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

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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:

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.

Comments (58)

  • HH says:

    Rob, I have never seen you publish anything so overtly snarky in all these years as that final paragraph under the BA story! Absolutely spot-on.

  • OnTheRun says:

    If the plan to abandon bottled water was true, this does not surprise me based on the shenanigans of its sister airline – a truly dry airline (at least on the day we flew) – Iberia didn’t give any water to us at all – not even in a cup. Noticed on the flight that they were willing to sell us a bottle of water though!

  • Nick G says:

    Haven’t flown euro traveller for years but was surprised to receive a mini water bottle and biscuits or nuts on a flight from jersey.

    OT was more shocked and surprised at how nice the new lounge is there. Fantastic place, clearly spent a fortune, great views and staff

    • Rob says:

      Is BA officially using No1 now?

      • Nick G says:

        Used PP. I assumed if you are in CE then it’s the option? For height of summer literally no more than 10 people in there. I can’t imagine it’s getting anywhere near enough people in the 150 people it can hold.

      • DHA says:

        BA are still using the lounge that they always have. Needs a refurb now, but I’m perfectly happy with it. Usually a decent selection of beers and close to the gate

  • Ash says:

    BA’s customer service is one of the worst going, narrowly beaten by Qatar. Dreadful experience all round but at least Qatar has a better on board experience

  • memesweeper says:

    The most eco friendly water solution IMO would be to encourage/incentivise passengers to bring their own water bottle, refilled as required, and offer pre-bottled water to those that didn’t.

    • Tim says:

      You would think so, but actually there is some psychology research (from university of Bath) to show that incentive schemes (ie, 30p off a coffee if you bring your own mug) have quite a limited impact. What is much more powerful is charging people because folk will try much harder to avoid a surcharge than they will to gain a reward. When the University cafes charged £2 for a cup of tea/coffee with 30p off if you bought a reuseable cup only about 5% of people did. But when they lowered the price to £1.70 and sold single use cups for 30p, more than 50% of people bought a reusable cup with them.

      • memesweeper says:

        I’m sure that’s correct. Free water but a 50p charge for a cup or £ 2 for a BA branded reusable bottle would be ideal probably to manipulate behaviour (but with plenty of up front notice!). Incentives are nicer, if less effective.

      • Rob says:

        When I was at Erasmus in Rotterdam in 1993, so 32 years ago, none of the vending machines gave cups and you carried around a stiff plastic Erasmus cup given to you on day one. We are so behind in the UK on this sort of thing.

  • TJ says:

    The other potential downside of booking with the Emirates platform is price…I don’t find competitive compared to booking with the hotel direct or other OTAs.

  • Pat says:

    if you’re telling us the salaries are way too low, a joke, you can’t be shocked with the thick decisions they make
    you don’t get a pat on the back in 2025 for saying things are fine as they are

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