Dubai, where interestingly 14 First and 86 Club seats are being replaced with no First and 56 Club suites, with a significant increase in economy capacity. Possibly a sign that BA’s current premium products are really struggling against the ME airlines…..

    For the others the switch represents an increase of around 100 seats per flight. The demand may well be there to justify that, but will be interesting to see whether these are long term deployments.

    • Jonathan says:

      17 May17 May 09:38

      I find it hard to understand why Virgin pulled out of the Dubai route on the grounds of profitability when their 1 flight a day was always 90% or more full, yet BA can make 3 flights a day work?

      • Rob says:

        17 May17 May 09:42

        Schedule. The Virgin outbound was terrible (overnight, lands at crack of dawn when you can’t check in to your hotel) and the only people on it would have been Virgin Holidays customers paying naff-all.

        If you’re heading to Dubai / AUH you want something around 10am if you can so you can get to your hotel by 10pm.

        The very fact that BA had 3 flights meant it did better. Virgin was stuffed because if they gave the outbound a better slot it may have needed to keep the plane overnight in Dubai at huge cost.

        • Mark says:

          17 May17 May 10:04

          To be fair none of BA’s flights offer that 10pm arrival either. Two of the three are also early morning arrivals, just like Virgin’s was. The other is an afternoon flight which gets in very late.

          We may have been lucky but had no problem checking in at our hotel early. When travelling in business class we took the view that we were getting an overnight flat bed anyway, and we had an extra day without having to pay for an extra night in the hotel. For the same reason we quite like the overnight BA flight coming back, but would probably be rather less keen to do that in economy.

        • Aston100 says:

          17 May17 May 11:46

          I would definitely fly a late night 7 hour flight to Dubai and would prefer it to a morning flight.
          The 22:25 – 08:25 and the 21:15 to 07:30 BA flight times are good IMO.
          There is enough time to sleep a bit and you’d arrive at a time to enjoy the entirety of the day.
          Maybe go bed a bit early on your first day if feeling a bit tired towards the end of that day.

• Alex says:

  17 May17 May 07:11

  OT Bits: Amex offer £30 off £100 at Harvey Nichols can be stacked with the weekend sale currently on (if you have an account). Just saved £65 on Creed aftershave which I was due to get for this summer in any case

  • Chris says:

    17 May17 May 09:10

    did you only get one of the amex offers? Still interested to know what happens if you have both the 20/30 off offers

    • Shoestring says:

      17 May17 May 09:52

      they stack

    • Tom1 says:

      17 May17 May 09:52

      Someone else commented that if you have both, both trigger.

      • Chris says:

        17 May17 May 10:06

        awesome thanks all, missed that

        • Stu N says:

          17 May17 May 11:50

          Not tried it with Harvey Nics, but on a couple of occasions with two similar offers – World Duty Free and one of the hotel ones (Hilton, I think) – the offers stacked for me.

    • Graham says:

      17 May17 May 15:02

      I bought a £100 gift card and got the £30 and £20 credited to my account which I intend to use at the OXO brasserie

  • MinR says:

    17 May17 May 13:42

    They do stack indeed. Gutted I spent the offers last week before the 25% this weekend.

• George says:

  17 May17 May 07:16

  OT: Any advice for making payments to a US- Dollar business ICC card? I had assume TransferWise would do it (I receive dollars through TW) but it appears they won’t accept the routing number. Would rather pay with dollars but understand this probably means opening a new account.

  • Mikee says:

    17 May17 May 07:36

    To pay my Amex USD intl card, I opened a free HSBC Advance account and then a USD currency account. Paid money into the USD account from Revolut and then paid the credit card. Cost a few $ in fees each time but worked well as HSBC allowed routing and reference fields to be used compared to Transferwise and Revolut which were restricted.

    • Qwerty Bertie says:

      17 May17 May 08:28

      I would like to go down this route, but have read so many accounts of people having their money suddenly confiscated/withheld from them on the flimsy prextext of security checks that I will never trust any online service that holds money. Transferwise, Revolut, Monese, Payoneer et al.

      Unfortunately, the HSBC USD account is far too expensive without them. I opened one once for something else, and the exchange rate it was offering when transferring from a GBP current account was so bad I would effectively have lost about 4.75% on the transaction!

      • Mikee says:

        17 May17 May 09:31

        Ref the HSBC exchange rate, I never exchanged currency using HSBC, just fed USD to the account after exchanging via Revolut. That way, I always received the best exchange rate. The HSBC account was purely there to pay bills that Revolut and Transferwise couldn’t cope with due to the lack of the relevant fields ie routing/reference numbers etc.

        • Mikee says:

          17 May17 May 09:33

          Have not had any security issues issues with either Transferwise or Revolut so happy to use them….but others may have different experiences.

  • MD says:

    17 May17 May 07:36

    Haven’t tried it myself, but wouldn’t Revolut work? You can change money into dollars at any time for no fee and make payments as a debit card or bank account.

