The good news for anyone travelling between London and Amsterdam or Rotterdam is that DIRECT Eurostar return trains are about to start running.

Eurostar has been running from London TO Amsterdam and Rotterdam for a while now.

However, due to on-going work constructing immigration facilities, you could not travel TO London directly.  Passengers from Amsterdam needed to get off the train in Brussels, clear passport control and get back onto a different train to complete their trip.  Passengers from Rotterdam had to take a Thalys train to Brussels and change.

This nonsense is about to end!

From 30th April, trains will run directly from Amsterdam to St Pancras.  From 18th May, you will also be able to travel directly from Rotterdam to St Pancras.

If you book a ticket THIS WEEK (the final date to book is 25th February) for travel to Amsterdam between 30th April and 30th June, or Rotterdam between 18th May and 30th June, you will receive double Club Eurostar points.

I value a Club Eurostar point at 10p-12.5p as this article explains.   With this offer, you will be earning 2 points per £1 spent which means a rebate of 20p-25p per £1.

You can also transfer Eurostar points to the Accor Live Limitless hotel loyalty scheme at 1:3 (minimum transfer of 500 Eurostar points).  As Accor points transfer 1:1 to Avios in Iberia Plus, you could earn 6 Avios per £1 spent on Eurostar via this offer.  We explained how the Accor / Eurostar partnership works in this article.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Eurostar has launched a new bonus Club Eurostar points offer which could prove very lucrative.

If you book between 21st and 29th February, for travel in March, you will receive:

double Club Eurostar points in Standard Class and

triple Club Eurostar points in Standard Premier

I value a Club Eurostar point at 10p-12.5p as this article explains.   With this offer, you will be earning 3 points per £1 spent on Standard Premier which means a rebate of 30p-37.5p per £1.

This is VERY generous, of course.

You can also transfer Eurostar points to the Accor Live Limitless hotel loyalty scheme at 1:3 (minimum transfer of 500 Eurostar points).  As Accor points transfer 1:1 to Avios in Iberia Plus, you could earn 9 Avios per £1 spent on Eurostar Standard Premier tickets via this offer.  We explained how the Accor / Eurostar partnership works in this article.

This offer was circulated by email last week.  It does not appear to be targetted even though it is not showing on the Eurostar website.  Here are the rules:

You must be registered as a member of Club Eurostar to be eligible for this promotion

Bonus points can be earned on any Eurostar direct journey, “Any Belgian Station” tickets or combined Eurostar and TGV tickets on Eurostar routes, booked between 00:01 (GMT) on 21 February 2020 and 23:59 (GMT) on 29 February 2020 (“Booking Period”).

The promotion is valid for travel between 00:01 (GMT) on 1 March 2020 and 23:59 (GMT) on 31 March 2020 inclusive (“Travel Period”).

During the Booking Period, you will receive bonus points equal to the number of Club Eurostar points awarded for each journey booked in Standard class and bonus points equal to twice the number of Club Eurostar points awarded for each journey booked in Standard Premier class on any Eurostar service.

Bonus points earned as part of the promotion do not count towards your Club Eurostar club level.

Bonus points can be earned during the Booking Period by either providing your Club Eurostar membership number at the time of booking, or by adding your Club Eurostar membership number to your booking via your Club Eurostar account prior to travel (subject to your booking being within the Travel Period).

Bonus points will automatically be credited to your membership account and become redeemable for rewards when you check in.

You may only accumulate one set of points for any journey, regardless of the number of seats you have purchased.

Club Eurostar membership is for individuals, therefore you may only earn points for your own travel.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

I get the occasional reader email asking if you can convert Club Eurostar points into British Airways Avios points.

The answer is yes, you can, but there are two snags:

it is a bit fiddly, and more importantly …..

you will lose a lot of value

How do you convert Eurostar points to Avios?

You won’t find anything on the Eurostar website about converting points to Avios.  This is because you need to move your points via an intermediary.

Eurostar only has one points partnership which allows direct transfers.  This is with Accor Live Limitless, the loyalty scheme for the Accor hotel group.  Accor owns Ibis, Novotel, Sofitel, Fairmont, Mercure and various other brands.

Full details are on the Accor website here.

Accor Live Limitless is a partner with British Airways Executive Club and Iberia Plus, so you can move points from Club Eurostar to Accor Live Limitless to Avios.

What are the transfer rates between Accor Live Limitless and Club Eurostar?

The snag with these transfer deals is that they are never generous.  Accor Live Limitless is a revenue based loyalty scheme, with 1 Accor point worth 2 Eurocents off a hotel room.  There is no redemption chart – the number of points needed for a free night is based on the cash cost of the room you want.

Because it is revenue based, it is hard for the Accor scheme to be too generous on transfers because it needs to make a profit on transfers in.

The transfer rate between Eurostar and Accor is:

500 Club Eurostar points gets you 1,500 Accor Live Limitless points

You need a minimum of 1,000 Club Eurostar points to convert them to Avios because of the Accor rules we explain below.

What are the transfer rates between Accor Live Limitless and Avios?

Here’s the interesting thing.

For weird historical reasons, Accor has a different deal with Iberia Plus and British Airways.

