BA price promise & how to book a bargain Marriott or Starwood luxury points redemption without the points!

BA Price promise

BA have had a price guarantee for a long time but they recently changed the terms and conditions of the offer. Even if you usually only book through BA it is well worth having a look next time you have booked a flight to see if you can find a cheaper deal and use the price guarantee to claim.

The way that it works is that once you have booked your BA flight at ba.com you need to find a qualifying British Airways flight for less on another website. You then must fill in the form on the same day as you booked. If your claim qualifies you will get a voucher for double the difference in price if you’re a member of the BA Executive Club (£200 maximum). The voucher credit is given for each ticket within a booking to the person that paid for the booking. The guarantee doesn’t apply to BA holidays bookings, just flight only. 

It is slightly complicated for BA Executive club members in terms of what you get refunded as there is a £200 maximum voucher on claims up to £200. For a £100 claim for example, a voucher for £200 would be issued. If however, you claimed for £120, a voucher for £200 would be issued.

As the bonus of double the difference only applies up to a maximum voucher of £200, if you submit a valid claim for £240 difference, this would not be eligible for any bonus amount and a voucher for £240 would be issued and so on. 

BA will respond to the claim within 2 days and usually will pay out up to £200 within this time but it can be up to 28 days to get the voucher if it is a larger amount. 

You will need a screenshot(s) of the fare with the following information shown:

• Date and time the screenshot was taken;
• Full itinerary (including all flight numbers);
• A full breakdown of the individual fare for each passenger including credit/debit card charges and booking fees; and
• Website name/logo.

You must also provide the fare conditions applicable to the cheaper fare.

You can find more details and the on line form to fill in on this page. 

Marriott – how to bag a bargain on points – even if you don’t have any!

The Marriott / SPG merger means that you can book hotels for both schemes in one place. The combination of both hotel redemption schemes is going to put all hotels into 8 categories. However, the Category 8 hotels under the new scheme will be Category 7 until 31 December 2018, meaning significant savings can be made when booking with points before 2019 commences. 

When booking over several nights this means you can save 40,000 points per night compared with 2019 peak prices, with the fifth night free offer remaining as it did in both previous schemes. Over a five night stay these savings can be well over 200,000 points for the stay when you add the discounted rate and free fifth night! 

So how do you grab one of these bargains if you don’t have enough points? Well, you can book the hotels up to 11 months in advance and of course, cancel them and get a refund of your points. Marriott allows you to get an advance on points as long as you have the points in your account at least 14 days before check-in. The catch is that it is not offered with every brand. Those excluded are:

●      St. Regis®
●      The Luxury Collection®
●      W®
●      Sheraton®
●      Le Méridien®
●      Westin®
●      Design Hotels^TM
●      Tribute Portfolio®
●      Four Points®
●      Aloft® Hotels
●      Element®

You could get the extra points you need through a variety of ways without even staying such as using Amex Membership rewards which transfer at a rate of 2 MR to 3 Marriott/SPG points, getting an SPG Amex card which comes with a sign up bonus of 30,000 SPG points when you spend £1000 in the first 3 months. You can also earn points on partners such as Hertz and cruises.