‘The Travel Brief’, the weekly Head for Points travel trade newsletter

Welcome to your weekly trade round-up of UK business travel and travel loyalty news as well as our latest reviews and features.

This newsletter is the successor to Malcolm Ginsberg’s Business Travel News which Head for Points acquired. If you are not a subscriber, you can sign up here to receive this free newsletter in your inbox every Monday. Please forward it to any colleagues who you think may be interested.

Malcolm’s new monthly forward-looking Travel News Update is available at travelnewsupdate.co.uk.

Join us at World Aviation Festival next month

If you work in the airline or travel loyalty sectors, World Aviation Festival in Lisbon should be on your radar for next month.

Taking place from 26th to 28th September at FIL (Lisbon Exhibition and Congress Centre), it is the best place this year to hear from senior management at the world’s leading airline groups. Over 5,000 attendees will listen to over 500 speakers.

World Aviation Festival also has a loyalty track to its conference programme. Whilst the organisers don’t make a big deal of it, I have been to the last two events and – if carved out as a separate loyalty event on its own – it would probably be the largest travel loyalty conference in Europe this year.

Head for Points is the Official Loyalty Media Partner for the event and will be around over the three days.

Click to read more about the event and get an exclusive 25% discount on your ticket.

This newsletter is a shorter than usual due to the thin news flow during August.

The latest UK business travel news:

Norse Atlantic delays the launch of its three new Caribbean winter sun routes

Aer Lingus appears to be restarting flights to Minneapolis

The mysterious mystery of Gatwick North’s new Flight Lounge

Finnair is adding a second long-haul flat bed service between Heathrow and Helsinki

Air India has unveiled its new livery

Business travel stories we recommend from other sites:

London’s former Park Lane Mews hotel to be converted into luxury boutique property (Business Traveller)

Rail strikes annnounced for 26th August and 2nd September (The Guardian)

Ryanair hits back at OTAs with demand for CMA probe (Travel Weekly)

Wizz Air launches new London Luton to Cairo route (Simple Flying)

United extends Bag Drop Shortcut service to Heathrow (Business Traveller)

Our latest reviews:

Rhys visits the classy Etihad First Class Lounge in Abu Dhabi Terminal 3

Slightly less OTT, he also visits the new Blush Lounge by Plaza Premium in Heathrow Terminal 4, used by EL AL amongst others.

The latest UK travel loyalty news:

Bid your Marriott Bonvoy points for a ‘Paddington’ day out in Oxford, image above

Necar Connect is closing – an easy source of Avios is going away

Get a 100% bonus buying Hilton Honors points – buy here

What are the best hotel promotions for August 2023?

Aer Lingus redemptions are still far cheaper when booked at avios.com

A bookable route to New Zealand opens up for Virgin Points

We continued our new series of articles looking at how you can redeem Virgin Points with Virgin Atlantic and its partners.

• How to use Virgin Points for a discount at Virgin Atlantic Holidays
• How to convert Virgin Points to Hilton Honors or IHG One Rewards hotel points
• How to upgrade your Virgin Atlantic flight with Virgin Points
• How to redeem Virgin Points on ANA and other non-SkyTeam airline partners
• How to redeem Virgin Points on SkyTeam airline partners
• How to redeem Virgin Points for hotel rooms via Kaligo

Thank you for reading

Please drop me a note at rob@headforpoints.com with any feedback. See you next Monday.

Rob, Rhys and Sinead @ Head for Points

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