News in brief:
Avios / Kaligo.com hotel promotion extended
Kaligo.com and Avios have extended their ‘double Avios promotion’.
It is now valid on all hotel rooms booked by 31st December for stays from now until the end of June 2020. The original closing date was 30th November.
This means that you can collect between 10 and 40 Avios per £1 spent on every hotel booking, depending on the category of hotel. You can see the special promotion page on the Kaligo.com website here.
Obviously you would be waiving your usual hotel benefits if you have status since you are booking via a third party. You also wouldn’t be earning any hotel loyalty points as these would be non-qualifying stays.
However, for independent hotels or stays at chains where you have no status or do not collect their points, this could be a very lucrative offer and give your Avios balance a big boost.
PS. Before you book, remember that Rocketmiles – a very similar business to Kaligo.com – is currently offering 5,000 miles in MANY programmes to new customers with their first stay. The clever thing to do is to credit the stay to Heathrow Rewards which gives you the possibility to transfer out to a variety of airline partners – including Avios and Virgin Flying Club – and potentially get a conversion bonus at a later date. Here is my article on what happened when I gave this offfer a try.
Hyatt gains two Manchester hotels from IHG on 10th January
As we reported back in September, Hyatt is opening two hotels in Manchester next year.
These are NOT new hotels. They are rebrandings of the brand new Crowne Plaza Manchester Oxford Road and the brand new Staybridge Suites.
The Crowne Plaza Manchester Oxford Road, which we reviewed here, will become a 212-room Hyatt Regency hotel. Staybridge Suites Manchester Oxford Road, which we reviewed here, will become a 116-room Hyatt House extended stay property.
The hotels are located in the University Quarter, a 10-minute walk from the city centre and close to Manchester Oxford Road station. Hyatt’s presence outside London is currently woeful, if you exclude the ‘Small Luxury Hotels’ affiliates, with their only hotel being the Hyatt Regency in Birmingham. This is a welcome expansion.
Both hotels are now showing on hyatt.com for bookings from Friday 10th January. This is a surprisingly quick turnaround – just four months from the announcement – which implies that relations between the owners and IHG have broken down badly or that both parties have agreed that Manchester simply has too many upper scale IHG hotels these days.
Run the London Marathon with IHG Rewards Club
Something a little different has appeared on the IHG Auctions website.
IHG has secured two places for the 2020 London Marathon on 26th April – an event which is so popular that places are allocated by ballot – and is offering them for a points auction.
There are two packages – one of which will go for a modest price and one of which will go for a high price.
The cheaper package includes your race place, one night at Holiday Inn London Stratford City (which I reviewed here), a £50 dinner credit, breakfast and coach travel to the race.
The luxury package includes two nights in a deluxe room at InterContinental London O2 (which I reviewed here), a Swedish massage, breakfast and coach travel to the race.
Go here to bid for the Holiday Inn package (current bid of 9,000 points).
Go here to bid for the InterContinental package, which at the time of typing is at 58,000 points.
Bids close on 6th January, which will give you around 15 weeks to get in shape!
About Head for Points
Michael O’Leary’s thoughts:
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/michael-o-leary-objects-to-f-king-dutch-people-telling-us-to-pay-more-taxes-1.4111084
I am now a Michael O’Leary fan. I wasn’t before.
Rubbish like these proposals is representative of why so many voted to leave the EU.
Well said LL, I think here in the UK we pay enough tax on flying – considerably more than the Irish and the Dutch anyway!
Countering a sound environmental argument with base racism is certainly typical of many of those who voted to leave the EU.
The post was about discrepancies in taxation on air travel! Why is it that Remainers can only rationalise the referendum result by labelling anyone who voted differently as racist?
I can’t think of one person I’ve discussed it with that ultimately had any reason beyond racism. Sure they dress it up, but the more you ask the more it becomes about racism.
You don’t know how I voted or if I did at all. Perhaps I am not even resident in the UK. Using a crude sexual swear word to describe a whole race of people is racist, full stop. Dutch, black, Asian, it doesn’t matter. Stating that you are now a fan of a person after they make a racist statement, well, you can join up the dots however you like.
Erm… It wasn’t a racist comment. He didn’t just mean the Dutch. There’s a kind of British/Irish humour in this. Sorry if non-UK/Irish people or perhaps younger people who seem to be excessively inculcated into political correctness missed this and did not take Michael O’Leary’s statement as a slightly dry humour way of making a serious wider point.
PS I’m a Remainer
There is a lot of sense being talked there.
What is really needed, though, is an end to the ridiculous idea that flying is still a young industry trying to find its feet, that needs tax breaks in order to survive. This being the reason for there being no VAT on most flights.
But I do not see many here agreeing with the last bit of his comments:
““Aviation tax […]is just a tax grab by governments” in favour of rich people. One way of addressing the problem, he said, was to ban business and first classes which were a grossly inefficient use of space […].”
I’d ban cheap tickets. Going to make a lot more difference than banning business/first.
And in the words of Marie Antoinette “Let them [the masses of ordinary people] eat cake!”
APD should increase a lot in business and first in my opinion.
Not on reward seats though 😉
OT
on any non FX card fees, do they get you on the currency conversion rate?
Are some cards better than others?
I’m looking at the Capital On Tap but wondering if they will burn me on exchange rate.
