News in brief:
Hyatt launches a promotion in EMEA and Asia Pacific
In an interesting move, World of Hyatt has launched a new promotion which is restricted to its 320 hotels in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
It could be simpler, unfortunately:
- you will receive double base points (so 10 per $1 equivalent) on stays between 7th October and 20th December 2024
- you only receive your bonus from the 2nd qualifying stay during the promotional period
- you must register before your stay via this link although you do not need to rebook existing stays
- registration is open now and closes early on 4th November 2024
- you are limited to 20,000 bonus points which would represent $4,000 of pre-tax spending
- Mr & Mrs Smith hotels and hotels in Greater China are not participating
For clarify, your first ‘qualifying stay’ must also be at one of the 320 participating hotels in EMEA and Asia Pacific. You can’t stay at a US hotel and then expect double points the following week from an EMEA stay.
I actively dislike rules like this. In this case I have good reason – I have a €1,000 Hyatt stay booked from 8th October. I’m not going to earn the bonus unless I do a cheap mattress run on 7th October, the first day of the offer, which isn’t realistic.
This will double up with the Lufthansa offer
For stays between 7th October and 31st October, this offer will double-up with the Lufthansa offer we covered in this article.
You will earn 1,000 Miles & More miles on top of (not instead of) your World of Hyatt points during this period.
Don’t forget to register for the ‘double points’ offer here before your next stay.
Virgin Atlantic Holidays offering extra discounts this weekend
Virgin Atlantic Holidays is running a ‘spend and save’ promotion this weekend.
You will save £150 per booking when spending £3,000 on a holiday for two people.
The minimum spend increases by £450 per additional person, so a family of four needs to spend £3,900 to get £150 off.
It is ONLY valid for departures in 2024.
You must book by Tuesday 1st October.
There are no promo codes to use – the discount will automatically be applied on the Virgin Holidays website.
You can fly from from London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Newcastle, Cardiff or Glasgow. Your booking must include flight and accommodation or flight and car.
The Virgin Atlantic Holidays website is here.
Eurostar and SkyTeam to partner – but it’s not clear how
The SkyTeam airline alliance, which includes Virgin Atlantic, Air France, KLM and SAS in Europe, has announced that Eurostar will become ‘SkyTeam’s first non-airline partner’.
It isn’t entirely clear what this means, and further details will not be released until early next year.
At the very least we will see the ability to book trains alongside flights on a single ticket – say New York to Berlin, flying Air France to Paris and taking a rail connection to Germany.
How this works in practice remains to be seen, especially in terms of which airline websites will be able to handle ‘train and plane’ combinations. Logically it would work best on stopover tickets – I can see why New York to Paris (flight) to Berlin (train) a few days later may be attractive, but no-one is going to do that trip straight through when direct flights are available.
There is no mention of how the various airline and Eurostar reward schemes will be integrated. I suspect, like an airline codeshare, you won’t be able to earn Virgin Points from Eurostar unless you book an integrated ‘train and plane’ ticket. Similarly, I doubt a Virgin Atlantic Gold member will be able to access Eurostar lounges unless on a connecting ticket.
More to come on this, I’m sure.