The HfP chat thread – Wednesday 10th March

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• Stuckish says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:14

  We are looking at flying through Doha with Qatar on Sunday, probably in Business class. Is the lounges open there, as it would be a 20 hour connection? Or if the Qatar business lounge isn’t open, would we have access to another lounge instead?

  • Andrew says:

    10 Mar10 March 09:19

    Yes, the main Al Mourjan main business class lounge has been open throughout the pandemic offering a full service with no Covid excuses – buffet and a la carte dining available in the restaurant upstairs. But note that not all business class tickets get you into the lounge now, so check the restrictions on the one you are buying. The lounge is open 24 hours so you can stay in there for the long layover.

    • Lady London says:

      10 Mar10 March 09:33

      There is a sleeping area with loungers in one corner but you have to look for it.

      Has Qatar stopped funding a hotel overnight at the airport with a stopover longer than 8 hours for Business Class travellers?

      If not IIRC rates for airport hotels were very reasonable. I’m a cheapskate but with that length of stopover I’d happily pay the kind of rates I saw and even more so if it’s not just me travelling.

      • Andrew says:

        10 Mar10 March 09:42

        They only paid for hotel stays if there wasn’t a shorter connection time, not if you chose a cheaper flight with a longer connection. But at the moment I think the State of Qatar remains closed to non-residents and so the only option would be the airside hotel which is quite expensive.

        • Lady London says:

          10 Mar10 March 10:17

          Ask Qatar if they have an agreed rate at the airside hotel that you could pay?

      • Zoe says:

        10 Mar10 March 11:55

        There is a sleeping area with loungers but the last time I was there someone was taking phone calls while we were trying to sleep!

  • KBuffett says:

    10 Mar10 March 10:24

    Are you flying from England?

  • Rob says:

    10 Mar10 March 10:25

    Lounges are open but certain business class tickets no longer get access to the football pitch-sized complex and you get shuffled off to the appalling 2nd class lounge.

    I’d book a room in the transit hotel inside the departure hall (no need to go through immigration) which even has a pool.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      10 Mar10 March 10:26

      Those oryx lounges are by far the worst thing about Hamad

  • The Streets says:

    10 Mar10 March 11:49

    The airport was heaving at 1am a couple of weeks ago.. four hour wait time for the Al Maha lounge

• Michael C says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:19

  Some very deals for long term (28 day) car hire through BA Avis if that’s helpful to anybody.

  • kitten says:

    10 Mar10 March 09:34

    what kind of rates are you seeing? from which town branches?

    • Michael C says:

      10 Mar10 March 10:15

      City centre branches and perhaps not airports. £400 a month for a small car, £800 for Mercedes E Class group. Cheaper than it’s been over the past few months.

      • Lady London says:

        10 Mar10 March 10:19

        £360-£380 was reported by a couple of people about 4 weeks ago.

        Sounds like rates are beginning to tick up for the summer.

  • Rob says:

    10 Mar10 March 10:24

    Got an email from Europcar the other day pushing similar deals. I might dig out our old article on this.

  • KS says:

    10 Mar10 March 20:14

    I have an ongoing Avis rental at £400 for 21 days for Mercedes E Class from city centre. I was booked for Hyundai Tucson or similar and got a double upgrade.
    I booked expecting a single upgrade to C class, this was even better.

• Craig says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:28

  Has anyone used Tesco club card points for railcard recently? I’m about to apply for a veterans railcard and although not listed as a partner I’m wondering if the vouchers are card type specific?

• kitten says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:28

  HSBC WE if you’re rich enough seems to come close. Rob has articles on here.

• Polly says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:29

  Hsbc either card.. hard qualification tho. But v good with travel claim for us last year. Might work for you.

• Amar says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:36

  Got a First flight from LHR T5 in July (cancelled/rebooked around 5 times!) – does anyone know if the concorde room is open?

  • Andrew says:

    10 Mar10 March 09:44

    Currently I think it’s just the Concorde terrace that’s open as part of Galleries First – but that will likely change by July.

• Zoe says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:43

  Please could someone remind me, if I book say SOU ALC using 23,000 miles plus £1 and later cancel will I only forfeit the £1? Website implies cost of 35 pounds each. Thanks in advance.

  • Rob says:

    10 Mar10 March 10:11

    If online cancellations are working now (are they?) you’d just forfeit the £1. When BA dropped online cancellations during covid you had to call and for a while (still happening?) the call centre would insist on charging £35 to a credit card before cancelling. Not sure what the current position is.

    • Sarah says:

      10 Mar10 March 10:42

      No, earlier this morning I had to call to cancel

• Track says:

  10 Mar10 March 09:47

  FT. In early February 2021, NHS Test&Trace said it was still employing around 2,500 consultants, at an estimated average daily rate of around £1,100, with £6,624 the highest daily rate paid.

