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Next year is a big birthday and I’m looking to splash out on a 2 week holiday to Canada. I’m working hard on earning Avios to upgrade 1 flight to business class, but it would be great if I can also have a night or 2 in a ‘nice’ hotel room.
I’m going on 3 or 4 small city breaks this year am wondering: would it be better to stick to 1 hotel brand for these, earn their rewards scheme points and use those on a ‘nice’ room next year, or would I be better to carry on chasing the Avios for the flight? I’m chasing Avios mainly through an Amex card, using British Airways Executive Store and Nectar points.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Have you looked at Rob’s article on collecting avios? If you’re not travelling until next year you should be able to collect enough avios for a return in business to Canada (depending on availability), even if you’re a relatively modest spender.
It’s quite hard to collect a lot of hotel points unless you’re staying a lot or using one of the hotel branded credit cards which mostly aren’t open to new customers any more. If you can get enough avios to cover your flight (so you’re only paying the admittedly still chunky taxes and surcharges), you might be better looking at a cash deal for a hotels; you’ve plenty of time to look out for bargains or free night offers. Emyr at Bon Vivant who’s often mentioned on this site sometimes has 3 for 2 deals with some excellent added benefits.
You’ll probably get a few more responses if you specify where in Canada you’re planning to fly to and which hotel chain you’re looking at collecting points with.This is great advice, thank you. For Canada I’m looking at Toronto/Montreal but semi flexible across the eastern side (I’m planning on moving around through the big cities so I’m not fussed where I fly into/out of). In terms of hotel brands, I didn’t have a particular one in mind, I was just going to pick one and try to make sure I booked a room there each time. But from the sounds of it, chasing hotel rewards is going to be tougher
If you’re not already active in a hotel scheme, you’re unlikely to get much from the odd night here and there. Some hotels will let you take Avios instead, albeit at modest rates, or let you transfer their hotel points.
If you have no hotel status, look at Hotels.com Rewards. It’s basically ‘book 10 nights, get a free night for the average price you paid’. It means you never need to compromise on hotel quality or location to fit in with a particular chain, but you still get a decent reward. More here: https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/05/01/review-hotels-com-rewards/
A lot of people would be better off moving to this instead of doing the odd night here and there in their preferred scheme.
Hotels.com are sometimes cheaper than booking direct, as I found out recently!
Hotels.com are sometimes cheaper than booking direct, as I found out recently!
Seen this quite a bit for Accor since Covid
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“You should be able to collect enough avios for a return in business to Canada (depending on availability), even if you’re a relatively modest spender.”And don’t forget, if getting the whole thing in avios for a ticket in Business turns out to be elusive, if you choose a Premier Economy ticket in cash then if you find an avios seat in Business either when you book or later (with a change fee if later) you can pay just the diffence in avios between PY cost in avios and Business cost, to upgrade to it. This means you’d need far less avios.
You’d pay BA some extra ‘taxes’ for the upgrade but it’s not too bad. Annoying actually, true taxes arw exactly the same for PY and Business and also the same in First, but BA insists on grabbing an extra higher fee for each class and calling it taxes.
The overall ‘taxes’ may well work out much better this way too. Because these days the cash cost to buy a PY ticket is not that different to the ‘taxes’ you’d have to pay BA alongside the full avios if you booked a full avios ticket in Business.
Lastly you would also then earn more avios on the PY base ticket doing it this way. Plus it would earn tier points towards status if you’re interested in that.
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