All Hilton Diamonds can now gift a Gold card
We know that Hilton’s Diamond members can gift a Gold or Diamond card if they’ve stayed enough nights a year. However, as a response to the current tough situation, the benefit has now been extended to all Diamond members regardless of the number of nights they’ve achieved this year.
Now through 31st January, any Hilton Diamond can gift another person a Gold card, and if you are a Lifetime Diamond it is upgraded to Diamond instead. The gifted status is valid for 365 days once activated.
If you qualify you should have received an email containing the unique code and just share it with whoever you like. Note that it’s targeted at those who are Diamond on 1st December, so if you hit Diamond on 1st January due to the new policies you won’t be able to benefit.
It doesn’t conflict with the old gifting rule – if you’ve stayed 60 nights this year, there are two Gold cards for you to gift in total.
Hilton’s Gold is relatively easy to achieve but comes with great benefits. Hilton has been excellent in responding to the pandemic since the very beginning.
Shop online to get the Amex Shop Small £5 credit
As we all know, Amex has launched the Shop Small campaign once again like in the summer and in previous years. It runs until 20th December and is a great way to save on your daily shopping.
But due to the current situation, it may be challenging for some to go outside and benefit from this offer. There is a workaround to this, although there’s no guarantee that it definitely works.
The thing is, some of the small shops have a website and support placing online orders. Depends on how the payment is processed, your purchase may trigger the £5 cashback offer as well.
Here is a list of such merchants, mentioned in the comments section of Headforpoints or reported by my friends:
- Silver UK – Jewellery seller
- Trouva – Clothing
- All Green – Gardening and environmental products
- Yard Sale Pizza – Pizza delivery
- Meat Me at Home – Butcher shop
- Reward Gateway – Employee benefits platform
As I mentioned earlier, these are past experiences and there’s no guarantee that your spend can still trigger the bonus, but you may wish to check it out by spending a small amount.
IHG hotels can now cost fewer than 10,000 points a night
Prior to the introduction of dynamic pricing recently, we know that IHG had fixed award prices for each individual hotel, which started at 10,000 points. There were also regular Pointbreaks promotion where award night redemption was reduced to as low as 5,000 points.
With dynamic pricing in place, this is no longer the case and Pointbreaks has become a page in the history book. Interestingly, as a side effect it appears that the 10,000-point floor has also been broken.
Here are some examples in China. Holiday Inn Express Kaifeng City Center costs only 5,000 points per night, whereas the best flexible rate is around £34:
Holiday Inn Express Zhangjiakou Park View:
Holiday Inn Express Foshan Nanhai:
Unsurprisingly these are all the select-service Holiday Inn Express hotels, and hotels in Asia tend to be cheaper than the rest of the world. It’s good to see the dynamic pricing doesn’t only go upwards anyway, and hopefully we’ll see more of such in the future.
My Review of Park Tower Knightsbridge, a Luxury Collection Hotel
We’ve finally been able to travel freely (-ish) again in England since last week. Whilst I’ve been fairly busy moving to my new flat, I’m adamant that the year end is coming and I must stay a few extra nights to hit Marriott Titanium!
My first stop is the Park Tower hotel at Knightsbridge, obviously due to it being on the Amex-£400-offer list, and thanks to my friend who gifted the offer to me. As with the Westbury Hotel at Mayfair, it also belongs to the Luxury Collection brand of Marriott.
The hotel is only one-minute walk from the Knightsbridge tube station, surrounded by Harrods, Harvey Nichols as well as other luxurious accommodations 🙂 The shape of the hotel however, hmm let’s say I don’t see the beauty in it at all!
Just re-opened its door one week ago, the hotel is a bit understaffed at the moment and some of them have to act multiple roles. The reception was empty and the guest relations manager ended up helping me with the check-in. She was very nice.
I was upgraded to a Panoramic Room on the 15th floor (17 in total). As you can see from the floor plan, every room on this floor is more or less panoramic I guess 🙂
I don’t think there’s much difference between the room and a standard one, apart from its aspect and being on a higher floor. There isn’t any nice touch I could sense, which is a shame as I thought PTK was a better hotel than the Westbury Mayfair.
The view is very nice admittedly.
I received a chocolate three-pack as a welcome gift.
I had problems with the wi-fi: it just never connects on my laptop although everything works fine on my mobile. I ended up using the wi-fi from Mandarin Oriental instead – they are just opposite the street and I’m glad they have very strong wi-fi signal 🙂
Breakfast is served in a banquet room on the first floor temporarily. Today is the first day the service returns since the first lockdown, so I’m the very first guest of their breakfast buffet since March 🙂 To be honest I’d prefer in-room dining if it was free.
