[Black Friday] Save 50% on hotels & flights with lastminute.com
It’s flying under the radar, but lastminute.com is running a very good sale at the moment.
It’s featured under its Pink Friday themed promotion. Until 30th November, you can enjoy 50% off their hotel, flight or flight+hotel gift vouchers. Simply enter promo code PINKFRIDAY50 when you check out. You can buy as many voucher as you like, but keep in mind that they are valid for 12 months, and you can only redeem one voucher per booking.
After you’ve made the purchase, you’ll be redirected to the voucher management page. Press Activate for myself and the voucher code will be sent to your email address.
Because of the rules, the ideal situation is when the booking costs exactly £50 so you have a genuine half-price saving. It’s quite straightforward to redeem, just be sure to compare the prices with other platforms before you book:
(I have no clue why the discount is 4p excessive either!)
For flights, note that you can only redeem on return trips.
If you know that you’ll have some (un-expensive) trips in the next twelve months, it may make sense to stock up some of the lastminute vouchers now.
Airtime Rewards – save on your phone bills via daily shopping
Well this idea is new to me too, but you can actually get money off your phone bills by doing (almost) nothing!
The trick is this app called Airtime Rewards. You simply need to download the app, register your phone number, link your bank card(s) and then forget about it. If you shop using the card(s) at qualified retailers, cashback will cumulate towards your next phone bill.
It doesn’t sound utterly new – actually it functions similarly to the in-store cashback system offered by certain websites. However, Airtime Rewards is different in:
- Cashback can only be redeemed against your phone bill
- There are many participating retailers
Currently, the following is a selection of the retailers I can see in the app, as well as the cashback rate:
- Boots – 5%
- Argos – 2%
- Farfetch – 5%
- Topshop / Topman – 2%
- Clarks – 5%
- The Body Shop – 5%
- Feel Unique – 2%
- Debenhams – 4%
- Groupon – 3%
- Halfords – 5%
- Q-Park – 2%
- megabus – 5%
- Gett Taxi – 10%
Some retailer offers may be targeted to only selected customers. Cashback is usually available for both online and in-store (where applicable) purchases. You don’t need to go through any special link, just shop as usual and purchase using the registered card.
Airtime Rewards supports all major network providers, including Vodafone, Three, O2, EE and giffgaff.
The trick is, cashbacks can take a long time to confirm. Depending on the retailer, it may take weeks or even months before the cashback becomes payable, and you can only redeem chunks of £10 (or another amount, depending on the network) against your phone bill. However, it requires minimum effort and the long processing time doesn’t bother me.
Only Visa and Mastercard are supported at the moment, so no American Express. It’s also mentioned in their FAQs that Curve isn’t supported, but it worked for me and many others.
If it interests you, it’s worth noting that Airtime Rewards runs a referral scheme. Sign up using my referral code NAYK9C9Y and you’ll earn £0.5 free credit immediately, plus another £1 if you spend within 7 days. I’ll also earn the bonuses too, thank you!
[Black Friday] IHG 30%-off UK & Europe sale
Our first Black-Friday post – IHG has started their sale early this year.
You can access IHG’s promotion page here. As you may have realised, it’s not really a new offer. “More To See” is a promotion that IHG started earlier this year and has been going on for a while, although the actual content has altered a few times.
In terms of the BF edition:
- Book by January 10th, 2021
- Stay between December 4th, 2020 and April 30th, 2021
- Valid for hotels in the UK and Europe
- You save 32% off the best flexible rate (including 2% member-exclusive)
- Free cancellation allowed 72 hours before check-in
Look for the Book Now Pay Later rate plan when you search:
Here are some London hotels I found, for the first Saturday of December:
- InterContinental London Park Lane £192
- InterContinental London The O2 £134
- Crowne Plaza Kings Cross £67
- Crowne Plaza London Kensington £65
- Hotel Indigo Paddington £59
The rates are not bad, but to be honest I was expecting something more from IHG. At least I thought they’d re-run the 2-for-1 flash sale which was offered a few months ago.
£20 cashback when making three purchases via Paypal
If you could spend some money on fashion or takeaways in the next month, you may consider using Paypal’s cashback offer.
To sign up, visit this page. In order to redeem the offer, you need to make three transactions with any of the following six retailers, the minimum spend of which needs to be £30 each:
- ao.com
- ASOS
- Just Eat
- Lego
- Not On the High Street
- Waterstones
You’ll receive £20 cashback from Paypal when accomplishing it by 31 December. It’s limited to 105,000 participants, but I doubt it will run out so there’s no need to rush.
