Heathrow Rewards is joining ‘My Heathrow’ – what do you need to know?

If you are a member of Heathrow Rewards, the loyalty programme for shoppers at the airport, you should have received an email yesterday outlining changes to the scheme.

(If you’re not a Heathrow Rewards member and don’t know anything about it, take a look at our introductory guide here.)

The changes don’t contain anything bad but there are a couple of things to be aware of.

If you’ve ever accessed Heathrow Rewards online, you’ll have noticed that the airport website has two log-in areas. The rewards programme has always been kept separate from the airport customer database.

This is now changing.

From ‘early 2025’, you will access Heathrow Rewards, Official Heathrow Parking and Reserve & Collect via a central log in.

After the switch, you will need to create a new password and set up 2FA. If you have separate accounts with different parts of Heathrow under the same email address, they will be merged.

What is changing with Heathrow Rewards?

Virtually nothing:

• you will continue to earn 1 point per £1 spent at the airport, on Official Heathrow Parking or on Heathrow Express

• points will continue to be redeemable for shopping vouchers or airline miles, including Avios

Here are the key points you need to understand:

Rocketmiles points will no longer be transferable

Heathrow Rewards has a partnership with hotel booking site Rocketmiles which lets you earn points on your stays. This has been attractive because Heathrow Rewards has multiple airline partners and it made sense to credit Rocketmiles bookings here rather than directly to an airline.

From early 2025, Rocketmiles points will be ring-fenced. You will only be able to use them for Heathrow shopping vouchers and not transfer them to an airline partner. This mirrors the current situation if you transfer Emirates or Lufthansa miles into Heathrow Rewards.

It isn’t clear what happens to existing Rocketmiles points which you have earned but not yet spent. Will they remain transferable? I have asked the Heathrow Rewards team but they haven’t come back with a firm answer yet.

Transfers in from Emirates Skywards will extend the life of your points

You have always been able to transfer Emirates Skywards miles into Heathrow Rewards points at the rate of 6,000 Skywards miles to 2,000 Heathrow Rewards points.

This isn’t hugely attractive because you are only getting £20 of value for your 6,000 miles.

These transfers have not, historically, counted as ‘activity’ when it comes to stopping your points balance from expiring. This will change in 2025, allowing you to extend the life of your points via an Emirates inward transfer.

It appears that transfers in from Lufthansa Miles & More already count as ‘activity’ so nothing changes here.

Heathrow Rewards points expire 36 months after your last ‘earn’ transaction. Redeeming points does not extend the expiry date.

Points on unregistered Heathrow Rewards cards will be lost

Some people are still using paper Heathrow Rewards cards to collect points – the airport used to hand out leaflets with cards inside.

If your Heathrow Rewards card is not registered online, you will lose all of your points on 31st December 2024.

Shopping vouchers will only be issued digitally

Going forward, it will no longer be possible to request £5 paper vouchers to use in the shops at Heathrow. All reward vouchers will be issued digitally and stored in the Heathrow app.

Existing paper shopping vouchers will remain valid until their original expiry date.

Conclusion

There is nothing to worry about here, unless you are one of the small number of people who credit Rocketmiles hotel bookings to Heathrow Rewards in order to convert them to an airline partner.

For everyone else, you should take note of the changes above but it is unlikely that you will need to do anything in response.