  There will be pent up demand for travel — from all of those IT consultants, KPMG partners, and DB traders with an improved bonus pool!

  • kitten says:

    10 Mar10 March 10:20

    Now I know where my taxes are going.

    These rates beggar belief.

    • Rob says:

      10 Mar10 March 10:39

      What’s the going rate for a graduate trainee auditor who is 4 weeks out of University? £200 per hour? Those numbers look cheap in comparison.

      • George1976 says:

        10 Mar10 March 10:41

        Auditors actually do some work though….

        • Rob says:

          10 Mar10 March 11:14

          A first year graduate trainee auditor doesn’t do anything my 13-year old couldn’t do, probably whilst posting a Tik Tok video at the same time.

        • George1976 says:

          10 Mar10 March 11:30

          Good luck trying to get accounts published without an audit though.

      • maccymac says:

        10 Mar10 March 11:42

        It’s a slap in the face to frontline health workers who risked their lives (and those of their families) for the good of the country, to give them a “pay raise” of less than £4 a week (real terms pay cut) while paying obscene thousands to management consultants who sat safely behind a laptop and created one of the largest wastes of money the taxpayers in this country has ever seen.

        But then again, “that’s all we can afford right now”

      • Martin Short says:

        10 Mar10 March 12:56

        I had an accountancy degree like most trainee auditors when I started so had 3 years knowledge already.
        Can’t do tik tok though.
        Maybe the 13 year old has caused many auditing scandals by being stupid.

      • Howard says:

        10 Mar10 March 21:03

        Charge out rate is one thing, what the firm actually recover from the client is another. Would be lucky to recover 50% of headline rate on most audits

      • Tony says:

        10 Mar10 March 21:25

        London rates

  • Super Secret Stuff says:

    10 Mar10 March 11:31

    Assuming it is inc. vat, doesn’t sound too extortionate to me.

    I assume there is a large mix of skill sets in those consultants, not a great deal but given this government, I am surprised it isn’t higher

    • George1976 says:

      10 Mar10 March 11:35

      “ I assume there is a large mix of skill sets in those consultants”

      Why do you assume that?

      • Rob says:

        10 Mar10 March 12:03

        Absolutely not true.

        Most consultants join consultancies from university and have never done anything else.

        I know it’s a nice idea that management consultants go out and hire experienced people from the sectors they are consulting in, but in my experience it isn’t true. This isn’t necessarily an issue per se – a lot of people actively want consultants who have never worked in the sector because they don’t come with preconceived ideas – but if you think hiring 10 management consultants to run a health project gets you 10 grey haired people with 300 years of NHS work between them, you are BADLY mistaken. The team is highly unlikely to have lived for 300 years between the 10 of them.

        • memesweeper says:

          10 Mar10 March 12:50

          There is a lot of misreporting of consultants being *paid* £000s. They are *costing* £000s, which is completely different.

          Rob, you are right about the big consulting firms. Many of the smaller ones specialise in the exact opposite, actual specialists, with or without sector experience as required.

        • Lady London says:

          10 Mar10 March 13:15

          +1 don’t get me started on management consultancies seen that from all sides over many years and am a total cynic.

          Sorry to the numbers of readers who are in just that line of work.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          10 Mar10 March 13:42

          There is the advantage that while they might not have worked in the industry they have experienced working with many different companies in your field.

          Therefore they have some relevant experience you probably wouldn’t get on a short term basis from others

        • ChrisC says:

          10 Mar10 March 14:12

          It’s hard to have any confidence when a management consultant didn’t know that when calculating the cost of employing someone you needed to add employers national insurance and pension contributions to the basic salary.

          And that was before you started to make allowance for over time / shift allowances and costs of training

          Some of them are very clever but a lot of them are lacking in basic common sense.

        • Rob says:

          10 Mar10 March 14:54

          What was interesting about my old PE firm is that most of us had some sort of experience of running a business, even if it was just small scale, as I was doing. Unless you have actually bought and sold ‘stuff’ it is very difficult to judge a business. You should put trainee management consultants on a stall in Rotherham market for a week.

        • mutley says:

          10 Mar10 March 14:17

          100% correct Rob. A contemporary of my son at 23 years old left Sheffield Uni with a Physics degree, Got a job for one of the management consultancies in London and after induction and 4 weeks orientation, was put on a client site at £450 a day with next to no work experience.

        • Magic Mike says:

          10 Mar10 March 15:16

          Those shiny offices and all the compliance required to work with government doesn’t come for free…

        • TGLoyalty says:

          10 Mar10 March 21:08

          Reality is us managers know when they’re talking shite

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