Village Hotels Last Minute Escape – UK hotels starting from £29
Village Hotels is a UK hotel chain that specialised in hotels in the, hmm, villages and suburbs. Although usually not ideal for a city break, they are good value for a family / weekend getaway, especially as they run very frequent promotions.
(more…)Great Accor fast track offer – Up to 10 bonus night credits after one stay
After withdrawing all its free status offers, Accor has been very stingy and there’s almost no way to fast track to Platinum status (still some for Gold and Silver). While Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt etc. are all offering fast track or status match opportunities, Accor doesn’t seem to care.
It seems though that Accor has finally opened up its gate. As you can see on this page, you will earn a certain number of bonus night credits after booking and staying once by the end of this year.
Note that it must be a new booking made after registration. Classic, Silver and Gold members earn 5, 7 and 10 bonus night credits respectively. There’s no incentive for Platinum members.
There’s a catch though – this is a targeted offer intended for Flight Centre Travel Group clients. However the terms and conditions make no suggestion that you must book via them to trigger the offer, so there is a chance that it may work for every one.
After clicking Subscribe Now, I received a success message and a confirmation email.
If you have any plan of staying at an Accor hotel by the end of this year, it’s a no brainer to sign up even if it may not work in the end. Night credits collected this year also count towards status in the next year.
My Review of the Lufthansa Business Lounge, LHR T2
Courtesy of TAP Portugal, I’m now Star Alliance Gold until April next year 😉. My first relevant experience should have been Ankara, when I flew Turkish Airlines to Istanbul. However it’s only until I passed security did I find out that TK has a separate VIP terminal at Ankara airport! Well, stupid me…
(more…)Incredible BA sale, Oneworld Sapphire for £430!
We mentioned British Airways’s latest sale a while ago, which had quite a few nice offers. However obviously the sale hasn’t been successful enough, as BA has decided to lower the prices to an incredible level!
The sale’s page is here. The most important bit, the Europe Luxury Sale can be accessed here. You can find some deal examples on that page, but the best way to navigate is via BA’s low fare finder.
Here are some of the deals, departing from London (Club Europe, return):
- Basel £132
- Billund £122
- Dublin £107
- Krakow £124
- Luxembourg £126
- Pisa £132
- Athens £195
- Bucharest £172
- Catania £228
- Gran Canaria £204
- Istanbul £182
- Larnaca £192
- Malta £236
- Reykjavik £154
- Santorini £268
- Sofia £146
- Tirana £196
The destinations in bold earn you 160 TP return, and the ones in front earn 80 TP. Remember that BA has dropped their qualification criteria by 30%. You need 210 / 420 / 1050 TP to earn Bronze / Silver / Gold status, which means 2 / 3 / 7 return trips respectively, if you take the 160-TP routes.
From a practical point of view, I’d recommend going for Silver, which is Oneworld Sapphire equivalent. It only takes three returns, which is fairly doable, and costs less than £500 if you take the cheapest routes.
There are also a few good economy-class deals to Asia:
- Beijing £369
- Shanghai £368
- Hong Kong £403
- Bangkok £379
- Singapore £355
- Kuala Lumpur £380
However, I don’t think I have to stress on the uncertainly for any travel at the moment. Good news is you could always request a future travel voucher if you don’t want to fly anymore. And in case of flight cancellations – I’ve had two recently and the refund was processed really fast, and it never took me more than 2 minutes to get through to the Gold service line.
IHG new double points promotion
IHG has launches its new global promotion, which is a bit boring.
The promotion’s page is here and you can register via this link.
- Valid for stays between 1 October and 15 December
- You earn double points on each stay
- Chase IHG credit card holders earn 10,000 bonus points after first (paid) stay
Compared to the previous round, where you could earn up to quadruple points, this new promotion is not very exciting. Personally I think it’s not as good as the ones from Marriott, Hilton or Hyatt either.
Unfortunately IHG seems to have forgotten about its affiliated credit cards outside North America – I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just offer the bonus to all IHG credit card members?
Marriott buy points 50% bonus sale
Marriott’s last round of points sale finished two months ago, but obviously they didn’t intend to let us wait long – the new round has just started.
- You get 50% bonus for purchases of 2,000 points or more
- The annual purchase limit has also increased to 150,000 points
- The promotion runs until 22 October
Under this promotion, you pay $83.33 for every 10,000 points, which is roughly £64.8.
50% bonus is Marriott’s second best offer, and it’s not difficult to avail at this price. However, given how frequently the sale is running now, I wouldn’t recommend buying without imminent use.
For maximising your Marriott points’ value, please refer to my following posts:
My Review of the iGA Lounge, Istanbul Airport
When planning my inbound trip to London from Istanbul, I really wished to fly Turkish Airlines as I was hoping to try out their renowned business class lounge at IST – and not to mention that their product in the air is generally deemed a lot better than BA. Unfortunately, their flight ticket was THREE times more expensive, so I had to stick to BA instead.
(more…)Marriott UK & Europe PointSavers Hotel List
Similar to the Pointbreaks promotion that IHG used to run, Marriott also has a regular promotion named PointSavers which offers discount on award night redemption.
