TAP Portugal sale: London to Cancun and Brazil for £1,100
TAP Portugal’s sale has returned, which includes some bargains if you are looking to travel to Cancun or Brazil.
The offer page for UK departure is here. There are similar deals for departures from Portugal, Spain and France etc, so if you are based in those countries you may want to check it out too.
The most attractive deals listed on the page are (ex-London or -Manchester, business class return):
- Cancun £1,262
- Rio de Janeiro £1,333
- Sao Paolo £1,334
Cancun is wide open from April, however for Brazil in order to get the cheap fare you have to depart in October and beyond. Here are a couple of examples:
London – Cancun April 18 – 22
London – Sao Paolo November 17 – 26
Remember, you can always add a stopover in Lisbon / Porto for over 24 hours, which helps you escape from UK’s ridiculous APD. You can expect to save about £150:
Ticket is refundable at a penalty of €165. From what I can see travel agencies are only slightly cheaper than TAP Portugal, so I recommend booking direct, which makes your life much easier if there’s a flight schedule change or you want to cancel your flight.
The booking class is J, and you will earn between 125% and 200% with TAP Portugal’s partners.
Buy one get one free – Expedia £30 Black Friday offer for a hotel booking
Expedia used to run ludicrous Black Friday offers, for example 50% off and $500 coupon discount etc. The good old days are gone, but Expedia UK still has an interesting promotion for this year.
- Book by November 28
- Stay by March 31
- Earn £30 in bonus points for a hotel booking
Remember that you must be an Expedia member and activate the promotion first. Terms are opaque, but you will see the 3,000 bonus points on the checkout page if your booking is eligible:
From what I see, you need to spend minimum £31 to earn the bonus. It can be any hotel in any country across the Expedia UK website.
Expedia Rewards points can be easily redeemed against your future hotel or flight booking, so it’s almost like cash if you don’t mind using them. For a cheap hotel booking you are paying £30-ish to get £30 back in points, which is almost buy-one-get-one-free.
Save an additional 20% at UK Kimpton hotels
This year’s Black Friday is a bit of a lacklustre and nothing got me really excited. However, if you live in the UK and is an IHG fan, there is a Kimpton deal that could be useful.
Three Kimpton hotels in the UK are promoting their gift vouchers:
- Kimpton London Fitzroy promo code KFL20
- Kimpton Manchester Clocktower promo code KCT20
- Kimpton Edinburgh Charlotte Square promo code KCL20
You get 20% discount on all vouchers. What I recommend is to buy the Monetary Gift Vouchers, which can be redeemed for accommodation or dining at the respective hotel. If you book via IHG you should still be able to use the voucher, as long as it’s a pay-at-hotel rate, not prepaid.
It should work in addition to whatever discount rate you book on ihg.com, for example the BOGOF voucher via InterContinental Ambassador. Also IHG has an exciting offer coming up this Cyber Monday.
Note that the voucher is valid for 12 months, and must be redeemed in full so choose the value carefully.
Save 50% off your restaurant bill with TheFork
You probably have heard of or even used OpenTable and SquareMeal, which are famous online restaurant booking platforms. One of their competitors just came into my attention recently, and they are running a very good promotion which covers London and other UK cities.
TheFork, backed by TripAdvisor, is a restaurant reservation platform that was founded in Australia but now supports dozens of countries in Europe and Americas. It works in a very similar way to OpenTable.
They are now running an event called TheFork Festival that ends on November 27th. Participating restaurants may offer up to 50% off your food bill!
Some of the names in London are:
- Hard Rock Cafe Oxford Street
- Clermont Charing Cross
- Harrods Social
- Podium Restaurant at London Hilton Park Lane
- Sushi Salsa (Japanese)
- Happy Lamb Bayswater (Chinese)
- Sticky Mango (Malaysian)
Some popular venues may have very limited 50%-off slots and offer 20%-off or 30%-off instead, but more availability could turn up closing in. I made a 50%-off reservation myself and the saving was impressive!
TheFork also runs a loyalty program where you collect yums by making reservations and they can be redeemed against your future bills at select restaurants. If you use my referral code 83720151 on your first booking you’ll earn 1,000 yums which is worth £20.
My review of Plaza Premium Lounge, London Heathrow T4 (Departure)
When travelling from Heathrow, most of the time my flight would depart from T5 or T3, so I haven’t been to T4 or T2 that often at all. Due to their close ties with Etihad Airways, Air Serbia operates at Terminal 4 which gives me a chance to refresh my memories before my flight to Belgrade.
Air Serbia business class passengers and Etihad Guest elite members are invited to relax in the Plaza Premium Lounge before taking off. T4 also has a very good Plaza Premium Arrival Lounge – I didn’t have the time to revisit it but will try to review next time.
The entrance is right by the Qatar Airways Lounge.
