Bits: 9,000 Thistle hotel rooms in London for £90, Norwegian launching low-cost Gatwick to Vegas

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News in brief:

£90 Thistle Hotel rooms in London – including breakfast

Thistle Hotels is running a four day promotion, starting today, to celebrate the 90th birthday of the Queen.

There are 9,000 rooms available at exactly £90 each including breakfast, spread over the eight Thistle hotels for stays until June 2017. On peak dates a price of £90 will represent a decent saving.

You should be able to book via this special link from today.

Sister company Guoman Hotels, which runs The Tower by Tower Bridge amongst other hotels, is having a similar sale. It is charging more but you get breakfast and a bottle of prosecco thrown in! This deal is bookable until the end of February 2017. Click here for details.

Norwegian 787

Norwegian launching Las Vegas from Gatwick

I haven’t covered budget long haul airline Norwegian for a while. I looked at them when they launched their New York service and I wasn’t hugely impressed – the cost savings over BA were modest and the terrible flight times meant that you either lost sightseeing time or had to pay for another hotel night.

The company has continued to expand using a growing fleet of new Boeing 787-9 aircraft. It now flies to Boston, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Los Angeles and Oakland / San Francisco.

In October it will launch flights from Gatwick to Las Vegas.

I took another look. 3rd to 7th November, for example, is £380 return. However, adding food (!) and a suitcase takes you to £480. This compares well with Virgin Atlantic (£612) and BA (£719).

Premier class was £910. This only comes with 46 inches of legroom – we’re not talking a flat bad here – but does include food, seat selection (which BA charges for), luggage, fast track security and lounge access.

This is not such a great deal, however, when you consider that – ex Dublin – you can buy ‘proper’ flat bed business class to Las Vegas for £1,175 on BA, Virgin or American. Factor in the Avios or Virgin miles you would earn and Norwegian looks even poorer value. For economy travel it might be worth a look.

If you’ve ever flown with Norwegian long-haul, please post below – I’d be interested to know how you found it.