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Book Virgin Chauffeur service for 17,500 points
Like many other airlines that wanted to impress their premium passengers onboard and off the plane, Virgin Atlantic used to offer free chauffeur service to Upper Class customers. The service has died down over the years though, and they no longer offer it in-house, but have partnered with a third-party provider and it is not to free to anyone anymore.
However, it is still possible to book the chauffeur service with Virgin points. It has a very limited audience though: only Upper Class reward tickets (booking class G) are eligible, although upgrade from paid Premium tickets are booked in the same class so I believe they qualify too.
You can read about the benefit here.
- It’s available at UK and US airports
- You pay 17,500 points per way
- It covers a 75-mile radius from the airport
- In the US it’s possible to pay $3.5 per mile if your travel distance exceeds 75 miles
I live near Heathrow, so Uber or Bolt costs me only £30 therefore the benefit doesn’t really apply. However, if you live further away it might start to make sense.
As you can see, the 75-mile radius covers almost the entire Southeast, as well as many other counties around London (I never realised England was so small).
If you already have a Virgin ticket, you could make a dummy chauffeur booking online to see what kind of car and service to expect. If I remember correctly their partner is Tristar, which was acquired by Addison Lee in 2020.
17,500 points isn’t cheap, but if you travel from far and especially with many bags, it may be a great redemption choice.
Use Amazon Currency Converter to earn £5 voucher
While I was placing an order today on Amazon, I saw a new promo message about their Currency Converter service.
You can check out the offer here. Basically by placing an order using the Amazon Currency Converter by July 31st, you’ll receive a £5 off voucher on your next purchase of £50, to use by September 30th.
You probably have never seen Amazon Currency Converter before, as it only shows up when the chosen card’s set currency is different than the sales (i.e. GBP). I have a U.S. credit card saved in my Amazon account which is probably why I was targeted for this promotion.
If you change the currency of your payment card you should see the option too.
The problem is it’s not cheap. In the example above, it charges me $123.60 for £100, whereas according to Google £100 = $120.05. The actual handling fee here is $3.55, or 2.96%.
However, in order to trigger the offer you only need to buy something cheap. I went for a £15 item in the end, which is essentially equivalent to paying 50p for a £5 voucher, which isn’t a bad deal I suppose.
My review of American Express Centurion Lounge, Seattle
I wrote about the Amex Centurion Lounge at Denver which wasn’t very impressive. There’s one in Seattle as well, and I’m gonna give it another try after having spent some time in the nice Sky Club.
It’s just one minute away from the Sky Club, with a very recognisable entrance.
Bad news upon entry: the lounge is already full. But fortunately I don’t have to wait long as I’m on my own.
It is indeed very crowded:
But I’m assigned a pretty comfortable seat.
There’s also some reserved seating which are presumably for Centurion members.
A couple of more photos of the decoration.
More seats are available in the bar area, but still limited.
All alcohol drinks, including cocktails are free.
The buffet menu for hot food:
- Spicy collard greens
- Carolina beef grifts
- Grilles asparagus
Again I’m a bit disappointed at the quality of this lounge, and neither of the two Amex Centurion lounges that I’ve visited in the States are anywhere near the standard of the London one.
Hyatt Europe offer: 2,500 bonus points or double elite qualifying nights
Hyatt has had different forms of promotion in different regions this quarter. The one in Europe has been going on for a while, but I didn’t find the registration link until recently.
There are two different targeted offers:
Stay between June 8th and September 5th at Hyatt properties in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia to participate.
If your account address is in one of these regions, you are likely to be eligible for one of the offers. Good news is that reward night counts too.
My review of Delta Sky Club, Seattle
I’m finished with my Seattle trip, and will be flying with Delta for the first time. I read some good things about the Sky Club at Seattle and I’m very excited in trying it out.
The Sky Club is located at Concourse A and hard to miss. All concourses are connected post-security, so although my flight departs from Concourse S it doesn’t stop me from visiting the lounges.
According to Virgin Atlantic’s website, I’m entitled to Sky Club access automatically when flying back to the UK on Delta as a Flying Club Gold member. My boarding pass fails the scanner though, then the staff go on a little discussion before telling me Delta’s partnership with Virgin has terminated a couple of days ago?!
