BA Exec Club / Avios Group Ltd hotel reservation – booked via Expedia…?
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Called the Exec Club to book flights using a 241 voucher. Once flights were booked, the very helpful agent offered to book the hotel, as I’d told her where I wanted to stay and it happened to be bookable on their system. She explained it wouldn’t be a ‘BA Holiday’ as the flight was on 241, but would count as a ‘package’, so ATOL protected. I booked it, paid in full, and received 24,000 avios for booking through them – the flight was 35,000 plus the 241 so almost got those avios back – win! The confirmation email came through as ‘British Airways Avios travel Reservation’. In the T’s & C’s it has all the BA standard contacts etc, plus mentions Avios Group (AGL) Limited.
When I needed to extend the booking for a couple of extra nights, I called up Exec Club to amend the flights on the 241. Once that was done I asked him to change the hotel too, which is when the problems arose. He said the Exec Club don’t handle hotels, I’d need to speak to BA Holidays. I told him a colleague at the Exec Club had booked it. He clearly thought I’d got that wrong. He couldn’t / wouldn’t help.
So I started by calling the customer service number on the confirmation (which is BAs normal 0344 493 0787). After numerous phone calls, many times being ‘transferred’ only to be cut-off, and hours being bounced around to ‘holidays’ back to ‘normal’ BA and round again, no-one seemed to be able to even find the reservation without a BA booking ref number with letters & numbers (mine has only numbers). Through sheer frustration I very nearly booked the extra nights direct with the hotel, as I’d already been in touch re arrangements for our stay. But in view of BAs current tendency to cancel flights, I wanted to do it through BA to be fully protected, just in case flights go pear shaped.
I ended up back trying the Exec Club. On the 3rd attempt, having explained the scenario, the wonderful Andrew said ‘no problem’, he’d load the ‘hotel system’, and sort it all for me. Which he promptly did. He was amazing. BA definitely need more Andrews.
Which brings me (at last, sorry) to my query. I’d emailed the hotel about the separate BA reservation for 2 nights, so they could link them so we don’t have to move rooms. The hotel have replied: “Just to inform you that your reservations were made through Expedia and not British Airways.” !!! For someone who avoids Expedia like the plague I was shocked. How have I ended up with an Expedia booking? Is this a BA known ‘thing’? More to the point, the ‘British Airways Avios travel Reservation’ states 100% fee (entire stay) for cancelling within 72 hours – that didn’t worry me when I thought I’d booked the hotel with BA as a ‘package’, yet if BA cancel my flights with less than 72 hours notice and we can’t get there, I’m now not sure I’d be protected from a very significant hotel (or AGL, or Expedia…?) cancellation fee. The confirmation mentions that Avios Group Limited comply with the ABTA code of conduct, but no ATOL mention. Can anyone shed light for me? TIA!
Our Fairnont booking in Cairo was Expedia. Varies which agent Avios uses. It’s not always the same.
Oh another thing – are you sure the terms you refer to are the ones that BA wants to actually apply? They play a nasty game of “hide the Tc and Cs” which I recently fell foul of. Got into your BAEC account and scroll down to “View bookings made with Avios” (yes even if you paid cash) which will take you to a clunky page with the same branding as the multi-city booking page and links to your bookings in http://www.hotelsandcars.ba.com that page will have the actual booking terms that are linked to in the email you got but might be different to the terms in the email itself.
That’s a great tip thank you, having paid I didn’t think to look under “view bookings made with avios”! Will check there for Ts & Cs, to clarify that flight and hotel do indeed comprise a ‘package’ booking.
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