Bits: BA abandons plan to scrap bottled water, 5000 Emirates miles for a hotel booking

News in brief:

British Airways drops plans to remove bottled water

According to cabin crew blog PYOK, British Airways has abandoned plans to stop giving individual water bottles to passengers.

During a two week trial in June, bottled water was not provided for passengers in World Traveller and World Traveller Plus on A380 flights to Boston, Miami and Los Angeles.

Passengers were instead given a small paper cup which cabin crew would fill from a bottle. Anyone who wanted a second cup had to track down a cabin crew member to request one.

BA claimed that the trial was not about saving money but about reducing the amount of single-use plastic on board. If true, what is strange is that it is not trialling any other eco-friendly options such as canned water (which Virgin Atlantic provides) or water boxes.

The same article on PYOK has a stunning BA quote about Brunchgate (a term coined by HfP – well, by my friend Simon – but which found its way into the mainstream media). Readers may remember that Club World and First passengers were served breakfast for lunch in a trial last autumn, as a way of cutting food costs. A steak, after all, costs a lot more than an egg.

The change was apparently made on the back of passenger requests. When faced with huge blowback from passengers and the media, BA brought back a proper lunch.

The article claims that, in a memo to staff, BA said that “passenger needs had rapidly changed in several months, prompting the reversal”.

Apparently customers used to want breakfast for lunch, but it suddenly became unfashionable and they started wanting meat, fish and pasta again. How BA manages to cope when faced with such wild swings in passenger tastes is hard to comprehend.

Get 5,000 Emirates miles with one hotel booking

Emirates Skywards has a hotel booking portal powered by Rocketmiles, which lets you earn Skywards miles on every booking. You can also spend miles on hotel rooms.

Until Monday, you will get 5,000 bonus Skywards miles on selected hotel bookings. This is on top of your usual base miles.

Click here for full details.

The offer is limited to one booking per person.

Your stay must be completed by 31st October.

Whilst not all hotels on the site offer the 5,000 bonus miles, most do. There is no minimum length of stay and I saw plenty of one night stays for as low as £78 which had the offer.

The downside of using this deal is:

• your booking is treated as third party, so you won’t earn any hotel points and you won’t receive any elite status benefits you may be due

• you won’t get a VAT receipt because of the way Rocketmiles pays the hotel for your room, which may be an issue for business travellers in the UK

5,000 Emirates Skywards miles are useful even if you don’t already have any. For example:

• you can redeem for UK High Street gift cards – roughly £20-worth for 5,000 miles
• you can redeem for easyJet travel credit
• you can convert 4,000 miles into 1,000 Accor Live Limitless hotel points, worth €20 off a future stay
• you can convert Emirates Skywards miles into Marriott Bonvoy hotel points at a ratio of 3:2 with a minimum transfer of 3,000 miles
• you can use them via the same hotel booking site for a £20-£25 discount on your next hotel room

The Marriott Bonvoy option is amusing. If you had 6,000 Skywards miles after your stay – including the 5,000 bonus miles – this would convert into 4,000 Marriott Bonvoy points. You could also convert into Accor points.

This means that you could earn a chunk of Marriott or Accor points by booking virtually any hotel, even those belonging to other chains!

You can book via the Emirates hotel platform here. The offer ends on Monday although your stay can be until 31st October.