Bit: 10% off duty free voucher, 100% IHG ‘buy points’ bonus ending, Club Eurostar launches

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News in brief:

Save 10% off duty free purchases at Manchester and Stansted

Biza is offering 10% off all purchases, excluding tobacco, at its duty free stores during December.

The discount is valid at the Biza stores at:

Manchester Airport (Main, Express, Arrivals)
London Stansted Airport (Main, Express, Arrivals)
Bournemouth Airport
East Midlands Airport

IHG’s extended ‘100% buy points bonus’ ends today

IHG Rewards Club – the InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza etc scheme – extended its recent ‘100% buy points bonus’ promotion but IT DEFINITELY ENDS TOMORROW. It is as generous an offer as you will ever see for IHG points.

The page to buy points is here.

The standard prices, before the bonus, are:

1,000 – 10,000 points for $13.50 per 1,000 points
11,000 – 25,000 points for $12.50 per 1,000 points
26,000 – 60,000 points for $11.50 per 1,000 points

The bonus rates are:

40% bonus when you buy 5,000 – 19,000 points
100% bonus when you buy 20,000 – 60,0000 points

With a 100% bonus, you would be able to buy 120,000 IHG points for (at current exchange rates for $690) £515. This assumes your credit card has 0% FX fees.

At the top end of the IHG Rewards Club portfolio, you have InterContinental properties which top out at 50,000 – 60,000 points per night. That’s what you would pay for InterContinental Le Grand in Paris or the InterContinental Amstel in Amsterdam.

With a 100% bonus, IHG is effectively selling you a night at a 50,000 point property for £215 all-in. A 60,000 point hotel would be £257. At the bottom end, the points for a 5,000 point PointBreaks night would cost just £22.

You should look at this if you have a ‘buy points’ target for your Accelerate promotion – although it makes more sense to buy 5,000 and get the bonus than buy 1,000 for no bonus. If you are topping off your account, it is also a good deal irrespective of the exact cents per point cost. The maximum number of points you can buy per year is 120,000 (ie 60,000 plus the 60,000 bonus).

You can buy via this link. The offer ends tomorrow, 8th December.

Club Eurostar launches today

If all goes to plan, the new Club Eurostar loyalty scheme should be launching today.

We wrote a long article here with our initial impressions of the changes. I will write something else once I’ve had a chance to look at all the bits and pieces which were not covered in the first announcement.

Starting on Monday, we have a fantastic Club Eurostar competition on Head for Points. Not only can you win a big pile of Club Eurostar points, you can also receive top-tier Carte Blanche status in Club Eurostar.

And, thanks to the new ‘Anytime’ feature with the new Club Eurostar, the winner can be 100% certain that they will be able to redeem their points for the train of their choice (unless it is completely sold out for cash, of course). And, with no taxes or charges with Club Eurostar redemptions, your ‘free’ ticket is genuinely free.

Make sure you visit Head for Points on Monday to enter.

How to get Club Eurostar points and lounge access from UK credit cards (December 2021)

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

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 1,333 Club Eurostar 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 2,000 Club Eurostar points. Card benefits include Eurostar lounge access.

American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 333 Club Eurostar points. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points which is an attractive rate. The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you will get the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum comes with a great Eurostar benefit – Eurostar lounge access!

You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk. No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a free supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Category

Club Eurostar, IHG Rewards

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

KevMc says:

7 Dec7 December 20:01

O/T registration for IHG’s accelerate promotion on Q1 (although it runs until 30th April) is now open. Once registered you should see a preview of what your targets are. Mine should be an easy 30k, as it’s the same as the current quarter, which I finished off with a mattress run to a HIE near me last week
- JamesB says:
  
  7 Dec7 December 20:29
  
  My offer was worst I ever got, 15 or 18 nights for 34000 points, gave up counting at the point I decided I will not stay with IHG during the next four months.
  - Cate says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 20:49
    
    22 nights for 35,000 + had to refer a friend. Compare and contrast that with Marriott who’ve just given us two one night vouchers from their last offer. That translates to two airport hotels …….with brekkie.
- Simon J says:
  
  7 Dec7 December 22:35
  
  Best accelerate promo for me so far.
john says:

7 Dec7 December 20:12

I just checked my Eurostar account, earlier in the day membership, status, points, and travel history were all missing

checking again, it’s showing Carte Blanche, points are there, including from a journey yesterday, history is minimal with only a migrated total, no itemised previous trips

I have a feeling I’m missing some points that had been ‘pending’, but can’t be sure, without trip history there’s no apparent way to check this, I’ll give it a few days in case there’s some internal catch-up going on

on the plus side, my partner then enrolled (she wasn’t in the program previously) which was set-up immediately, then put in the booking reference for the trip we just made, the points for both legs were instantly credited, and then we moved 200 of her brand new points to my account (looks like transfers must be multiples of 100), the transfer was also immediate, that’s quite impressive
the real harry1 says:

7 Dec7 December 20:14

Mr Cruz said airlines must learn from companies such as Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo about how to respond when things go wrong.
“They are incredibly wonderful on how they recover from any problems they may have. They are fast, generous and they leave you with a sensation that they really will do everything in their power to fix whatever problem and to make sure it never happens again.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/british-airways-food-flights-menu-costs-latest-charge-short-haul-economy-class-a8095536.html
- the real harry1 says:
  
  7 Dec7 December 20:16
  
  losing that bonus must have worked wonders
  
  he’s gone from the Wenkmeister incarnate to the epitome of customer service in 12 months
  - JamesB says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 20:38
    
    Reading between the lines I took him to mean their workforce and UK taxpayers were both screwed and the passengers could go whistle but perhaps I’m being a touch cynical.
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      7 Dec7 December 20:54
      
      maybe it was that convo with Raffles? 🙂
  - JamesB says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 21:26
    
    I’m sure that was a good chat, pity we cannot have a full transcript. I have often found that peoples public persona and their private person are often vastly different so it is very likely that Mr Cruz is a nice guy and not the villain we frequently make him out to be. I have enjoyed the newspaper ‘clippings’ on anything travel or miles related you have increasingly posted in recent months. It might be an idea for Rob and/or Anika to compile a list of such articles and publish them once a fortnight like the Diary posts. If that’s not viable then good that you and others continue to highlight them in bits posts.
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      7 Dec7 December 21:38
      
      I am 100% sure that a dinner invitation with Mr Cruz would be a charming affair – especially in Spain, where dinner is so much better – I bet you he would take enormous pride in showing you the best of Spain and all that Spain can offer in terms of drinks & food – generous hospitality and warm friendship to guests are in-built to decent Spanish people
- Rob says:
  
  7 Dec7 December 21:14
  
  This is bull.
  
  All front line staff at The Ritz-Carlton hotels have the authority to spend $2,000 WITH NO APPROVAL FROM ANYONE if a guest has a problem that needs fixing. I doubt a front line BA employee has the power to lend you the biro on their desk in case you take it.
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 21:29
    
    he might come round, though?
    
    look @ Ryanair – they changed their tune – making gazillions and increasing passenger numbers by a huge factor in short period (up to 120 million pa soon I think) made them reconsider niceness
    
    so BA are also making gazillions & have plenty of areas they could reconsider
mhuk01 says:

7 Dec7 December 21:09

O/T: I’m trying to book a BA 2-4-1, LHR to HKG return. I would like to do LHR-HKG economy and HKG-LHR business.
If I load up availability as two separate one-way flights, it comes to just over £500 taxes. But if I book it as a return, the flights come to over £800 taxes. I cannot work out why this is. Does anyone have any thoughts? I want to minimise cost and was hoping that by booking business from just HKG (less taxes) it would achieve this. Very confused!
- Rob says:
  
  7 Dec7 December 21:11
  
  You only get lower taxes out of HK if your journey starts in HK. Your journey starts in London if you book a return. If you book a 2 x one way, your return flight starts in HK and is exempt.
  - mhuk01 says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 21:25
    
    Can i do this using the 2-4-1 voucher?
    - JamesB says:
      
      7 Dec7 December 21:33
      
      Yes, just call them. Also, to add to Rob’s comment, consider departing the IK from likes of Inverness or Jersey to avoid APD on the outward journey if it is practical for you to do so.
    - Rob says:
      
      7 Dec7 December 22:48
      
      No. You can book the 2 outbounds on the 2-4-1 but you would need to pay for 2 normal Avios tickets to come back, which wipes out your saving.
  - mhuk01 says:
    
    7 Dec7 December 22:18
    
    Ok so just to clarify, I can book the one-way LHR-HKG. Then call BA and get the HKG-LHR one-way added to the booking, creating 2 one-way flights and therefore the lower (£500) taxes? And both flights will be covered under the 2-4-1 voucher? Also, would there be a change fee for this, as I have to call BA?
    I did look through some guides about the 2-4-1 but didn’t read anything regarding keeping the taxes low like this…
    - JamesB says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 05:44
      
      Apologies, follow Rob. I read 241 but was thinking Lloyds avios voucher when I replied to you. Regarding taxes, there are a few places like Inverness you can depart without paying APD. This is true regardless of whether ticket is on 241 or not. However, only with doing if it is practical, I.e. you live nearby, the saving is worthile or if yo want to use the APD saving to cover a short break in Inverness or Jersey immediately before your flight.