Earn 700 Virgin Flying Club miles for £3

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Reader Rich dropped me a line with details of an interesting Virgin Atlantic offer via their Shops Away online shopping mall.

Online hotel booking site booking.com is currently offering 700 Virgin Flying Club miles for any hotel booking made their site if you click through from Shops Away.

Anyone who collects Flying Club miles should be able to get £7+ of value out of 700 miles. This means that it is a pretty good return on booking, say, a £100 hotel room.

It is, of course, an even better deal if you book a £3 hotel room.

The strength of booking.com is that, unlike Expedia, it has a lot of relationships with hotels at the bottom end of the value chain. If you search for a city in, say, India and rank the hotels by price, you should find something at £3.

The bed and breakfast pictured above, which I won’t name because it is unfair to focus lots of ‘dead’ bookings at the same property, is only £3 for example.

I have made a £3 booking in India and I will report back when I get my miles. The transaction is showing as ‘Pending’ with 700 miles due. Rich has already received his so it does seem to work OK.

The link to the Shops Away online mall on the Virgin Atlantic website is here. You need to search for booking.com once you have clicked through and logged in.

PS. Some readers have shared their concerns, in the comments below, that this is not necessarily in the best interests of the hotel involved. You need to decide – are you are helping the B&B by booking a room which would otherwise remain empty? Or are you hurting the B&B by depriving them of selling the room to someone else who would actually turn up and spend additional money of food, tours etc (but would then want a breakfast and their room cleaning)? I am personally OK with this one or I would not have run it but you should make your own decision.

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 2021)

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, one has a bonus of 15,000 points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

The UK’s most generous free Visa or Mastercard at 0.75 points / £1 Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 points bonus and the most generous non-Amex for day to day spending 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:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 30,000 Virgin Points:

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

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

(Want to earn more Virgin Points? Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Category

Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

William Charles says:

8 Sep8 September 15:29

You can also get $14 by using the US based site, which you can do even if you’re from the UK. Probably better value than 700 miles, but depends on the individual. I’ve been doing it a bit recently as I am in SEasia and they actually have some nice 3-4 star properties for around $15-$20, makes a massive discount and they also get my beverage/tour spend as well.
AviosNewbie says:

8 Sep8 September 16:10

Hi folks, I originally belong to India, but have been living in the UK for the past several years. I have been a regular reader of HFP, and in that context let me offer some perspective as one who’s seen some of these hotels and how that market works:

I haven’t seen the hotel (it’ll be called a ‘lodge’ in India, and I’d be surprised if the owner has even heard the term ‘B&B’) in question, but if it costs £3, it’ll doubtless be in one of the smaller towns. Which means booking.com (or any online channel) would account for an extremely small proportion of their sales, and they would depend on walk-in customers, referrals or small travel agents for bulk of their bookings. Also, the labour costs in India are very low, and they’d be astonishingly low in the smaller towns. So there’s not much impact in terms of additional costs to prepare the room – actually most likely, it’ll be done by the owner’s wife or son.

Also, as long as they get paid – the discussion about booking.com’s margin is pointless here because whatever that it is, it’s factored in anyway – the B&B should be happy with the extra money anyway. If there’s a no show, they’ll be able to fill in the vacancies through their usual channels (i.e. walk-ins, etc.) without problems, because that will continue to be their everyday channel to fill rooms.

I disagree with comments above that most of India is ‘dry’, but it’s true that these smaller establishments won’t have an attached bar (taking out a liquor licence is a long process in India). The breakfast will be prepared on the day, so if there’s a no show they save on making the breakfast and cost of raw materials. There’s also no staff morale to worry about, because they’ll run on skeletal staff, most of the work being done by family.

So my view is that I’ll tend to side with Raffles here because any additional money should be welcome by these establishments – the rest are sunk costs. If he gets 50 bookings and £112.5 (assuming 25% booking.com share), that amount will make him a happy man!

But appreciate the viewpoints expressed above – will only say that some of the factors applicable to B&Bs in the UK will not be relevant in the small towns of India!
Oly says:

8 Sep8 September 17:17

found one for £3 🙂 shared toilet and shower, nice
Dwadda says:

8 Sep8 September 18:50

It took me 2 minutes to find/book another hotel for £3. I doubt they sell food or other services, single bed shared toilet. Pretty sparse.

I told them in the notes that if I don’t show up by 1 hour after the room is ready that I won’t show up and they can sell the room.

I’ve been to India, and stayed in these types of places (many moons ago). It’s just a room, hopefully safe.
Dan says:

8 Sep8 September 21:27

exactly my view – booked a bed in a shared dorm, no restaurant or bar – did the same as the poster above and left the hotel a message in the booking to say i won’t be showing up. Thought i should be honest! Thanks for highligting Raffles.

I think your totally justified in highlighting deals like this – it’s then up to the reader if they want to take advantage or not.
sir crusticroc says:

8 Sep8 September 22:05

£2
- idrive says:
  
  9 Sep9 September 11:05
  
  me too, but booking does not show in pending. anyone else?
TJ says:

9 Sep9 September 06:06

Raffles, you have heard of tineye.com ? 🙂
- Rob says:
  
  9 Sep9 September 13:34
  
  Actually, no, I hadn’t. Looks interesting though!
  - TJ says:
    
    9 Sep9 September 17:17
    
    You can reverse search any images. It comes in handy 🙂
    
    FWIW these no-shows have never posted for me with any CB portal at booking.com. Maybe things are different this time.
Froggitt says:

10 Sep10 September 09:31

http://images.google.com/imghp?hl=en