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Rich_A wrote:

Hotel: Radisson Collection Bilbao
Upgraded: Yes. Basic to Junior Suite. They confirmed unprompted that it was the best they had available
Stay duration: 3 nights
Welcome gift: None
Late check out: Not requested
Breakfast: included as VIP, very decent.

Also included was spas access, though I didn’t use it. Nice hotel with great location

Did they have a lounge? Radisson Collection hotels are more likely to have them than Radisson Blu.

[Pangolin]

Another feature which marks out this message (and is typical of scams) is urgency – you are given a tight time limit in which you need to act or else bad things will happen. No serious hotel could give you less than 24 hours to respond to a request before scrubbing your reservation.

[Pangolin]

TAP are saying that from March 10th-16th they will be running a 20% transfer bonus for Revpoints, so 1:1.2 for transfers into TAP.

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yonasl wrote:

You can use Kayak and it does that for free

I do use Kayak but it’s nowhere near as nice to use as Flighty.

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I held Amex Plat for one year back in 2017 (great car insurance service after having dinged my rental car in S. Korea) and I still have Melia Gold.

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Flighty (iOS) is great but the Premium membership is expensive. Last time they wanted £50 for a year and that’s a bit too rich for my humble circumstances.

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dpcgmf wrote:

Highlights:

Ho Chi Minh City: First time to Vietnam and fell in love with the country.
Kotor: Ditto as above. Loved Montenegro.
Doha (Pearl Island): Everything Dubai used to be 20 years ago before we (the Brits) decided to create a new Benidorm in the Middle East.

Lowlights:
Madeira: Quick late Feb break to eat up a 241. Just bored and the weather was iffy. Wouldn’t return.
Istanbul: Unbelievably pricey and probably going 9 years on the bounce finally caught up with us tbh.

What’s interesting about Istanbul is that the faster the Turkish Lira devalues the more prices seem to go up in Euro terms. It’s like they’re overcompensating. I was originally going to visit there last April because I had a great deal on Aegean, but the hotel prices were so inflated that I binned the idea. The JW was 300 EUR/nt for the entire week I was looking at and evertyhing on the European side was priced like Singapore. Only the Radissons were reasonably priced (or properties on the Kadikoy side).

Pre-pandemic it was cheap as chips but now I can probably get better value going to Vienna!

[Pangolin]

Lumma wrote:

Found out today that if you buy something with Klarna, instead of getting a refund directly to the underlying card (which can be a points/cashback earning credit card, just not American Express), you can get the refund to your “Klarna balance”. You can then use this balance to pay off other money you owe Klarna, for future purchases or you can refund it to a debit card.

That’s interesting. It means you don’t get the points rolled back for the original purchase but get to keep them instead.

[Pangolin]

Lady London wrote:

You could check out sources like vielfliegertreff.de which would probably lead you to other sources of info on this.

I do know that cashback seems to be useful with some travel payouts and there’s a lot of opportunities – I think payback.de has some and there are others.

Cards have been a thing for much less time in Germany so some things about various incentive schemes are, shall we say, less mature in Germany so I’d expect there to be opportunities.

Sadly the Amex Plat annual fee is just as overpriced in Germany as it is in the UK

Yes, alongside vielfliegertreff.de you could also check out Reisetopia, which gives a good overview of the Miles & More program and which cards to go for in the German market: https://reisetopia.de/meilen-punkte-anfaenger/

[Pangolin]

RonnieB wrote:

A little advice on this please – going to do the 7 airlines for 100k challenge, but is there any easy way to check out the best routes at the cheapest prices?

Do all the flights need to be booked on the lufthansa site?

Any sample itineraries from Edinburgh?? I looked at EDI-FRA-MILAN then MILAN-BRU-Geneva gets 4

How many overnight stays are needed – I’m guessing 3 at least?

Thanks

As long as all the flights are on LHG metal it’s fine, so you could for example book something on OS and the fact that it could show up as a code share with LH, LO etc doesn’t matter.