Accor Live Limitless points transfer at 1:1 into Iberia Plus (3,000 point minimum) – see the Accor website here 

Accor Live Limitless points transfer at 2:1 into British Airways Executive Club (4,000 point minimum) – see the Accor website here 

Only an idiot would transfer from Accor to British Airways instead of using Iberia Plus.

The smart thing to do is to open an Iberia Plus account, transfer your Accor points into Iberia Plus, and then use ‘Combine My Avios’ to move your Avios from Iberia Plus to British Airways Executive Club.

This HFP article explains how ‘Combine My Avios’ works.

Is it worth moving Club Eurostar points to Avios?

On the face of it, no.

I value a Club Eurostar point at 10p-12p as this article explains.

I value an Avios point at 1p, although you can often do better as this article explains.

So …. this is how it goes:

1,000 Eurostar points (value £100) gets you 3,000 Accor points (worth €60 of hotel rooms) gets you 3,000 Avios in Iberia Plus (worth £30)

The value gets worse at each level:

You get more value for your Eurostar points using them for train tickets than for Accor hotel rooms

You get more value for your Accor points using them for hotel rooms than for Avios points in Iberia Plus

Of course, life isn’t always that simple.

Perhaps you have Club Eurostar points you won’t use and will expire?   In this case, 3,000 Accor or Avios points is better than nothing.  You can always stop Club Eurostar points expiring by transfering a small number of American Express Membership Rewards points though.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is always good to have more redemption options.  This one involves a noticeable loss of value, on my valuations, but you may have a different view than me on what your Eurostar points are worth.

You can find out more about the Accor / Eurostar partnership on the Accor Live Limitless website here.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Accor Live Limitless has a little known partnership with Club Eurostar.

As there are very few ways of earning Club Eurostar points apart from using their services, I thought it was worth a closer look.  You can convert American Express Membership Rewards points to Club Eurostar at the rate of 15:1 but this is pretty much it in terms of partner earning options.

How do you earn Club Eurostar points with Accor Live Limitless?

As the biggest hotel group in France and with a big UK presence, Accor was a natural fit for Club Eurostar’s first major travel partnership.

You can move Accor Live Limitless points to Club Eurostar, and Club Eurostar points to Accor Live Limitless.

Full details are on the Accor website here.

But should you do it?

Accor is the only airline or hotel group which is really pushing the concept of two-way transfer partnerships.  You have been able to transfer Finnair points to and from Accor for years, and Qatar Airways was added more recently.

In a roundabout way, this is a way of converting Finnair or Qatar Airways miles into Avios or many other airlines, using Accor Live Limitless as an intermediary.  You lose a LOT of value doing this though – it would make more sense to move the points into Accor and spend them on a hotel.

The snag with these transfer deals is that they are never generous.  Accor Live Limitless is a revenue based loyalty scheme, with 1 Accor point worth 2 Eurocents off a hotel room.  There is no redemption chart – the number of points needed for a free night is based on the cash cost of the room you want.

Because it is revenue based, it is hard for the scheme to be too generous on transfers because it needs to make a profit both on transfers in and transfers out.

What are the transfer rates between Accor Live Limitless and Club Eurostar?

You can see what I mean by looking at the asymmetrical Accor rates to and from Club Eurostar:

500 Club Eurostar points gets you 1,500 Accor Live Limitless points

4,000 Accor Live Limitless points gets you 350 Club Eurostar points

Point transfers do NOT count towards status in either scheme.

Let’s try to put a cash value on this.  I decided in this article that Club Eurostar points are worth 10p – 12p.  Let’s stick with 10p to be safe, although on a short-notice trip you can do a lot better.

Going back to our original trade:

500 Eurostar points (value £50) gets you 1,500 Accor points (value €30)

4,000 Accor points (value €80) gets you 350 Eurostar points (value £35)

This is clearly a bad trade whichever way you do it.

Of course, life isn’t always that simple.

Perhaps you have a handful of Club Eurostar points you won’t use and will expire?   In this case, 1,500 Accor points is better than nothing.  You can always stop Club Eurostar points expiring by transfering a small number of American Express Membership Rewards points though.

If you have 4,000 Accor Live Limitless points sitting around you could convert to 4,000 Avios in Iberia Plus (NOT in BA Executive Club, which has a worse rate).  Even better, you would get €80 off a hotel room.  Converting to Eurostar is probably equally as good as moving to Avios in Iberia Plus, but you are losing almost 50% of the value compared to booking a room.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is always good to have more redemption options.  This one involves a noticeable loss of value, on my valuations, but you may have a different view than me on what your Eurostar points are worth.

You can find out more about this new partnership on the Accor Live Limitless website here.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Whilst Club Eurostar does not have family accounts, it has something even more flexible – points pooling.  You can transfer points to anyone you want, although transfers inwards do not count towards status.

