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New Marriott / Singapore partnership that fast tracks you to Star Alliance Gold (but with a catch)
Marriott Bonvoy has had long-standing partnerships with airlines including United and Emirates. A new name has just been added to the list – Singapore Airlines. You can view the promotion details and link your accounts here.
[Marriott Bonvoy]
- Gold: Two flights within six months for Krisflyer Silver
- Platinum and Above: instant Krisflyer Silver, and four flights within six months for Krisflyer Gold
- Booking class G and award tickets are excluded
Matched / upgraded status is valid for 12 months. As the challenge starts immediately once you’ve linked your accounts, wait till you have relevant flight plans.
One biggest catch is how a “flight” is defined. I’ve seen at least three response emails from SG already, and here’s one of them on China’s FlyerT forum:
In addition, a few data points concerning the ongoing Infinite Journey promotion they have with Shangri-La confirm that it is indeed based on bookings not segments. This is bad news as you can’t complete the challenge in one return trip of four flight segments.
(Update: we’ve now received a data point and a reader was upgraded after one PNR of four segments.)
If you are based in Singapore / Southeast Asia it is still relatively easy (and cheap).
There’s also a “hack” for European residents, as SQ has a fifth-freedom flight between Milan and Barcelona.
Four one-ways cost about €400 (with the discount offered by Trip.com). KrisFlyer Silver is next to useless. Krisflyer Gold however, gives you extensive benefits including priority check-in, extra baggage allowance and business lounge across the Star Alliance network.
[Singapore Krisflyer]
- Silver: stay three nights within 6 months for Marriott Silver
- Gold: instant Marriott Gold, and stay ten nights within 6 months for Marriott Platinum
If you are currently Marriott Platinum and above, you could complete the Krisflyer Gold challenge, and at some point link back for the Marriott Challenge, if they allow it.
[Shangri-La Circle]
In case you have Shangri-La Jade membership that’s due to expire, you should participate in the Infinite Journey promotion first if you haven’t done so already. Similarly you’ll get Krisflyer Silver and then need to fly three times in four months to upgrade to Gold.
After 12 months you could then re-do the challenge through Marriott’s offer – their terms explicitly say that previous status match promotions don’t preclude you from being eligible.
Black Friday Flight & Hotel deals roundup
Etihad
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between January 15th and June 12th
- Use promo code WHITEFRIDAY20 or BLACKFRIDAY20
- Save 20% on economy and business class fares
Note that the 20% discount applies to the base fare only, which means in reality the savings will be much less.
Aegean
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between January 15th and October 26th
- No promo code needed
- Save up to 50% on all tickets across the network
The actual discount depends on your travel date.
ITA Airways
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between December 1st and December 31st
- Use promo code BLACK
- Save 30% on all tickets except Economy Lite
The offer is available to many markets including UK, Europe and US (20% off).
Cathay Pacific
- Book by November 26th
- Travel between December 1st and June 28th
- Use promo code UKBLACKFRI for flights departing from the UK
- £100 off business class and £75 off economy / premium economy
Similar deals are available for France and Germany etc.
Air China
£100 discount on UK flights to China / Asia. Claim your voucher on Trip.com – they have other Black Friday offers as explained in this blog post.
TAP Portugal
London – Boston in business class for ~£1000 return, and the cost can be further reduced if you add a stopover (>24 hours) in Lisbon to avoid the UK APD. Example:
Use Google Flights and Skyscanner to find cheap date combinations. Book by November 28th.
Virgin Atlantic
- Book by November 27th
- Travel by September 30th
- Pay 30% fewer points for all reward flights
This is an incredible deal for flying to/from Shanghai:
Redemptions for US destinations are unfortunately bundled with outrageous fees, so they might not be a great deal even with the 30% discount.
Melia
- Book by November 26th
- Stay by December 20th, 2024 (hotel dependant)
- Save up to 50%
Remember to stack the Gold 20% off and App 5% off. The discount is genuine although not necessarily at 50% at most properties, and many of the rates are flexible.
Accor
20% bonus on digital gift card purchases. Gift cards are valid for 5 years, and can be used at participating hotels in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece and Poland.
Kimpton Hotels
The following UK Kimpton hotels are offering 20% discount of gift vouchers:
- Kimpton London Fitzroy
- Kimpton Manchester Clocktower
- Kimpton Edinburgh Charlotte Square
- Kimtpon Glasgow Blythswood Square
Gift vouchers are valid for 12 months and can be used upon hotel checkout. They work well with pay-at-hotel rates, including Amex FHR and IHG Luxury & Lifestyle.
