Bits: Luxury Travel Diary auction deals, £8000 of free BA flights for joining a supercar club

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News in brief:

Luxury Travel Diary auctions ending soon

The Luxury Travel Diary site dropped me a line about a wave of its auctions that are closing within the next 48 hours.

Most of the items offered tend to go for far less than the standard retail price. Included are hotel stays, travel equipment and various gift vouchers.

Interesting options closing either today or tomorrow include five nights at the Jannah Place Dubai Marina, three nights for five people in a luxury apartment in Belgravia, London and two nights glamping for four people by the loch of a Scottish castle.

The five nights stay at the 5* Miraggio Thermal Spa Resort in Halkidiki, Greece looks like one of the most interesting auctions in Europe, although this doesn’t finish until the end of September.

It’s worth taking a look at the different auctions. Not everything will work for you, either in terms of location, length or dates, but you’ll probably find something of interest if you poke around as there are about 160 different items.

Auto Vivendi

Get £8,000 of BA flights for joining a supercar club

This is, I admit, one of the most niche British Airways offers we’ve ever covered.

Auto Vivendi is a London-based supercar club. It owns 11 cars, from a £115,000 Range Rover Vogue through to a £320,000 Lamborghini Aventador S, with 2 x Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce, 2 x Aston Martin, a Mclaren and 2 x Lamborghini inbetween. The full list is here.

When you join you receive a set number of credits. These are generally enough to get you 25 days of car use over a year, although that will vary depending on the cars you borrow and the days of the week you take them.

Standard membership is £18,950 per year plus a £1,950 joining fee. Until 29th September, new members will receive £8,000 of British Airways flight credit as an extra bonus.

There are no restrictions on how this credit can be used, except that it will expire after 24 months. You can book flights for other people as well as yourself and they will earn Avios and tier points as usual.

The offer doesn’t appear on the Auto Vivendi website but has been emailed to their database and is almost certainly available to anyone who enquires about membership this month.

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:

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

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

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.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

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

Andrew says:

4 Sep4 September 08:58

OT: I’m trying to price up a return LHR-GLA-BRR using the Loganair codeshare agreement that apparently went live on Friday. No joy. Does anyone know whether it’s not loaded into BA’s system yet or – more annoyingly – whether Barra isn’t on the list of codeshare routes?
- Relaxo says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 09:53
  
  There is some back-end issue for LHR-GLA flight redemptions. They dont show up. Had to call & book, but didnt get charged booking fee. So might be related issue…
  - Andrew says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 20:13
    
    Thanks!
    
    Tried calling but they have no options: the BA agent suggested I book with Flybe (which I can’t as the codeshare agreement with them has ended, but even if I could is odd advice!).
mark1980 says:

4 Sep4 September 09:47

I’ve gone off the Luxury Travel Diary since their auction for a couple of nights at the Conrad Algarve a few months ago. They basically kept extending the auction time by 30 mins to drive the price up. They did it about 6 or 7 times and it ended up going for over £100 more than the price at the original ending time. Poor form I thought…
- Rob says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 10:18
  
  That is standard – SPG online auctions works that way. It stood sniping software automatically placing a winning bid at the last microsecond.
  - xcalx says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 11:18
    
    Brought back happy memories of the Airtours Auction site back in the eighties. I won two auctions for very little money, before they made me change my username. Your username used to appear at the top of the auction as the latest bid. My username was AUCTION CLOSED. It really worked and no more bids were made. Airtours honoured the bookings.
    - Cate says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 11:46
      
      10/10 for initiative 🙂
    - Mr(s) Entitled says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 12:33
      
      80’s? Can’t imagine you faced much online competition.
      - xcalx says:
        
        4 Sep4 September 13:00
        
        Your right. I got my dates wrong, it was 2001 just before My Travel took over. In the eighties I was booking holidays on Ceefax and Teletext. Happy days waiting for page 65 out of 90 to reappear. Got some great priced flights every year to Orlando from £59 to £99 return. Once booked a friend MAN- Orlando Sanford for £29 return
      - Alan says:
        
        4 Sep4 September 13:23
        
        Managed to get a couple of cheap flights to Rhodes from that site at about the same time. Parking the car at BRS cost more than the 2 return flights.
        
        Ah, happy days,
- David2910 says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 10:18
  
  I’ve had good experiences. Used twice with great savings each time. Just know your price limit. The bidding extension can be annoying, but thats how regular auctions would operate, right? (Not ebay auctions).
- AVM says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 10:23
  
  Good to know- thanks for sharing!
- ADS says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 10:36
  
  i’ve often wondered why ebay don’t extend (even just for a few mins) after each bid. it’s what happens in a real world auction, and would take the advantage away from the bots !
  
  good to hear that Luxury Travel Diary are implementing this.
David2910 says:

4 Sep4 September 10:24

OT: am I missing something here? Trying to use avios to SYD. The BA route (if I were to plan far enough for it) in biz is 250k avios off-peak. The multipartner chart equivalent distance (20-25k) is 240k (and gives me 4k miles to cover extra internal flights on Qantas). So unless I had the 241 (and could get seats, and was off-peak) I should never be flying on BA?! Presumably cancellations are more favourable at least? (E.g. if I cancelled a 4 leg multipartner, would I pay 4*35 GBP to cancel or amend per person?)
- Scallder says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 12:37
  
  You’d need 2 OW airlines if not using BA, or 3 with BA, but otherwise yes you’re correct, so go with Cathay and Qantas perhaps via HK and you’re laughing as you’d be getting better service, lower “taxes” as I’m sure neither of those charges extra surcharges, and as you say you’d have an extra 4k of flying miles to play around with.
  
