News: Louis Vuitton cafe opens in T2, Sainsbury’s closes its credit cards, voco Winchester opens

News in brief:

A Louis Vuitton cafe opens in Heathrow Terminal 2

If you heading through Heathrow Terminal 2 in the near future, note that a new Louis Vuitton store opened last week.

For a brand that used to take pride in not lowering itself to duty free sales (the first airport store only opened in 2011 in Seoul), it has certainly been making up for lost time ….

What is noticeable about this store is that it features the UK’s first Louis Vuitton ‘Le Cafe’ with a menu curated by Cyril Lignac. It doesn’t look as cool as the one in Doha’s Hamad Airport, but you need to have access to the Qatar Airways business class lounge in order to access that (and, according to the comments below, also have Qatar Airways Privilege Club elite status). The new Heathrow Terminal 2 site is open to all.

It is open from 5.30am to 10pm, seven days per week.

Sainsbury’s Bank closes its credit cards to new applicants

We covered Sainsbury’s Bank credit cards on HfP for a couple of years because, whilst their Nectar card had a weak earn rate, it did come with a decent sign-up bonus and it didn’t conflict with any other credit cards you held.

In August 2023, Sainsbury’s pulled the Nectar Credit Card for new applicants. It was replaced by the Nectar Dual Credit Card which had no sign-up bonus and a shocking earning rate (1 Nectar point per £5 spent) which meant that it was of no interest.

Sainsbury’s is following Tesco and pulling out of retail banking. The majority of Tesco Bank is being sold to Barclays whilst the bulk of Sainsbury’s Bank is being sold to NatWest.

It seems that NatWest has no interest in selling additional credit cards. All Sainsbury’s credit card have been closed to new applicants ahead of the sale.

It isn’t clear if NatWest will simply run down the existing credit card ‘book’ or whether it will try to launch new products under the Sainsbury’s Bank brand.

voco Winchester hotel opens

Holiday Inn Winchester has completed its major renovation and, as of last week, is now trading as voco Winchester.

voco is another IHG brand, so the hotel is staying within the IHG family, but with looser brand standards. It will allow the hotel owners to deviate from what is currently expected at a Holiday Inn. In general I would say that your average voco is a better hotel than your average Holiday Inn.

The image above is of a refurbished room, which looks substantially better than the ones which were previously on the Holiday Inn website.

The voco Winchester website is here if you want to find out more or book.

Remember that you earn triple IHG One Rewards points at voco hotels until 31st December. Our article on this offer is here and you must register here before your stay.

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IHG One Rewards update – April 2025:

Get bonus points: IHG is not currently running a global promotion.

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