Malmaison / Hotel Du Vin
Malmaison – rate starts at £100, including £50 dinner credit
Hotel Du Vin – rate starts at £145 for two nights, including £50 dinner credit
Black Friday: buy Aeroplan points with up to 125% bonus
Air Canada has launched their campaign for Black Friday, and there’s an interesting buy points offer which is worth checking out especially if you are UK- or Europe-based.
The offer runs between November 13th and 29th, and all Aeroplan members receive a targeted mysterious offer. You can reveal the offer here after logging in.
I received only a 100% bonus, equating to C$17.5 / £10.22 per 1,000 points. If you are lucky enough to have the 125% bonus, you will pay C$15.6 / £9.1 per 1,000 points.
The highest bonus Aeroplan had offered recently was 115%, and that was targeted too, so 125% very generous. Even with 100% bonus it’s still not bad deal.
I wrote about Aeroplan recently specifically about their Europe – Middle East redemptions. Here is a guideline of how much certain itineraries cost (per way):
- Europe – Middle East (business): 45,000 points
- Europe – Middle East (first): 60,000 points
- Asia – Middle East (business): 60,000 points
- Asia – Europe (first): 100,000 points
To put it into perspective, a one-way first class ticket from Abu Dhabi to London on Etihad will cost you just around £600!
Aeroplan points can be accrued through Amex and Chase credit cards in North America, but otherwise difficult to collect. If you have plans to visit the Middle East, you should seriously consider jumping on this deal.
Aegean flash sale: £30 off and buy 1 get 1 free!
The Greek airline Aegean is working with Trip.com to launch a flash sale targeting the UK market. You can see the offer details here.
For our London audience, the most relevant bit is the BOGO sale.
- Going live on November 2, 10am
- Buy two economy class tickets from London to Athens for the price of one
- Travel between November 15 and March 31
- Limited availability
In addition there’s a promo code YXWFIVIWAW that you can claim and redeem until November 10. It gives you £20 discount when travelling from London / Manchester / Birmingham / Edinburgh to Athens and the Greek islands, but unfortunately London – Athens is excluded.
Remember that by booking via the Trip.com app you get an additional £10 off – £30 off a flight is not to be sniffed at, although not as good as the BOGO deal.
As you can see from the image above, your itinerary doesn’t have to be entirely Aegean, but somehow it doesn’t always work. Note that you must enter the passenger information first before being able to see whether the £20 promo code applies.
Earn United miles on every Marriott stay, and vice versa
Marriott and United has had a long-term partnership which allows members to receive reciprocal benefits when staying at a hotel or taking a flight. They have taken a step further and launched a Dual Currency promotion.
It appears that the following members are eligible for the offer:
- Marriott Titanium Elite and Ambassador Elite
- United Premier Gold, Platinum and 1K
You need to link your Marriott and United accounts first if you haven’t done so yet. Once completed you can register to the offer, and:
- Earn 500 United miles for every Marriott stay
- Earn 750 Marriott points for every United flight
The flight and stay must be taken by December 9th. Only paid stays and flights count. You don’t need to change your earning preference, as the bonus is on top of what you normally accrue.
It is a great offer, even though for us who live outside the U.S. only the first offer is likely to be useful. Remember that you earn 1,500 bonus points for each stay as well in the current Marriott promotion.
In the United program it costs only 6K – 9K miles to redeem a short-haul flight in Europe and Asia, which is quite good especially since BA is constantly devaluing its partner redemptions. There is an ongoing offer to transfer Marriott points into United miles too.
Great offer preview: Marriott to United 30% conversion bonus
United MileagePlus are about to launching a great incentive for converting points in October, so hold on if you need some United miles!
The offer page is here. As it hasn’t started yet you will be redirected to a placeholder instead, however in Terms and Conditions you can see all the details already.
- Registration: To qualify for this offer, members must register for the promotion between October 1, 2023 and 11:59pm EST on October 31, 2023 (“Promotional Period”).
- Qualifying activity: A member must earn award miles as a result of one or more points to miles conversion transactions from any combination of MileagePlus hotel partner programs that offer a points to miles transfer program that are conducted during the Promotional Period (“Qualifying Activity”) in order to qualify for MileagePlus Hotel Points-to-Miles bonus miles (“Bonus Miles”). Qualifying Activity must be completed by 11:59pm EST on October 31, 2023.
