Get triple Avios with BA Holidays – plus double tier points, lounge access and more

There is, it seems, no end to the limits that BA Holidays is prepared to go to in order to get you to book with them this year.

On top of:

• double British Airways tier points,
• lounge access and
• the ‘Book With Confidence’ refund guarantee

…. you will now receive triple Avios when you register and pay with a British Airways American Express card. This includes the Accelerating Business small business card.

You must register for triple Avios which you can do here.

What is the new American Express offer?

You will receive triple Avios (3 Avios per £1) from BA Holidays when you make a new booking before 21st March for a holiday completed by 30th November 2022.

To receive triple Avios, you must pay with a British Airways American Express card, including the Accelerating Business card.

This offer is badly described online. For clarity, you do NOT receive your bonus Avios from American Express.

Your bonus comes from BA Holidays. It replaces the standard ‘1 Avios per £1 spent’ offer than all BA Holidays customers receive.

Because your bonus is coming from BA Holidays, you will receive it after your holiday is completed. The bonus Avios won’t arrive along with Avios from your American Express card, and they will show as ‘BA Holidays’ on your Avios statement, not ‘American Express’.

This offer has nothing to do with the ‘double Avios for using your British Airways Premium Plus American Express card at BA Holidays’ offer, which is a permanent benefit. If you pay with a BA Premium Plus card, you will receive 3 Avios per £1 from American Express on top of the 3 Avios per £1 you will receive from BA Holidays. You also receive the usual Avios from your flight.

Remember, you MUST register before booking via this link.

What is the current BA Holidays cancellation policy?

As we covered yesterday, British Airways and BA Holidays have extended their ‘Book With Confidence’ policy again.

The current cancellation policy for new bookings is:

• for travel due to be completed by 30th September, 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 30th September, are subject to the standard cancellation policy

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

The other BA Holidays benefits are still in place

What is great about the BA Holidays triple Avios deal is that it stacks 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 (this is tripled to 3 Avios per £1 under the current promotion)

• if you have the British Airways Premium Plus American Express card, you get double Avios via American Express if you use it to pay for your holiday

• 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

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

Remember – you must register for triple Avios

Remember that you MUST register for the ‘triple Avios’ offer before booking with BA Holidays.

You can register here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (May 2023)

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:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 30th May, the sign-up bonus on the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard is doubled to a crazy 50,000 Avios! Apply here.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 30th May, the sign-up bonus on the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard is doubled to 10,000 Avios. Apply here.

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 13th June, the sign-up bonus on The Platinum Card is doubled to 60,000 Membership Rewards points – and you get £200 to spend at Amex Travel too! Apply here.

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.

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.

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.

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