Today let’s talk about a niche membership programme – A Small World (ASW).
A Small World is a paid membership scheme. There are multiple membership levels you can choose when signing up, and they come with benefits including hotel / airline status, award miles and more importantly, “member-only exclusive events”.
I have no idea how those events are like and I didn’t find much information online either, so let’s focus on the airline / hotel benefits today.
There are four different levels:
Access | Lifetime | Prestige | Signature | |
Validity | 1 year | Lifetime | 1 year | 1 year |
Fee | €80 | €390 | €5,200 | €19,950 |
Award Miles | – | – | 250,000 (Miles & More or Etihad Guest) | 1,000,000 (Etihad Guest) |
Airline Status | – | – | Etihad Gold | Etihad Gold (*2) |
GHA | Platinum | Platinum | Black | Black |
Jumeirah | – | – | Silver | Gold |
Dragonpass | – | – | Prestige | Prestige |
Sixt | Gold | Gold | Platinum | Diamond |
And from my point of view, there are two opportunities here.
Lifetime – Pay €390 and you get lifetime GHA Platinum and Sixt Gold. It doesn’t sound too bad, especially the former which comes with solid benefits when you stay at hotels.
Prestige – the annual fee is definitely not cheap. However, the 250,000 award miles is worth around €3,000 already, and whether the remaining benefits are worth €2,200 is anyone’s opinion.