Book a two-bedroom suite in Bangkok with IHG points
IHG doesn’t have a Premium Award feature that many other hotel groups offer, which means you can only book standard rooms with points. However it’s not always the case, as it’s not rare to see hotels offer award availability on all room types, whether it’s intentional or a bug I can’t tell.
Thanks to @midnight on Flyertalk, a new hotel in Bangkok is running such “promotion”. The Sindhorn Midtown Bangkok hotel is set to join IHG on August 1, although the actual brand hasn’t been revealed yet.
It’s only a four-star though so it’s not gonna be an upper-scale brand unless they have done substantial renovation, and my guess would be a Holiday Inn. The hotel is now bookable on IHG, and all room types are priced at 30,000 points:
Including the top-level two bedroom corner sky suite, which sleeps four. Due to the lack of tourists in Bangkok at the moment hotels are pretty cheap, and the suite is priced at around £200 so you are not getting insanely outsized value for your points here.
Obviously the uncertainty here is we don’t know when / if we can travel freely to Thailand and back in the near future. However award nights can always be cancelled free of charge so you may want to lock in some redemption nights if you have any plans in mind for the next year.
Week of Wonders – exclusive Marriott offers in Asia Pacific
In a bid to revive its business, Marriott has been running exclusive monthly offers (Member Day) in China since May. Looks like it has been extended to Asia Pacific (at least for this month), so has potentially become more interesting.
You can access the Week of Wonders offer page here. The promotion period is October 8 to October 15, and there are three region-wide offers available:
- October 8: unrevealed (it’s a quiz competition in China)
- October 11: win a free hotel stay
- October 14: win $200 hotel dining gift card
Moreover, there is a sweepstake where the winner can nominate one name to display on a Manchester United match’s digital boards. It doesn’t seem to be limited to Asia Pacific only, so all Marriott members can participate.
There are also country-specific offers on the Exclusive Offers page. Offers range from dining discount, extra bonus points to special package rates.
BA’s Japan flight surcharge has got really low
Just sharing an interesting observation by a friend today. We all know that BA can be really greedy when it comes to carrier-imposed surcharges, a.k.a. YQ, which adds to the cost of redemption tickets.
There are a few countries / regions in the world where YQ is strictly prohibited or limited, which means you pay very little fee for one-way outbound award tickets. Hong Kong and Brazil are two typical examples – Hong Kong revoked this regulation a couple of years back though, but interestingly very few airlines decided to increase their surcharge since, apart from Cathay Pacific.
Not sure if Japan has exercised a similar law or something, but BA’s flight departing from Tokyo carries a very low surcharge at the moment:
Going to the next page and you can see the actual fee is even lower than advertised, finalised to £26.6.
This is the same case for a return flight too, which is very rare. £244 is a very generous price considering a large percentage of it is UK APD.
If you want to visit Japan, it may be a good time to lock in the ticket given the wide availability and low surcharges. We’re still uncertain when Japan is going to welcome tourists again though – I’m hoping soon as I’ve got ANA first class ticket booked for Christmas…
Bamboo Airways’ (conditional) status match programme
Bamboo Airways is a new airline based in Vietnam. They were founded only in 2017 so still fairly young as of today.
Fraser Suites 3-for-2 sale and Diamond fast track
Like Ascott Hotels, Fraser Suites is a hotel group dedicated to the serviced-apartment market. They are running an interesting promotion – where you can get a decent deal as well as top-tier status – which is worth a look.
(more…)New promotion added to Hilton Points Unlimited
You are probably aware of the Points Unlimited promotion that Hilton is running. It was meant for the first quarter only, but then was extended to September because of the Covid situation.
(more…)Amazing Radisson Blu Maldives sale – fixed $305 rate plus free breakfast and more
A couple of days ago we spoke about the arriving-soon Radisson Blu Maldives hotel. Redeeming award night can represent exceptional value here, but I didn’t realise there was a great flash sale going on as well.