Conversion rate is set by Mastercard / Visa, and Mastercard typically has a better rate than Visa, I believe
some cheap flights to/ from PMI (Palma) on BA direct! tinyurl.com/qogjxje
just found a return leg for £12 PMI-Gatwick (check Sept-Oct-Nov 2020)
Iberia running +50% Avios promo again! 300.000 Avios for €3,601 = £3,032
Not doing the math on a calculator as I can see it in my head! – thanks to GBP strengthening…
…WE’RE NOW ON 1p/ AVIOS TO BUY 300K FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR ARMCHAIR 🙂
150K is also 1p
75K is 1.05p (£788)
any buyers need to take a view on the election tomorrow and the reaction of GBP vs EUR when the result (a) seems predictable (say, tomorrow morning/ afternoon) & (b) becomes solid fact (early morning on 13th)
could be higher in anticipation rather than after the fact
will the fear of a hung parliament weigh on the £?
will GBP dip – even with a Conservative victory as that’s already in the price?
would any dip be followed by renewed strengthening of GBP in the coming days?
deadline to buy the Avios is 20th December
Thanks Harry, if you start your own blog / facebook page / tiktok account, I will definitely follow you.
(I’ll still read Rob and Anika’s first of course though).
There is the economist Canada deal at 0.8ppa, don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to get 75k+ avios from that.
@BJ does the Economist subscription offer work if you use a different name and address? Suppose I could sign my partner up too.
That said, 84% of HfP readers have a -90,000 Iberia balance so can’t use this deal.
How did you get to 84%?
Not you is it Dianne???
Based on an admittedly small sample of the HfP readers I know 🙂
Tips would be welcome on how to reset the negative balance by the way
On resetting the -90k exercising your GDPR rights has been reported to work.
Otherwise I suppose you could wait the three years without activity on the account that would mean all your points get automatically expired and taken away from you. Should work, if things are fair, for negative balances as well as positive ones!
Don’t expect these avios quickly if your looking to book a flight, I’m on 3.5 weeks waiting and still not credited! 😠
This is not Groupon…. read read read!
My bad! Rubbish rates at 20k, 10% more.
O/T: Spire Elite & IC Ambassador member with a refundable IC reservation using IHG CC Free Night, when viewing reservation there’s a code, “6C”, under Special Requests. Does anyone know what that means?
Fall back to Six Continents Club, the old IC elite scheme.
OT – just had a very pleasant stay at the Hilton Vienna Plaza. As gold we got a room upgrade, welcome gift and the breakfast included the buffet (including sparkling wine and smoked salmon) and anything you wanted from the a la carte – I can recommend the eggs benedict! Extremely comfortable beds and very quiet given that it’s fairly central, and within walking distance of several Christmas markets.
Vienna airport is also a very civilised experience – we were at the hotel within an hour of landing. On the way back we used the very efficient City Airport train which costs 12 euros and takes 16 minutes!
We stayed there in the summer, nice hotel. We managed to pay 20 euro per night to upgrade the basic room, then got the complimentary gold upgrade to an exec with lounge access.
Thanks Anna we are off there tomo!
Any good Amexy ways to buy an iPhone cheaper?
I’m thinking buying Apple vouchers from Waitrose to get the 4% off.
Any other ideas?
Be careful those App Store vouchers can’t be used to buy any phones etc.
Do you have a work discount portal? I get 8% off curry’s gift cards for example.
Amex are running a harrods offer which could get you £60 off if you use them.
More than likely the Morrison’s offer will be back on cards soon and that’s 10% off amazon or JL probably the only Two I’d Still trust to look after me if I didn’t use a credit card to pay)
I just bought some earphones from John Lewis using their gift cards. I used the current Amex JL offer to get £10 off a £50 gift card and used some other gift cards I bought from Morrison’s for 10% off.
The best deals are usually Vodafone contracts through mobiles.co.uk on Black Friday tbh. I got my new iPhone 11 Pro with 60gb of data a month for the same price over 24 months as buying the handset itself. Contracts can often be a better deal, even if you can afford the phone outright (I could).
The other gift cards were also JL ones. I stock up when the Morrison’s offer comes.
Do the same every two years. However, this year for the first time ever I avoided a top end handset in favour of a Galaxy a70 which retailed for £369 at the time. Very happy with it, and the contract including handset cost me less than nothing taking into account promotions from Samsung and the usual place, and the money I got from selling my old phone. I will never again buy a top of the range phone.
I took an 8Gb contract for £4.40pm. I have unlimited under a separate contract and needed a lowish-value separate one. Contracts with unlimited GB and everything have been around regularly in the UK at around £14pm since at least March on more than 1 of the networks.
I only take contracts with a minimum duration of no more than 12 months regardless of the offer for longer. This has served me well.
My policy is to separate the handset from the contract. Then I am free on both to choose where I go next. This has worked excellently for me on Android, but on i-Things (Mac’s as well as phones) there are frequently deals around like @Harry T’s you’d be mad not to take.
Due to the pound’s fall keeping an eye on handsets available in the grey market and other country markets is worth it. As Samsung is a fashion brand you can do really well following BJ’s new approach of taking older than the latest handset. The trick is to assess between which releases serious new functionality is added. Mostly there are true step changes only on some releases. But when the new release comes in prices on older ones will drop like a stone at a soonish point so watch carefully across sources. So choose your moment, gather your promotions, gift cards, points and vouchers, and pounce!
Once or twice a year Carphone Warehouse (=Dixons/Curry’s) seems to offer some nice bundled deal. The last one I recall was a free Chromebook with a Pixel3 at launch.
A bit late I’m afraid, but if you read this go through the BAEC store – Apple is currently offering 9 Avios per £…..
Targeted £5 off £25 spend Amazon code doing the rounds recently (10,000 uses, items sold and shipped by Amazon only). GIFT5P