Here are the rules:

• You can share a maximum of 3,000 points in one go
• You can share a maximum of 6,000 points in each calendar year
• You can share a maximum of 3,000 points with one member in each calendar year
• You can share points with a maximum of four people in each calendar year
• You can receive a maximum of 3,000 points in each calendar year
• Points have to be shared in multiples of 100

To transfer your points, simple log in at the Eurostar website and look for ‘points pooling’ in the Club Eurostar section.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 20,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus (20,000 points is a special offer until 29th June 2020)

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Is it possible to transfer hotel loyalty points to a friend or partner?  Can you transfer the points for free?  In most cases, the answer is ‘Yes’.

Airline schemes are not like this.  Most frequent flyer schemes allow you to pay to transfer miles to a friend but it is usually a terrible deal.

The price is often only modestly cheaper than buying miles outright but no new miles are being created. You are paying a high fee simply for the loyalty programme to move them from one account to another!

Here is British Airways pricing for Avios transfers.  Transferring 13,000 Avios points from yourself to a friend will cost a crazy £100 unless you are a Gold member.  This is especially crazy given that:

a) you can issue a reward ticket for someone else from your account, and

b) you could create a Household Account for free and pool your miles that way

In general, you should think long and hard before paying to transfer airline miles to someone else.

With the hotel loyalty schemes, it is a totally different game.

How can you transfer hotel loyalty points to someone else?

Most of the hotel schemes make it very easy to transfer points around – and you often don’t need to pay.  Here are some examples:

Accor Live Limitless

Accor points cannot be transferred.

Best Western Rewards

The FAQ on the UK website says:

“Yes. Points can be transferred between accounts that share the same physical address. To arrange a point transfer, please contact our Rewards Team at rewards@bestwestern.co.uk”

Hilton Honors

Hilton used to make a nominal charge ($12.50 per 5,000 points) to make transfers.  This has now changed – points pooling, as they call it, is now FREE.  You can send up to 500,000 points, albeit across no more than six transactions, and receive up to 2 million points per calendar year.

It works well.  Every time that my wife has a Hilton stay I sweep the points across to my account.  You can find out more on this page of the Hilton Honors website.

IHG Rewards Club

You can transfer points to anyone else for a flat fee of $5 per 1,000.  I did this once to top up my Mum’s account when she was 1,000 points short of a redemption – in this scenario it was $5 well spent (buying 1,000 would have been $13.50).  The link to arrange transfers is here.

Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott Bonvoy allows you to transfer your points to anyone.  Full details are here.

There is a cap of 100,000 points per year.  There is no fee for the transfer but you need to call Marriott to get it done.  It cannot be done online.

Radisson Rewards

Radisson Rewards used to be very generous – you could make any transfer, to anyone, for free. Whilst that is no longer the case, it is still pretty good.

If you do NOT have elite status (remember that Amex Platinum comes with free Radisson Rewards Gold status) you can transfer points to anyone who has shared your address for at least 30 days, as long as both accounts are at least a year old.  Details are on the website here (see 3d).

If you have status, you can still transfer points to anyone for free.

World of Hyatt

Hyatt points can be transferred to any other member for FREE by filling in this PDF form. You can only make a transfer once every 30 days. In theory you are meant to redeem them as soon as the transfer is complete but my understanding is that this is not enforced.

There is one unpublished rule, which I came a cropper with a couple of years ago.  Both the giving and receiving accounts must have had a qualifying Hyatt stay during the previous 12 months.  This is what it means when the PDF form says that both accounts must be ‘active’.

PS.  It is worth knowing that Club Eurostar also lets you transfer points to anyone for free within annual limits.  We wrote this article on how to transfer Club Eurostar points to another person.

(Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Promos’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)

Eurostar has announced that it is dropping its direct Summer service to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille.

What was more surprising is that, as well as cancelling all trips for 2020, it has also wiped the schedule for Summer 2021.

It’s obviously not the end of the world if you had planned to visit any of these cities by train.  TGV connections are available in both Lille and Paris, albeit with additional travel time required, and your connection is protected if you book a through-ticket from the Eurostar website.

Existing ticket holders can be rebooked, for free, onto a TGV connection for no additional fare.  You will need to pay any fare difference if you want to change your travel date during rebooking, however.  Refunds and Eurostar vouchers are also available.

You can find out more on the Eurostar travel agents website here.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Eurostar has cancelled its dedicated ski services to France for 2020.

Last month, we reported that Eurostar has cancelled its services to the south of France.  These were the trains heading to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille.

As well as cancelling the services for 2020, Eurostar has already cancelled them for 2021 too.

The axe has now fallen on the Winter ski services too.

The Eurostar website now says:

“IMPORTANT: We unfortunately won’t be running our ski trains during the 2020-21 winter season. It’s been an absolute pleasure to take thousands of travellers direct from St Pancras to the Alps over the years. But in the wake of the coronavirus and a challenging travel market, we’ve had to make some changes to our services, focusing on our main routes with the highest demand.

You’ll be able to book an indirect trip to the Alps on our website from October. This would mean taking a Eurostar train to France and changing onto an SNCF train for the rest of the journey.

Eurostar is a member of Railteam, which means travellers can benefit from the ‘Hop on the next available train’ feature should they experience any delays or cancellations on their journey, providing peace of mind when connecting between trains.”

