[Mikee]

Anyone know if a day room would constitute a stay as per the promotion? I’m thinking of getting a night in tonight’s and a day room tomorrow to complete the 3 stays by 31st March.

[Mikee]

Urgh…..just been onto Hilton about this and they told me I needed 3 stays to keep my Diamond. I only did one mattress run last weekend for £64 and now there’s not enough nights in the month to get 3 stays in….I was convinced I only needed one stay but my error means now I’m heading to Silver on 1st April 😔
The only silver lining is that I’ve still got the Barclaycard Hilton visa so getting £10k spent on that will bring me gold and free breakfast.

[Mikee]

Well, the solution was to write a nice email to the hotel explaining the situation and asking for a date change/future credit to use at the hotel. They refunded me as a gesture of goodwill 🙂
Thanks to John for the additional info. I will do a bit more digging to whether the Digital Key route allows a physical no-show to “show”.

[Mikee]

NorthernLass wrote:

I always assumed that you can’t “download” the key until you get close enough to your room for whatever internet connection it’s using to work, but I have never tried to do this before arriving as of course I haven’t needed to.
Could someone else use the stay or have you booked somewhere rubbish?!

Yep not sure….just wondered if anyone has done what I’m suggesting (unless we’re into Fight Club rules territory!). Hotel is in Central London so last resort is to find a friend to go there for me.

[Mikee]

So my question is when I receive the alert in the app, does that mean my stay at the hotel is active…or do I need to actually use the key. The email when requesting Digital Key in the app says “You will receive an alert in the Hilton Honors app on your smart device when your key is ready.”

[Mikee]

In the App, it says the Digital Key is available but not sure if that means it’s not fully activated until you use it.

[Mikee]

NorthernLass wrote:

Don’t you need to be in actual proximity to the hotel for the digital key to activate?

Yes but what I’m not sure about is once you’ve checked-in on the app, received your Digital Key and then checked-out on the app (usually automatic), whether the “stay” is recorded whether you actually used the Digital Key at the hotel or not. I’m trying to avoid having to travel 100 miles whilst sick to open the door and close it again, then return home 100 miles 🙁

[Mikee]

Thanks George….hum…every time I’ve stayed with Digital Key, I’ve never needed to go to reception either at check-in or check-out…so I was thinking that the only way they could see if I actually attended was if their system showed the Digial Key was actually used to open the room.

[Mikee]

Was about to hang up after 2hrs and 2 mins on hold but then the magical ring tone appeared…account closed in about 2 mins. The agent said they have been having high call volumes and she didn’t know why…..probably HfP’ers receiving their bonuses and closing their accounts en masse 🙂
I did sign-up to User Testing in order to feed back my experiences with the card but the invite to the survey I received never worked.
Free points in the bag for relatively little effort.

[Mikee]

Upgrade availability is shown by checking the Finnair website for award availability. If it’s there, you can upgrade. I saw J award availability and then booked a cash ticket on Expedia. The booking appeared in my profile and I was then able to upgrade online using my vouchers or miles. If there is no availability, you can waitlist via the website. I’m not sure how long it takes to get confirmed but I think you can waitlist 300+days ahead and confirmation is usually a few days before departure at the latest. I prefer to have firm J seats so probably won’t use the waitlist option unless it’s a last minute booking in Y and J doesn’t look too full. I don’t know how Finnair processes waitlist requests ie. do they fill the cabin with upgrades (like the US carriers) or do they restrict numbers to prevent to many people booking cheap Y fares and then hoping to get a cheap upgrade.

[Mikee]

Mikee wrote:

Posted this over in Finnair Buy Points/Status article:

I just booked a 1-way MIA-HEL-LHR Y cash ticket for £413 and upgraded the LH sector to J using one of my 8 LH upgrade vouchers.

