How do you earn tier points from BA Holidays in The British Airways Club?

For a number of years before the launch of The British Airways Club, British Airways Holidays had been very popular with Executive Club members due to offering double tier points on most bookings.

One long haul business class holiday on BA (long haul) got you 560 tier points, getting each traveller 90% of the way to Executive Club Silver status.

Following the launch of The British Airways Club, the mechanism for earning tier points from BA Holidays has changed substantially.

The headline earning rate is ‘1 tier point per £1 spent’.

This makes it more attractive to book flights via British Airways Holidays than on ba.com, although you’d need to add at least one night of hotel or car hire.

This is because BA Holidays gives tier points based on total (gross) spend. ba.com flight bookings only give tier points on NET spend, excluding all taxes and charges.

(A small trade off is that you don’t receive On Business points on flights booked as part of a BA Holiday.)

Does your booking qualify to earn tier points?

Here are the key things you need to know about making a booking which qualifies for tier points:

• There is no minimum length of hotel or car booking – you will earn tier points from BA Holidays on ALL bookings as long as a flight and hotel and/or car is included, even if just for one night.

• You will not earn tier points from a standalone hotel or car hire booking

• You do not need to fly on British Airways or on a BA codeshare – any airline is acceptable

• You CANNOT book a flight on ba.com and add a hotel or car during the booking process. This will no longer count as a BA Holiday for tier point purposes (this is a change to the situation up to the end of 2024). You must book on the dedicated BA Holidays website.

• Your booking can only contain one flight starting in your country of residence – you cannot nest multiple flights from your home country in one booking (eg London / Madrid / London / Helsinki / London). This does NOT seem to impact people starting in the UK regions and connecting in Heathrow or Gatwick, however – those bookings are crediting OK despite having ‘multiple flights from your home country’.

• Despite the above, there is no requirement in the T&C to start your BA Holiday from your country of residence ….

• …. however, if your country of residence is the UK, you may be stuck. Starting from outside the UK will trigger two flights departing from the UK (eg Dublin to Heathrow to Miami to Heathrow to Dublin) so you may NOT earn tier points because of the ‘only one flight from your home country’ rule. There is a case study on Flyertalk to back this up, although there are other people who have received tier points with no issues. The risk is yours.

The term and conditions do not discuss two clauses which existed before the launch of The British Airways Club:

• The rules do not say if you need to book a hotel or car for the entire trip, so you should assume that this is not an issue – albeit you may need to book by phone if you only want a hotel or car for a day or so

• The rules no longer say whether your hotel or car hire must be between your outbound and return flight dates or whether it can be separate (eg a hotel the night before your outbound flight)

You can see the full terms and conditions here.

How many tier points will you receive?

This is where is gets confusing:

• You do NOT receive any tier points from your flights if you are booked on British Airways or a BA codeshare. The tier points you get from BA Holidays REPLACE the tier points that your flight would earn. (It is not clear what happens when the flight booking is not on a BA flight number.)

• You WILL receive bonus tier points, should an offer be running and you have registered for it (there IS such an offer running for all of 2025 for flights with a BA flight number) – these tier points post 2-3 days after your flight

• The total number of tier points due (based on 1 per £1 spent) is divided equally by the number of passengers aged 2+ and sent to their respective BA Club accounts. A £5,000 holiday for two adults and two children would generate 1,250 tier points per passenger.

• If a British Airways Club number is not provided for any particular passenger, their portion of the tier points is forfeited. The remaining passengers do NOT receive extra to compensate.

• British Airways Club membership numbers must be added before the start of travel, not retrospectively

• If you book a BA Holiday for one person – to ensure that all of the tier points go to you and are not shared with your family – but British Airways is told by the hotel or car hire company that additional people were present, ‘the booking [may be] deemed ineligible for tier points’

• Only the amount paid to BA Holidays qualifies for tier points. Any additional spending at your hotel does not count.

When do you receive your tier points?

• Your tier points from BA Holidays should arrive within 14 days of the completion of your holiday

• If your tier points arrive after the end of your membership year on 30th March, for a holiday taken in the previous year, they will be treated as part of your previous membership year and immediately expire

In the situation outlined above, the tier points will still be added to your lifetime tier points total. Your status will still be upgraded if the tier points cause your total from the previous year to hit a new status target.

What isn’t clear is what happens if a holiday straddles the membership year end date of 30th March. Do the tier points go into the new year (when you flew home) or the previous year (when you flew out)? A reader who asked BA was told it was based on return date but there is no evidence in practice.

I hope this is clear. The biggest issue for most people is the enforced splitting of tier points across all passengers, especially when those passengers could be as young as 2 years old and have no need for elite airline status.

You can see the source terms and conditions, which verify everything written above, on this page of ba.com.

If you have any queries or clarifications, let us know in the comments.