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
another OT
Took advantage of the Air China business class offer FRA to Melbourne in R class in July 2020
I have no *A membership and unlikely to gain further miles/status
Are there any *A schemes with good transfers out to eg hotel points
Looked at “where to credit” but didn’t seem to address this situation
Thanks in anticipation
Lufty lets you use your points towards a hotel booking. SAS has specific hotels (mainly Radisson) which can be booked for a fixed number of points – I once did a night at The Mayfair. Lots more too I assume if you dig.
Remember that SAS and Singapore can be topped up with Amex points.
Are LH hotel redemptions still working? My partner has been trying to redeem for guftcards but they still appear to be blocked. The order can be placed but is never filled.
There was a comment a couple of weeks ago that said they might have stopped because of a court case in Germany where their argument hinges on miles being worth nothing.
Correct. Someone is claiming that miles are emoney, and so LH must cash them out for, well, cash if requested. LH is claiming that miles have no financial value. In order to do this, they have stopped all transfers in and out because those DO prove miles have a cash value, eg redeeming for a gift card or letting you buy hotel points and transfer them into M&M miles.
Thanks, knew about this but tried anyway in hope things might have changed. Just assumed it would be the same for their hotels and car scheme.
SAS also let you pool all points together with your family and friends
Are you sure you can’t use a *A Gold membership even just to status match, as that trip will take you quite close in some schemes.
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?