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New Zealand under £2000
I last wrote about this deal in March this year and now it has made another appearance. The fare is from Paris Charles de Gaulle which is a handy starting point on an ex EU fare due to its short travel time and regional connections. The fare is available on a mixture of Star Alliance airlines including Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Air New Zealand and Swiss.
My pick would probably be Singapore Airlines. I also love Air New Zealand although their seats are not always popular with everyone being the flip over style. Singapore Airlines has great food and service and some incredibly wide seats too. You can read several aircraft type reviews on Singapore Airlines here.
- Book by 19 July 2019
- Travel by 30 June 2020
- Minimum stay: 5 nights or a Saturday night
- Maximum stay: 3 months
- Transfers: unlimited
- Stopovers: 1 for €100 extra ( you could use this to travel to Paris on a different date and have another holiday out of it)
- Refundable: No
- Changeable: Yes for a fee
Although not stated in the rules, it only appears to be available midweek. The fare is available from online travel agents such as Expedia. It is always worth checking Expedia’s prices for a flight + hotel as adding in one night in a very cheap hotel can lower the price further sometimes. You don’t actually have to stay in the hotel! You can also search for the cheapest deal using Skyscanner.
Earn Avios with Airbnb – but be aware it could cost you more!
With the amount of travelling I do, I enjoy the odd Airbnb for a break from hotels. However, the lack of any sort of loyalty scheme has always put me off using them more extensively. For example, when I book Hilton, I not only earn Avios through the BA e-store, but I then earn Hilton points on my stay. You can read a review of one of my Airbnb experiences here.
So how do you earn Avios from Airbnb? By using the BA e-store. All you need is a BA Executive Club account, and then you can shop online as usual, with many retailers and travel companies. You simply get directed to the official website for the company from the link on BA. The Airbnb one is slightly different in that you need to enter your BA Executive number after you have clicked through. Most do it all automatically. You get the Avios within 60 days of booking.
For Airbnb, you will collect 3 Avios per £1/€1/$1 spend and if you haven’t used them before you get 500 Avios as a welcome bonus too. If you have been thinking of hosting your home on Airbnb, there is also 8000 Avios for hosts. You get this once you have listed your property and had your first booking.
However, there is a potential watch out – the T&C say “The rates for bookings via Airbnb may differ from regular bookings with the same conditions on airbnb.com.” Whether this will actually happen, it is hard to say, but it certainly worth comparing costs before you make the book via BA.
You can find the relevant BA Airbnb page here.
China Southern snubs oneworld for now
There has been a lot of speculation that when China Southern leaves Skyteam, it will join oneworld instead. This actually would have been a useful airline since they often offer reasonable fares from the UK to Australia and other destinations. You can read a review of China Southern’s business class here.
It had been announced that informal talks had taken place between China Southern and oneworld, but then it seemed to go very quiet…China Southern is due to leave Skyteam on 31 December 2019. They have now revealed their ambition to become the world’s largest carrier within the next three years and are not planning to join any alliance before 2021. Instead, China Southern plans to form partnerships with other major carriers after leaving Skyteam Alliance.
