What are the current rules for the BA Holidays ‘double tier points’ offer?

The BA Holidays ‘double tier points’ offer has, for many HfP readers, been a game changer in how they earn British Airways status since it launched during the pandemic.

Even someone with no tier points at all could earn themselves Silver status in British Airways Executive Club with two European breaks, as long as you flew in Club Europe to cities which earn 160 tier points.

If you’re heading to Asia, a British Airways Gold card will be nearly yours with just one Business Class return trip, as long as you book on Qatar Airways as a BA codeshare. You’d end up with 1,120 tier points (140 tier points from each of the four flights, given the aircraft change in Doha, doubled) out of the 1,500 required for Gold.

BA Holidays continues to ‘tweak’ (or ‘mess with’, depending on your view!) the rules of this offer so I thought I’d run through it again today.

IMPORTANT: The rules of this promotion have changed multiple times since it was launched. If you reading this article after the 15th December 2023 publication date, I strongly recommend checking the latest situation on this special page of ba.com.

How does ‘double tier points’ work?

The headline deal is:

If you book a ‘flight and hotel’ or ‘flight and car’ package via British Airways Holidays for at least five nights, and travel by 31st December 2024, you will receive double BA tier points on your flights.

There’s small print though, which I will cover below.

For clarity, ALL travellers on the booking receive double tier points.

Double tier points do NOT arrive with the tier points from your flight but post separately within 14 days.

BA accepts no responsibility if the double tier points do not arrive in time to post in your current membership year. If they are delayed then you are stuck – they will be backdated to your old membership year but BA will not re-open the calculation on whether you earned status or not. For this reason I strongly recommend that you do NOT book your BA Holidays trip at the very end of your membership year.

This offer applies to solo travellers as well as couples and families.

You can find out more on the BA Holidays website here.

How many tier points would you need for BA status?

Thresholds have now returned to their pre-covid levels:

• Bronze status in BA Executive Club requires 300 tier points

• Silver status in BA Executive Club requires 600 tier points

• Gold status in BA Executive Club requires 1,500 tier points

Remember that – as well as hitting the tier points target – you need four BA or Iberia cash flights (codeshares with a BA or IB flight number count) in your membership year to get promoted to Silver, or two flights for Bronze.

You could get very close to a Silver card from scratch in one trip. For example, booking London to New York in Club World, you would get (140 + 140) x 2 = 560 tier points.

This HfP article shows you the number of tier points earned from BA flights. The rules are different for partner airline flights and you need to use the calculator on ba.com here. In simple terms, the cut-off for a partner flight to be treated as long haul is 2,000 miles.

What does the small print now say?

BA Holidays has changed the small print for this offer multiple times. To be fair, this was generally done as the result of ‘abuse’ by passengers, although whether this was actual or just perceived abuse is a different question. There were also ambiguities over partner airline flights which have now been clarified.

It is very easy to fall foul of these rules because BA Holidays will still accept your booking even if you break them. The first thing you will know about not getting double tier points is when they don’t turn up!

Let’s look at the key rules:

Where do you live?

You must a UK or US resident to take part in this offer, which probably means ‘your BA account must be UK or US registered’

(Whilst the promo website only says UK residents can take part, this wording changes if you access the page from the US.)

What counts as a ‘holiday’?

You must book a ‘flight and hotel’ or ‘flight and car’ or ‘flight and hotel and car’ package via the BA Holidays website.

You cannot book a flight via the main BA website and add a hotel or car during the check-out process. Your booking must be made via the BA Holidays site. (EDIT: there is some disagreement here. If you book a flight at ba.com and add the required car and/or hotel at the same time it seems that it may be OK, but NOT if added later. It’s not clear why you’d do this given the bonus Avios earned for booking via the BA Holidays site.)

You must book at least five days of car hire or five nights in a hotel, but you do NOT necessarily need to book the car or hotel for your entire stay.

Your holiday must not be for more than 30 days.

RULE CHANGE: The car hire or hotel nights must all take place between your flight dates. If you start your trip in London, you can no longer book a hotel at the airport the night before you fly or after you arrive home and have that count. It is not clear if an airport hotel in London before/after a domestic connection counts.

RULE CHANGE: You will lose your double tier points if BA Holidays finds out that you did not collect the car (or you returned it early) or did not check into the hotel (or checked out early).

What flights qualify?

With British Airways no longer flying to key holiday destinations such as Thailand, it is important to understand whether your flights on partner airlines will earn tier points and will be doubled.

Your flights must start from, and end in, the UK

Your trip must start and end here. If you want double tier points, you cannot save money on Air Passenger Duty or the flight cost by booking, say, Dublin to Heathrow to Singapore.

Your flights must have a British Airways flight number

This isn’t an issue if you fly with BA. If you are booking with another airline, such as Qatar Airways, you must ensure that you are booked on a codeshare and that your booking shows a BAXXXX flight number.

You will find that British Airways does codeshare with its oneworld alliance partners on key leisure routes, but there is no central list that I am aware of. Some Qatar Airways destinations, to use Qatar Airways as a random example, may not be part of the BA codeshare arrangements.

If the BA Holidays website only shows QR flight numbers on Qatar Airways flights, you need to keep fiddling with dates to try to force a BA flight number – or give BA Holidays a call and see if they can force a codeshare booking. The allocation of seats given to BA as part of the codeshare arrangement is limited.

Your flight must earn tier points in the first place

This may be a statement of the obvious, but it’s easy to be caught out.

BA Holidays sells flights from Aer Lingus, China Southern and LATAM. BA Holidays states that these flights do not earn British Airways tier points, irrespective of whether your booking has a BA flight number or not. Double nothing is still nothing. (A codeshare with a BA flight number would normally earn tier points so this could be an error in the rules.)

RULE CHANGE: You cannot combine two separate trips as one ‘holiday’

Some people were gaming the system by booking multiple 2-3 night trips in one transaction to reach the five nights of hotel stay required.

The rules now say “Bookings can only contain one flight departing the UK, multiple journeys from the UK within one booking will not qualify.”

The other BA Holidays benefits are still in place

As well as the double tier points offer, BA Holidays is running various other offers which will all stack together:

• booking a ‘Flight and Hotel’ or ‘Flight and Car’ package can be cheaper than booking a flight on its own, since British Airways will often use BA Holidays as a way of quietly selling seats without cutting its headline flight prices

• you earn an additional 1 Avios per £1 for every £1 you spend at BA Holidays

• if you have the British Airways Premium Plus American Express card, you get double Avios via American Express if you use it to pay for your holiday

• you only need to pay a deposit now with the balance not due until a few weeks before departure

The only real downside is that BA Holidays flights do not earn On Business points in the SME loyalty scheme, assuming that the On Business website ever comes back.

Conclusion

I think it is worth having a serious think about how you can use this BA Holidays offer to put yourself well on the way to Executive Club status next year.

Remember that the rules are constantly being tweaked. Check the current rules before booking and consider taking a screen shot on the day you book in case they later change in a negative way.

You can learn more about the double tier points offer on the BA Holidays website here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.