News: new BA Amex / BA offer, 100% bonus buying IHG points, new Qatar Airways promo

News in brief:

Bonus Avios offer for holders of the free BA Amex card

If you have the free British Airways American Express credit card, you may be targetted for a ‘bonus Avios’ offer.

This may, or may not, show under the ‘Offers’ tab in the Amex app or on your online statement page. You need to save the offer to your card to register.

You will receive 1,000 bonus Avios if you spend £200 with British Airways by 10th May. You need to book via ba.com, according to the rules, but I imagine call centre payments would work OK too, as would BA Holidays payments.

The rules state that flights must depart a UK airport but I would question whether that actually matters. It may be that any non-Sterling spend is excluded.

Because the bonus Avios will come from American Express and not BA, you will also earn the bonus for paying the taxes and charges on Avios redemption bookings, or even booking partner airlines via the BA website.

The offer is restricted to the first 40,000 people to register.

Get a 100% bonus when you buy IHG Rewards points

IHG Rewards has launched a new and time-limited 100% ‘buy points’ bonus, which is as generous as you ever see. 

The maximum number of points you can buy is 300,000 (ie 150,000 plus the 150,000 bonus).  The minimum purchase to trigger the bonus is 15,000 points for some people and 30,000 points for others.

The page to buy points is here.

With a 100% bonus, you would be able to buy up to 300,000 IHG points for (at current exchange rates for $1,500) £1,150.

I usually value IHG Rewards points at 0.4p.  You are paying 0.38p here so from that point of view you shouldn’t lose money. The skill is to use them at hotels where you can get substantially more than 0.4p per point of value, although this got a little harder since IHG moved towards revenue-based redemption pricing recently.

You can buy points via this link. The offer runs to 14th April.

Save 20% on Qatar Airways flights in May and June

Qatar Airways is running a special sale for the next few days, exclusively for Qatar Privilege Club members.

(If you’re not a member of Qatar Privilege Club you can sign up for free here. This HfP article shows you how to link your BA Executive Club and Privilege Club accounts so you can transfer Avios back and forth.)

Until 19th April, logged-in members will see special discounts – up to 20% off the base fare – on a range of destination including the Maldives, Seychelles and Zanzibar. A full list of destinations is in the T&C on the landing page here.

You must be booking for travel in May or June.

You must use code MEM22 when searching for flights.

The discount applies to both Economy and Business class bookings.

Your Qatar Privilege Club number will be used in your booking, but you can easily – if you wish – swap it over to a British Airways Executive Club number later, or at check-in. You will earn Avios either way but you may want the BA tier points.

You can find out more on this page of the Qatar Airways website.