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

News in brief:

Aspire’s Luton Airport lounge due to open on 4th August

The Aspire lounge as London Luton Airport is due to re-open on 4th August.

The good news is that the lounge has been completely refurbished.  It originally closed in late January, with a view to re-opening in mid-March.  Clearly that wasn’t going to happen.

Scattered throughout this ‘Bits’ article are a few ‘artist impressions’ of how it is meant to look.  We can hopefully take a look over the next few weeks.

It will be accessible with Priority Pass (buy one here, or get one free with American Express Platinum) or Lounge Club (get two free passes with American Express Gold).

Eurostar lounge at London St Pancras due to re-open on 3rd August

Meanwhile, Eurostar has confirmed to a HFP reader that it is re-opening its lounges on Monday 3rd August.

Our review of the London St Pancras Eurostar lounge is here – it has since gained a cocktail bar on the upper level.  Our latest review of the Paris Eurostar lounge is here.  There are also lounges at Brussels and Ebsfleet.

Access is available to Business Premier passengers, Eurostar Carte Blanche cardholders or anyone holding an American Express Platinum charge card (no guests allowed, although your supplementary Platinum cardholder can get in by showing their own card).

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

News in brief:

More American Express card offers

Yesterday we covered an interesting Santander Cycles American Express card offer. This would get you 1,000 Membership Rewards points for a £6 outlay.

There are a number of other American Express offers popping up in people’s accounts.

Got an Amex Gold?

Amex is offering double Membership Rewards points for Gold card holders at certain retailers. It is an eclectic list – Aldi, Superdrug and participating Esso petrol stations, and online only at Currys PC World and Deliveroo.

The offer is valid until 21st November 2020. You need to opt-in via the ‘Offers’ tab of your online statement page.

And a hotel deal …..

I have an offer of £100 off £300 spend at The Connaught and The Berkeley hotels in London. You must book and pay by 27th November 2020. It is not valid purely on restaurant spend so you need to be a resident to use it.

These are usually extremely expensive and plush hotels. However, you can combine this with the special benefits that our hotel booking partner Emyr Thomas can get you. At The Berkeley, for example, booking via Emyr comes with:

• Upgrade on arrival, subject to availability
• Seasonal welcome amenity
• Full English breakfast for two guests per bedroom
• £75 hotel credit to be utilized during stay (not combinable, not valid on room rate)
• Early check-in/late check-out, subject to availability
• Complimentary Wi-Fi

Factor in the £100 credit and it looks interesting for a high-end break. You can contact Emyr via the form on this page of HfP.

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine has closed

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine has been closed down by News UK, presumably following a collapse in advertising revenue, according to Press Gazette.

The magazine will always have a place in the heart of Head for Points readers. This is because, back in 2016, it decided to offer 4,500 Avios to everyone who took out a £30 subscription. What could possible go wrong ….?

I often use this example when talking to companies who want to use loyalty points as incentives. The magazine thought it made sense to pay (at least) £45 for 4,500 Avios in return for a £30 subscription. Why? Because their modelling showed that the average subscriber stayed with the magazine for (I’m guessing now) five years.

There were many, many thousands of sign-ups from amongst the Head for Points readership, and I am pretty sure that the average subscription length was nearer 1.0 years ……

Eurostar finally starting direct trains from Amsterdam and Rotterdam

At long last, there is a date for direct Eurostar services from Amsterdam and Rotterdam to London.

Direct services TO Amsterdam started in 2018. Anika travelled on the launch London to Amsterdam Eurostar service and her review is here.

Direct services back to London were not possible, however, because the necessary passport, security and segregation facilities were not in place in the Netherlands. You had to take a standard train to Belgium where you would clear immigration and get onto a Eurostar train for the final leg.

From 26th October, you can say goodbye to all that with the launch of direct services. It will take just over four hours for the trip from Amsterdam and just over three and a half hours from Rotterdam.

Tickets will be on sale from 1st September.

What are Club Eurostar points worth?

I have pondered this question – without answering it – in a couple of recent articles, including this one from two weeks ago on which is the best American Express Membership Rewards points redemption.

Whenever I write about Club Eurostar I say that I value a point at 10p.  With my Eurostar travel picking up over the last couple of years, I started to wonder whether I was undervaluing them.

10p per point was fair, in my mind, based on my personal Eurostar travel.  However, my use of Eurostar is NOT typical.  When I go to Paris it is usually to review a hotel for HFP, and I take off-peak mid-morning trains out and mid-afternoon trains home.  These trains tend to be relatively cheap, even if booked at 2-3 weeks notice.

Most Head for Points readers do not use Eurostar like this.  Even if they take the same trains that I do when working – which will normally be a cash trip paid for by their employer – they are likely to want to redeem for a weekend break.

Here is the key point – Club Eurostar lets you redeem on ANY train.  You need more points for peak services, but as long as seats are bookable for cash you can book them for points.  There are also no taxes or charges to pay.  Free, for once, really means free.

Here is the pricing:

Standard class – 1,000 Club Eurostar points off-peak and 1,500 points peak, return

Standard Premier – 2,000 Club Eurostar points off-peak and 2,500 points peak, return

Business Premier – 3,000 Club Eurostar points at all times, return

Peak and off-peak is NOT driven by date.  There are a fixed number of tickets available for each service at off-peak pricing and then it switches to peak.

