What price/value Bronze/Silver/Gold membership to you?

[Jasdev]

I apologise if this has been covered before; I attempted to use the search function of this forum but it doesn’t let you fine-tune…

Just an idle thought I had as I was planning holidays and planning to make use of the double tier points offer via BA Holidays bookings.
Suppose that a round-trip booking in Club Europe to a destination that earns you 160 tier points is enough to get you to (or retain) Bronze via the double points offer.
Now of course what it costs you will vary depending on destination, length of stay, choice of hotel/car hire, and many other factors.
So it makes more sense to me to ask myself what price/value I place on Bronze membership…

And then I thought to ask the Head for Points reader base for their thoughts on this!
i.e. What is the minimum you would spend in a year in order to get to or retain a tier? How much is it worth to you?

[dougzz99]

Bronze – little value.
Silver – perhaps the sweet spot, easy to maintain. Lounge access.
Gold – seat choice, nicer lounge and additional Avios award seats. TS increasing chance of no one next to you on SH. FW at LHR is typically a good experience.

Gold a few years on £3K to £5K spend. Don’t bother with TP runs, but happy to optimise route to gain additional TP. The value of a status is hard to calculate, but on CW seat choice is very important, CS all the same so choice of no real importance.

[List]

I dropped down to Silver last November. Silver is fine for my needs. I have 15 CE flights so far booked (4 already taken) to maintain silver for £1950. Anything extra will be relaxed travel in any class or with other airlines.

[Andrew.]

I value it at 2-4 free domestic return business flights a year.

A good friend who is cash rich, time short and usually needs a bit of a boost in order to qualify for Gold every year. I have family who live in Scotland, I’m more than happy to impersonate him in return for a free trip home.

I’ve been caught once by a member of crew who with a perfect smile and a vice like grip on my shoulder leaned in and quietly sought an explanation for my impersonation. “Tier run for…” was a satisfactory answer.

[Gary B]

dougzz99 wrote:

Bronze – little value.
Silver – perhaps the sweet spot, easy to maintain. Lounge access.
Gold – seat choice, nicer lounge and additional Avios award seats. TS increasing chance of no one next to you on SH. FW at LHR is typically a good experience.

Gold a few years on £3K to £5K spend. Don’t bother with TP runs, but happy to optimise route to gain additional TP. The value of a status is hard to calculate, but on CW seat choice is very important, CS all the same so choice of no real importance.

This looks very informative but I don’t know the abbreviations. TS, SH, FW ?

My limited input is…I am Silver and the benefit is seat booking in Club.

[Peter K]

SH = short haul
FW = First Wing (lounge)
TS = not sure, but basically the seating algorithm of where to place everyone on a flight

[dougzz99]

Theoretical Seating. Short Haul. First Wing.

Edit: PeterK beat me to it. Only thing I would add is the FW (First Wing) is a separate check-in area and security channel that leads directly to the First Lounge.

[AJA]

I am Silver and value the seat reservation at time of booking. Lounge access is good too, though if you travel Club as I do, you get the lounge via the ticket. I like the bonus Avios too though I think with the upcoming changes to Abios earned via flying not sure that’s going to mean much.

Never hit the lofty heights of Gold so never had the pleasure of the First Wing or Galleries First so don’t know what I’m missing

[astra19]

Andrew. wrote:

A good friend who is cash rich, time short and usually needs a bit of a boost in order to qualify for Gold every year. I have family who live in Scotland, I’m more than happy to impersonate him in return for a free trip home.

How on earth does that work?

[phantomchickenz]

Presumably the value massively depends on how you fly, how often you fly and how it’s paid for.

A ten trips a year person who is normally in economy paying cash is going to see a lot more benefits/value from tier membership than a once a year traveller redeeming Avios in Club World.

[NorthernLass]

astra19 wrote:

Andrew. wrote:

A good friend who is cash rich, time short and usually needs a bit of a boost in order to qualify for Gold every year. I have family who live in Scotland, I’m more than happy to impersonate him in return for a free trip home.

How on earth does that work?

Presumably domestic trips where they don’t ask for ID …

[dougzz99]

NorthernLass wrote:

astra19 wrote:

Andrew. wrote:

A good friend who is cash rich, time short and usually needs a bit of a boost in order to qualify for Gold every year. I have family who live in Scotland, I’m more than happy to impersonate him in return for a free trip home.

How on earth does that work?