As a Platinum member the breakfast the complimentary. Unfortunately the porridge and coffee are not tasty, however I really like the pancakes.
The fitness centre is open but by appointment only. There isn’t a swimming pool as far as I know.
Overall I’m not very impressed by the stay. The room is okay but nothing really stands out, which is something I’m looking for when paying £250 for a night. Hopefully I’ll get to try the other Marriott’s in the area and report back 🙂
Multiply your miles earning on Lufthansa flights
Lufthansa (or more accurately, Miles & More) ceased selling award miles a few years ago, and even completely shut down partner transfers last year due to a lawsuit, although I believe it has been partially resumed since. However, there still appears to be a way to purchase miles from them, although kind of indirectly.
Miles and More has partnered with this company called Loy Logic to handle such transactions. One of the services is called Multiply Miles, which basically lets you pay for a subscription that awards you extra miles on your next Lufthansa Group flights.
You can choose from three pre-defined subscriptions, Lite, Classic and Pro:
Alternatively once logged in, you have the option of customising your own package:
At the lower end, you can pay €99 to double your miles for a month, capped at 5,000 miles; and at the top end, you can pay €2,049 to quadruple your miles for 12 months, capped at 120,000 miles.
As you can easily see, these aren’t any good rates at all, as you are paying 1.7 – 2 eurocents per mile, let alone the fact that you must fly to collect them! How Lufthansa always comes up with such odd and funny ideas really baffles me.
On the other hand, another service it provides could be quite useful – Transfer Miles. You could transfer miles between accounts at the price of 100 miles / euro, with a maximum of 50,000 miles. If you or someone you know need a small amount of miles for a redemption, it could be a cheap and fast way to solve it.
800 Free Avios for filling out a questionnaire
You probably have heard of e-Rewards – it is an enterprise-facing service that distributes online surveys. As an end user (worker?), every time you fill out a survey you’ll earn some rewards, which could be hotel / airline points or other forms of rebate depending on the affiliation you signed up with.
By 15 December, if you register as a new e-Rewards user and complete the first survey, you’ll earn 800 bonus Avios. British Airways’ offer page is here and you need to sign up via this link. Although the offer appears to be global, the sign-up link has a .co.uk domain and you may need a UK address.
I used e-Rewards for a while a few years back. You usually earn between 50 and 500 points for each survey, co-related to the length of it. It’s definitely not rewarding enough for the time spent, so don’t expect too much out of it unless you’re just killing time. It also happens quite often that you get disqualified at the beginning or even in the middle of surveys due to “wrong answers”.
That said, 800 Avios for a few minutes on their website doesn’t sound a bad deal at all. e-Rewards has similar deals with other loyalty schemes too, so you may want to dig around a little bit if Avios is of no use to you.
Listed on BA’s offer page is another piece regarding Rocketmiles – new members get 5,000 bonus Avios after completing the first booking with them. We’ve actually written about it back in June, and now that our chances of travelling are getting slightly better you may want to re-consider using it, and your earning preference doesn’t have to be Avios. Should you want to participate, feel free to use my referral link (or enter code PKUKAYCHOU during sign-up) for 1,000 additional points after your first booking.
IHG 3-for-2 UK & Europe Sale
IHG has launched a new Night On Us sale in UK & Europe – well, “launch” isn’t the correct word, as similar deals have been coming round in the last six months or so.
- Book by 31 December
- Stay by 31 March, 2021
- A minimum stay of three nights is required
- Enjoy 34% off the Best Flexible Rate
- Non-refundable first-night deposit is required
- Changeable up to 48 hours before arrival
And here are some rates I found in London (per night):
- InterContinental London Park Lane £175
- InterContinental London The O2 £93
- Crowne Plaza Kings Cross £56
- Crowne Plaza London Kensington £76
- Hotel Indigo Paddington £69
- Holiday Inn Regents Park £60
- Holiday Inn Express Hammersmith £29
Some of the rates are quite good. However, beware that there’s a non-refundable deposit for the booking, so make sure your trip is going ahead before reserving anything.
Instant Platinum status for Red by Dufry
(This promotion has expired but there’s an alternative)
Red by Dufry is a membership programme for duty-free shoppers. They are running a promotion at the moment which elevates you to the top-tier immediately.
To participate, simply download their app and create an account if you don’t have one (you can also sign up online here). Once you’re logged in, click My Profile and you’ll see a place to enter promo code – use REDPLATSMART0821.
You may need to log out and then back in to see your status updated. I’m not sure how long the Platinum status is valid for.
One of the best Platinum benefits was $10 for a Dragonpass single entry, which unfortunately has been discontinued and all members have to pay a flat $27 now.
However, you can still enjoy 10% off at Dufry shops – this includes World Duty Free shops at Heathrow and many other airports globally.