For the purposes of this analysis:

I am only looking at London to Paris, the most popular redemption option

I am only looking at Standard and Standard Premier.  In my mind, Standard Premier is the ‘sweet spot’ in terms of value – you get the same Business Premier seat and a three course meal with wine, but you don’t get fast track security, lounge access or a ‘premium meal’.  Many people are perfectly happy with Standard, however, especially if travelling as a couple (I think that there are no solo seats in Standard).

I looked at pricing for a weekend break to Paris booked one month, two months and four months ahead of travel.  As it is currently December, I would expect my prices to be lower than what you would find if I did the same exercise in May.  I am tempted to repeat it then to see the difference.

I took the same trains on each occasion, which I thought were the ideal ‘weekend break’ services:

18.01 from London St Pancras on Friday, arriving at 21.15 in Gare du Nord

19.13 from Paris Gare du Nord on Sunday, arriving at 19.39 in St Pancras

Here were the prices:

Standard:

One month ahead: £239 return

Two months ahead:  £151 return

Four months ahead:  £134 return

Standard Premier:

One month ahead: £239 return (not a typo – it was the same price as Standard!)

Two months ahead:  £299 return

Four months ahead:  £219 return

Let’s look at the value you are getting for your points on this basis, turning the prices above into ‘pence per Club Eurostar point’.

Standard:

One month ahead: 15.9p per Club Eurostar point (peak pricing)

Two months ahead:  15.1p per Club Eurostar point (off-peak pricing)

Four months ahead:  13.4p per Club Eurostar point (off-peak pricing)

Standard Premier:

One month ahead: 12.0p per Club Eurostar point (off-peak pricing)

Two months ahead:  13.3p per Club Eurostar point (off-peak out, peak return)

Four months ahead:  10.1p per Club Eurostar point (off-peak pricing)

Looking at these numbers, it looks like I can increase my Club Eurostar valuation to at least 12.5p for anyone happy to redeem in Standard for a long weekend in Paris.  For anyone who prefers Standard Premier, 10p still looks fair.

Assuming that you will get your Club Eurostar points by transferring American Express Membership Rewards points at 15:1, I should increase my ‘value of an Amex point when used for Eurostar’ from 0.66p to a range of 0.66p to 0.85p.

Of course, you need to factor in the fact that cash tickets would earn valuable Club Eurostar points back.

As with airline miles, you will find that your points have substantially more value if your lifestyle means that you are likely to need to travel at short notice.

How to earn Club Eurostar points via UK credit cards

As a reminder, Club Eurostar does not have its own UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold – 10,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

The Platinum Card from American Express – 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

American Express Rewards credit card – 5,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you earn the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum also comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a FREE supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.  Note that this benefit only applies to personal Platinum cards issued in the UK (and possibly France, Belgium and the Netherlands).  It is not a benefit of the Business Platinum card.

At long last, there is a date for direct Eurostar services from Amsterdam and Rotterdam to London.

Direct services TO Amsterdam started in 2018. Anika travelled on the launch London to Amsterdam Eurostar service and her review is here.

Direct services back to London were not possible, however, because the necessary passport, security and segregation facilities were not in place in the Netherlands. You had to take a standard train to Belgium where you would clear immigration and get onto a Eurostar train for the final leg.

From 26th October, you can say goodbye to all that with the launch of direct services. It will take just over four hours for the trip from Amsterdam and just over three and a half hours from Rotterdam.

Tickets will be on sale from 1st September.

News in brief:

Update on the BA Amex ‘1,000 Avios’ offer

On Thursday we covered a new British Airways American Express offer. This gives all cardholders an extra 1 Avios per £2 spent until late October, to a maximum of 1,000 bonus Avios.

The original version of our article said that it applied to all BA Amex cards. This was wrong – it does NOT apply to British Airways Premium Plus American Express cards.

Amex told us that ‘the offer applies to all British Airways American Express cards’ which, in retrospect, can be interpreted in two ways. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Save an extra £100 in the BA Holidays sale

BA Holidays is offering a further discount on bookings made in the current British Airways sale. If you book a flight + hotel or flight + car holiday before 8th September you can make the following additional savings:

• £100 extra discount with a minimum spend of £2,500 per booking
• £50 extra discount with a minimum spend of £1,250 per booking
• £25 extra discount with a min spend of £650 per booking (flight + Car only)

The discount is valid on selected destinations for 2020 and ALL destinations for 2021.

The British Airways ‘Book with Confidence’ guarantee means that you can change your booking date and destination if you wish (obviously you need to pay any difference if the new holiday is more expensive) or even cancel completely for a Future Travel Voucher.

BA Holidays is offering complimentary access to the Galleries Club lounges at London Heathrow Terminal 5 when booking an economy flight + hotel package. You must travel for seven nights or more, before Christmas Eve. Minimum spend criteria apply.

You can find out more on the BA Holidays sale page here.

Eurostar to withdraw from Ashford and Ebbsfleet

Eurostar has announced that it will not be reinstating services from Ashford International or Ebbsfleet until at least 2022.

