One of the easiest ways of earning tier points with BA at the moment is with the BA Holidays Double tier points offer. This allows you to earn double-tier points when you book a 5-day BA Holiday, including flights plus hotel, car or both, with a minimum of 5 days of the hotel or car.
There were a few loopholes, such as not having to pick up the car or being able to book any dates for the accommodation in any destination. As of yesterday, BA has closed these two loopholes. This is a pain as you could legitimately want to include a night before the flight at an airport hotel, and now can’t do that unless you had another 5 nights booked.
You can find the full terms and conditions here.
Here are the key parts of the terms and conditions:
- The offer is for travel to 31 December 2023
- Bonus Tier Points will be awarded separately to standard Tier Points and within 14 days of your return flight. This is important as, unlike flight tier points, they are not credited for the date you travelled. So you must allow more than 14 days before your tier point year-end for them to credit, or they will end up in next year.
- The booking must contain British Airways flights, including codeshares and British Airways marketed and/or operated flights only.
- The bonus only applies to hotels and cars booked at the time. You can’t add them afterwards. I think this is a bit unfair too and sometimes you don’t realise you need a car until later. Since BA get the same money anyway, I think they could do better.
- The hotel/car element of the package must be for a minimum of five nights within the flight travel dates for travel before 31 December 2023.
- The hotel/car element of the package must be used i.e. hotel occupied and or car rental hired for the full booked duration.
Obviously, there is nothing to stop you from picking up a car and then leaving it at the airport, for example, in the car park or elsewhere, before returning it later. If you decide to do this, I would do your research and pre-book the parking before.
Now I would argue that if you booked under the original terms and conditions, those apply. The current rules state correct as of 26 June 2022 which is obviously not the last time they were updated. If you need to argue the original terms, here is an archived page from 28 March 2023
If anyone travels in the next week or so that booked before the 26 June and will now be in contravention of one of the rules, I’d be interested to see what happens. My guess is that in many instances, BA would not necessarily be informed that you hadn’t picked up the car or checked in to the hotel anyway. However, it was making a new booking, I would not want to be testing that theory!
27 comments
Does anyone know whether BA is likely to extend this promotion beyond December?
Highly unlikely
“The bonus only applies to hotels and cars booked at the time. You can’t add them afterwards. I think this is a bit unfair too and sometimes you don’t realise you need a car until later. Since BA get the same money anyway, I think they could do better.”
The reason why the accommodation or car hire have to be booked at the same time as the flight will be because only in this situation does BA Holidays get all the money and only then does it comes under the package holiday regulations and has ATOL protection.
If you add the car hire or accommodation later to a flight already booked it is simply a linked travel arrangement where the flight would have been sold by BA and the car hire or accommodation being sold by BA Holidays – contractually and legally very different.
Really? Are the hotel or car hire companies going to pick up the phone and call BA that you didn’t quite make it… we once booked up, but ended up staying with friends, quite by accident. It was normal TPs then, which we got. Weird new rules.
Why would BA care, all parties have been prepaid. Seriously nit picking here. Some jobsworth thinking “ we will punish these chancers, and not give them their double TPs so they can’t get to Silver”
Just a chance to reduce the numbers of Silvers pouring into their lounges? less complaints about their pathetic lounge offerings around Europe, maybe?
26th June 2022
Thanks Kevin. Didn’t see the year!!
Earlier in June, I booked a holiday abroad ex LHR (and included car hire for 4 days. Travel dates are in October. I have also booked a hotel for one night with check-in on the day of my return (but not in London), as I have got another flight coming up (with a different airline from a different airport) the following day. It’ll be interesting to see if this qualifies for double tier points…
Someone clearly needs to take one for the team and see if not picking up a car still credits the extra points.
I’d be genuinely amazed if BA has the infrastructure to verify hotel check in/ car hire pick up for every booking- look at the chaos it had crediting double TPs when this offer first started and how long it took to automate it! This also isn’t about trying to avoid people getting to Silver- they’d drop the offer entirely if it was.
There is a real cost to people not checking in or collecting vehicles which is the lost revenue from upsell on insurance/ car categories and on F&B spend at hotels. This wouldn’t be a problem at the margins but they’ll be some routes where this is being done on scale eg SOF where they’ll have inventory management issues too from a car park full of uncollected vehicles. I suspect BA has had complaints from hoteliers and car hire companies which is what’s driving this change. This is the stick to avoid people no showing and the cover to remove TPs if a hotelier/ car hire company is so aggrieved to report and evidence it to BA.