I’m so astonished and know that’s impossible. After exchanging a few words I realise that they are talking about Virgin Australia. Anyway they don’t seem well trained on the reciprocal benefits, and I decide to just flash my Amex Platinum instead. This time it works like a charm.
An array of lenticular cards by the entrance.
The Seattle lounge is generally regarded as the best Sky Club that Delta has. The lounge is huge with two floors, and leaves a very good first impression on me.
Seattle is one of Delta’s main hubs, but the lounge is not as busy as I thought.
Further down the line is more workspace.
A view of Delta aircrafts.
Some memorabilia of Seattle SeaHawks, an American Football team sponsored by Delta.
The second (first) floor:
The upper floor is quieter, but food is only offered downstairs.
The following hot food is on offer:
- Ivar’s clam chowder with bacon
- Spicy tofu stir fry
- Steamed brown rice
- Roasted green beans
- Teriyaki chicken
If you haven’t got to taste Seattle’s specialty Clam Chowder yet, there is one last chance! The Teriyaki chicken isn’t cooked right and tastes salty instead of sweet, but I actually prefer it this way.
A limited selection of beer and wine is complimentary, but most alcoholic drinks are payable. I read somewhere that redeeming Delta miles on Champagne is a good idea, but I didn’t check.
Desserts:
The chewy marshmallow looks very similar to a Chinese snack that I liked when I was a kid.
The bathroom might have been inspired by a few horror movies…
I want to take a look at the Amex Centurion lounge as well so didn’t spend all the time here. The Seattle Sky Club didn’t disappoint me, and is well worth a couple of hours before your flight.
My review of Kimpton Monaco Seattle
Hotels in the US tend to be expensive, which is why I prefer to splash some of my points here. It doesn’t seem easy in Seattle however, as there aren’t many options to start with. Hilton redemption values are poor, whereas Marriott and IHG may have a dozen of options combined.
I didn’t find anything that’s near ideal, but went with the Kimpton Monaco hotel eventually. 107,000 points for two nights isn’t cheap, but the hotel is quite well located, and it’s right after the new IHG One benefits came into effect so I want to see how it plays out.
The Monaco brand appears to be a chain itself, as it’s present in other cities like Washington DC, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Seattle one is very close to the University Street station, so around half an hour by train to the airport.
The building looks quite tired, and to be honest the W opposite doesn’t look any younger.
The lobby has an Arabic style.
To my disappointment the hotel restaurant is operating at limited capacity and isn’t open during my stay, which means I can’t choose breakfast as a Diamond welcome amenity. However they are running a special promotion, so I’ve got 600 welcome points + 5,000 bonus points instead.
(I forgot to say the Kimpton password :()
There’s a small refuel corner in the lobby for snacks and drinks. If you choose the $20 welcome credit instead you can spend it here.
eStandby was offered online on IHG’s website. The suite upgrade offers are very attractive, and I opted for Premier Monte Carlo Suite which costs only $25 per night. It’s the second-best suite this hotel has (there’s an Ambassador Suite which you must consult the hotel directly for booking).
The top three floors (9, 10 and 11 if I remember correctly) are the so-called Premier Floors. It’s similar to what some hotels have as an Executive Floor – no tangible benefits, but only a dedicated express elevator.
It’s actually a big room split into a living room and a bedroom by a curtain, so not a proper suite in the real sense.
This is the living room with sofa, desk and TV.
And the bedroom:
Nothing to see here in downtown Seattle.
The drapes aren’t black-out at all, which annoys me in the morning.
One thing I like about the UK Kimptons is that all rooms have a yoga mat. I didn’t find one here though so I guess it’s not a global standard.
What they do offer is a daily happy hour (6pm-7pm), which means free drinks for all hotel guests.
I don’t recall if you can order cocktails (for free) too, but from the display I guess it’s possible.
It’s a nice touch of the Kimpton brand.
There’s a gym at the lower ground level.