Eurostar has continually been the most pessimistic / realistic of the travel companies. It has already scrapped its Summer services to the south of France until 2022, and there will be no ski trains this year.

The decision to end services from Kent for at least two years has not gone down well with local politicians and the wider business community. Given that the trains are passing through the stations anyway, it appears a strange decision. I accept that the need to operate immigration and security facilities means that running costs are not cheap, however.

Hampton Blackpool hotel gets permission for major expansion

I wouldn’t normally run this story, but it ties in with my review of the Holiday Inn Express Bodmin in Cornwall from earlier this week.

In that article I said that three-star hotel operators like Holiday Inn Express, Courtyard by Marriott and Hampton by Hilton were facing an open goal at UK seaside resorts. They are up against the low quality and high cost of independent coastal bed and breakfast establishments.

The Hampton in Blackpool, on South Promenade, has just been granted planning permission for an extra 74 rooms to add to the existing 130. The demand is clearly there from people looking from clean, reliable and good value accommodation.

You can read more on Lancs Live here.

News in brief:

BA avoids compulsory cabin crew redundancies at Heathrow and City

British Airways has confirmed to staff that no cabin crew were made redundant in the recent restructuring.

(EDIT: It seems that this claim may only relate to Heathrow and London City and not Gatwick, which does appear to have some compulsory redundancies.)

This is, of course, not as rosy as it sounds. Many legacy cabin crew members, hired before the introduction of lower paid Mixed Fleet almost a decade ago, were facing substantial pay cuts if they remained. These crew members are highly likely to have taken voluntary redundancy rather than remain.

Some crew members also chose to switch to part time work. In addition, given that Mixed Fleet staff at British Airways tend not to see their job as one for life, there will have been a number who had been planning to leave and were spurred on by the carrot of a cheque.

With ticket and sales and flight schedules for the Autumn running well below projections, however, there is likely to be another round of job losses to come.

Eurostar resumes a full catering service

Eurostar has, belatedly, begun to offer on-board catering again.

The buffet has returned for Standard Class passengers, whilst at-seat meals have returned for Standard Premier and Business Premier customers.

Apart from some minor changes in presentation to avoid direct handling of food, the meals are apparently unchanged from how they were pre-coronavirus.

There are, of course, very few Eurostar services operating. France, Belgium and the Netherlands are covered by the UK quarantine regulations. Summer Eurostar services to the south of France have been cancelled for 2020 and 2021, and the Winter ski services have been cancelled for 2020. Ashford and Ebbsfleet have also lost their Eurostar services until at least 2022.

The only piece of good news recently was the change to Amsterdam and Rotterdam services, finally allowing passengers to travel back to the UK without having to change trains. Outbound services had been direct since the 2018 launch.

A good Melia cashback offer from American Express

Yesterday we covered two generous American Express hotel cashback offers.

Cardholders who received the offer could receive £50 cashback on £200 spend at selected Marriott hotels in Europe, and £100 cashback on £300 spend at selected Hyatt hotels.

There is also an offer for Melia hotels out there, it appears.

If targetted, you will receive £75 cashback if you spend £300 at selected hotels by 31st December 2020.

The list of participating hotels is here. It covers Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and the UK.

News in brief:

Virgin Atlantic delays the relaunch of Orlando flights

Unsurprisingly, Virgin Atlantic has pushed back the relaunch of its Orlando services.

The Heathrow service will now start on 10th December, using an A330-300.

The Manchester service will relaunch on the same day, also using an A330-300.

Both services are scheduled to operate daily, although clearly a lot can still change before then.

Remember that you earn double Virgin Points on all Virgin Atlantic flight bookings made by 15th October – full details here.

Avios launches new Santander deal in Spain

I know that we have a large number of expat readers, so I thought I’d flag the major new partnership which IAG Loyalty has just annouced with Santander for Spanish residents.

It isn’t live yet so we don’t have full details. However, according to IAG:

“From November 5th 2020, Iberia Plus members who hold a Santander One Account can earn Avios on a wide range of banking products. The more they engage with Santander, the more benefits they receive, including more Avios.

The partnership gives Iberia Plus members access to a wide range of choice benefits across their Santander banking relationship including insurance, credit and debit cards and other Santander products.”

One interesting point to note is that this includes status benefits with Iberia.

Those who sign up for Santander One Iberia Plus at the Elite level will receive 15,000 bonus Avios plus 10% discount on Iberia flights, as well extra luggage allowance, priority check-in and boarding, and 25% extra Avios for flights with Iberia.

There will also be a temporary 15,000 Avios bonus for anyone who opens a Santander One Iberia Plus account, at any level, as long as they pay their salary into the account.

Readers in Spain will be able to apply from 5th November.

Eurostar delays the introduction of redemption fees

Today was meant to be the day that Club Eurostar introduced a £32 ‘network charge’ per return reward ticket.

The ‘network charge’ is a flat-rate and not tied to your class of travel, status or destination.  The fee is the same whether you are in Standard or Business Premier, and whether you are travelling to Paris or Amsterdam.  There is no discount for children.

