NEW: Book your next holiday for less in the British Airways Sale

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• Rob H not Rob says:

  23 Jun23 June 05:42

  Can you use BA companion vouchers for BA Holidays sale? Guessing not.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    23 Jun23 June 06:03

    Correct. Can’t be used on BA holidays at all.

  • Andrew J says:

    23 Jun23 June 06:15

    Can’t be used for cash bookings at all.

• Manya says:

  23 Jun23 June 06:47

  Anyone found any genuine deals for Easter holidays next year?

• SK says:

  23 Jun23 June 07:14

  It’s actually cheaper if you booked your own flights & hotel, id done & got a much better deal

  • Jonathan says:

    23 Jun23 June 07:29

    Exactly, you’re paying a premium for all those extra Avios points, maybe worth it if you need TPs

    • JDB says:

      23 Jun23 June 08:38

      @SK and @Jonathan – while I’m sure it’s possible that you might occasionally find deals cheaper than BAH, I think it’s rare.

      I would always check the specific flights and their cost before booking the holiday as that is such a variable and easily established cost. On a recent BAH to Belgrade, the car as part of the package was £35 for five days and a future one to Bucharest the total hotel cost is half the published rate. The report from @Andrew J re Hong Kong is not uncommon.

      I’m wondering if you aren’t comparing things like for like?

      • CarpalTravel says:

        23 Jun23 June 09:32

        Another example: A family member recently went with BAH to visit NYC. The package had him fly out from Gatwick, returning to Heathrow, staying at a midtown Hilton. It seemed such an crazy price that just to compare, I tried to book just the room at the Hilton. Via any channel I could think of, I couldn’t get close, let alone adding on the flights too.

      • Jonathan says:

        23 Jun23 June 10:25

        @JDB although I’ll admit I didn’t exactly make it clear, a lot of the time it can be better to book your own hotel separately, that way you get complete freedom of choice where to book, and you’re not limited to BA’s hotel choice (which can awful at times, when I booked to go to Rio De Janeiro, I booked is hotel for a single night, making what essentially just a flight booking a ‘BA Holiday’ which meant I earned an Avios point per every £1 spent, plus the Avios from the flights, I haven’t looked, but BA’s hotels options for Rio De Janeiro were appalling when I booked, there was only one hotel within the city, nowhere near Copacabana, Ipanema or even Leblon – the parts of the city where tourists stay, there was one other hotel, but it was very far away, not within the city confinements, elsewhere within the state of Rio De Janeiro

        Often when booking a hotel separately, you can get a better price and or return on everything else you get by booking separately rather than booking as a package with the likes of BA Holidays, setups like BA Holidays half relies on people who can’t be bothered to be making numerous different bookings and or looking elsewhere for other options and potentially better prices.

        Up until very soon, the HfP favourite hotels.com for non-chain hotels, was a very good way of booking, sadly that door is very nearly closed… things like that are (or were) ways of getting very good returns, and the cost of buying extra Avios that would’ve been earned via BA Holidays is cheaper buying them with the savings from the other bookings if you’re really desperate to some extra Avios…

  • Andrew J says:

    23 Jun23 June 08:05

    It depends – I booked to Hong Kong and got the package for less than just booking the flights.

  • Sam says:

    23 Jun23 June 08:18

    It’s not cheaper booking the same flights and same hotel separately. Tour Operator fares that you book with BA Holidays are lower then the normal Seat Only fares you would book and also do not need to be paid & issued when booking so you’re also paying the deposit.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    23 Jun23 June 08:28

    Not always. Depends when and where you want to go and the terms of that booking.

    The booking I’ve just done for AMS in August is cheaper than booking individual elements plus I get the double TPs plus just paying the deposit.

    If I change my mind by the time the balance is due I lose £150.

    If I cancel a flight only booking I lose more than that. And if it’s a non refundable hotel I lose even more.

• Reney says:

  23 Jun23 June 08:00

  “you earn 1 bonus Avios for every £1 spent at BA Holidays” – how does this show up on your account activity pls i.e. what line item am i looking for. I think I only got the flights.

  • roberto says:

    23 Jun23 June 08:09

    Shows up a couple of weeks after you get home. Check your running account and claim online if you can’t see it. BAH usually pretty go with allocating the extra avios.

    NB You must start your BAH in the UK to get extra avios.

    • tony says:

      23 Jun23 June 10:00

      Are you sure? I think it might show up some weeks after you pay the balance. I paid for a BAH booking in October back in April. A line has now appeared on my Avios account under IBPL for 1013 Avios. The booking cost just over £1000.

• DanC says:

  23 Jun23 June 08:39

  There is a pattern here. I’ve been looking at Perm Econ to KL. When they announce a sale in Business. the price of the Prem Econ jumps up. then it goes back down after the sale….

• Greenpen says:

  23 Jun23 June 08:55

  I have used BA Holidays as well as booked independently, you just need to check the prices and exact conditions to ascertain the best deal. Remember conditions may be outside the formal booking, for example, cash back offers, and these need to be factored in. Same is true of the luxury hotel agents prices for rooms.

  It’s all great fun if you enjoy the whole process of travel but of course the holiday company does offer convenience.

