What you missed on Head for Points last week

Welcome to the Head for Points weekly newsletter, full of the latest Avios, travel loyalty and travel credit card news, hints and tips.

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We are trialling a new email template today, before rolling it out to our daily emails during next week.

If you have any problems (links which go to the wrong place or go nowhere, messed up formatting etc) please reply to this email – ignore the ‘donotreply’ message, we will get it! – and let us know. We have tested the new template as best we can but we don’t have access to every bit of mail software or mobile app. Thank you.

LAST CHANCE: 100,000 (!) bonus Avios with Barclays and Barclaycard:

Barclays and Barclaycard have launched a fantastic new promotion with 100,000 bonus Avios up for grabs (150,000 Avios in total, if you include individual product sign-up bonuses). It’s bonkers 🙂

You need to take out the Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card and Premier Banking with Barclays Avios Rewards. If you already have one of these products, you need to add the other.

Our introductory article is here, and you can find out more and check your eligibility directly on the Barclays website here.

The offer ends on 30th November.

The latest travel and aviation news:

Virgin Atlantic has announced new routes to the Maldives and Turks & Caicos. Great news for anyone with Virgin Points or the Virgin Atlantic credit card: you now have two exciting new destinations to choose from.

British Airways has announced that its 27th US destination is Cincinnati. It might not be quite as sexy as the Maldives, but BA thinks the city has a lot going for it!

Heathrow has dropped the threat of Christmas capacity caps. After scrapping the summer cap, airlines weren’t happy when Heathrow said it might introduce it during busy periods.

A flurry of domestic and international routes have been announced:

• Newquay to East Midlands on Eastern
• Manchester to Copenhagen on Norwegian
• Heathrow to Neom – fancy a trip to Saudi Arabia’s yet-to-be-built megacity Neom?

Hans Airways, a start-up airline that wants to launch flights between Birmingham and Amritsar, India, is one step closer to its goal. Despite rumours of falling into administration, the airline is alive and well – albeit with a shuffle of its senior leadership team.

British Airways & Avios news:

You can now redeem Avios at The Wine Flyer. BA’s new wine shop, which launched this Autumn, is getting into the swing of it although there are some weird things happening when you try and pay using Avios ….

Claim 250 free Avios from Uber under the new Avios partnership. Registration is now open as long as you have the latest app and you are in the UK. You’ll also earn 1 Avios per £1 spent going forward.

Avios to Nectar transfers are now less lucrative. The devaluation to 300 Avios = 400 Nectar points went live this week.

Here’s the story of how Avios ‘taxes and charges’ got out of control in the USA. If you thought they were high for UK residents ….

British Airways has dropped Rocketmiles as a hotel booking partner but you can still earn Avios. Three backdoor earning routes mean that all is not lost.

Credit card news:

American Express has confirmed Shop Small will return in December. It is looking for small businesses and shops to join the promotion – you may want to apply if you run an independent retailer.

IHG has launched a new Amex cashback deal. Get £75 off when you spend £300 or more until the end of January.

What’s the difference between the personal and business American Express Platinum Cards? You might think they’re identical, but they’re not. Each one comes with its own benefits (and annual fees).

Hotel news:

Rhys reviews the new Marriott hotel in Geneva. Although it’s technically an ‘airport hotel’, there are lots of reasons to stay here as a tourist. And it’s only 15 minutes from the city centre. Image above.

Which InterContinental hotels give free Club lounge access when you book via a ‘preferred partner’ agent? Confusingly, it’s not all of them so we’ve put together a list.

Review: the Thompson hotel in Madrid. Thompson is one of Hyatt’s luxury brands. This will be the first Thompson to open in Europe, bar a short-lived Thompson hotel in London some years ago.

IHG One Rewards is offering tickets for concerts at the OVO (Wembley) Arena and AO (Manchester) Arena for points. The London ones include a £40 per person food voucher.

Other interesting articles:

JetBlue has announced that its next European destination will be Paris. The airline now has five daily flights to London from both Boston and New York and is clearly happy with how they are performing.

Win 1 million Virgin Points. Three winners will become Virgin millionaires.

If you have 2 million Virgin Points (so the competition winner will be halfway there!) you can possibly go into space with Virgin Galactic. It beats using your points for a Greggs sausage roll.

What you missed:

This week was your last opportunity to take out an Amex Business Platinum Card under the elevated 60,000 point sign-up bonus with £200 travel credit.

We offered 500 Avios to people with the British Airways Prepaid Mastercard if they completed a short survey, but we hit our – very large – cap on replies within a day.

The Hilton Metropole hosted a ‘Surprise holiday performance’ with a ‘VERY important guest’ earlier this week. The tickets have already been snapped up by HfP readers. This probably annoyed Hilton who did a mass email blast on Friday promoting it even though no tickets remained!

Our latest roundup of miles and points offers closing soon is here and will be updated on the site on Sunday.

Don’t forget to visit our forum if you have any questions relating to frequent flyer or hotel loyalty programmes or loyalty credit cards.

See you next Saturday.