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British Airways Reward Flight Pricing to Increase Again
From 27th May, the price of BA Reward Flights is set to increase yet again. That leaves less than five days to book reward flights at current prices, and that’s assuming there’s availability!
The new increase applies only to the cash portion of your booking, so the required Avios will remain unchanged. If you already thought BA surcharges were getting too high, this certainly won’t help.
BA only increased Reward Flight pricing five months ago due to high APD and inflation, but that appears to have not been the end of it.
BA gave some examples of the increases:
It’s not surprising, since ongoing disruptions in the Middle East have driven up jet fuel prices. There has been no direct mention of this, but BA owner IAG said that higher fuel prices will feed through to ticket prices and affect profits. The issue is that when fuel prices go down, BA are extremely unlikely to reduce the cash element, which is already high compared to many competitors.
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to spend Avios. Even if flight redemptions become devalued due to the extra charges, there are still many opportunities to use ‘Transfer Your Avios’ to redeem Avios with the Qatar Privilege Club, Finnair Plus, AerClub and other Avios partners.
If you have a trip in mind, make sure you book before the new pricing starts.
World of Hyatt Award Nights Devaluation Now Implemented
World of Hyatt has just made major changes to its award chart. Categories remain, but instead of Off-Peak, Standard and Peak pricing, each category now has five levels: Lowest, Low, Moderate, Upper and Top.
Here are the new costs for a Standard Room redemption:
A Category 8 standard room redemption will increase to 75,000 points per night at the new Top level. That’s 40,000 more points than dates priced at ‘Lowest’ and a 30,000 point increase from the previous award chart at ‘Peak’ pricing.
At the other end of the scale, here’s the new pricing for Premium Suites:
Here, the difference between a Category 8 redemption from Lowest to Top is 40,000 points!
You can view the separate award chart for all-inclusive resorts and Miraval properties here.
There will also be yearly category changes, and this year, it will affect 136 hotels, with the majority moving up rather than down. This will indirectly affect Category 1-4 and 1-7 free night certificates, too.
On a more positive note, Hyatt is still keeping fixed award bands rather than moving to dynamic award pricing, as many other hotel loyalty programmes have in recent years, but this does give Hyatt more room to charge higher rates during popular dates. The biggest impact of this will likely be at properties where award space is already hard to find.
Later this year, Hyatt will give early access to reward night bookings for Explorist status holders and above, as well as Hyatt credit card holders. Though the credit card is not available in the UK, it will give a huge number of people access, alongside status holders.
While World of Hyatt is one of the most transparent loyalty programmes, this change does reduce the value of some redemptions.
Search for Hyatt redemptions here >>>
Avios.com Bonuses to Keep in Mind
If you’re doing any online shopping this month, it’s worth taking a moment to check whether you can earn points by clicking through Avios.com (or a similar site, such as Virgin Red or even a cashback site). If you’re not already doing this, you’re leaving a huge number of Avios on the table. Along with credit cards, this is one of the easiest and most lucrative ways to earn Avios.
Top offers at the moment include:
Travel
- Get Your Guide – 10 Avios per £1 (up from 7)
- Viator – 12 Avios per £1 (up from 1)
- Cabin Zero – 10 (up from 8)
- IT Luggage – 6 (up from 3)
- SIM Local – 20 Avios per £1 (up from 10)
Accommodation
- Radisson Hotels – 8 Avios per £1 (up from 4)
- Accor – 15 (up from 8)
- Thistle Hotels – 12 (up from 4)
- Marriott – 7 (up from 4)
- Booking.com – 6 Avios per £1 (up from 4)
- Premier Inn 5 (up from 1)
- Agoda 11 (up from 6)
Hotels.com – 8 Avios per £1 (Up from 5)
Hotels.com has just launched its new loyalty programme, which gives you £100 to spend on hotel bookings for every 10 eligible nights stayed. That could work out well for some stays, especially if the hotel doesn’t yet have a loyalty programme. If you’re also earning Avios from your stay, it will be even more lucrative. For example, a £2,000 stay would earn you 16,000 Avios. If that were a 10-night stay at £200 per night, that would be eligible spend, and you’d also earn the £100 from Hotels.com.
Online Shopping
- Dunelm – 4 Avios per £1 (up from 2)
- Currys – 3 Avios per £1 (up from 2
- Dyson – 10 (up from 3)
- Harrods – 13 Avios (up from 5)
- Oliver Brown – 15 (up from 5)
- Liz Earle – 12 Avios (up from 5)
- Nectar Sleep – 15 Avios (up from 11)
- FUL London – 50 Avios per £1 (up from 10)
- TK Maxx – 6 (up from 3)
- Habitat – 5 Avios per £1 (up from 3)
- Apple Store – 5 Avios per £1 (up from 3)
- Selfridges – 12 Avios per £1 (up from 6)
- Barker and Stonehouse – 6 Avios per £1 (up from 4)
