Get 20 Nectar points per £1 spent at IHG hotels with Nectar Connect

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• BJ says:

  30 Nov30 November 05:25

  Although not related to Nectar I will flag this up here as related to IHG so readers might want to check their app to see if they have similar as it would add further incentive to Nectar Connect offer. When I registered for the Cyber promotion on Monday it appeared on my app under registered offers. At the same time another offer appeared under my list of registered offers. This other one also provided for 10k bonus every two nights but stated it was valid now through 31 December. On checking my register offers this morning my Cyber offer had disappeared (interestingly after midnight Thai time and GMT but before midnight on the US East coast so perhaps there is a twist in the ‘standard time’ story, who knows). Anyway, although the Cyber offer has gone this other 10k points every 2 nights still remains, along with my 19k every 4 nights autumn offer and my 20k Ambassador offer. I cannot find any details of a 10k very 2 nights anywhere on the web. My best guess is that even though it appears as a separate offer it might simply be related to the Cyber offer therefore caution is needed as further bonuses may not be available for new bookings made after midnight 29th even if you have this offer showing on your app.

• Phillip says:

  30 Nov30 November 06:41

  Is anyone else having issues with converting Nectar points to Avios at the moment? Having connected accounts and successfully made transfers before, all I get now is that there was a problem and I need to re-connect my account. When I do, it just repeats the same cycle again and again. The same with all our household accounts and regardless of whether I do it on a mobile device, laptop etc.

• hedgecock says:

  30 Nov30 November 06:52

  No “Warning: contains Simon Calder” message this time? Have relations thawed between HfP and the ubiquitous travel correspondent?

  • Rob says:

    30 Nov30 November 07:41

    I have a lot of time for Simon. We meet up for regular chats and he uses quite a lot of our stuff in his Indy column.

    • Bill says:

      30 Nov30 November 08:28

      I like his Instagram live videos

      • Mikeact says:

        30 Nov30 November 17:41

        +1

  • Rich_A says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:06

    I’ve never understood the hostility towards Simon Calder. He always comes across as knowledgable, passionate, and humble. I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be the latter quality that puts some people off?

    • Rob says:

      30 Nov30 November 09:09

      He is a genuinely nice bloke, and well respected in the industry (he moderated the airline CEO conference in London last week I attended, for eg). His core content – economy travel – isn’t our niche of course.

      I’m not sure why he stays with the Indy, especially as it is now online only. There is still kudos for being in a print title.

    • John says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:23

      I think it’s a bit like Martin Lewis, they have to dumb things down somewhat because their audience could be anybody. So often they say things that are not exactly fully accurate from the perspective of a knowledgeable person such as most HFP readers.

      And because we are knowledgeable, a lot of what Simon Calder writes is not actually useful to us, especially as we probably have different priorities to the average member of the public when it comes to things like travel and finances.

      • The Savage Squirrel says:

        30 Nov30 November 13:30

        Exactly this.

        Explaining a topic to useful depth, to someone with little prior knowledge, is a very difficult and underrated skill, especially when your audience has a wide range of attention spans and intellectual abilities. Both Simon Calder and Martin Lewis are extremely good at it.

• ianM says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:40

  Too late was the cry from me – registered yesterday and no offers yet.

• John llewellyn says:

  30 Nov30 November 09:16

  Pity Simon Calder was unable to even reply to me on the issue with my alpharooms refund which I am still waiting for from TTA over a year after they went into administration. Anyone here have any advice on how to get the refund from the muppet show aka TTA.

  • Rob says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:43

    We get 100 reader queries per day, employ 3 staff and all the questions are on the same thing.

    Simon works alone, must get 5x the email we get on a far broader range of stuff, probably earns peanuts, has to produce a huge amounts of content inc a daily podcast. Come on.

    If you are owed money by a firm in administration you go to your credit card company and you are repaid in days. If you used a debit card the money is gone – you may get 1%-2% back in 5 years when the administrator is done. Obviously if your booking had ABTA / ATOL cover they will pay.

    • RussellH says:

      30 Nov30 November 10:16

      I am not familiar with alpharooms, but from the name I would assume that they were a retail bedbank?
      If so, there will have been no need for financial protection (many other schemes exist, not just ATOL + ABTA) as the requirement for that is only for packages.
      I would have assumed that anyone reading this site would always have used a credit card for any purchase!

      As to Simon Calder, I too have a lot of respect him, even though back in the 1990s, when I was just getting started in tour operating (and doing some other work to help pay the bills), he left a very brusque and disgruntled message on my answer machine that rather upset me. I no longer remember what was said, just the fact of it having been said.

      • John llewellyn says:

        30 Nov30 November 12:23

        Russel see comment above. Have a search on TTA and you will see that they are a company which apparently provided 100% cover to alpharooms and still are providing this cover to many other companies who I would assume think they are getting a food deal. They are in fact paying into a company which is providing a far from adequate response and not paying back what they have promised. I just feel that people should be aware of TTA and what a shambles they are. Perhaps that’s just me though and mist people are happy for companies such as TTA to go around screwing people.

        • RussellH says:

          30 Nov30 November 19:36

          I am fully aware of the TTA, and what they say that they do. A number of colleagues in the TO business spoke very highly of them, though I never had anything to do with them.