This is a genuine expense to Eurostar – it represents the track access charges per passenger that Eurostar has to pay. With its services currently down to a fraction of the usual number this is one way of reducing their cash bleed.

Eurostar told me yesterday that the new fee will not be introduced today. It is still coming, however, so this is only a temporary hiatus. You still have some time to make reward bookings for the future without being charged £32.

News in brief:

Eurostar to withdraw from Ashford and Ebbsfleet

Eurostar has announced that it will not be reinstating services from Ashford International or Ebbsfleet until at least 2022.

Eurostar has continually been the most pessimistic / realistic of the travel companies. It has already scrapped its Summer services to the south of France until 2022, and there will be no ski trains this year.

The decision to end services from Kent for at least two years has not gone down well with local politicians and the wider business community. Given that the trains are passing through the stations anyway, it appears a strange decision. I accept that the need to operate immigration and security facilities means that running costs are not cheap, however.

Hampton Blackpool hotel gets permission for major expansion

I wouldn’t normally run this story, but it ties in with my review of the Holiday Inn Express Bodmin in Cornwall from earlier this week.

In that article I said that three-star hotel operators like Holiday Inn Express, Courtyard by Marriott and Hampton by Hilton were facing an open goal at UK seaside resorts. They are up against the low quality and high cost of independent coastal bed and breakfast establishments.

The Hampton in Blackpool, on South Promenade, has just been granted planning permission for an extra 74 rooms to add to the existing 130. The demand is clearly there from people looking from clean, reliable and good value accommodation.

You can read more on Lancs Live here.

The Hampton by Hilton Blackpool website is here.

Eurostar has, belatedly, begun to offer on-board catering again.

The buffet has returned for Standard Class passengers, whilst at-seat meals have returned for Standard Premier and Business Premier customers.

Apart from some minor changes in presentation to avoid direct handling of food, the meals are apparently unchanged from how they were pre-coronavirus.

There are, of course, very few Eurostar services operating. France, Belgium and the Netherlands are covered by the UK quarantine regulations. Summer Eurostar services to the south of France have been cancelled for 2020 and 2021, and the Winter ski services have been cancelled for 2020. Ashford and Ebbsfleet have also lost their Eurostar services until at least 2022.

The only piece of good news recently was the change to Amsterdam and Rotterdam services, finally allowing passengers to travel back to the UK without having to change trains. Outbound services had been direct since the 2018 launch.

As there are very few ways of earning Club Eurostar points apart from using their services, I thought it was worth a closer look.  You can convert American Express Membership Rewards points to Club Eurostar at the rate of 15:1 but this is pretty much it in terms of partner earning options.

How do you earn Club Eurostar points with Accor Live Limitless?

As the biggest hotel group in France and with a big UK presence, Accor was a natural fit for Club Eurostar’s first major travel partnership.

You can move Accor Live Limitless points to Club Eurostar, and Club Eurostar points to Accor Live Limitless.

Full details are on the Accor website here.

But should you do it?

Accor is the only airline or hotel group which is really pushing the concept of two-way transfer partnerships.  You have been able to transfer Finnair points to and from Accor for years, and Qatar Airways was added more recently.

In a roundabout way, this is a way of converting Finnair or Qatar Airways miles into Avios or many other airlines, using Accor Live Limitless as an intermediary.  You lose a LOT of value doing this though – it would make more sense to move the points into Accor and spend them on a hotel.

The snag with these transfer deals is that they are never generous.  Accor Live Limitless is a revenue based loyalty scheme, with 1 Accor point worth 2 Eurocents off a hotel room.  There is no redemption chart – the number of points needed for a free night is based on the cash cost of the room you want.

Because it is revenue based, it is hard for the scheme to be too generous on transfers because it needs to make a profit both on transfers in and transfers out.

What are the transfer rates between Accor Live Limitless and Club Eurostar?

You can see what I mean by looking at the asymmetrical Accor rates to and from Club Eurostar:

500 Club Eurostar points gets you 1,500 Accor Live Limitless points

4,000 Accor Live Limitless points gets you 350 Club Eurostar points

Point transfers do NOT count towards status in either scheme.

Let’s try to put a cash value on this.  I decided in this article that Club Eurostar points are worth 10p – 12p.  Let’s stick with 10p to be safe, although on a short-notice trip you can do a lot better.

Going back to our original trade:

500 Eurostar points (value £50) gets you 1,500 Accor points (value €30)

4,000 Accor points (value €80) gets you 350 Eurostar points (value £35)

This is clearly a bad trade whichever way you do it.

Of course, life isn’t always that simple.

Perhaps you have a handful of Club Eurostar points you won’t use and will expire?   In this case, 1,500 Accor points is better than nothing.  You can always stop Club Eurostar points expiring by transfering a small number of American Express Membership Rewards points though.

If you have 4,000 Accor Live Limitless points sitting around you could convert to 4,000 Avios in Iberia Plus (NOT in BA Executive Club, which has a worse rate).  Even better, you would get €80 off a hotel room.  Converting to Eurostar is probably equally as good as moving to Avios in Iberia Plus, but you are losing almost 50% of the value compared to booking a room.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is always good to have more redemption options.  This one involves a noticeable loss of value, on my valuations, but you may have a different view than me on what your Eurostar points are worth.

