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Earn Virgin Atlantic miles with the American Express and Red Carnation Hotels cashback deal

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You may have received an email from American Express yesterday offering you £50 cashback if you spend £250 at Red Carnation Hotels.

Assuming you were targeted, it is valid at their nine UK hotels for stays completed by 19th May.  In London, they are dotted around Kensington and Belgravia – The Milestone, The Rubens, The Egerton House Hotel, The Chesterfield, 41 Hotel etc.  The full list is here.

What Amex didn’t remind you is that Red Carnation Hotels is a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club partner.  Full details can be found on the Virgin site here.

The standard earning rate is 2,000 Virgin miles per night.  This is substantially better than any other Virgin Flying Club hotel partner.

Virgin Flying Club recently announced that Red Carnation will cease to be a partner on 13th April.  Oddly, the wording has now disappeared from the Flying Club website so I don’t know what is happening.  Assuming it is ending, you still have three weeks to take advantage and £50 cashback PLUS 2,000 Virgin Atlantic miles per night is not a bad deal at all.

The Red Carnation website is here if you want to find out more.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points. 

Category

Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (102)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Trevor says:
    20 Mar20 March 12:55

    Thanks for the reminder Rob. Got to be careful about the items coming from Amazon. “Fulfilled by Amazon” does not work. A couple of SD cards for the holiday for a tenner instead of £25. Perfect…..

  • Craig Strickland says:
    20 Mar20 March 17:50

    OT: Mrs S is waiting until June to apply for a MRG, she has a BA and is supp on my BA & Plat. Can I recommend her for the SPG to earn a referral then cancel and apply for the gold in 3 months?

  • Gman says:
    20 Mar20 March 18:04

    Ot – I have three cc linked to my curve corporate debit card. Can I withdraw 200 pounds via each card? Or is the £200/month calender limit means I will be charged for more than 200?

    • memesweeper says:
      20 Mar20 March 19:27

      No. It is £ 200 /month per Curve card.

    • Anna says:
      20 Mar20 March 19:33

      No you can withdraw £200 per card per calendar month without incurring fees. Other posters have made the point that your other spending needs to be at level that makes the cash withdrawals acceptable. I am assuming that making utility payments counts toward this type of spend but it’s not been confirmed.

      • memesweeper says:
        20 Mar20 March 19:39

        +1 for playing fair with Curve. I use it for absolutely everything that isn’t Amex. I rarely need more than £200/month in cash anyway.

  • memesweeper says:
    20 Mar20 March 19:30

    My Curve is badly playing up now, working in shops (PIN and contactless) but useless online: ‘Authentication error’ for everything I’ve tried since Sunday. Curve support unable to work out what the problem is, but it is very consistent. 🙁 Hope they fix this soon.

    • Anna says:
      20 Mar20 March 19:34

      Which retailers are you having problems with?

      • memesweeper says:
        20 Mar20 March 19:37

        > Which retailers are you having problems with?

        All of them! Tried HMRC, a couple of others, then when I couldn’t make a low-value purchase from Argos, who is one of their partners, I realised it was properly broken for all online purchases.

        • Leo says:
          20 Mar20 March 19:43

          My only real interest in Curve is to pay HMRC etc. I’m slowly trying to build up Curve usage to increase limits to do this. If people are finding paying HMRC is no longer an option going forward I will ditch Curve for the second time. Can people trying to pay tax with Curve drop a comment in now or then to let the rest of us know how HMRC payments are going?

        • Genghis says:
          20 Mar20 March 19:52

          @Leo what would you lose by not using Curve? I use for all non Amex spend where don’t need S75 protection as I quite like the functionality of the product.

        • Memesweeper says:
          20 Mar20 March 20:09

          Leo — As well as tax payments i’ve found the go back in time feature to be handy. And it slims the wallet. 🙂

        • Rob says:
          20 Mar20 March 20:58

          What card is linked?

        • BLT says:
          20 Mar20 March 21:00

          @Genghis The problem with using curve as your go to card is that it reduces the max £50K you can use it at HMRC. As that’s the main draw for me (and I spend over £50K annually at HMRC), I can’t use it regularly on places that accept credit cards.

        • Genghis says:
          20 Mar20 March 21:42

          @BLT fair enough. I don’t have that “problem”. But so far, how much have you used Curve to pay HMRC? Are you just using it to pay HMRC?

        • Memesweeper says:
          20 Mar20 March 21:47

          Got many linked, including Lloyds Avios, MBNA Virgin and HSBC — makes no odds what is chosen at the time of the transaction, online fails and there’s no indication of a decline in the app.

    • Luckyjim says:
      20 Mar20 March 22:38

      I suspect curve have blocked certain payees – similar to what happened with 3V.

    • Mr dee says:
      20 Mar20 March 22:38

      How long have you had your Curve account?

      Hmrc payments seem ok for accounts that are older but Hmrc declining for newer accounts, wouldn’t surprise me if they have put a minimum account opening time before some payments can be made.

      • Leo says:
        20 Mar20 March 22:45

        I did get a payment through HMRC in January, just for such a small amount – £200, I couldn’t be bothered to make multiple payments in such small stages! I’m hoping to get a slightly larger amount through by July. @Genghis yes it’s fairly nifty but I only use the IHG card and amex so I don’t feel the need to use Curve for the sake of it.

    • Mr dee says:
      20 Mar20 March 22:39

      Btw HMRC definitely still works for some

  • BLT says:
    20 Mar20 March 22:06

    @Genghis I kept the original Beta card until swapping for a debit card in February. My PAYE is around 4-5K a month and have managed to do that over the past couple of months (in max 2k chunks per day). It’s a good problem to have, Prior to HMRC changing the rules I just used my IHG premium card and achieved Spire through HMRC spend.

  • Rob says:
    21 Mar21 March 10:10

    Yes

    • Heidi says:
      27 Mar27 March 11:37

      I have got the same message and I have not used the promotion before. What might I be doing wrong? I have linked my amex gold card. applied £0.01in points then added the code. There is £31 of product sold by Amazon EU. Not sure what else I might be doing wrong.

  • EwanG says:
    1 Apr1 April 09:00

    The promotion has been extended. Now ends 30/06/2018

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