Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Save up to £300 as BA Holidays launches new discounts

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

In response to the relaxation in pre-departure and arrivals testing rules, BA Holidays has rolled out some extra savings if you are now ready to jump in and book.

These offers are valid on bookings made until next Tuesday, 11th January.

The additional savings are on top of the existing sale prices.

Book with BA Holidays by next Tuesday and you will receive:

  • £300 extra discount with a minimum spend of £10,000 per booking (Flight + Hotel only)
  • £200 extra discount with a minimum spend of £5,000 per booking (Flight + Hotel only)
  • £100 extra discount with a minimum spend of £2,500 per booking
  • £50 extra discount with a minimum spend of £1,250 per booking
  • £25 extra discount with a min spend of £650 per booking (Flight + Car only)

You can find out more on the BA Holidays home page here.

The current cancellation policy for new bookings is:

  • for travel due to be completed by 31st August, you can cancel up to 28 days before departure for a refund in the form of a voucher
  • cancellations within 28 days of departure, or for travel after 31st August, are subject to the standard cancellation policy

You can see details of the revised BA Holidays Covid cancellation policy on its home page here.

BA Holidays Avios

The other BA Holidays benefits are still in place

What is great about the BA Holidays sale deals is that they stack with various other offers:

Double tier points

If you book a ‘flight and hotel’ or ‘flight and car’ package for at least five nights, and travel by 31st October 2022, you will receive double BA tier points on your flights. Existing bookings count.

You can find out more on the BA Holidays website here.

There are problems with the posting of these bonus tier points and BA Holidays is now saying that you need to wait 60 days. The latest reader feedback is that a new email address – executiveclub@my.ba.com – is apparently your best bet for submitting a retroclaim. However, you shouldn’t let that put you off what is a very generous deal.

With the tier point threshold for British Airways Executive Club Silver status cut to 450 tier points for membership years ending in 2022, you could hit this in just one trip.

A BA Holidays package in Business Class to, say, Athens would earn you 320 tier points with this promotion. You would be just 130 tier points short of Silver.

A Business Class package to, say, New York or Dubai would get you 560 tier points under this offer. This is well over the threshold for Silver and half of the way to Gold, currently 1,125 tier points.

Free lounge access

If you book a 5+ night package for travel up to 31st March 2022, you will also receive lounge benefits at Heathrow.

  • spend £1,500 per person on an Economy package and receive Galleries Club access in Terminal 5 plus fast track security and priority boarding
  • spend £2,500 per person on a Business Class package and receive use of the First Wing and Galleries First access in Terminal 5

Other benefits

  • booking a ‘Flight and Hotel’ or ‘Flight and Car’ package can be cheaper than booking a flight on its own, since British Airways will often use BA Holidays as a way of quietly selling seats without cutting its headline flight prices
  • you earn an additional 1 Avios per £1 for every £1 you spend at BA Holidays
  • you only need to pay a deposit now – which can be as low as £60 per person – with the balance not due until seven weeks before departure (this is now back to the old rules – it had been reduced to three weeks)

You can find out more on the BA Holidays website here.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (25)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Bina says:

    Not sure double tier points is a benefit as BA do not appear to be able to deliver on it. I am awaiting double tier points for two trips, one is two months old and the other three months and a family member is still waiting on a trip from August!. I have tried contacting BA by various methods including those you have suggested but in usual BA style I have had no response.

    • Kathryn says:

      Arg! I was hoping to reach gold using this offer, but will be down to the wire

  • James says:

    Save £300 on a £10,000 holiday with those cancellation terms? No thanks.

    • Lady London says:

      Although I think this is unlikely to keep happening on the scale it has been, remember that if one of BA’s providers, typically a hotel that welshes on an allocation of rooms to consolidator/BA Holidays, or if BA as the airline provider to the holiday you’ve bought from BA Holidays cancels the flight that’s in your holiday, BA Holidays can effectively choose to force you to refund your holiday in such cases as they are not obliged to make up any difference in extra hotel nights cost or replacement flights, nor compensate you for the effective loss of a day at your holiday location if, say flights change mean they switch your 10pm departure to a 7am departure.

      Regulations governing holidays are excellent so you don’t lose your money if anyone goes bust but do not give you flexibility nor make you whole in terms of keeping the holiday you have booked if such things happen. Due to the lack of flexibity the holiday provider does not have to give you can be faced with sucking up a financial cost losing day(s) off your holiday or weekend break, or taking a refund. The provider can also unilaterally refund you in such cases.

      If you book as a flight then you do have good rights and a much better chance of insisting on getting the timings that you paid for.

  • Hardy says:

    I don’t get it. It’s a ridiculous 3% off on a 10k spend. With nonsense cancel terms. Better to book Qatar. I spend 10k on Qatar and cancel it for a voucher and get 20% more plus the most flexible cancellation policy in the world. Every Qatar flight I’ve been on in the pandemic has been reasonably busy. Airlines are not selling tickets By more. They are selling, trust, flexibility and just happen to take you to a holiday.

  • Chris says:

    Is the 5 day minimum still applicable for double tier points? Terms seem to have changed to car and/or hotel need to be booked for duration of holiday but didn’t notice 5 day minimum

    • Metty says:

      In the title area: ‘To qualify, you’ll need to book a holiday (flights + hotel or flights + car) of at least five nights before 22 October 2022’

      In the T&Cs: ‘the hotel or car element of the booking must be booked for the duration of the trip’

      So I think yes, still min 5 nights and duration of trip

  • Chris says:

    Cool, I missed that. Still think the duration point is worth stating in article as it precludes the BA holiday trick that is often discussed here

  • C says:

    Can 1 of the 5 nights for the double tier points offer be a LHR hotel after a domestic flight down and continuing on the next day?

    • Rob says:

      Unfortunately the rules don’t cover this sort of thing so your guess is as good as ours. In theory you’ve paid for 5 nights so I’d say you’ve done your side of the bargain. Whether it would automatically pay out (since your holiday is only 4 nights long) or would need manual intervention is a secondary question.

  • John says:

    “A BA Holidays package in Business Class to, say, Athens would earn you 320 tier points with this promotion.”

    How is this calculated? Athens is in the 10/20/40 tier point zone on the lists that I’ve seen.

  • Helen says:

    Does anyone know what happens if I book the flight plus car but don’t actually use the car is never pick it up?

    • Rob says:

      Nothing as far as the promo goes.

      There are some occasional examples of car hire companies charging €50 or so as a penalty for no-shows, even though they’ve been paid for the car anyway. Apparently it makes up for the profit they have lost on selling you extra rip-off insurance or making you pay for fake damage …..

    • Tomgold says:

      i booked a holiday package for old in-laws to NYC. It slashed the price by over half of regular flight only booking. Old man had no intention of driving but we bagged the cheaper holidays price and no one said a word that he didn’t collect the car

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.