Obviously you also need to have your M&M FFP number tied to each flight 🙂

[Pangolin]

In Germany you will have access to the LH Miles & More card, so if you’re going to be living there you may as well check it out.

[Pangolin]

degsy wrote:

I think it was mentioned on yesterday’s chat, with a subsequent reply to say it had seemingly been resolved, but is anyone else struggling again today to log in to Radisson Rewards?

I was locked out for most of yesterday but now I can log in normally.

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Chrisasaurus wrote:

Anyone else having difficulty login to into Radisson today or am I just lucky? Am in an endless loop of being told password incorrect (after a loooooong wait) directed to reset it, but then new password doesn’t work either…

I can’t log in either and there’s reports on FlyerTalk of others having the same problem.

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kai wrote:

PMI

PMI knocks off 4Y? That looked like the hardest airline to shoehorn into the challenge in an efficient way.

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bungalow wrote:

Any whispers on this happening again this year, it’s getting near that time…

If it was going to start on Feb 10 then the likely announcement date would have been Monday or Tuesday this week (all previous Q1 promos were announced 14-15 days prior to starting on a Tuesday in February).

It might be more like 2021 this year due to the Chinese lunar new year starting relatively late. In 2021 the promo was announced on Feb 1 and started on Feb 16. CNY was late that year also. Just a supposition.

[Pangolin]

Rob Burgess wrote:

I’ve used them at Windsor Park, dig out my review. Lovely place and fab spa.

Raffles Warsaw is also excellent value for money – look at my review of that, also booked with suite certs.

I’m not a big fan of Fairmont St Andrews and its about to start a mega refurb, which gives you an idea of the current state.

The Savoy would be interesting.

Not sure what Lucknam Park has to offer now its joined Accor but I’d check that.

Raffles Warsaw was available for 1100 PLN (£225) last November on ALL Voyageur rates.

[Pangolin]

Reward availability is likely to be better for EU airports than LHR, if you can stomach the positioning flights.

[Pangolin]

Bear in mind that next month will also see the Winter Olympics 2026 in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (Feb 6-22).

Milan is an expensive city anyway but this means that what are normally off-peak prices will become more like peak prices, so rates could easily double in many cases.

Milan city council have also hiked the tourist tax (tassa di soggiorno) for 2026. This means that 3-star hotels will have a €7.40 charge *per-person, per-night* and it will be €10 for 5-star hotels.

[Pangolin]

@titaniumostrich Good stuff, but just one question re point (2): how do you top up M&M accounts with points from credit cards? I thought that Rove was the only way of getting miles into the LH scheme.

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@titaniumostrich I’d be interested in hearing more about your 100K LHG run.. maybe post a thread about it?

I also did the ITA status match during the pandemic and got it matched to LH SEN.

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I won 10K on my second spin and have been getting nothing but lumps of coal since then

[Pangolin]

AlanC wrote:

I too got the challenge ( targetted according to Rob.)
Im looking at pointers ex NCL or EDI.
Can pop down to LCY on Avios to start there.
Confirm its 9 qualifying brands and fly 7 for 100k?
Cheers

Yes, 7 LHG brands gets you 100K.

[Pangolin]

Found about it 4 days ago and won 10k points once. What’s nice is that they appeared in my account instantly.

[Pangolin]

I’ve used the card outside the UK a few times so far without any issues (in Europe but not Eurozone).

Only thing to note is that the FX difference is consistently 1%, and since I’m only earning 1.5x points within Europe when not staying at a Marriott hotel it doesn’t really pay off with a spread like that (1.5×0.5p = 0.75p).

The good thing is that any Marriott hotel outside the UK counts as 6x, but with a lower FX hit than the Amex card, so I used the Amex Bonvoy for the pre-auth then paid at checkout with the debit card.

[Pangolin]

These figures are projections from Hilton themselves, not from me.