• Londonsteve says:

  23 Jun23 June 13:39

  What’s the view about prices in J for after 1 April next year going down in another sale after summer? They seem quite high now considering it’s 10-11 months ahead when you’d expect largely every flight to be selling for the lead-in price, excepting exceptionally busy dates around Easter school holidays, May half term, etc.

  The spike in demand from people seeking to qualify for status after 1 April seems noticeable in the pricing. Makes me wonder whether it was wise for BA to align everyone’s membership year as the demand is no longer spread evenly throughout the year. Previously, there will have been people travelling at otherwise very quiet times of year with the demand stimulated by the need to collect tier points which is now packed into a 12 week window from mid-Feb until mid-May. Granted, if you spread out your travel over the year and would naturally qualify for status anyway you’re unaffected, but I’d wager that half of status holders wouldn’t qualify if they didn’t undertake some ‘extra’ travel so as to collect enough tier points. The 1 April rollover date is also unhelpful is that in occurs during, or very close to Easter, the date of which isn’t fixed, therefore in some years people would qualify simply by travelling for the Easter school holidays, in other years, one or both of the legs falls into a different year. A more neutral date would have been a better choice in my opinion.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    23 Jun23 June 21:57

    Mid May? Where do you get that from?

    If BA keeps offering the 2 weeks grace period then that gives people a little more flexibility.

    For BA there are other considerations for having everyone on the same collection / status years whether it’s to align on financial or reporting periods years or making the scheme easier to administer.

    And the whole collection year ends on the 8th of the month might have made sense years ago but not necessarily now.

    • Londonsteve says:

      24 Jun24 June 13:42

      I chose mid-May as someone seeking to qualify early in the collection year would probably want to complete all required travel by then but it’s obviously a personal decision and will be influenced by how much upcoming travel someone has in the diary.

      A 2 week grace period would just mean that people availing themselves of this are competing with those wanting to travel after 1 April to ensure their TPs end up in the new collection year. Either way it leads to a scrum for flights during a short window.

• pigeon says:

  23 Jun23 June 13:40

  How many Avios do you earn on the flights in a BA Holidays booking, especially if there’s no breakdown showing the flight component of the total price?

  • Londonsteve says:

    23 Jun23 June 13:58

    You earn as per the ‘old’ calculator based on flown distance, subject to the status uplift (which has been reduced when the revenue based approach came in for cash tickets). You can access the calculator on the BA website and in most cases you’ll get significantly more Avios when booked as part of a package than for the flight alone where the price paid is the critical element. Generally you now get half the Avios you used to, unless you’re paying an arm and a leg for your ticket.

    • pigeon says:

      23 Jun23 June 14:50

      Yeah, Avios is now a reward for credit card and hotel spend, rather than pure flying.

      Were it not for the credit charge interchange fee cap, we’d be like the US and have people earn status without ever getting on a plane.

      Perhaps a BA-Tesco Gold Clubcard holder from meticulously charging the office’s meal deals to his credit card?

      • Londonsteve says:

        23 Jun23 June 15:19

        It’s a mad state of affairs considering that airline loyalty schemes are supposed to incentivise flying with a particular airline (or whole alliance) as opposed to collecting points via unrelated activity then using them to purchase reward seats. Perhaps this latter set-up is of greater interest to the airlines, otherwise why would they be gutting the rate earned on all but the most expensive paid tickets? I can foresee circumstances in the future where I never ‘pay’ to fly BA and just use it to redeem Avios. Clearly, these scheme don’t have much relevance to the bulk of the travelling public paying for cash tickets otherwise earning miles on cash tickets would be a much bigger thing these days.

        • Rob says:

          23 Jun23 June 16:28

          I very, very rarely pay to fly BA – 90% of sectors are redemptions.

        • Londonsteve says:

          23 Jun23 June 17:11

          How then do you maintain your status within BAEC, Rob?

        • Rob says:

          23 Jun23 June 19:13

          I probably know 5% of the GGL base, that’s how!

          It’s not a gift from BA, I promise you. We get no comped airline status from anyone. We do get Eurostar status and occasionally we get a hotel status upgrade but only where we need it to do a review properly, eg get club access.

  • Rob says:

    23 Jun23 June 16:30

    Based on the old system of distance and class.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      23 Jun23 June 19:19

      Though in MMB the booking I made this morning shows them via the ‘new’ calculation method but I expect that to rectify itself once I’ve flown – and the blurb does indeed say thats only an estimate.

  • pigeon says:

    23 Jun23 June 19:34

    Sadly I dont see the 90% redemptions model persisting. The natural step after revenue based earnings is revenue based spending, with every Avios worth 1p, and then the occasional sale.

    Stuff like gold priority reward on half term ski flights makes no business sense if the gold card comes from eg the weekly shop, business travel if the holder has no influence over the airline (or objectively, if nominated by a GGL holder). But hopefully it continues for a bit longer !

    • Rob says:

      23 Jun23 June 20:01

      The Gold Priority Reward is pretty much dead anyway, given that it now prices off the ‘£1’ redemption price. No-one is paying 39,000 Avios + £1 for an Economy ‘Gold Priority Reward’ to Amsterdam. It does still work on half term ski flights but that is literally about it.

      • LittleNick says:

        23 Jun23 June 20:56

        And it works on peak flights to Munich during Oktoberfest as prices were crazy but still not an amazing valuation

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