Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Book Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch for 45,000 Virgin Points on winter weekends

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Last November, you could, finally, redeem Virgin Points for six of the eight Virgin Hotels properties – London, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Nashville and Dallas.

The two hold-outs were Las Vegas (not surprising, as its also part of Hilton Honors) and Edinburgh (no good reason at all!).

When I looked at this back in November, I found some decent deals for New York but London was a washout.

Virgin Hotels using Virgin Points

Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch was pricing at 60,000 to 90,000 Virgin Points per night. Unsurprisingly, this gave you a terrible ‘pence per point’ ratio of about 0.4p.

Virgin Hotels New York, on the other hand, averaged about 0.7p and got very close to 1p per point on some dates.

Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch is now a better deal, at least at the weekend.

Until 31st March, weekend nights are reduced to a flat 45,000 Virgin Points per night. Weekend seems to be defined as Friday, Saturday or Sunday night.

This is still not an outstanding deal. Cash rates run to around £250 per night for weekend stays until the end of March, so you’re getting about 0.55p per point.

This is in line with most Virgin Red redemptions, but you’d still do better redeeming for a premium cabin flight at a ‘Saver’ rate.

Note that the £250 cash rates quoted above are Advanced Purchase, whilst a points booking can be cancelled within 72 hours of arrival.

How do you redeem Virgin Points for Virgin Hotels?

It’s initially a bit fiddly, but when you’ve set it up once it will work automatically in the future.

You need to register for ‘The Know’ (click here), the Virgin Hotels membership programme. Once registered, you can link your Virgin Red account to your ‘The Know’ account.

(If you only have a Virgin Flying Club account, not a Virgin Red account, you will have to download the Virgin Red app and register there first. Link your Virgin Flying Club account so your points balance is shared. You can then register with ‘The Know’.)

Once your Virgin Red account is linked, you get a simple button on the Virgin Hotels booking page allowing you to toggle between cash and points.

As far as I could tell, if a Chambers Room (entry level) is bookable for cash, it is bookable for points.

No other room categories are bookable. Upgrades are not available.

Conclusion

This is definitely an improved deal for redeeming Virgin Points at Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch, but it still isn’t as good value as booking a flight.

With Shoreditch offering average value and Edinburgh not participating at all, you really need to look to the United States to get a good deal for a Virgin Hotels points redemption.

The Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch website is here.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (February 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

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

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

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 comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

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

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points

Comments (2)

  • James says:

    Main article for “not an outstanding deal”? Hmm

    • Rob says:

      If it was a main article it would have been emailed to 20,000 people. It wasn’t.

      There is now a two tier HfP in place whereby people on the email list get the three key stories and we occasionally add additional stuff to the main site where we can do it quickly and it will have some interest to some people.

      Remember that, in terms of readership, HfP is an email newsletter and NOT a website. Usually 4x more people read an average article via email than on the website. Occasionally an article will do so well on social that the ratio gets to 1:1 but I reckon no more than 2 articles per month (out of 100) have more readers online than via email.

      The only reason we spend so much time focusing on the website is that, bizarrely, advertisers don’t value email readers and do value online readers. We also need a strong website to get people to sign up to the daily emails – after which, frustratingly, most never visit the website again.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please click here to read our data protection policy before submitting your comment

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.