Bits: 8000 Avios for an Economist subscription, full points for my £27 lastminute.com stay

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News in brief:

Iberia brings back its Economist promotion

Head for Points readers had a lot of fun before Christmas when Iberia offered 12,000 Avios points with a subscription to ‘The Economist’.

The Economist historically let you cancel your subscription at any time for a full refund. Many people signed up for a year, took the 12,000 Avios and then cancelled for a pro-rata refund.

The offer is now back in a weaker form and with no cancellations allowed. However, if you’d been thinking of subscribing to ‘The Economist’ (£155 for a year), getting 8,000 Avios points as an extra incentive is not a bad deal.

Full details are here. The offer ends on May 31st. The points will be credit to an Iberia Plus account from where you can transfer them to ba.com or avios.com.

Full points for my £27 Park Plaza stay via lastminute.com

A couple of weeks ago, lastminute.com had a special promotion via their ‘Top Secret Hotels’ page offering London hotel rooms for £29.99. There was even a 10% discount code which brought them down to £26.99. I wrote about the deal here.

I booked myself a room at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge – I had wanted to check it out for a while and it was two days of cheap office space. A review of the hotel will appear in a few days.

I was VERY surprised to see 2,493 Club Carlson points appear last night. If you book a hotel via a third party such as Expedia, you should not expect to receive any points – that is the rule. And yet – because of the current Club Carlson triple points promo and my Club Carlson Gold status – I received roughly £12.50-worth of points for my £27 room.

I heard recently about someone who got points for a Radisson Edwardian booked via HotelTonight. I don’t know if this is an IT issue or policy – probably the former – but if you booked one of these lastminute.com rooms at a Park Plaza you should definitely join Club Carlson and register for triple points.

Even if you never intend to stay at a Carlson hotel again, 2,000 points would be enough for 200 airline miles, including Avios.

How to earn Radisson Rewards points and status from UK credit cards (December 2021)

Radisson Rewards does not have a dedicated UK credit card. However, you can earn Radisson Rewards points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards. These include:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 60,000 Radisson Rewards points. 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 90,000 Radisson Rewards points

American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 15,000 Radisson Rewards points. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:3 into Radisson Rewards points which is a very attractive rate. The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 3 Radisson Rewards points.

Even better, holders of The Platinum Card receive free Radisson Rewards Gold status for as long as they hold the card. It also comes with Hilton Honors Gold, Marriott Bonvoy Gold and MeliaRewards Gold status. We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here.

(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)