Found a better option so cancelled this and re-booked MIA-JFK-HEL for Jan and then added a return in Nov HEL-JFK-MIA (not 100% sure I’ll use it but it’s minimal additional cost when you compare it to the one-way price I was paying). Found a good fare on Expedia USA for £461 (making sure the legs I wanted to upgrade were proper AY servides and not code-shares so I could use the upgrade vouchers). The domestic legs are AA on their domestic B777 so with Oneworld status giving free Main Cabin Extra, this means a proper Premium Economy seat on the 777. Emerald status also gets me access to the AA Flagship lounges including their 1st class dining areas. I upgraded the JFK-HEL lag online with a voucher…..3rd party bookings are not a problem in this respect and even appear automatically in your profile if you add the FF number to the initial booking. The only thing I’ve needed to add is a separate HEL-LHR which is <£100 and I can hopefully tags bags through to LHR…if not, I have plenty of connection time at HEL.

The booking process has been pretty smooth with no particularly long waits on the Gold/Platinum phone lines. All the advisors have been super helpful and booked my flights very efficiently. I also used the Whatsapp channel and responses were very quick.

[Mikee]

Good spot @Guernsey Globetrotter….thx.

Another datapoint – Finnair website doesn’t allow you to book multi-city trips so you have to phone, which attracts a 50euro booking fee. However, if you ask to pay in USD, the fee is only $35. The very helpful Customer Service agent advised me of this but he couldn’t waive the whole fee even though the website’s lack of functionality forces you to call. A complaint in writing to the Platinum team might be worth a shot as it’s a pretty poor policy.

[Mikee]

Posted this over in Finnair Buy Points/Status article:

My mini-overview of the value I hope to get from this promotion (which I paid £2,195 for 400,000 points @ 0.55p/per point):

1 – I swapped 150k for Oneworld Emerald (BA Gold) for 2 years, which also gives me a Oneworld Sapphire (BA Silver) soft landing for another year, so status until 1st Jan 2025….and I have 250k points left for award bookings

2 – Over 3 years, I will receive 16 short-haul upgrade vouchers and 4 long-haul vouchers. I am able to exchange 4 SH vouchers for 1 LH so in effect, I will have 8 x LH vouchers (best use for me)

3 – I can upgrade from Y to J the cheapest Finnair cash tickets (hand baggage only) with my vouchers (or with 50k points long-haul)

4 – I will recieve 2 x 12 month Gold Status (BA Silver) vouchers to gift to another Finnair member (plenty of value here, particularly if you want to accept a cash “donation” for gifting!)

5 – I will have the ability to leverage Oneworld Emerald (BA Gold) status with other Frequent Flyer programmes which is much more valuable than trying to leverage Sapphire since not all programmes match to this “middle-tier”

5 – I do not have to chase status with BA for 3 years so can just focus on spending my vouchers/upgrading cheap cash tickets etc rather than tier point runs

What does this all mean for value? I will redeem points on Finnair and not partners, meaning I will save a lot on taxes. For example:

1-way MIA-HEL (or ARN) in J is 80k + £10 taxes. I can add a cheap 1-way HEL-LHR for less than £100 (80k points cost me £439 so total cost £550). Equivalent BA MIA-LHR is 75,000/62,500 + £550

With my remaining points (250k), I can fly 3 1-ways long-haul. The obvious inconvenience is having to route indirect to the UK via ARN/HEL and a smaller route network on Finnair compared to BA (…but Finnair allow baggage to be interlined on separate tickets if all flights are Finnair).

I just booked a 1-way MIA-HEL-LHR Y cash ticket for £413 and upgraded the LH sector to J using one of my 8 LH upgrade vouchers.

For me, the Finnair route network is sufficient and I don’t mind connecting via ARN or HEL. J-award availability looks pretty reasonable although one can never tell how good/bad it could be. As a top-tier Finnair member, I can easily book into Y and waitlist for upgrades. I still have BA Silver until Dec next year and have a pot of Avios to use outside the Finnair network (I can also credit my Finnair flights to BA if I want).

Finally, I get to use the sauna in the HEL Finnair Premium Lounge!

[Mikee]

Anyone else getting nil results from the Shop Small map? Tried 2 different browsers and no shops appear no matter what location I choose.