News in brief:
That missing No 1 Lounges discount code …..
Yesterday we ran an article on a new promotion from No 1 Lounges, offering up to 30% discount.
We messed it up. We thought that the discount code was automatically applied when you went to the special sale page, but it wasn’t. Code GIFT2019 was needed too.
There are two options:
you can buy a pass for a specific lounge, if you know where you will flying from, for up to 30% discount, or
you can buy a £20 or £50 gift voucher at up to 30% discount which can be redeemed against any lounge booking
Vouchers can be used until 31st December 2020 so you shouldn’t have any trouble using them. Note that the £20 and £50 vouchers must be used in one transaction, so you should only buy these if you are likely to be travelling with other people.
Whilst this offer is presented as a gifting offer, you are free to buy vouchers for yourself and save up to 30% on your No 1 Lounge, My Lounge and Clubrooms visits next year.
The offer runs until 26th December and you can buy here. You need to use code GIFT2019. Sorry for any inconvenience yesterday.
Save 25% on IHG bookings with their new sale
IHG is currently running a ‘Cyber Sale’ that takes 20% off Best Flexible rates, plus an extra 5% if you are an IHG Rewards Club member (which you will be!).
However, as these sale rates are non-cancellable and non-refundable, you should really be comparing them to the existing Advanced Purchase rates. Your saving might not be as high as 25% but prices are definitely lower than the usual Advanced Purchase rates.
The sale is open from now until 17th December, for stays until 31st May 2020.
Don’t forget that IHG is running TWO bonus points promotions at the moment:
the current Accelerate promotion runs until year end and gives you a variety of targets to earn bonus points – you can read our full article here or register here.
the second promotion is IHG’s new 4x promotion, which lets you earn up to quadruple points on your next four stays. You can register here or read our article.
You can find full details of the sale on the IHG site here.
PS. Not all hotels seem to be showing the sale rate. If you don’t see the Cyber Sale rate, you may see an offer for ‘double points on member rates’ instead. This is also worth a look.
Get SkyTeam Elite status with one Vietnam Airlines trip
If you enjoyed our recent reviews of Vietnam Airlines, this offer may be of interest.
The Vietnam Airlines frequent flyer program, Lotus Miles, has a new promotion to earn instant status. You can get SkyTeam Elite in two ways:
Lotus Miles Gold with a business class flex roundtrip to Vietnam (booking class J/C)
Lotus Miles Titanium with a premium economy roundtrip to Vietnam
Confusingly, Gold is a higher status than Titanium. Flights must be booked and flown from the UK, Germany, France or Russia. You must complete the journey before 31st May 2020.
To be clear, Lotus Miles Gold and Titanium BOTH translate to SkyTeam Elite. This includes priority services but does NOT give you SkyTeam lounge access across the full alliance. Lotus Miles Gold card holders DO get access to Vietnam Airlines’ own lounges, however.
The only Vietnam Airlines status level which gives SkyTeam Elite Plus status – which would get you alliance-wide lounge access – is Platinum, which is not available via this deal.
There is some sense in making use of this offer if you are planning a trip to Vietnam – especially if you don’t want to connect – since Vietnam Airlines is the only airline to fly direct from the UK to Vietnam. If nothing else, you’ll get some additional benefits – albeit not lounge access – across all of the SkyTeam airlines which includes Delta, Air France and KLM.
You can read our review of long haul business class on Vietnam Airlines here and premium economy here.
You can see the full details on the landing page here.
About Head for Points
O/T:
Just checking. If I currently hold a BAPP Amex and a Preferred Rewards Gold Amex, I won’t be entitled to a signup bonus on the SPG Amex right? and presumably same for all other non-business Amex cards?
Just trying to figure out what cards to move to next.
Thanks.
Correct. You can’t get any personal bonus.
All I would say is it’s worth a punt on SPG/Amex IT…
Fight club rules and all that, but very recent experience would suggest a gambler might take a punt….
In light of yesterday’s discussion on amex, I’ve decided to be a model of good behaviour going forward but it might be too little too late.
That ships probably sailed
Completely hypothetical, but if the bonus spend tracker doesn’t eventually appear on your account – would this suggest the IT gods were not smiling in your favour?
Bonus tracker never seems to appear for the SPG card anyway.
OT. Anna, just wanted to say a huge thanks for motivating me (and educating me!) to do the IHG accelerate. All in all, including stay points, I accumulated 148k points through 7 nights (£450 spend). All of which we needed hotels for anyway. Thanks so much.
Beats my effort of 55k for 4 nights at £190 this quarter, well done 🙂
I feel more reassured thank you! Especially as I had the 2 x IC stays target too.
How did you and BJ accumulate those points? Sounds impressive.
Most of it was through accelerate targets. And then the actual stay points on top. My accelerate targets were clearly generous this time with a max of 120k in points for
24k – 2 x IC hotels
6.6k – 2 x bonus points packages
18k – 2 brands
12k – 2 saturdays
60k – 4/4 of the above.
Mine was 2 weekends, 3 brands, 4 nights for 48600. The rest were welcome, base and spire bonus. I shouldn’t have completed it with 4 nights, it really required 5. However, I complained that the t&c did not male it explicitly clear that ‘stay Saturday night and one other night’ had to be consecutive in the same hotel, and that they did not need to be in previous versions of accelerate. CS agreed and let me complete with 4 nights instead of 5.
I had the saturdays ones and probably should have argued that too but it worked out for us as both of the stays were those we needed (or maybe 1 night have have sufficed, but 2 made it comfortable for us with 2 kids, and the nightly rates were decent)
I’ve never done accelerate but good going on the points! I think I may have helped you find 2 4 1 availability though?
Oh maybe it was lady London! I’m sorry if I got it wrong! It was deffo one of the ladies!
I don’t want to confuse you Zara but gender does not always correlate with HFP usernames as well as you might think 🙂
Haha noted!
and I was speaking generally… before LadyLondon comes after me 🙂
OT:
Amex–> Hilton.
Transferred some points on 26 Oct at the standard 1->2. Got the bonus, making 1->3 today.
Having yesterday spent a load of Hilton points at about double Rob’s valuation I now wish I had done a lot more.
🙂
Given that we have seen two of those in recent times you might not have to with that long for another. Always felt Rob’s Hilton valuation was a bit low as I found it easy enough to get about 0.5-0.6p although that’s coming down for me this year.
I was only targetted for the recent offer.
A few readers reported getting it although they were not targeted, or perhaps they were unaware that they were.
Thanks for the reminder. Just checked and have received my bonus too.
I got the same and also wish I had moved more but I wasn’t sure it would actually work.
OT: 3 pairs of tickets have become available for the McLaren Technology Centre Tour on 21 Nov if anyone is interested. On the Hilton experiences website…
I have now returned from my Mekong river cruise, with free business class flights to Saigon. I registered with Lotus miles a while ago and have been promoted to Silver. What does this mean in real life?