If you don’t have a Paypal account yet, I could send you a referral link. Once you’ve signed up and spent at least £5, both of us will get £10 free credit. If you are interested please send me an email at [email protected].
Free £5 voucher & 15% for Amazon Kid
Two new Amazon offers which are useful if you have kids!
[Free £5 voucher]
Check your eligibility here. Create a Child profile for the first time by the end of this year, and receive a £5 promotional reward.
Note that the £5 can only be used for products in Baby, Toys or Clothes and Shoes for children categories and minimum spend of £20 is required.
[15% off a Kids’ wish list]
Offer page is here. Create an Amazon Kids’ Wish List for the first time and add some products in it. Wait 24 hours for the code KWL15 to activate. Apply the code for 15% off before checking out.
Note that the range of applicable products is limited to the Kids section only, so even if “your kid” wanted a, say PS5, the discount code won’t work😉.
The promotion ends 30 November.
Marriott and Choice selling points with a bonus
Both Marriott Bonvoy and Choice Privileges are selling points with a (decent) bonus at the moment.
For Marriott, the offer’s page is here. It runs only for a week until 25 November. You get a 60% bonus (37.5% discount) when purchasing at least 2,000 points, and the annual purchase limit triples to 150,000 points (pre-bonus).
Factoring in the the bonus you are paying $78.125, or £59 per 10,000 Marriott points, which is a fair trade. This is the best price that Marriott has ever offered, however I’d expect similar promotions to re-appear in the near future, so unless you have a massive demand for Marriott points you don’t have to buy them now.
The second offer is by Choice Privileges, with a decent 40% bonus (28.5% off). This is also one of the better deals you can expect from them.
As discussed here, Choice points can be of great value when redeeming high-end hotel stays in Northern Europe. They are also great for budget hotels in Japan – although it’s less likely for you to be able to travel there anytime soon.
My Review of Hampton London Waterloo
As we’ve mentioned earlier, Hilton is running a very generous promotion for day use rooms. It also happens that I need to spend a few more quid to redeem my Amex cashback deal, so I was looking to spend a few hours in a London Hilton hotel.
The cheapest option in London is Hilton Hyde Park, for a ridiculously low price of £40. However I needed to spend £44 to trigger the Amex offer, So in the end I chose the (slightly more expensive) Hampton Waterloo hotel which is more convenient for me as well.
The hotel is around five-minutes’ walk to the Waterloo train station. Although there’s not much to do in the area, it’s a good base to explore London due to the transport links, and its proximity to the Thames may be preferable to some.
As London is in lockdown and the hotel is only running with skeleton staff, the entrance is closed and you need to buzz the get in. The ground floor / reception area looks quite new and functional.
I was assigned a Queen Room with City View, which is sort of an upgrade due to my Diamond status.
As you can expect from a Hampton hotel, the room is a bit on the small and basic side. It should offer you what you need though.
The bathroom is shower-only.
There isn’t much of a view, but you do see a bit of the City 🙂
Since I only stayed a few hours in the room I don’t have much more to say. The hotel and its rooms are definitely adequate, but from my previous observations it’s not really a lot cheaper than its full-service counterparts in London (Hiltons and Doubletrees). You probably prefer to stay somewhere else as long as you have status.
My points (including the 10,000 bonus) and two night credits posted OK a couple days later.
Qatar Airways launches student club – discount, extra baggage and elite status!
If you are or are going to be a student, Qatar Airways has just launched a Student Club programme which is worth joining for a range of benefits.
You can access the programme page here. To qualify for the club, you must be aged between 18 and 30, and studying for a university degree or higher. You need to provide expected graduation date upon registration.
The first benefit is fare discount – you receive a 10%-off promo code immediately after enrolment. Once you’ve completed the trip you’ll receive a second 15%-off code; and upon completion of the second trip you’ll receive a 20%-off one. You’ll only receive the discount three times and they only apply to flights taken by the member.
According to the terms, as I understand it the discount is off the full ticket price, rather than just the base fare, which is quite good.
In addition, you also receive the following benefits:
- 10kg extra baggage allowance if you don’t hold any elite status
- Complimentary Super Wi-fi onboard
- One complimentary date change per ticket – note that fare difference is still payable
Last but not least, upon graduation you’ll also receive an uplift of your Qatar Airways Privilege Club status. As long as you’ve flown at least one round-trip (revenue ticket only) per year after enrolment, when you graduate your Privilege Club status will be upgraded by one tier. If you are already Platinum, you status is extended by one year for free.
The programme looks very practical for students who travel long-haul regularly. I’d probably join if I could, however I’d prefer to credit my flights to a better loyalty programme instead, e.g. British Airways 😉.