Presumably domestic trips where they don’t ask for ID …

Yep he says Scotland. My understanding is on domestics they check that the person that goes through security is the person that flies. They don’t check ID in as much as the person who is flying is named on the ticket.

[meta]

Yes, with HBO nothing is checked at all apart from boarding pass.

[Indy500]

We fly Club for long haul which switches on the Silver through the tier points. We generally go ‘back of the bus’ for European short haul and appreciate the seat choice at the time of booking and lounge access while enjoying WT fares. The increased Avios earning rate may lose it’s value if the scheme switches to revenue base.

[NorthernLass]

As above, the best perks of Silver are lounge and seat selection. I’ve been able to make very good use of my remaining vouchers by using less avios to fly in ET/WTP and still travel in comfort as able to select extra legroom seats by booking early before anyone else gets them!

[Jon]

Interesting question. I’m not sure this directly answers it, as it’s not BA (albeit it is OneWorld) but perhaps it’s useful as a couple of examples.

A year or two ago, Finnair had an offer (covered on here as I recall) whereby for around £2,000 or so you could buy enough Finnair points to convert them to Platinum (OW Emerald = BA Gold) status and have just about enough change left over for a return Business class redemption to Asia. Plus various upgrade vouchers thrown in. Had I not already been OneWorld Emerald for that year, I would have gone for it. So on the face of it we could say Emerald/Gold is worth £2000 to me, albeit I’d be getting a +/- £2000 redemption flight and some upgrades into the bargain, so the status is effectively free.

More recently, Malaysia Airlines sent a (targeted) offer to retain Enrich Platinum (also OW Emerald) by buying 80,000 miles, at a cost of about £950. I felt that was good value and took them up on it. Will I get £950 worth of benefits from it? Maybe, maybe not – lounge F&B, some free seat selections, higher miles earning rates when flying on MH metal, various intangibles… Probably not literally £950-worth. But worth it to me, and the 80k miles are almost (but not quite) a one-way redemption between London and KL, which would otherwise likely cost at least £1,500. It was a good deal to me; others may see it differently.

Of course, if you’re buying actual flights to earn/maintain status over and above the flights you would have done anyway, then obviously you need to factor in the value-to-you of the travel experience/time away from home/holiday/business or networking opportunities etc etc that you gain (or endure!) as well…

[iamlost]

Bronze – near worthless. I briefly soft-landed to Bronze for a few months and had to start flying even short-hauls in Business to make it tolerable. The only worthwhile benefit to Bronze is group 3 boarding before the masses.

Silver – a must to maintain. Fast track security, lounge access, seat selection at time of booking including exit rows on short-haul, higher luggage allowance, group 2 boarding. My old strategy of ex-EU QR J flights to maintain Silver has become a lot more expensive, so did it this year via lots of weekend getaways to Europe booked in BA J.

Gold – definitely nice to have, but personally adds limited value over silver. The two most tangible benefits for me are behind the scenes: additional avios seat availability and the gold line sometimes going against BA policy to help me out. Nothing else is a dealbreaker for me: slightly better lounges (OK this is more worthwhile in places like HKG than it is in T5), group 1 boarding can actually be more chaotic on short-hauls than group 2 but better on long-hauls, row 1 seat reservation is nice but I can usually still snag it at any tier 48 hours before check in, the personal welcome on board is a nice touch but meh. Considering I need to collect 2.5x the TPs as Silver, I don’t chase Gold unless work flights get me there or close enough.

[Lula]

@dougzz99 Interested in how you achieved gold on 3-5k spend. Are you able to share more detail?

[Biki]

Lula wrote:

@dougzz99 Interested in how you achieved gold on 3-5k spend. Are you able to share more detail?

Depending on how willing you are to take indirect routes you can get extra points pretty easily. For instance, Budapest-London-New York-LA-Hawaii and back in club is about 60% of the way there for around £1,600 to £2,200, depending on dates. There’s more convoluted routes too if you’re a bit more adventurous. Or BA holidays with double tier points on Qatar metal also gets a decent way towards Gold.

[jj]

Lula wrote:

@dougzz99 Interested in how you achieved gold on 3-5k spend. Are you able to share more detail?

It was quite easy during the pandemic. I did it by accident for about £3,300. First class return to NY with BA Holidays double tier points was 840 points. First class return to Denver via Dallas was another 500, and the threshold was reduced from 1500 to 1125. All flights were booked at bargain-basement COVID prices.

