Bits: first photos of Aspire lounge in Terminal 5, Dragonpass lounge deal

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News in brief:

First photographs of the Aspire lounge in Heathrow Terminal 5

Thanks to reader Neil, I can share a couple of photographs of the new Aspire airport lounge in Heathrow Terminal 5. This officially opens on Monday and is not yet listed on the Priority Pass website. I think these are the first pictures of it to appear anywhere.

and:

I should be there next week so I will report back. Once I know exactly what cards are accepted, I will write an article on the best ways to gain access.

If you are planning to visit the Aspire lounge and do not have a Priority Pass, your best option is to book in advance and guarantee admission via the Aspire website here.

Dragonpass

Dragonpass lounge deal in The Telegraph TODAY

Dragonpass is a Priority Pass-clone which is trying to gain traction in the UK. There is an interesting deal in The Telegraph today, ie Saturday.

You usually need to buy a Dragonpass membership card for £60 before you can buy their lounge passes. With this offer, you can just buy the passes you need for the standard cost of £15 each. This is the same cost as having a Priority Pass, except that Priority Pass will charge you £69 for your card first!

More details are on The Telegraph website here. Remember that you can get one for free today if you spend £10 at Waitrose and show a My Waitrose card!

Etihad ‘free Hilton Gold’ offer IS transferable

Finally, you may have had an email from Etihad yesterday offering free Hilton HHonors Gold membership until the end of October, with an extension to March 2017 if you complete three stays.

The link in the email can only be used once. However, the offer is fully transferable. I proved this. I got the email from Etihad but input the details of my wife’s account (which is under a different surname so it was clear to Hilton that it was not me). She was instantly upgraded to Gold.

I now need to decide whether I should put three stays through her account in order to get her Gold status until March 2017. It would allow me to let my own Gold lapse after March 2016.

Category

Etihad and Etihad Guest, Hilton Honors

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

Cheshire Pete says:

1 Aug1 August 09:08

I didn’t get the etihad offer, was status matched earlier this year, so not flown or used it yet….
- Cheshire Pete says:
  
  1 Aug1 August 09:28
  
  Now, on checking my account, all my communication preferences were set to Off! Damn…
  - Alan says:
    
    1 Aug1 August 11:07
    
    Ahh, good thinking – that’ll be why I didn’t receive it either! Will put them back on and hopefully they’ll do another offer in early 2016!
  - James67 says:
    
    1 Aug1 August 13:19
    
    Much as it pains me to do so, I have opted in to almost all marketing via email for my travel schemes and credit cards. By failing to do so we probably miss out on targeted offers. However, I do opt out for phone, sms and regular mail. Inconvenience can be avoided by using a dedicated email for this purpose to avoid m9re important email getting swamped with junk.
Roger says:

1 Aug1 August 09:10

We have the Hilton offer from Miles and Smiles and Air Berlin and have a question.

Award stays count. Good. But does the new offer produce a New HHonors membership number, or can awards from an existing Gold account somehow qualify? Mrs Roger’s Gold expires in March 2016 and she wouldn’t otherwise qualify for Gold renewal.

Thanks.
- Rob says:
  
  1 Aug1 August 09:24
  
  There is no indication that you can successfully use this on an existing Gold account to extend it. Not sure if you could book a room from one Hilton account and then, in the hotel, change the HH number on the booking.
  - Colin JE says:
    
    1 Aug1 August 14:04
    
    That’s disappointing. On the other hand do they ‘not open to existing Gold members’ anywhere?
    
    The small print for the Airbrtlin offer doesn’t mention anything about the Gold upgrade, just the points, as far as I can see.
    
    I’m Gold already and although I have two booked stays over the next three months I’d only book a third to get status extended. Any advice
    - Richmond says:
      
      3 Aug3 August 20:20
      
      Use link from airline and see if number or required stays to retain gold has change to 3. As in my other comment, I used link from Alitalia and it worked this way. From 6 required stays to retain Gold, it changed to 3 required stays.
- Roger says:
  
  2 Aug2 August 11:37
  
  UPDATE: The SES’FIKILE (arrivals) lounge at JNB is now accessible via Priority Pass.
  - Roger says:
    
    2 Aug2 August 11:39
    
    Sorry, this should have been appended to my post of 1 August 2015 at 9:19 am.
- Richmond says:
  
  3 Aug3 August 20:18
  
  Similar offer from Alitalia worked for renewing Gold status so I assume other arilines offers are the same.
Liz says:

1 Aug1 August 09:46

OT: Does anyone know why you cannot have 3 Heathrow Rewards cards at the same address. Just tried to change my daughter’s Uni address on her card back to our home address and it won’t let me as we already have accounts. Surely we can all have independent cards as independent travellers???
- Rob says:
  
  1 Aug1 August 09:53
  
  You can’t have more than ONE card at the same address!
  
  Easy way to fix it is to make the addresses 23, 23a, 23b etc.
  - Alan says:
    
    1 Aug1 August 11:09
    
    Or apply over the phone, they can manually override this – I got them to do this for my parents so they could both transfer out their expiring Emirates miles to Heathrow Rewards.
    - Sandgrounder says:
      
      1 Aug1 August 13:34
      
      I have added a full stop after the house number in the past and it worked.
Ammar says:

1 Aug1 August 11:59

Hi….would like some advice, travelling in September with EMirates, on way back have a 3 hr stay at Dubai Airport, was going to buy a dragon pass to a lounge T3…..its between the Marhaba lounges and Lounge at B? Has anyone used either and any feedback to help my decision, I understand from tripadvisor reviews that Marhaba lounge gets very busy at peak times and people said they had complimentary access but would not necessarily be happy to pay for it.
Arnaud Amiel says:

1 Aug1 August 12:02

If one of you has a spare Hilton deal, I would be very glad to get it as I would be in one next weekend.
If you can forward to my gmail, that would be great. My user name is aamiel

Thanks
jason says:

1 Aug1 August 12:04

Could you reg now get gold and then reg for air Berlin offer, in Nov?
- Rob says:
  
  1 Aug1 August 12:09
  
  Why bother? I reckon so as long as you drop back to Blue as expected in Nov.
VP says:

1 Aug1 August 12:45

OT: I recently had a 3 consecutive night stay in hilton (same hotel, same booking name). I booked it as 3 seperate stays as follows:
Website-Kaligo-Website to take advantage of 5K BA miles offer. This has counted as 2 stays (1st and 3rd day ) with 2nd day as non qualifying.
- mark2 says:
  
  1 Aug1 August 17:40
  
  did you keep the same room for the three nights (I am doing the same in Sept)
  - VP says:
    
    2 Aug2 August 09:00
    
    yes I was upgraded on first night and kept same room throughout. I did have to settle the bill each morning and get the key reprogrammed.
Brian says:

1 Aug1 August 14:29

Bit OT any advice on accessing an airport lounge at Philadelphia Airport?

I only have Lounge Club membership which doesn’t have Philadelphia. I am flying with US Airways on an Avios ticket.

Thanks
- Alan says:
  
  2 Aug2 August 02:14
  
  You could try the LoungeBuddy app, see what options they have for paid access. TBH at most lounges in the USA it’s not really worth paying – apart from a small number (Amex Centurion, AA Flagship, international carrier lounges) you get hardly anything to eat or drink. I’d probably just sit down and have something to eat/drink at a restaurant instead.