News: UK hotel deals on Travelzoo, best Star Alliance programme

News in brief:

Good deal at the Aloft Liverpool hotel

Travelzoo is running another good branded hotel deal this week.

The partner is Marriott’s Aloft Liverpool – home page here. We reviewed the Aloft Liverpool here.

For £69, you can buy a voucher which gets you:

• room for two people
• full English breafkast
• a wecome drink from the bar up to £5.80 per person
• guaranteed 2pm late check-out

You can use your voucher up to 30th December. It is fully refundable if not used.

There is a £6 supplement for a Friday night, although £75 is still a good deal given the package. A Saturday night will incur a whopping £50 surcharge, which begins to feel less of a bargain but you may want to compare with cash deals.

You will not earn Marriott Bonvoy points on this rate and you will not receive any Bonvoy status benefits unless the hotel is feeling generous.

You can find out more, and buy, on Travelzoo here.

A Manchester deal returns

Travelzoo has brought back its £99 deal at the new Hotel Indigo in Manchester, pictured below.

Rhys had a ‘hard hat’ tour of the hotel when it was still being built and liked what he saw. They have gone a good job converting an old warehouse near Victoria Station.

For £99, Travelzoo is offering:

• overnight accommodation in a Standard Room
• a bottle of prosecco in the room upon arrival (worth £28)
• a 2-course à la carte dinner for two in the 2 AA Rosette restaurant
• full English breakfast for two
• late checkout until 12pm

You can add a 2nd night (with breakfast but not another dinner) for an extra £60. Note that there is a £20 supplement for Saturday night stays from September to December, ie when the football should be back in town.

Note that your voucher is refundable if you can’t use it. You have until 30th December to stay.

Full details are on Travelzoo here.

EDIT: there is also a Groupon version of this deal for £69, less 15% if you use a new account and code ‘WELCOME’. This has different terms so compare and contrast. See here.

A new video on Star Alliance frequent flyer programmes

A few weeks we mentioned some good quality YouTube videos by HfP reader Matt Jones on how to research, book and fly a British Airways tier point run.

Matt has now produced a two-part video on how to pick the best Star Alliance frequent flyer programme.

This is a complex issue – here is our last article on ‘what is the best Star Alliance frequent flyer scheme?’. Matt uses a real life example, running his 11 upcoming Star flights through 15 different schemes to see which one would get him nearest to Gold.

As I said last time, what I like about Matt’s videos is that he is a middle aged guy like myself and his videos reflect that. He doesn’t jump around and shout as much as an oversugared teenager would, at least no more than he has to to ensure the videos are lively and interesting.

You can see Part 1 here.