Watch a YouTube series on planning a British Airways tier point run

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• ChrisC says:

  22 Feb22 February 04:26

  BA reduced the tier points on the CWLCY flight from 210 to 140 in the spring of 2015 as part of a large package of changes to avios and TP earnings.

  • Mr. AC says:

    22 Feb22 February 07:17

    Would be interesting to know if this was regarded as a mistake later on within BA given the low performance of the route… It if the group of people that cares enough about TPs to fly that route as opposed to something else would have been too small to tip the scales.

    • Sam G says:

      22 Feb22 February 12:35

      The LON-JFK performance was affected by global entry mainly I believe. I have a couple of friends that stopped using it once the pre-clear immigration benefit was lost, the time penalty of the Shannon stopover wasn’t worth it. They actually switched to the AA 777 flights for the WiFi and 1-2-1 layout. Inbound a different story and was still the flight of choice back

• Matt's Planet says:

  22 Feb22 February 07:49

  Thanks Rob and Team – hope its useful for some readers out there!

  • Secret Squirrel says:

    22 Feb22 February 08:33

    Hi Matt, I watched your vids this morning & subscribed. Good, clear advise on using ITA. Great job..

  • John W says:

    22 Feb22 February 21:09

    Hi Matt , watched your videos this evening and learnt a lot from want you presented = Thanks !

• Mark Priest says:

  22 Feb22 February 09:00

  £75 pp for Breakfast, Cocktail and Dinner in Marble Arch. Bargain!

• Ian says:

  22 Feb22 February 09:17

  The Hard Rock offer looks very attractive if it really is fully refundable. For £149 they offer the superior with 4pm, but it also seems to include a meal for two. If you were planning on eating at HRC anyway, it looks worth considering. I’m not sure how these deals work out if you are after a two (or more) night stay, but the rates look very good compared with what is available today on their website.

• tony says:

  22 Feb22 February 09:31

  Are they likely to be anal with the availability on these travelzoo rates? So come October and things are a bit more normal, they’re selling rooms for £250/nt. Will they even countenance giving them away at this price or simply decide they only have voucher rooms available on Sundays in November?

  I know you can get your money back, but that’s not really the point.

  • tony says:

    22 Feb22 February 09:49

    Just to add, I see that if you look on Travelzoo.de, the Dixon is available for EUR105 (so £90) a night room only. The terms are quite explicit re blackout dates, so have bought myself a handful 🙂

  • Rob says:

    22 Feb22 February 10:10

    The hotel has a choice, doesn’t it? If can either accept your booking and get the money, or it can refuse you and you will get a refund. Until mass business travel returns, the higher end London hotels are not going to be full.

    • tony says:

      22 Feb22 February 10:39

      It’s just an interesting dynamic. The hotel will presumably have been paid upfront by TravelZoo, so I’m in turn making a free loan to the hotel. They can then decide at some point in the future if they want to convert my money to a room, or return the cash (most likely in 2022 as you’d try again to book the room).

      The hotel could therefore decide it doesn’t care so every room can go at this price, or be exceptionally greedy and have fewer rooms available on aggregate than have been sold via the vouchers. I guess i’ll find out when I come to make the bookings, but suspect that won’t be for a few months yet as i’ll wait for underlying prices to rise to get better value here…

      • Sam G says:

        22 Feb22 February 12:41

        highly unlikely they’ll have been paid upfront by travelzoo – especially as that would leave travelzoo on the hook if they go bust as the vouchers are refundable!

        Agree with Rob – I don’t see a problem redeeming these except potentially some very peak dates around Xmas if things really go well. If they start being picky they’ll come under pressure from travelzoo market managers pretty quickly as well…

        These types of hotels usually have a lot of group tour bookings from overseas tour operators at very low rates. They don’t have any of that base of business this year so they’ve got plenty of capacity for this type of booking and are happy to take 50-60 quid a night after commission which is about what they’d be getting anyway.

        • tony says:

          22 Feb22 February 13:59

          If the hotel isn’t paid anything upfront then why not just sell the rooms through opaque sites nearer the time? I’ve got those rooms at the Dixon for £90 but they reckon they will sell at £250-£300 in October, so that’s a massive haircut if there’s nothing in it for them cash-wise.

          I guess perhaps it allows them to book some future revenue into the accounts???

• ChrisW says:

  22 Feb22 February 11:30

  Never really understood the Hard Rock brand. It seems like a very 90’s US-Celebrity thing?

  • Andrew says:

    22 Feb22 February 20:10

    Prefer Edinburgh Rock.

• Sam G says:

  22 Feb22 February 17:01

  @Tony – these sales now are an attempt to generate new demand and build a revenue base that otherwise wouldn’t be there. I’ve bought one for no particular reason other than a night in the summer with a friend at some point will be fun as I’m sure many others will do. They’re betting on a) occupancy still not being at 100% so they aren’t displacing higher rate business and b) they didn’t sell you a room for 90 quid that you would have bought for 250 quid nearer the time (which is unlikely!) then overall they’ve maximised possible yield and revenue

  The London market hinges on the inbound strategy of the government which sounds like it’ll be announced around mid-April, if they end up trying to fill London hotel rooms for the bulk of the summer on domestic demand alone expect to see many more of these types of promotions and packages with train tickets, theatre etc to stimulate demand and it’ll be interesting to see how low rates can go, especially early in the week.

  New York in January ends up in a similar situation and I’ve seen Hyatts at $69 which usually go for $100s for example

  • Tony says:

    22 Feb22 February 19:38

    Fair points – thanks. I might be looking at this the wrong way as I do reluctantly spend up to £250 for London hotels (business expense). It’s more productive given I live a fair way out. Getting rooms at a good hotel for £90 therefore makes a lot of sense for me.

• Christian says:

  22 Feb22 February 17:29

  Get tier point runs while you can before they become socially unacceptable due to carbon footprints and Greta.

  • Lord Doncaster says:

    22 Feb22 February 18:19

    Didn’t some muppet want to ban Frequent Flyer Programmes?

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