I’ve been to the Skyteam Lounge a long time ago when travelling on Air France. It was in the Priority Pass network, closed during the pandemic and then permanently. Strangely enough but It means that Skyteam no longer has a lounge at London Heathrow.
Plaza Premium also terminated their cooperation with Priority Pass recently, but you get still get in with Amex Platinum or Dragonpass.
I arrived at around 12pm and the lounge is really quiet.
It’s got a lot of space, and different areas are carefully curated. Plaza Premium Group is headquartered in Hong Kong and there are definitely some Asian influences in their interior design, for example the orchids.
These semi-private booths remind me of my overnight stay at the Plaza Premium Lounge at HKG…
The buffet area looks like an open-plan kitchen, but it isn’t.
The following hot food options are available:
- Penne pasta with broccoli pesto sauce
- Chicken tikka masala
- Chickpea sweet potato and pepper tagine
- Carrot coriander soup
- Steamed rice
- Peach crumble
I had some chicken tikka masala and pasta and they were really good.
There is a bar on the other side of the lounge but at that time it doesn’t seem to be manned.
As an Air Serbia guest I can order one premium drink for free.
As always I’m very satisfied by this Plaza Premium lounge, although my complaint would be the bar doesn’t get any natural light and isn’t as live as its T5 sibling. I definitely think it’s a better hard product than the Skyteam Lounge, and would also like to check out the Qatar Airways Lounge some day.
My review of Bankside Hotel, Autograph Collection
My Amex Marriott card has a nice Spend £250 Get £100 back offer for booking Marriott hotels, so I’m ready to try out another new Marriott hotel in London. I need to be near the Shard for dinner (burning my expiring Shangri-La voucher), so the Bankside Hotel stands out.
The hotel is roughly 8 minutes from either the Blackfriars or the Southwark tube station. The south bank is perfect for walking along the Thames and exploring the likes of Tate Modern, Tower Bridge and London Eye, but not as convenient in terms of public transport.
The hotel is new and chic.
Titanium members get 1,000 points as a welcome amenity, and can choose between breakfast and an £8 F&B voucher in addition.
All guest floors feature a vending machine, plus a refill station with both still and sparkling water.
I received a one-level upgrade to an Ample room, which isn’t particularly generous. I submitted my suite night award for the largest suite, but it was unfortunately declined.
The room is pretty smart.
Popcorns, bottled water and a small chocolate bar are complimentary. There’s also a small plate of deserts as my welcome gift.
Breakfast is served in the restaurant on the ground floor.
The buffet is good.
You can pay a £5 supplement for the a-la-carte items, which is a fair price.
I like the hotel and its location. However, being a boutique hotel it has no gym, pool or club lounge. If those are important you should probably consider the Hilton instead.
Earn £5 voucher for using Amazon Pay
Amazon Pay is Amazon’s payment product which is similar to Paypal, Google Pay or Apple Pay. To encourage its acceptance, Amazon has started a new initiative for customers to try it out. I noticed the following banner on Amazon’s homepage:
Which brings me to this offer page. Unlike other Amazon offers, the page doesn’t seem to indicate whether one is eligible for the promotion or not.
If you are eligible, pay at least £10 via Amazon Pay by November 25th and a £5 Amazon voucher will be deposited into your account, which can be redeemed against a purchase of £25 or more. Act fast as it’s open to the first 2,500 customers only.
You can find all merchants supporting Amazon Pay on this page. The list isn’t very long, and some of the better known names are All Saints, Trespass, Dyson, Feel Unique, Hotel Chocolat and National Express.
Other Amazon offers:
- £10 off your first Amazon App purchase
- £20 off your first Amazon Fresh and Morrisons order
- Get £10 Amazon voucher for using its Photos app
- £4 off your next Amazon pickup order
- £5 Amazon bonus when topping up £60
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Music
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Podcast
- Earn £5 voucher for using Amazon Pay
- Free £5 Amazon voucher to claim
- £5 voucher for watching Amazon Prime Video
- £5 reward for creating an Amazon wish list
- £15 free money to spend at Amazon Fresh stores
- Amazon Warehouse £5 free voucher
10% off train and bus tickets with Uber Travel
Uber launched a railway ticket booking service in partnership with Omio a couple of months ago. The platform has now expanded to include National Express too, with a nice cashback promotion.
You can access the service via the Travel section in the Uber app.
It works just like any other online ticket retailers. You can apply a railcard and purchase any ticket type including Advance. You can book National Express and Eurostar too (as it’s backed by Omio).
By the end of this year, you earn 10% cashback in Uber credit for all your bookings. The cashback is deposited into your account within 10 days of the completion of your travel, and is valid for 180 days.
I made a dummy booking, and it turns out you can redeem your credit on Uber Travel like for rides and takeaways. If you’ve bought discounted Uber gift cards (e.g. via Morrisons or Monese offers), buying train tickets on Uber Travel saves you up to an additional 30%!