Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 50% bonus when you buy Avios via Qatar Airways Privilege Club

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Qatar Airways (yes Qatar Airways, not British Airways) has launched a new ‘buy Avios’ bonus promotion. The link to buy is here.

Until 8th September, you will receive up to a 50% bonus when you buy Avios.

You can buy on this page of the Qatar Airways Privilege Club website.

The Avios can only be credited to a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account. You can move them into a British Airways Executive Club account by linking your BA and Qatar Airways accounts via the process here.

There is no minimum purchase, although your bonus depends on how many Avios you buy.  For me, the 50% bonus kicks in with a 36,000 Avios transaction. Smaller transactions, from 5,000 Avios, attract a 20% or 30% bonus.

You can only buy if there has previously been ‘activity’ on your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account. Transferring in 1,000 Avios from British Airways would count, even if the Avios were immediately transferred back.

What does it cost?

At the top end, you will pay 1.16p per Avios under this offer.

The most you can buy is 250,000 Avios with a 125,000 bonus, for a total of 375,000 Avios for £4,375.

Based on my spreadsheet of the last 9 million Avios I redeemed, I got 1.23p of value – and this is based on very conserative valuations for the flights I booked. If you have a plan to use the Avios, because you should never buy speculatively, then this is not a bad opportunity.

You can check pricing on this page of the Qatar Airways Privilege Club website.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 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:

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

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

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.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

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.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

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

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to up to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 80,000 Avios. You will receive 8 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to up to 40,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 40,000 Avios. You will receive 4 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. The card is FREE for your first year. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Category

Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

Comments (32)

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

  • Mike says:
    3 Sep3 September 06:36

    I’ve got a spend £2,000 get £300 back with Qatar on my gold amex this morning.

    • Bumblebee says:
      3 Sep3 September 06:43

      + 1 on Platinum card too.

    • ClubSmed says:
      3 Sep3 September 06:44

      I do not think this would count for that, it certainly doesn’t with BA. The avios are supplied by, and charged by, a separate company. So it does not qualify for any Amex spend promotions unfortunately.
      It is possible that Qatar do it differently, but I doubt it.

  • Jingle says:
    3 Sep3 September 07:06

    Anyone know offhand what Qatar taxes and fees are for flights to Oz in business? Hard to see on their booking page. For two people the necessary Avios in October are 360 K While for cash it’s £6800 each. If it’s a thousand or so each then this deal might generate 2p of czlue

    • Jess says:
      3 Sep3 September 07:26

      From Dublin to Brisbane I paid £357 for a return flight.

    • Paul B says:
      3 Sep3 September 08:11

      I paid 90k miles + ~£440 for LHR-DOH-MEL one person one way, booking a couple months back for next Jan. QR business.

    • Rhys says:
      3 Sep3 September 08:57

      It’s very clear if you do a dummy booking – where are you looking? I think I paid something like £550 return to Auckland.

      • Jingle says:
        3 Sep3 September 15:33

        On privilege site miles show but if not enough points in account it won’t let me go a full dummy booking with taxes. No problems as kind fellow travellers have provided the answer. Good value is confirmed vs full club price

    • Jody says:
      3 Sep3 September 14:40

      We paid just under £1100 in taxes. That was for 2 people in business from Birmingham to Auckland, then returning from Sydney to Birmingham.

    • Jetset Boyz says:
      5 Sep5 September 07:06

      Looked at reward flights yesterday on QR’s website. After choosing both your outbound & return flights, on the next step it’ll display the the total number of points and taxes / fees.

  • HH says:
    3 Sep3 September 07:08

    Unlike buying Hilton points, there appears to be no advantage in changing currency here. I tried USD and QAR, both marginally worse than the GBP pricing.

    I’m not a buyer at 1.16p. Typical Asia QR J redemption is 150k+taxes return, so this would price it at £1740+taxes.

    • Aston100 says:
      3 Sep3 September 10:28

      From next year, all the 150k flights are now 180k when I checked recently

      • HH says:
        3 Sep3 September 17:06

        I’m not seeing that, priced up LHR-SIN in June 2025 and it’s 75k each way.

        • BJ says:
          3 Sep3 September 20:44

          I think @Aston100 is seeing summer peak pricing because I had to pay 90k to BKK in July this year booked one year ago. That said, Rob has hinted at bad news coming from Qatar.

    • Jean says:
      3 Sep3 September 18:40

      I’m seeing £5k return for cash LHR-SIN bookings in J next summer. Definitely still worth it at £1740+taxes.

      • Rob says:
        3 Sep3 September 19:14

        To be fair, 11 months out, that’s what you would expect. Lower fares don’t tend to appear until a few months in.

  • Michael Loberman says:
    3 Sep3 September 07:18

    Revpoints (Revolut loyalty programme) are doing 20x points on Qatar spend at moment (normal rate = 1 pt to £1) and a revpoint is 1:1 with avios

    Presumably that wouldnt work with this offer?

  • BJ says:
    3 Sep3 September 07:35

    No, I doubt that offer will stack with the avios purchase bonus as the latter is likely processed by points dot com. In any casw, the offer is for fluggts departing UK and amex can easily determibe if spend is on a flight departing UK. Thus the amex offer will not work either if anybody us contemplating using it with an exEurope departure.

    Having said all tgat I don’t think the OP was suggesting the two offers stacked anyway.

  • Charley says:
    3 Sep3 September 08:43

    So if i am understanding this right as I have never had an account with QR. I would need to open a QR account, transfer 1000 avios into said account, purchase avios triggering bonus, then transfer back to my BA account. Am i understanding that correctly?

    • Rob says:
      3 Sep3 September 09:01

      Yes

      • Charley says:
        3 Sep3 September 11:54

        Thanks Rob, I am assuming there is no charge for transfers of points inter account and transfers almost instantly?

      • BigTimeCharley says:
        3 Sep3 September 12:09

        Thanks Rob, I am assuming there is no charge for transfers of points inter account and transfers almost instantly?

        • BigTimeCharley says:
          4 Sep4 September 22:27

          Just an ongoing report. Purchased the Avios via QR around 7.30 last night and at 7.26am this morning (local time for me) they are still yet to be credited to my QR Privilege Club account.

          Have spoken to QR regarding this and they state there is nothing they can do. Not ideal when you are trying to booking a seat departing shortly

  • Yaron says:
    3 Sep3 September 08:49

    Point about ‘activity’ in account is very important – I opened a privilege club account yesterday to buy a small number of Avios , the transaction has been in ‘pending’ state on my AMEX since yesterday 9:01am and no Avios show on the dashboard (it only shows ones from linked BAEC ). Test transfer of 1K Avios from BA later on in the day reflected immediately.
    Reached out to Qatar online chat last night , was advised to wait 24-48 hours but I suspect I will need to contact AMEX at some point to say “goods not yet received”

  • BJ says:
    3 Sep3 September 20:51

    I think it was February this year that BA allowed all unboosted avios from 2023 to be boosted fir one day only. Perhaps they’ll repeat that offer again next year.

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