You can find out more about this new partnership on the Accor Live Limitless website here.

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How to earn Club Eurostar points from UK credit cards (November 2020)

Club Eurostar does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 1,333 Club Eurostar points. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with two airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 2,000 Club Eurostar points. Card benefits include Eurostar lounge access.

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 333 Club Eurostar points. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you will get the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a free supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Today was meant to be the day that Club Eurostar introduced a £32 ‘network charge’ per return reward ticket.

The ‘network charge’ is a flat-rate and not tied to your class of travel, status or destination.  The fee is the same whether you are in Standard or Business Premier, and whether you are travelling to Paris or Amsterdam.  There is no discount for children.

This is a genuine expense to Eurostar – it represents the track access charges per passenger that Eurostar has to pay. With its services currently down to a fraction of the usual number this is one way of reducing their cash bleed.

Eurostar told me yesterday that the new fee will not be introduced today. It is still coming, however, so this is only a temporary hiatus. You still have some time to make reward bookings for the future without being charged £32.

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How to earn Club Eurostar points from UK credit cards (November 2020)

Club Eurostar does not have a UK credit card.  However, you can earn Club Eurostar points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 1,333 Club Eurostar points. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with two airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 2,000 Club Eurostar points. Card benefits include Eurostar lounge access.

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 333 Club Eurostar points. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar points which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, so you will get the equivalent of 1 Club Eurostar point for every £15 you spend.

American Express Platinum comes with a great Eurostar benefit – lounge access!  You can enter any Eurostar lounge, irrespective of your ticket type, simply by showing The Platinum Card at the desk.  No guests are allowed but you can get entry for your partner by issuing them with a free supplementary Amex Platinum card on your account.

Once upon a time, it was not unusual for airlines to offer transfer options out of their frequent flyer miles and into hotel schemes.

Over the years this changed, creating a pyramid of sorts:

• Hertz would let you transfer into hotel and airline schemes

• hotel schemes would let you transfer into airline schemes, but not car schemes

• airlines schemes wouldn’t let you transfer to anyone

There are some exceptions. In the UK, Virgin Atlantic lets you transfer into Hilton Honors and IHG Rewards Club. In Europe, Finnair has a partnership with IHG.

That’s about it though. Or, at least, it was.

Accor has been striking multiple airline deals

Accor Live Limitless, previously known as Le Club AccorHotels, is the loyalty scheme for Novotel, ibis, Raffles, Swissotel, Mercure, Sofitel, Fairmont etc.

You can learn more on the Accor website here.

In recent years, Accor has been working hard to agree two-way transfer deals with airlines. As well as the industry-standard transfer out option, Accor also allows many airline miles to be transferred IN.

This isn’t as great as it sounds

The one snag is that Accor Live Limitless has revenue-based redemptions. In plain English, each point is worth 2 Eurocents.

It doesn’t matter if you want New York on New Year’s Eve or a wet January Wednesday in Walsall, you get 2 Eurocents per point. There is NO opportunity for arbitrage. This virtually guarantees that a transfer into Accor is a bad deal, because it puts a firm – low – value on your airline miles.

However, this is not always an issue. If you have 2,000 Aegean Miles+Bonus miles, you can’t do much with them. Move them into 500 Accor Live Limitless points and they are good for €10 off a room (albeit you need to redeem in chunks of €40) or to be transferred on into 500 Avios in Iberia Plus.

Which airlines are Accor Live Limitless partners?

Because Accor has been rolling out these deals so quickly, you might not realise that it is now working with an airline where you have a handful of useless miles.

These are the current Accor ‘transfer in’ airline partners. Full details are on this page of the Accor website – make sure you are on the ‘Earn’ tab of the airlines page.

• Aegean Miles+ Bonus: 2,000 miles = 500 Accor points

• Air France KLM Flying Blue: 4,000 miles = 1,000 Accor points

• Azul: 10,000 TudoAzul points = 1,000 Accor points

• Finnair Plus: 3,500 miles = 500 Accor points

• Hainan Fortune Wings Club: 7,000 points = 1,000 Accor points

• LATAM Pass: 5,000 miles (5,800 miles in Brazil) = 2,000 Accor points

• Oman Air Sindbad: 1,500 miles = 500 Accor points

• Qatar Airways: 4,500 Qmiles = 1,000 Accor points

• Royal Air Maroc Safar Flyer: 4,000 miles = 1,000 Accor points

Plus …. launching in 2021:

• Qantas Frequent Flyer: transfer rate not yet known

Plus … not (obviously!) on the airlines page of the Accor website:

• Club Eurostar: 500 points = 1,500 Accor points

Conclusion

If you have enough airline miles for a free flight in any of the above schemes (or Eurostar points for a free trip) then it is likely that you will lose value by moving them to Accor Live Limitless.

However, if you have a small amount of orphaned miles in any of the schemes above, a transfer to Accor is a great way of getting some value from them.

You can learn more on the airlines page of Accor Live Limitless here.