Bits: £400 F&B on Avios tickets at The O2 cut, Great Northern Hotel leaves Marriott

News in brief:

£400 F&B allowance on Avios tickets at The NinetyThird cut

As we covered in detail here (so I won’t repeat myself), Qatar Airways auctions, for Avios, a pair of tickets for every event at The O2 in London.

These aren’t any old seats – they are for The NinetyThird, the private club in The O2 which carries an £18,000 per year membership fee.

As our article explains, each pair of tickets comes with a £400 food and beverage credit to use on the night.

From 1st October, this is being cut to £200.

To be fair, it won’t change how much you eat – the restaurant pricing was always reasonable – but you will need to move down the wine list a bit!

If you are bidding on Lady Gaga tickets via the Privilege Club Collection site, note that two dates are in September (and come with £400) whilst the other two dates are in October (and come with £200).

It remains to be seen how the £200 cut in the F&B allowance impacts the Avios bidding.

Great Northern Hotel leaving Marriott

Great Northern Hotel, the property bolted on to London Kings Cross railway station, is leaving Marriott next Thursday, 4th September.

The HfP article about it joining Starwood (as it was then) was published on 4th September 2015, so it either had a 10 year contract or 2 x 5-year ones!

Part of Tribute Portfolio, the hotel was well regarded despite being in the centre of the swarm of crowds around Kings Cross and St Pancras. I know some people had swapped over from Renaissance St Pancras following its rebranding to Autograph Collection.

In an article in the Financial Times back in 2015, the owner of the hotel explained why he had signed up with Tribute.  The figures are fascinating:

• The hotel was spending £300,000 per year (in 2015 money) on ‘search engine optimisation’ and pay-per-click advertising. This wouldn’t be necessary after joining Tribute Portfolio.

• Tribute was going to be a cheaper way to sell rooms than ‘generating online buzz’.  (In truth the hotel was simply bad at this – HfP was never invited to do a review for example.)

• Online Travel Agents generated 45% of bookings but were charging 20% commission. Starwood (as was) asked for just 4% – 6% of room revenues.

• The move to Tribute was expected to see ‘cost of sales’ as a % of room revenue fall from 18% to 12.5%

The hotel is joining Turkish hotel group Kaya as Kaya Great Northern Hotel. It seems that Kaya acquired the hotel outright last year and was waiting for the Marriott contract to end.

Thanks to Revs for flagging in our forum.