- Posting of Promotional Miles: At the conclusion of the promotion, all miles earned by each member from Qualifying Activity will be multiplied by 30% to determine the eligible bonus up to a maximum of 25,000 bonus miles. Bonus miles will be credited into the member’s account on or before January 31, 2024. The maximum bonus miles that can be earned by a member under this promotion is 25,000. MileagePlus will not be responsible for technical problems with partner miles postings, or failures or delays in miles postings by hotel partners, that would render any points to miles converted as ineligible under this promotion.
Basically you’ll earn 30% bonus when any hotel points into United miles in whole October, after you’ve registered to the offer. The bonus is capped at 25,000 miles under this promotion.
Although a few hotel programs will be participating, the true value lies only in converting Marriott Bonvoy points.
3 Marriott points converts into 1 United mile, and as a permanent offer you are awarded 10,000 bonus miles when converting 60,000 Marriott points. With this new promotion on top, you earn 39,000 United miles when converting 60,000 Marriott points, which is an excellent deal. If you convert 180,000 Marriott points, you’ll get 115,000 United miles in total.
Unfortunately United devalued their U.S. – Europe redemption recently, and now a one-way flight in business costs at least 80,000 miles.
Good news is however, there’s no carrier-imposed surcharges. For the same route BA wants 80,000 Avios + £175, and 47,500 points +$977 from Virgin Atlantic!
Rare deal: buy Lufthansa miles at 0.94p
Dating back about a decade, Lufthansa faced a few lawsuits where people tried to claim compensation based on the price at which they sold their miles. At this point Lufthansa decided it was causing them too much trouble, and withdrew all related functionality suddenly. To date it is still the only mainstream airline that doesn’t allow point transfer from Marriott Bonvoy.
Whereas you still cannot purchase Lufthansa miles, they introduced something called Bundle & Go recently which is basically points package in disguise. The bundle includes some other discount and bonus, but I suspect people just buy it for the points.
Until September 30, you earn 60% bonus when purchasing any of the three bundles:
- S: €250 – 10,000 + 6,000 miles
- M: €1,000 – 50,000 + 30,000 miles
- L: €1,750 – 100,000 + 60,000 miles
You can buy up to 500,000 miles per calendar year excluding the bonus. Once you’ve purchased a bundle the miles should be deposited into your account within 5 business days.
If you are interested, the L package works best at 1.09 euro cent or 0.94p per mile. This is a very good price, especially considering how difficult it is to acquire Lufthansa miles.
Lufthansa doesn’t have the most generous award chart, and like all other European airlines their carrier-imposed surcharge is high, so you may be better off redeeming via Aeroplan or United instead. There are some exceptions though:
- One stopover is allowed each way on a roundtrip award
- Partner programs have access to Lufthansa’s first class award space only within 15 days prior to departure
- Lufthansa run frequent Mileage Bargain offers. At the moment a return trip in business class from Europe to certain North America destinations cost only 55,000 miles
- Their redemption chart has some sweet spots (price is for one-way)
- Europe – Middle East: 35,000 miles (B)
- Europe – North America / Africa: 56,000 miles (B)
- Asia – Hawaii: 35,000 miles (B)
- Any Domestic: 20,000 miles (B) or 25,000 miles (F)
One funny restriction is, Lufthansa doesn’t allow you to search award tickets unless you have at least 7,000 miles in your account. Therefore I have no idea how the availability and fuel surcharges are like nowadays.
Important note: Lufthansa miles expire after 36 months and nothing stops it unless you hold elite status or a Lufthansa credit card.
Rocketmiles promotion: earn 5,000 United miles after the first stay
If you haven’t heard of Rocketmiles, they are an online travel agency for hotel bookings. Unlike its rivals they don’t really have a membership program, instead you earn miles or other reward currencies with airlines and loyalty programs that they’ve partnered with.
They also run lucrative promotions from time to time, especially to new customers. If you are a collector of United miles, here’s an opportunity for you: book your first stay by June 30 and earn 5,000 bonus United miles. This is in addition to the standard miles you earn, starting from 500.
The cheapest night you can find in London is just under £50, for 5,500 United miles:
Whereas it’s closer to the £20 mark in many Asian countries:
It is a brilliant way to purchase cheap United miles, although valid once only. I wouldn’t recommend booking via Rocketmiles in general, as they tend to be more expensive and you are not entitled to elite benefits or points as they are a travel agency.
United miles are very powerful and hard to come by for UK residents, so the deal is worth considering if you are already a collector.