• Tom says:

  17 May17 May 07:17

  OT: Does anyone know if Hilton rooms for HH points can appear closer to travel date, in a similar way to Avios flights? Or is it a case of once they are gone (if they were ever available) they are gone?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    17 May17 May 07:24

    They can appear due to cancellations and because premium rooms have been released at discounted rates.

  • meta says:

    17 May17 May 07:29

    Sometimes they are not released at all until closer to stay date. Japanese properties are known for this. I emailed Hilton Fukuoka recently and they said they usually release 8-9 months ahead both for award and cash bookings.

    • Spurs Debs says:

      17 May17 May 07:59

      Is that why several Japanese Hilton’s are showing as sold out a year in advance?

      I booked the Hilton Tokyo but will keep an eye out for the Conrad my first choice.

      The extra bits of useful info you pick up from the comments on this site is great.

      • meta says:

        17 May17 May 08:05

        Yes. Conrad just released next batch of dates.

        • Spurs Debs says:

          17 May17 May 08:26

          Oh great thanks! I’ll look out for April 2020.

          I thought it was odd but when I investigated I discovered that the Olympic test dates are happening when we go and thought maybe thats why rooms were showing sold out.

• Reeferman says:

  17 May17 May 08:21

  O/T – Lloyds CC changes
  A word of warning. Lloyds is automatically charging your new credit card (with it’s overseas transaction fees) even when you present your old Avios cards and even though you have NOT “verified” your new card!
  Have just spoken with Lloyds and they have agreed to refund the fees for the charges up to the end of my monthly billing cycle (but NOT for the new cycle).
  They said it was an automatic transfer of cards but that your existing cards will continue to work for one month – but during which time you will be charged the 3% overseas transaction fee!

  • TGLoyalty says:

    17 May17 May 08:56

    I haven’t even had the letter to say I’m being switched over yet.

    • David says:

      17 May17 May 10:05

      The last hurrah for Lloyds woeful customer service with these cards. I’m currently travelling, so no idea if a new card has arrived for me at home. My Amex worked for my hotel bill this morning, but I won’t be happy if they’ve whacked on a 3% fee!

      How did anyone at Lloyds think this was an acceptable way to manage the changeover…?

      • Reeferman says:

        17 May17 May 20:48

        I was (and still am) in the same position – currently overseas and using the card regularly. No idea whether my new card had arrived in UK.
        It was only when I went online to check my account that I saw all the overseas transaction charges showing-up (all listed separately).
        Have now shredded the cards!

    • fivebobbill says:

      17 May17 May 17:35

      No letters for me or the missus either!
      Just got my statement today too and everything as normal, hammering away at the Amex overseas for extra Avios and no FX. Year ended in Feb and we already have our vouchers bagged 🙂
      Gonna miss this card (if it ever closes) given the direction Amex MR are heading…

      • fivebobbill says:

        17 May17 May 17:38

        Still getting 1.25 per £ by the way

  • Justin says:

    17 May17 May 09:22

    Do you know if Avios earning has automatically switched over to the new rate? Even when using the Amex?

  • Frenzie01 says:

    17 May17 May 10:57

    I still haven’t had a letter from them.
    I currently hold 2 Avios Lloyds card, one of these is the super old Premium one .

  • EwanG says:

    17 May17 May 11:51

    If anyone else is in the same boat, when you call Lloyds you should make the point that MBNA managed their transition from the airline and hotel cards successfully, and who owned MBNA at that time….?

• Brian says:

  17 May17 May 08:23

  Not sure if it’s been mentioned already, but Hilton seems to have launched a sale.

• Rob Walker says:

  17 May17 May 08:51

  OT
  Has anyone noticed the new HSBC rewards card? Doesn’t look like there’s much to get excited about, but still interesting.

• Andrew says:

  17 May17 May 08:58

  Plenty of new brands for IHG.

  Their “Allure Resort” turned up on my recent search of hotels in Orlando. Very handy for Universal, but the reviews on the usual sites don’t make for good reading. That could, of course, change when their standards align to that of a bigger chain.

  • Rob says:

    17 May17 May 09:46

    They still have that odd ‘Qo’ hotel in Amsterdam too. Apparently the owner wanted to be a Kimpton but IHG was not prepared to launch two at once in the same city so it sits as a ‘Qo’ for a few years. There will not be any more Qo hotels AFAIK.

    • Mark says:

      17 May17 May 10:41

      I’m going in september if you’d like a review?

      • Rob says:

        17 May17 May 11:34

        Too niche, even IHG isn’t so keen to push it (I asked once).

        • Mark says:

          17 May17 May 11:43

          no worries.

    • Ian Perry says:

      17 May17 May 12:11

      I stayed there recently. It’s a very nice, albeit a little quirky hotel. Great food and very cool views from the bar on the top floor.

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