The hotel advertises a destination fee but I wasn’t charged, not sure if it’s due to the restaurant not open or me booking with points. My total bill is the $50 for eStandby upgrade (no extra taxes).
When I checked out I mentioned the 5,000 promotion points didn’t hit my account. The manager told me it’s actually misinformation and the promotion is double points (1,200 points) or double credit ($40), but since I was told so they’d acknowledge it and award me the bonus.
Two weeks after I checked out there’s still no sign of the 5,000 points and I had to raise it with IHG’s customer care. It was confirmed again – and to my surprise a batch of three 5,000 bonus points landed at my IHG account a couple of days later. I guess they were just a bit slow 🙂
Best UK SIM options for data roaming
Due to Brexit, most of the major UK network operators have now reintroduced roaming charges when you are in Europe. You can always pick up a local SIM of course, but there are options you can consider whilst in the UK to avoid the roaming fees as well.
[O2]
As of today, O2 still doesn’t charge any roaming free when you are in Europe. Good news for those who are a customer with them.
[Three]
Three used to have a fantastic feature called Feel at Home / Go Roam that allowed free roaming in Europe and many other international destinations. Unfortunately it terminated last year and is no longer included for new contracts starting in or after October 2021.
However, Go Roam is still valid for Pay As You Go (prepaid SIM) customers. It sounds as if Three was punishing their loyal customers under a contract, which is a bit weird.
Go Roam supports many more territories than just Europe, including United States, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Hong Kong and Vietnam, just to name a few. If you are heading to one of these destinations, just grab a pre-paid SIM before you go – at the time of writing the cheapest plan costs only £10.
[Airalo]
If your destination is not included in Go Roam, or you don’t have time to order a SIM card, Airalo is your friend.
Airalo sells eSIM for over 190 countries, so wherever you are travelling it’s most likely that Airalo has an eSIM that works for you. Because you don’t need to acquire a physical card, it’s more convenient and the process is almost instant – that’s assuming you have a compatible device of course.
I travelled to the United States recently and tried it out. I purchased an eSIM with 10GB data for $16:
Installation was fairly easy and reception was satisfactory throughout my two-week trip. Note that it’s for data usage only and cannot be used to make/receive calls or SMS.
If you are interested you can sign up on their website or via the app. Use my referral code KAI2510 to save $3 on your first purchase.
My review of Seattle Marriott Bellevue
I need to stay four nights in Seattle, and following my friend’s advice I chose to split the stay and spend the first two nights in Bellevue. It’s also because I found a good Marriott deal – two nights at the Seattle Marriott Bellevue hotel costs only 48,000 points.
Departing from the airport, there was some traffic going into Seattle and it took 40 minutes to get to the hotel. The hotel is about 10 minutes’ walk away from the downtown park which isn’t too bad. The Westin and W are more centrally located, but more expensive too.
According to their website, most rooms are more or less the same, and one of the main differences is the presence or absence of a bath tub. I expressed my preference for a room with bath tub, but then it turns out to be a quest – no one has any idea what rooms that would be.
They have to turn so many pages before finally assigning me a room. Then I make all the way to it only to find no tub in the bathroom at all. I have to go back to reception and they start another investigation, but this time they send a housekeeper to check the room first, and I eventually get what I wanted.
From what I understand they don’t have suites at this property, and what I’ve got – a high-floor, mountain view Executive room – is the best in their inventory.
The room is okay although nothing inspiring.
When the sky clears up – not very often during my stay in Seattle – you can see the mountains. The Westin and W presumably have better views as they are much taller.
To my disappointment, the bath tub is so tiny and low that you’d be lucky to fit a kid in it. I truly can’t figure out its purpose.
The previous room I entered has a microwave, but it’s not available in this one.
The M Club just re-opened the Sunday before.
Soft drinks and snacks are available throughout the day. I don’t think there’s any arrangement in the evening though.
Elite breakfast is served in the M Club.
Although there are a few hot items served, the quality is very underwhelming.
The hotel has no swimming pool, but a gym.
In summary, the Seattle Marriott Bellevue is just about acceptable and nothing more. If you want to spend your Marriott points and are on budget, it’s one of the better options in and around Seattle.