Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

New Amex £1,000+ cashback flood – IHG, Marriott, SLH, Minor, Virgin, AF-KLM, Singapore

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I take back everything we wrote about American Express cashback deals apparently disappearing for good.

A flood of deals has emerged in the last 24 hours, for both airlines and hotels.

I suspect many of us may be rethinking our upcoming travel plans ….

American Express hotel and airline cashback offers

Let’s start with the hotel offers. As always, some, all or none of these deals will show under the ‘Offers’ tab on one or more of your American Express cards. You need to click ‘Save to card’ to register before making your transaction.

Hilton

To keep the discussion in one place, I want to start by reminding you that Hilton has already launched a ‘get £50 back on £200 spend’ offer which we wrote about here.

Marriott

Marriott is offering £100 cashback when you spend £400 before 3rd July. Cumulative spending is OK.

I suspect a more generous version will emerge for holders of the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card in the next few days.

The list of participating hotels is here. It covers most of Europe.

This will double up with the current Marriott Bonvoy promotion. You will receive 1,000 bonus points per night, plus double elite night credits, on every stay between 13th February and 29th April.  Registration closes on 15th April. Our full article is here and you can register here.

IHG

IHG is offering £75 cashback when you spend £300 before 11th August. Cumulative spending is OK.

The list of participating hotels is here. It covers much of Europe.

This will double up with the current IHG One Rewards promotion. You will earn 2,000 bonus points for every two cash nights you stay between 1st April and 31st May.  Nights do not need to be consecutive. Our full article is here and you can register here.

Small Luxury Hotels of the World

SLH is leaving World of Hyatt on 15th May and will join Hilton Honors as a partner soon after. These offers will credit either via a direct hotel booking or if you go via Hyatt or Hilton.

SLH is offering £100 cashback when you spend £300 before 3rd July. Cumulative spending is OK.

The list of participating hotels is here. This is a global list, not just Europe.

Minor Hotels (Anantara, NH, nhow, Avani, Tivoli)

This is the first time that Minor Hotels has run an American Express cashback offer across all of its brands. We usually just see NH Hotels and nhow included.

Minor is offering £50 cashback when you spend £150 before 3rd July. Cumulative spending is OK.

The list of participating hotels is here. This is a global list, not just Europe.

Most (all?) of these hotels are part of Global Hotel Alliance. You can learn about how GHA works, and its generous GHA DISCOVERY loyalty scheme, in this article.

New American Express cashback on flights

Let’s move on to the airline deals

Remember that you need to be targetted for these deals under the ‘Offers’ tab of your Amex card, in the app or online. Don’t waste your time looking under your British Airways American Express card ….

Save £250 with Virgin Atlantic

Well …. this could be the first ever Virgin Atlantic cashback deal we’ve seen.

You will get £250 cashback when you spend £1,500 with Virgin Atlantic.

You must book by 22nd May and depart from a UK airport. Cumulative spend is OK.

I am fairly certain that taxes and charges on Virgin Atlantic redemption flights WILL trigger the cashback as long as you hit the £1,500 threshold. They go through your credit card in the usual way. American Express will get details of the underlying flight but is it smart enough to weed out redemptions? The T&C don’t even explicitly block redemptions.

The cashback will NOT trigger on the purchase of Virgin Points because this is handled by a third party intermediary.

You can check prices on the Virgin Atlantic website here.

Save £400 with Singapore Airlines

The second offer is worth £400 cashback when you spend £2,500 with Singapore Airlines.

You must book by 22nd May and depart from a UK airport. Cumulative spend is OK. Remember that Singapore Airlines is restarting Gatwick flights in June, alongside the Heathrow services – Rhys will be on the inaugural flight to report back on the business class seat and service.

You can check prices and times on the Singapore Airlines website here.

Save £150 with Air France / KLM

The third offer is worth £150 cashback when you spend £1,500 across Air France or KLM.

There are TWO versions of the offer. One is branded Air France, one is branded KLM. The version you register for is the airline website you need to use.

Irrespective of which version you have, the Air France and KLM websites are identical and carry each others flights. They also carry Virgin Atlantic transatlantic flights under AF/KLM flight numbers.

All flights need to depart from UK airports.

You must book by 22nd May.

The Air France website is here. The KLM website is here.


earns points from credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2025 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In 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:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Comments (97)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Michael C says:

    Grr…need to book an annoyingly expensive Novotel this w/end…come on, ALL!

    • tw33ty says:

      I’ve not seen an ALL hotel offer on Amex in years

      • apbj says:

        There was one last year on my Amex Platinum, though annoyingly not when I needed to book an ALL hotel.

  • Kowalski says:

    The Marriott offer is on my BAPP card rather than my Bonvoy card which is annoying but I guess I shouldn’t complain!

  • southlondonphil says:

    Between my Amex Blue and my Amex Bonvoy I seem to have the full Bingo Card.

    /smug

  • Andrew. says:

    Might be the first Virgin Atlantic offer on Amex, but they are a permanent offer on Barclaycard or Virgin Money (albeit only 2% or so).

    Going a few years back, Virgin Atlantic had a regular offer on my work perks scheme with a 12.5% rebate.

    • Rob says:

      VHols is on VM cards but no sign of VAA for a year on mine.

    • PGR says:

      Where do you see the offers on Avios Barclaycard? Or is this for a different card?

      • Andrew. says:

        Barclaycard’s loyalty scheme is operated by Visa, so Mastercard customer’s don’t qualify for the offers.

        But if you’re wondering why the Virgin Mastercard offers are near enough identical to Barclaycard Visa offers, it’s because Virgin Mastercard offers are operated by Sports Card Loyalty Limited, and Visa outsources their operations to Sports Card Loyalty Limited.

  • Nick says:

    I’d imagine Amex can identify VS redemptions – I’m 100% sure they can with BA ones. But that of course doesn’t mean they’ve coded it to exclude them.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Probably but if you’re going to box anyway it’s worth a go

  • Cool says:

    What does “Mail and telephone orders are excluded” mean under the Amex T&C for the Virgin Atlantic offer? I can only use the Virgin 241 voucher by booking over the phone, so does this invalidate the T&C?

    • Scriv09 says:

      Yeah, this one has really thrown me, Need to ring up soon to use it to upgrade, how would they even know it’s over the phone?

  • omicron says:

    Do they also take full payment if I book a refundable rate? I need to book a stay for just after the expiry date so would be nice to get this offer to trigger right away

  • Nigierian Prince says:

    I have all the offers except the Marriott one which is the only one I want. Probably I already had a feww Marriott spends on my card recently.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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