NEWS: BA Future Travel vouchers info, Hilton devalues and Heathrow could be overwhelmed this summer

BA Future Travel vouchers info

British Airways have released a new video explaining the steps they are taking with Future Travel Vouchers, some of which I have already covered. Overall, it’s good news. If you had a voucher and forgot about it, it was probably one of the older ones you couldn’t use online so you should be contacted by BA. 

Here are some of the highlights of the information:

• BA should start refunding vouchers starting 125-2 which can’t be redeemed online 
• They will also be refunding all other types of FTV which can’t be redeemed online such as Avios bookings or those using a voucher
• This will be done in order of issue with the oldest ones done first
• You should get notified by email and then get a refund within 30 days of being notified
• B A Holidays vouchers that have not been redeemed within 2 years will be refunded

If you want to watch the whole video, here it is:

Hilton devalues by increasing top hotels points per night

Waldorf Maldives

Hilton has quietly increased the cost of a number of Hilton’s most desirable luxury hotels. Previously only one hotel cost 150,000 points per night on a standard redemption – the Waldorf Astoria Maldives. Most other top end properties cost 95,000 points. Hilton uses variable rates but there is a standard room redemption rate maximum. Premium rooms cost substantially more. 

Here are a few of the most popular hotels which have changed:

• Conrad Maldives from 95,000 to 120,000
• Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills from 95,000 to 120,000
• Waldorf Astoria Grand Wailea (Hawaii) from 95,000 to 110,000
• Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam from 95,000 to 110,000
• Mango House Seychelles (review here) from 95,000 to 110,000

Hilton don’t have a points chart anymore but you can look up the ranges of redemption rates on this page. 

Heathrow could be overwhelmed this summer

Heathrow Airport

This summer, unfortunately, has the potential to be extremely stressful for travellers, and I don’t just mean from a covid restriction point of view. Airports, hotels, and airlines are already creaking at the seams due to lack of staff. Manchester has had huge queues recently and is allegedly using firefighters as baggage handlers, BA is struggling for cabin crew and at Heathrow there have been issues with security and stands/jet bridges recently. 

Sadly all this is likely to get far worse as travel returns to some sort of normality in the summer and more people travel. Heathrow today said that it expects peak days in the summer holidays to be very busy, at up to 85% of pre-pandemic levels. The airport expressed concerns about how this would affect travellers.

An official statement said, 

This is likely to feel even busier in check-in because of the additional pre-departure checks. This is higher than current airline, handler and airport capacity, so we are putting passengers first by gearing up across the airport for peak demand, working with airlines to reduce check in times and recruiting 12,000 new colleagues, as well as reopening Terminal 4 before July.  We are particularly concerned over Border Force’s ability to scale up to meet demand.

Hopefully, the majority of countries will no longer have any Covid checks by the summer which should reduce the issues with check-in. Although if airlines made it mandatory to use something like Verifly it would speed things up considerably for those countries that did still have restrictions. Those that were unable to use Verifly for any reason could be sent to a separate check-in to keep things moving for everyone else.