  Afraid I have no clue about the cancellation, however if it was all booked as one ticket, then I would presume it would only be 1 x £35 charge (same as booking a return flight on BA and cancelling the whole thing – charge is per person, per booking, not per person per flight).
- Rob says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 12:38
  
  You need 2 OW partners to trigger that chart so would need to be, say, Finnair to Singapore (if they do that) then Qantas onwards. Agreed, though, there are deals there. May take another look.
  - Scallder says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 12:51
    
    Rob – also worth looking at the Asia Miles table for this as well, as there are some significant savings compared to BA’s table in Avios. 25k of flown miles for example in business (as per David’s example above) would be only 160k Asia Miles for 2 or more airlines exc Cathay Pacific and Dragon compared to 240k Avios for the 2 ex BA.
    
    So using Asia MIles, could perhaps go via LAX on AA and then Qantas to SYD, and then even route back via HKG on Cathay I guess, although that would be 23.5k miles as opposed to 21k via HKG, so less to play with in that band (although 25-35k miles flown in biz is 190k Asia Miles, so still coming out well ahead against Avios).
    - david2910 says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 13:49
      
      I looked into Asiamiles too – I’m a member of marco polo/asiamiles (cathay FF club) – but even so i see very limited availability throughout the year (mostly ‘full/waitlisted’ or ‘closed’). in some cases, I can’t find flights on cathay metal through asiamiles that are available through avios…
      - Scallder says:
        
        4 Sep4 September 14:06
        
        That’s interesting to know. Pretty shocked that there are flights available for Avios but not Asia Miles even on Cathay metal! Also as Asia Miles have a 3 year expiry (albeit that you can for a small fortune extend miles for another 3 miles), perhaps easier to accumulate the Avios required over a longer period if need be.
- the_real_a says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 18:42
  
  The real advantage is to get your internal flights for “free” – so into perth – sydney – Newzealand (south) – New Zealand (North)
  - Alan says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 21:11
    
    Internal Oz (QF) and Oz-NZ (QF) would be OK but internal NZ flights seem to be sewn up by Air NZ (*A carrier) so don’t think they’d be an option?
    - the_real_a says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 22:24
      
      Yes my bad – you would be limited to Quantas internal flights and onward (once) to NZ only. BUT since these can be booked as one way itineraries, you can take a completely different route on the way back, starting elsewhere in NZ 🙂
      - Alan says:
        
        4 Sep4 September 23:01
        
        Indeed so. Can then use grabaseat.co.nz to get cheap internal flights (with lounge access if you have *A Gold!)
Graham says:

4 Sep4 September 12:03

O/T. I see in the “Best of BA News” in this month’s Club magazine that the bonus avios on BA package bookings is being reduced to 1 avios/£ from 2 October. This is under the headline “More ways to earn bonus Avios on holidays”. As you currently earn 2/£, looks like another great enhancement.
- Rob says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 12:34
  
  Hadn’t seen this, thanks.
- Alex W says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 14:38
  
  Sods. I have a BA Holiday starting on 2 October – I hope existing bookings are excluded from this enhancement!
  - Graham says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 15:27
    
    I’ve got one booked for next Feb. Our e-ticket has 2x bonus avios specified, so hopefully it will be honoured for existing bookings.
    - Peter K says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 16:06
      
      BA taking away something that was in place when you booked your ticket but that they removed before you took the flight? They wouldn’t do that! Next thing you’ll be saying is that they would remove the complimentary food and drink on a flight with minimal/no compensation offered to those who booked before the change…….oh, wait.
Wally1976 says:

4 Sep4 September 14:52

OT – anyone got the Amex offer code for the 500 Avios for ‘everyday spend’ please? (Or did I hear someone mention you could get 1000? Just come back off hols and catching up!). Saved it too hastily to the one card it was offered on. Thanks.
- the real harry1 says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 15:04
  
  you can still get it from the offer you saved – right click on it, inspect element
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    4 Sep4 September 15:11
    
    fairly sure it’s the first one (‘SHOPPING ENROLLED’) ie beginning 3E2…49E’) and not the second one (‘RETAIL ENROLLED’)
    
    but not sure & obviously one is a unique identifier (to your card) and I wouldn’t want to go giving my unique identifier to Amex 🙂
    
    you can simply try both
    - Wally1976 says:
      
      4 Sep4 September 15:24
      
      Thanks Harry, will take a look.
- Anna says:
  
  4 Sep4 September 15:42
  
  Just be aware – I spent £20 with WH Smith but one item wasn’t available so they only put £15 through. I’ve tried again with a £20 gift voucher, they can’t split that!
  - Wally1976 says:
    
    5 Sep5 September 09:49
    
    Thanks Anna. I was planning to use it at Shell so not anticipating any issues.