Receive 2 x 10,000 Etihad Guest miles (good for £80 Visa gift card) for opening a business account

I wrote last week about the much improved bonus on the Etihad Guest UK credit card, which is now offering a 17,000 miles sign-up bonus. On its own, that won’t get you far, albeit Etihad is also an American Express Membership Rewards partner.

If you run your own company, though, Etihad is offering you a very generous way of earning an additional 20,000 miles. They even entitled the email “Earn 20,000 miles with ease”!

This is what you have to do:

Would you like extra miles to put towards an upgrade for your personal travel as well as your business travel? Well, now you can with the latest offer from Etihad Airways’ company loyalty programme BusinessConnect.

Follow these three easy steps to receive an extra 10,000 miles into your personal Etihad Guest account as well as receiving an additional 10,000 miles for your company’s new BusinessConnect account:

1. Sign your company up to BusinessConnect via the individual who manages your company travel at etihadbusinessconnect.com

2. Connect your Etihad Guest number and one other business traveller’s number to the BusinessConnect account via the website

3. E-mail your Etihad Guest number & Company name to businessconnectoffer@etihad.ae

Once these steps have all been successfully completed you and your company will receive an extra 10,000 miles each for free flights, upgrades or products for your personal travel as well as your business travel.

I have spent the last week testing this out.

Stage 1 was easy enough. You will need the Companies House registration number of your company. They also insist that you upload the registration certificate. As I didn’t have mine to hand, I uploaded a note giving the contact details if they do actually want to see it.

I got a ‘pending’ email, and then 24 hours later my account was confirmed.

I then linked the Etihad Guest accounts of the two directors of my company (ie myself and my wife) to my business account.

Finally, I emailed the details to Etihad as per Step 3. A few days later, I got a personal email from someone at Etihad confirming my registration, and saying that the bonus miles would be awarded within 10 days of the closing date of the promotion, ie October 30th.

Three days after that (Tuesday this week) – slightly oddly – I received the standard account opening bonus of 5,000 points in my business account. It is not clear if I will receive another 10,000 later (which would mean the sign-up bonus is actually 15,000) or whether I will just get an additional 5,000.

What is interesting is how you can use the business miles.

The 10,000 Etihad Guest miles that go into your personal account would go nicely with the credit card sign-up bonus. This would get you a good way to a one-way ride in their First Class Suite (below).

You may think that the 10,000 miles in your business account will be ‘orphaned’. However, that is not the case. I wrote about PointsPay here, where you can cash out your miles for, well, cash. The good news is that I was able to link my company account to my personal PointsPay account. At the very worst, I can swap my 10,000 business account miles for a £41 Visa gift card.

Full details of Etihad Guest and how to use your miles can be found here.

How to earn Etihad Guest miles from UK credit cards (December 2021)

Etihad Guest does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Etihad Guest miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 20,000 Etihad Guest miles. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with two free airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 30,000 Etihad Guest miles.

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 5,000 Etihad Guest miles. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Etihad Guest miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Etihad Guest mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it.

Etihad Guest is also a partner with the HSBC Premier Mastercard (0.5 miles per £1 spent) and HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard (1 mile per £1 spent).