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Bits: £50 Amex cashback on £150 NH Hotels spend, fly to Rabat on Royal Air Maroc on Avios

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News in brief:

Get £50 American Express cashback on £150 NH Hotels spend

Whilst British Airways and Iberia have, over the years, harmonised their partners, there are still some oddities.

NH Hotels, for example, is the only major chain which works with Iberia Plus but not British Airways Executive Club.

A new £50 Amex cashback deal may mean you want to give them a try.

Earn Avios with NH Hotels

NH Hotels is one of those niche European hotel chains that is rarely seen in the UK (the London one is now closed, as Business Traveller reports here) but crops up quite frequently on the continent.

As well as the main NH Hotels brand, the group also includes the funky nhow chain which does have a London outpost, in Shoreditch – see here.

The standard Avios earning rate with NH Hotels and nhow is shown here at iberia.com.  You earn between 200 and 450 Avios per night depending on the quality of the hotel. To earn Avios at NH Hotels, you need to open an Iberia Plus account at iberia.com and give that number to the hotel.  British Airways Executive Club numbers are not accepted

Once the Avios arrive in your Iberia Plus account, you can transfer them to British Airways using the ‘Combine My Avios’ feature online.  This HfP article explains in detail how ‘Combine My Avios’ works.

NH Hotels and nhow are now part of Global Hotel Alliance

It is also possible to book NH and nhow hotels via Global Hotel Alliance. We looked at GHA in detail here and interviewed CEO Chris Hartley here.

The GHA Discovery loyalty programme has an interesting quirk as we explain here.

  • Platinum status can be earned via $5,000 of spend but also by staying at just two different GHA brands
  • Top tier Titanium status can be earned via $15,000 of spend but also by staying at just three different GHA brands

If you had been looking at Global Hotel Alliance status, the cashback offer we are about to discuss offers a cheap way of ticking off another brand. Note that NH and nhow are treated as the same brand for the purposes of this offer.

Earn £50 American Express cashback too

NH Hotels has just launched a new cashback deal with American Express, and it is very generous.

You will earn £50 cashback on £150 spend before 25th August.

It is valid at participating hotels (click here, PDF) across Europe, including the nhow hotel in London. A few European Anantara and Tivoli hotels are also included, since NH now controls these.

You can find out more about NH Hotels on their website here.

Royal Air Maroc brings back its Rabat route

Royal Air Maroc is to bring back its seasonal route from London Gatwick to Rabat for Autumn 2023.

Flights start at the end of October with the switch to the winter airline timetables. There will be three flights per week on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

These are ‘one class’ Economy only flights.

You can book with Avios, as Royal Air Maroc is a member of the oneworld alliance alongside British Airways. Flights show as available on ba.com but I was getting error messages when trying to get a final price so you may need to call the Executive Club to book.

If you’re looking for somewhere to stay, Hilton’s luxury Conrad brand opened a hotel in Rabat last yearwebsite here.

Hat-tip to @SeanM1997 on Twitter.

Comments (16)

  • Jens says:

    If you want to obtain premium status without staying twice then you can follow this trick to purchase a year’s subscription of business traveller online magazine for £18. If you do you’ll be sent a link to fast track you to premium status a couple of days later. (Although the website does suggest you could be waiting until the end of the month for the fast track email).
    You can also get seatspy first class membership for £4.99 and 25% off awardwallet with the business traveller membership. Worked well for me just now.
    https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/07/18/get-gha-discovery-platinum-hotel-status-for-just-16-2/

  • Warwick says:

    Do you know the taxes to Rabat?

    • Rob says:

      No, because ba.com refused to price it despite showing availability. Usually quite high with RAM unfortunately.

      • Warwick says:

        Thought that might be the case… might be better to go out to Marrakesh on a RFS and back on this flight

  • Stuart says:

    Great news about the cash back, in Portugal now and off to a Tivoli in a couple of days. Portugal has not been included in many Amex offers, if any, for hotels. The giving the Iberia number to the hotel seems a bit fiddly and not very trusty though

  • Arbie says:

    Rob, the 3 NH brands are not treated as separate brands for the purposes of earning elite tier status. See the GHA DISCOVERY terms and conditions, which say:

    16. “Number of Brands Stayed” is the total number of different GHA Member Brands stayed in by the Member in the specified period. One note for clarification – the following NH Brands are counted as one single GHA Member Brand for tier calculation purposes: NH Hotels, NH Collection, and nhow Hotels.

  • SteveCroydon says:

    The NH Amex offer states:
    “Offer valid on checkout spend only at participating locations.” So you can’t benefit from an online non-refundable booking in advance, just the more expensive flexible rate when paying at the hotel.
    Also the usual contradictory “Offer only applies to spend settled in Great British Pound (GBP)” . So paying at checkout in Euros doesn’t count then?! Or does it?
    These people really need to do their jobs properly and correct such inaccurate nonsense. But hey, it’s a website with the usual website quality and attention to detail!!

    • Bagoly says:

      Quality confirmed by this entry in the list:
      NH Magdeburg Olvenstedter Str. 2a 39179 Maagdenburg

      One might not know how to spell a given city name, but if it’s also in the name of the hotel…

      • Marc says:

        It’s actually not a typo but rather the dutch spelling. For some reason the city names are all in dutch, e.g. Köln (Cologne) is listed as Keulen, etc. Maybe the list was originally created by Amex NL and is now getting reused in other regions, too.

  • AJA says:

    I would assume not. The non sterling transaction fee is essentially Amex’s income, not the hotel’s.

    • CamFlyer says:

      Buy a drink at the bar (if the stay is within the offer period), or upgrade to a better room / breakfast inclusive.

  • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

    What cards is this NH offer appearing on?

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