New BA route, Accor mergers continue, transfer your unwanted travel, Havana for £1022

New BA route

BA have introduced a new route and extra flights for winter 18/19 season. The new route is to the German city of Cologne.

BA has announced it will be adding a new four-per-week service from Gatwick airport to Cologne, located on both sides of the Rhine, from November 16, 2018. Cologne (Köln) is Germany’s fourth-largest city and offers plenty of attractions such as the famous cathedral with its filigree twin spires as well as a Christmas market.

The city is known for its art, history and architecture. If you are a bit of a foodie there is plenty on offer such as the local speciality Himmel un Ääd, mashed potato with apple sauce and sausage. There is also a chocolate museum as well as the many beer halls – no other German city has as many pubs per capita. Cologne is also home to the six-day street carnival known as “Crazy Days” where more than one million revellers take to the streets for the largest carnival in Europe.

Services to Cologne will be on Mondays, Thursdays. Fridays and Sundays with fares starting from £27 one way,

British Airways is also increasing the number of flights it operates to other city break destinations from Gatwick this winter, with more flights to Palma in Mallorca, Turin, Lanzarote, Malaga and Geneva.

You can find the lowest fares to destinations using BA’s handy low fare finder here.

Havana from £1022 in business class

With the death of Fidel Castro things are changing at a fast pace in Cuba and now it is probably getting to that sweet spot in time where there are comfortable hotels to stay in but tourism is not out of control or spoiling Cuba. Luxury hotels such as the Kempinski in Havana are springing up in Havana making it the perfect time to visit.

At the moment it is not that easy to get flights from the UK in business class apart from on Virgin and they are often pricey or indirect. If you don’t want to redeem your Avios to fly to Cuba you could have a look at the deal with KLM from Zurich or Geneva (Air France also offers it but it involves two stops instead of one with KLM).

The offer rules are:

• Available for travel until 31 October 2018
• Changeable for a fee
• Non-refundable
• Must stay a Saturday night or 5 days

The drawback is that KLM’s A330-200s are still being refurbished and won’t be complete until November 2018. However, as it gets closer to the time the chances of getting a new one increase. The flights I looked at in September were showing the new 2-2-2 configuration versus the old 2-3-2.

During the refit all seats in World Business Class will be converted to fully-flat with a brand-new inflight entertainment system.  These still won’t offer direct aisle access for the window seats but they are definitely a step up from the previous ones. These are the same seats that Qatar uses on their A330 also in a 2-2-2 configuration. You can read my review of Qatar’s A330 here

You can book direct with KLM.

From the UK there are a few seats with Swiss for around £1343 but beware this transfers onto Swiss’ leisure airline Edelweiss. It is not up to the standard of Swiss but it is still a decent service with seats in a 1-2-1 or 2-2-1 alternating pattern. You can search for the fares on Swiss’ website.

Transfer your unwanted travel and buy other’s unwanted travel cheap

Whilst travel insurance covers many reasons why you may need to cancel a trip, there are always other situations where you want to cancel a reservation but can’t get a refund from the supplier or your insurance company. A relatively new company aims to solve this issue on an ‘eBay for Travel’ web platform which allows consumers to buy and sell unwanted travel.

TransferTravel.com helps consumers who can no longer go on pre-booked, non-refundable travel arrangements recoup some of their money. You can sell anything from accommodation, flights, package holidays and cruises. TransferTravel.com estimates that 80% of all travel is eligible for transfer but at the moment, there is little consumer knowledge about this and very few travel and ticket brands highlight this in their small print.

In terms of luxury travel for flights, all the ones I saw were economy but there were some interesting hotel offers on there such as the Atlantis Bahamas and Sofitel the Palm Dubai. The prices were around 50% of the original cost of the booking.

Simon Powell, the company’s founder and CEO launched the company after he experienced a relationship break up, which left him with an expensive, romantic hotel package to Dubai worth thousands of pounds that he no longer wanted.

If you are looking to sell you obviously need to check whether your travel is transferable in the terms and conditions or enquiring with your supplier. Once you have listed it, people can either make an offer or buy at the price you have set.

So how safe is it to use? When you buy tickets, your payment is held by TransferTravel and only released to the seller once you use your tickets. Plus, if the seller doesn’t transfer the tickets within 7 days, they will refund you instantly. For sellers TransferTravel.com operates on a no-sale, no-fee basis, only collecting a 15% fee when a successful transfer is made. They take the payment from the buyer, and then pay you.

You can find more information at TransferTravel.com

Accor Hotels merge hotel loyalty schemes

In July 2016, Accor hotels acquired Raffles, Fairmont and Swissotel in a $2.7 billion deal. Since then, all hotel loyalty programmes have continued to operate independently of one another. However, as of now all the loyalty schemes (Raffles, Fairmont and Swissotel) are operating under the Le Club AccorHotels programme, with your status matched from the previous schemes based on your activity with them in 2017.

There will be some losses in elite benefits for members coming from the more prestigious Fairmont President’s Club, with more information here. The same also applies to previous members of the other loyalty programmes. Yet the losses for the President’s club members are the most profound ones; including guaranteed late checkout and suite upgrade certificates. You will generally be matched to the same level in Accor so Platinum to Platinum, Club to Classic etc. although it gets more complicated if you hold status in Accor and one of the other schemes. However, the bonus for all members is that the benefits and scope for points earning is now spread across all the hotels, with 4,300 hotels worldwide.

Accor Hotels has also recently purchased a 50% stake in SBE Entertainment, owner of Morgans Hotel Group, This gives the French chain a bigger presence in the US, with 20 hotels in SBE Entertainment being in the US, and 3 in London. Hotels include Delano, Mondrian, SLS and St Martin’s Lane. Accor hotels may be looking at using their stake in SBE Entertainment for lifestyle experiences or points redemptions too. SBE Entertainment not only have a portfolio of hotels but also nightclubs and restaurants Katsuya, Unami Burger and Cleo.