          The USP of the TTA was that pipeline monies were supposed to be protected not only from the retail customer’s point of view, but also from the principal’s PoV. Bonding schemes like ATOL are only designed to protect the consumer, but the supplier to the ATOL holder has no protection.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:48

      “probably earns peanuts” like a Boris Johnson with his ‘chickenfeed’ column in the Telegraph? Be sensible here, he must be on some reasonable money otherwise why would he stay at the Indy? He might be able to get better money elsewhere but he must be happy with the overall package

      • Rob says:

        30 Nov30 November 11:55

        Put it this way, Henry Winter – who is the main football writer for The Times – got £400k when he switched to them, and this was back in 2015. Let’s assume he’s on £500k now. His daily output is probably about the same as Simon, who clearly isn’t on £500k given that the Indy only has turnover of £40m.

        • Save East Coast Rewards says:

          30 Nov30 November 12:07

          I agree with most of that, he’s probably earning a lot less that he could be, but he’s obviously happy which is why he’s staying there. But saying he earns peanuts is an insult to those who work hard and genuinely have poor wages. I don’t know if Simon Calder earns more or less than me but I’m sure I could live a comfortable life on his income, but I know I would struggle on the wage of BA cabin crew, they deserve more.

    • John llewellyn says:

      30 Nov30 November 12:20

      Just for info Rob. It was a credit note with them from a previously cancelled trip, remember covid? And it was just a point and asking for help that’s all. Never mind, have a great day.

      • Rob says:

        30 Nov30 November 12:31

        The point is that you effectively said that you thought Simon had some divine requirement to help you, even though he doesn’t even do a helpline column and just happens to be be a journalist who covers travel, and you were annoyed when he didn’t. That’s not right.

        • John llewellyn says:

          30 Nov30 November 13:48

          I didn’t say he had a divine requirement. I just said it would have been nice if he had replied. It was a personal message sent to him. Again never mind. Its not right that a company such as TTA can offer 100% commitment to refund and then yreats everyone like shit yet no one seems to want to do an article on that or have any other involvement to highlight this issue. Surely it is unacceptable that a company offers 100% protection then fails to deliver?

        • Nihal says:

          30 Nov30 November 16:43

          What was SC supposed to reply to you? – not enough time in the day/ in my life to help you: so bog off, especially as we won’t get anywhere. In fact, my suggestion would be to get off your sorry ass and help yourself.

          Much better just to ignore your silly message & not be rude.

        • Nihal says:

          30 Nov30 November 17:35

          OK right, here we go. You sent a DM & asked SC to shame TTA in his column – based on your scant evidence/ personal experience of a bad situation – and he declined to engage with you?

          And now you’re mad at him?

          You actually think an experienced journalist would get into that unless there were better grounds for alerting his readership? For all he knew, you were completely at fault.

        • CarpalTravel says:

          30 Nov30 November 18:36

          “I didn’t say he had a divine requirement. I just said it would have been nice if he had replied.”

          No, you didn’t. That would have been fine. You however said:
          “Pity Simon Calder was unable to even reply to me ”

          That implies that you think he was being lazy or negligent in not doing so. Perhaps he saw similar tones or misrepresentations in the original message so purposely chose not to engage.

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  30 Nov30 November 10:58

  One thing I noticed is since LNER officially dropped out of Nectar they often appear on Nectar Connect offering more points than they ever did as an official partner. What I do is when I see these offers in Nectar connect is buy an LNER gift card to use when I actually need to travel

  • Big Ern says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:07

    Had a look on the LNER website but couldn’t see where you buy gift cards. Any advice?

• AirMax says:

  30 Nov30 November 13:30

  Well Simon has 70k Tiktok followers and it’s only him, imagine what HFP could do with a team of 4 millennials/gen X?

  • Rob says:

    30 Nov30 November 13:36

    We are thinking about hiring someone to look after social media. We have the content already, it’s just about spreading it out.

    • Nihal says:

      30 Nov30 November 16:50

      There are a lot of gap year kids who know a helluva lot more than you about the social media channels where HFP is absent and would extremely happily do it (ie based at home mostly) for £25-30K pa, pro rata. Ie they want to fund a few months in the fun.

      Then you get new blood next year. Probably not the continuity you would want, though maybe more effective.

• Nihal says:

  30 Nov30 November 16:09

  Simon Calder seems perfectly pleasant. I don’t personally mind the way he obfuscates/ invents/ pretends a bit – he has to get the message across to a low-ish common denominator readership, no disrespect to them intended, we all started The Knowledge without having miraculous understanding of how the different bits work. A podcast has to run smoothly. Mick: the star, in a modest way. I certainly listened to the podcast. This nonsense about SC only just ‘getting’ what Avios are, is laughable fibbing, though. Only a year or so ago (in his column) he was clapping himself on the back for buying a load (at a rather high price 🙂 ).

  Pleasant enough chat, overall. Not sure I would invest in listening to the other 132 podcasts, or future ones. Different audience to this one.

  • Nihal says:

    30 Nov30 November 18:51

    Actually Sidekick Simon often seems to be a bit cleverer than Alan Partridge.

    Watch out! SC, though don’t get rid of him in some kind of Et tu Brutus pre-emptive move. Mick was great.

    • Nihal says:

      30 Nov30 November 19:25

      Here you go, Mick www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=kECr7tYgjhY

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