Home » Posts tagged 'fast status' (Page 5)
Tag Archives: fast status
Free Emirates Silver for transferring your hotel points
Like many other airlines, Emirates has run a few different forms of promotions this year to collect funding, and the one currently running is particularly interesting.
You can access the offer here. It appears that the offer page is only shown when selected country is UAE, but according to the terms and conditions it should be available to all members globally.
Before 31 January 2021, all award miles transferred from eligible partner programmes will also earn 25% tier miles as a bonus. You can earn maximum 25,000 tier miles (requires 100K award miles transfer), which is just enough to upgrade you to Emirates Silver.
Eligible partners include certain banks in UAE, as well as Accor, Hyatt, Marriott and Shangri-la.
When flying Emirates, Silver offers the following privileges:
- Free seat selection
- Extra baggage allowance
- Priority check-in and boarding
- Business Class lounge access at Dubai
You could also earn 1 Emirates mile for every USD you spend at Marriott hotels globally through the Your World programme, and this is in addition to the Marriott points. Note that you’ll first need to link your Marriott and Emirates accounts here.
Emirates doesn’t have the best redemption chart in the world, however for redeeming Business Class or First Class tickets on their own metal the miles are not bad. I transferred 85K Amex points earlier this year for a First Class trip in February, and God knows whether I’ll be able to fly…
Aside from redeeming on flights, you could also use the miles on sports or event tickets sponsored by Emirates, which usually are great deals.
The best shot it is to transfer 240K Marriott points over and hit Emirates Silver straightaway, probably some time in January to maximise the duration of your membership. It may not be a crazy idea if you are sitting on a pile of Marriott points, and Emirates miles aren’t useless after all.
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.
Buy Star Alliance Gold & 130K miles for €718
TAP Portugal has been running a status match promotion – and now even better, you could buy out a Star Alliance Gold card directly without any conditions!
The offer page is here. Now through 30th November, if you purchase the Club Top or Club Platinum membership, you’ll be granted TAP Portugal Silver or Gold status for six months.
They match Star Alliance Silver and Gold status respectively. Your account will be updated by 9th December.
As we know, *A Silver means next to nothing, so let’s just take a look what Club Platinum offers:
- Annual fee: €718
- *A Gold for six-months, and then TAP Silver benefits until it expires
- 36,000 welcome miles, plus 8,000 miles per month, so a total of 132,000 miles after one year
- Some exclusive benefits when you fly TAP, e.g. 25% bonus miles
*A Gold comes with business class check-in, fast track, airport lounge access (plus one guest) and additional baggage allowance etc, when you fly TAP, Lufthansa Group, United, ANA and other *A carriers. You are essentially pay seven hundred euro for these benefits and 130K miles.
You can check TAP Portugal’s redemption chart here. There’s nothing exceptional, but with 130K miles you can still get a one-way flight in business class from Europe to any part of world except Australia, subject to taxes and fees of course.
[Black Friday] 50% extra on IHG Bonus Points Package
In addition to its hotel sale, IHG is also giving Bonus Points Package bookings a boost this Black Friday.
You can see its mention on the BF promo page here, and details about Bonus Points Package here. If you book any package by the end of this year, and stay by 31st March 2021, you’ll earn 50% extra on the package. For example if you book a 5000-points package, you’ll earn 7500 bonus points for the booking in total.
And IHG has made it crystal clear on the promo pages – these points count toward status. With this promotion it may be fairly easy for you to hit Spire next year, although it doesn’t have many solid benefits unless your stays are mostly in Asia.
Impressive Finnair promotion: 100% bonus on miles purchase & “free” Oneworld Sapphire status
Finnair is running a very interesting bonus promotion on miles purchase, and plus you can get free elite status with them (and Oneworld)!
You can view the offer here. Firstly, you get a bonus when making a purchase of at least 5,000 Finnair Plus points:
- 5,000 – 49,000 points: 60%
- 50,000 – 99,000 points: 80%
- 100,000 – 150,000 points: 100%
At 100%, you are buying Finnair Plus points at €64.375 per 10K points, which is roughly £58 at the current exchange rate.
The best use of Finnair points is on cabin upgrade:
- One-way intra-Europe upgrade from HEL costs 10K points (£58)
- One-way intercontinental upgrade from HEL costs 50K points (£290)
In terms of reward flights, a one-way flight from HEL to North America or Asia in business class costs 80K points (£464) plus taxes and surcharges, which is passable.
The second part of this offer is more fun though. During the promotion period, you will earn 25% of the total amount you buy as tier points. If you max out at 150,000 points, with 100% bonus on top it means you will get 75,000 tier points for free. It is more than enough to lift you to Finnair’s Silver status, which requires 30,000 tier points only.
Equivalent to BA’s Bronze, Finnair Silver comes with priority check-in and seat selection privilege. It doesn’t just stop here though – Finnair allows you to transfer award points into tier points at the ratio of 3:1, which means you could convert 15,000 of the purchased points into 5,000 tier points, and upgrade yourself to Finnair Gold (80,000 tier points).
In a word, if you are happy to pay £1740 to Finnair, you get free Oneworld Sapphire status that grants you business class lounge access (plus one guest), priority check-in and boarding, free seat selection and extra baggage allowance. In addition you are also left with an account balance of 285K Finnair points.
Similar to BA, Finnair’s status accrual is based on membership year rather than calendar year. I’m not totally sure but from the sound it if you open a new account now and take part, your Gold status is valid for the current and next membership year, which is almost two years.
Upon reaching Gold, you get to choose one of the following three elite gifts:
- Four one-way short-haul upgrade vouchers
- One one-way long-haul upgrade voucher
- One 2-4-1 award ticket voucher
Note that for Silver members, the cap on your converted tier points is 40,000, so you cannot just buy your way up to Platinum using this trick.
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.
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.
Preferred Hotels offer: Elite status after one stay
Preferred Hotels is a soft hotel alliance, similar to Leading Hotels of the World and Small Luxury Hotels. Some very well-known hotels in London are part of this group, for example Royal Lancaster London and the Beaumont Hotel.
