Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: 3000 American Airlines miles at Ramada / Days Inn, Cathay at Gatwick, buy cheap Melia points

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News in brief:

3,000 American Airlines miles per Ramada or Days Inn stay

I don’t cover Wyndham Rewards, the loyalty scheme for Ramada and Days Inn, much on HfP.  I did write this overview here if you want to learn more.

Despite this, there are a fair number of Ramada and Days Inn hotels across the UK and many are pretty cheap.

Outside the South East, sub-£30 prices at Days Inn hotels on off-peak dates can be found.  This makes this promotion interesting.

Wyndham will give you 3,000 bonus American Airlines miles, on top of your base miles, for your next five stays at any Wyndham hotel.

This means that you can earn a maximum of 15,000 bonus AA miles.

There are no minimum stay requirements.  You have until 29th February to book and until 7th March to complete your stay.

Even better, according to the small print, you can get credit for up to three rooms per stay.  You could book three rooms at the same cheap Days Inn, check in for all three and get bonus miles for them all.

At a suitably cheap hotel (eg daysinn.co.uk has Days Inn Chesterfield is £21.25 on 20th December) you would be paying around 0.6p per AA mile.  Not bad!

You can register for the promotion here – don’t forget to set your Wyndham Rewards account to ‘earning AA miles’ as well.

Cathay business class

Cathay Pacific launches Gatwick to Hong Kong – a new Avios option

Cathay Pacific has announced a new ‘four flights a week’ service to Hong Kong from Gatwick.  This is in addition to the existing services from Heathrow and Manchester.  From September 2016, it will mean Cathay is operating 43 weekly flights from the UK.

Cathay will be using a brand new Airbus A350 on the route, configured with Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy.  You can find out more on the Cathay website.

As a oneworld alliance member, you can redeem Avios points on this route.  Availability should be pretty good as Cathay is known for being generous in opening up space on non-prime routes.

Remember that BA charges ‘peak day’ pricing every day for partner airlines, which means you will need fewer Avios if you book the British Airways service on an off-peak day.  For peak day travel, however, I don’t see why you would bother with BA unless you had an British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher to burn.  Cathay is generally seen as a superior airline in every respect.

If you live outside London, it is worth looking at redeeming on Cathay services from mainland Europe – assuming you can connect from your local airport – due to the HUGE tax savings.  Here is an example on the Dusseldorf service.


How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Comments (18)

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

  • Danksy says:

    That’s a good way to top up AA miles! Shame there’s nothing like that price anywhere near me!

  • Mycity68 says:

    Is there a requirement to check out, or could one just check in and not return and still get the miles etc?

    • Rob says:

      No need to check out, just leave key in room.

      I am doing this at a Holiday Inn on Monday!

  • Dannyrado says:

    Is there a way to search flexible dates, for the lowest possible price??

    • Chris says:

      There is for the Ramada & Days Inn that are operated by welcome break.

      If you go to the welcome break website and click on hotels and enter some dates it comes up with a week to view.

      Make sure you book via days inn and not welcome break though as they operate on different systems even though it’s the same hotel and operator.

  • Jake says:

    You say you can earn AA credit for up to three rooms at a time. Does this contribute to the 5 stays? I.e. Three rooms on one night would net 9,000 miles and leave you with 2 stays under the promotion. Or would you have a further 4 remaining?

  • Ralphy says:

    As I read what Raffles has said, you get 3000 miles per stay AND can book up to three rooms for the same date and get credit for each of these rooms.
    That would leave two rooms to book, together, for a different night to maximise the 15000 miles on offer

    • Rob says:

      That is what the small print says, and I am just repeating it! I don’t pretend to be an expert on Wyndham Rewards.

  • John says:

    Unless BA has an Avios discount (such as the recent Y for 11000 Avios), CX redemptions will be cheaper overall even on BA’s off-peak days as long as the price of oil doesn’t rise.

  • Fenny says:

    Massively OT: I have 2,750 Marriott points that are apparently going to expire at the beginning of Feb 2016 under the new rules. If anyone can use them, I’ll gladly transfer them over for the price of the transfer fee (about $10, I think). I’d rather someone gets the use of them than they just go to waste.

  • harry says:

    OT bits
    https://network.americanexpress.com/connect/uk/en/secure/campaign_detail.html?campaign=tcm:618-142947

    Get your Justin Bieber tickets in the pre-sale, good for MS

    • Andy says:

      Big fan or just planning to sell them on?

      • Rob says:

        Not sure Bieber is that big these days to justify the risk!

        • harry says:

          I think day 1 @ O2 is straightforward enough 🙂

          These were clearly only pre-sales, but they had already sold out of the premium tickets stock @ 10.15am, possibly more released tomorrow?

          • harry says:

            and just checking, I see they have reduced max tickets from 8 to 6 since this morning…

            anybody without the password just ask (it’s the free phone number on your Amex card)

      • harry says:

        The clue was MS 🙂

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