On a slightly different subject – has anyone else noticed how “easy” it is to find availability for Avios CE & E flights at the moment but how difficult it is to find a return? I recently looked at 2 of my favourite destinations (LXGB & LIRF) but as I was intrigued also looked at LEMG & LEBL. I found availability, in mostly in both classes, on at least 28 days a month for September to December but returns for ALL destinations were only available on the last Saturday or Sunday of the month!! Is this how BA can get away with claiming there are more reward seats available than ever before (even though we can’t book them!!)
There’s a fault with the availability checker on BA.com where if you search for a return trip it finds outbound availability but wrongly reports nothing for the return. Looking at your destinations if you search GIB-LHR as a one way you’ll see there’s wide open availability showing in both J and Y except over August. Once you have the dates you want you can the book using the standard reward search to get the whole trip on one PNR.
As James said it is a system fault that has been around a long time. If you want to search availablity over a wide range the best bet is to use Reward Flight Finder. You do have to pay for some searches but the outlay is small and you can get alerts too which I find very handy.
I recently made a trip to Phuket, on Qatar, which included a BA Care Hire for 12 days. BA a did all the bookings. A month before the trip, the Phuket to Doha flight was cancelled and BA booked us on an earlier flight. After we got back home, I noticed that the Bonus Tier Points were only 420, when I was expecting 560. One examination of the flights, I found the Phuket to Doha flight was QRxxxx and not a BAxxxx which it was on the original booking. I assume this is why BA Holidays did not award me the Bonus Tier Points for that flight. Am I entitled to extra 140 Tier points, and how would I go about claiming them. Looking at BA web site it is a very confusing process.
Yes that will be why. I’d contact them as you orginally booked within the terms. However, usually what is known as original route credit only applies to changes on the day. This is sligthly different as it is the same route. It could have been a booking error or there were no codeshares available. Definitely worth asking.
Thanks for the above info. My wife and I are both Gold so I managed to get a rapid response from BA. BA say that it was a code share flight and should have been a BAxxxx. Also, as it was a BA cancellation, the terms of the original ticket still apply. Therefore, I am entitled to the Bonus Tier Points, plus I should receive Bonus Avios points which are based on the price of the ticket. Thank you
Good news!
I wonder if this was the car rental counters at Sofia airport that pushed for this change?!
I’d imagine bookings that create ‘false’ demand increase prices and remove availability for those who are genuinely looking for hotels and vehicles, so I’m with BA on this one.
It’s interesting that they’re tweaking the rules when there’s only six months or so of the promotion left to run.
I suspect that whilst BA may not have the means to check every car is picked up or every hotel is checked into, if they receive a complaint within that 14 day period before they award the bonus points, they now have the “right” to say you didn’t comply with the terms. I think this is fair. The scheme has been taken advantage of and I bet it has had a notable knock on effect from those who chose to game it.
I note that the revised offer shows deposits from £60 rather than the original £150. But I’ve never been able to persuade the system to offer me a deposit option for a singles trip that has fewer nights than the total trip. It always demands the full price at booking. No problem if the nights match!
Interesting, never had that issue, but not booked a holiday with less than the full amount of nights for a couple of years
Is the double tier point offer still only applicable for bookings originating from UK. Based in ME and could benefit from this at Xmas with flight and car hire. Any guidance greatly appreciated.
Yes UK only but including Jersey
Any chance you can get BA to clarify the position on whether the T&Cs in place when we bought tickets will continue to apply? Seems that they should?
I will see what I can find out but I would expect the original T&C to apply.
Hey Michelle, from BA’s T&C’s:
“4. Standard Tier Points for the flight elements will be awarded in line with regular awarding timelines after completion of the flight returning to the UK which is part of a Qualifying Booking. The initial transaction will be updated when the additional Tier Points due as a result of this promotion are added to the standard Tier Points, within 14 working days of the return flight which is part of a Qualifying Booking.”
This means the bonus tier points will be credited against the date of flight, so you will not see them in the new year. This has been confirmed anecdotally on flyertalk.
extended to Dec 24
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