I don’t value Silver as I always travel in business class or better, so the only benefit is free seat booking. Gold is nice, but not life-changing: the First Wing is sweet, but the First lounge is little better than Club unless you’re in T3 and can access the Cathay Pacific First lounge. The biggest benefit of Gold that I’ve found is being able to book row 1 in CE, so you get better seats and first dibs on service.

[cats_are_best]

Value of Gold vs. Silver airport experience depends where in the UK you typically fly from.

LHR T5 FW is usually much faster than Club check-in and Fast Track, and as above you’re straight into the lounge. Another minor benefit is if travelling with oversize baggage, at FW they tag it and take it to the oversize for you, at LGW you have to lug it around there yourself once it’s tagged.

There’s also the niche benefit of Arrivals lounge, if arriving LH during opening hours, though I’d rather head home, can’t take a guest in either.

Otherwise, little in it for UK airport experience, the LGW Club vs. First lounge experience is similar. Overseas will mostly be no difference at all, unless it’s a key one for BA like JFK.

Silver/Gold both have 32kg checked baggage item weight allowance, two with Silver, three with Gold. This alone makes Silver worthwhile for me as I often have two items well over 23kg.

Call centre etc., Gold Line usually faster and probably more flexible. Once onboard it’s dependent on cabin crew, often no difference.

As Gold, when flying CE/EC, for me row 1 seating and TS are the things I’ve (unexpectedly) come to value most, especially now that BA moved most of my flights back to LGW, it’s the only real difference I notice.

With the BAH double TP offer and a few other flights, it’s been very easy to stay Gold with the reduced threshold.

But with reduced business travel and some places I’ll fly not served by OneWorld, plus the double TP offer ending, I expect I’ll be dropping to Silver in 2024 – unless I’m close and the good old days of cheap B2B CE TP runs return!

[BJ]

BA status has zero value to me and I’ve never sought it because I only fly J or F on longhaul, and usually have access to Priority Pass too. Being based in EDI I do not fly BA, IB or EI short-haul so zero value there too.

I believe BA is pushing status nit to encourage sales but because there is something in the wind. Most likely access to premium cabins and/or use of companion and cabin upgrade vouchers will be restricted by status. Therefore if I were concerned I would be chasing status now! Personally I’m not because once I’ve burned my current avios stash I’m out the long-haul rewards game in favour of miles-earning revenue J flights. Going forward I expect I will be focusing avios and other miles burning on regional sweetspots.

[dougzz99]

Lula wrote:

@dougzz99 Interested in how you achieved gold on 3-5k spend. Are you able to share more detail?

As others have said you fly from low cost cities which change over time. Of late Budapest and Sofia have featured, and Dublin regularly has decent business fares. Even at 1500TP it’s achievable. Sofia, London, New York, LA, and say San Francisco would be 80+140+140+40 each way, so 800TP for £1300 to £1500. To the east coast of US I may do say Dublin, London, Philadelphia, Charlotte to Tampa so 260 each way. If you buy positioning flights (the flight to and from Budapest/wherever to begin and end the trip) you earn more TP on them. You need time to fly, time to research, and a willingness to deal with the inevitable AA timetable changes as these fares will typically be 90 to 120 day lead times.

As things stand a BA holiday to Florida with double TP in first could net a 1000TP. LHR-MIA-TPA is (210+40) x 4, with a car this is achievable for around £3K and puts you two thirds of the way. This avoids the excessive flying, the positioning risks, and the potential need for hotels along the way on longer routes.

Something I’d add here is that currently the US once there is expensive and pretty poor value. Many cities have suffered hugely through COVID and downtown areas can be a sea of homelessness and depression, many boarded up shops.

Heading east there’s less options at the moment.

But you need a personal assessment of the value of status for you. If you’re buying business class tickets you have a lounge anyway. If your only flying is to earn status than the value of that status is what? You need to assess the real cost of positioning, hotels along the way, the likely additional problems as your number of connections increases.

If I try to be as impartial as I can, I think that Silver is where it’s at, especially If you take a lot of economy flights. Here you get lounge and seat (mostly) selection, so most of what matters is covered.

[dougzz99]

@cats_are_best For what it’s worth Gold and Silver will get you in the same lounge in the USA. The posher Chelsea lounge at JFK needs GGL (or a ticket in First) and by all reports in underwhelming and very inconsistent on entry, with many GGL being sent to the Soho (Gold/Silver) lounge.

[Lula]

@dougzz99 Thank you – I have silver already – was just intrigued about the costs and how you’d done it. Thanks for explaining.