Given the fuel surcharge now being charged by SAS on EuroBonus award flights (read
here and
here) greatly increases the cost of booking EB award flight with SAS, it is no longer so rewarding to book award flights with them (
unless it is a rare 50% intercontinental point bargain).
With the negative changes to SAS and EuroBonus the last number of years, SAS obviously wants to encourage it's most loyal customers (you) to spend their hard-earned points on partner hotels and airlines (which will cost SAS more money to pay the partner hotels and airlines, and as a bonus - both keep SAS airplanes even emptier and lose more customers at the same time)
Find below information (without the nonsense and terrible SAS promos thrown in) on how to easily support SAS achieve their new core strategy for EuroBonus by:
__________________________________________________
Spending your SK EB points on partner hotels
This is now perhaps the best way to use your points (especially on weekend nights) as their is no electricity surcharge, no water surcharge, or blanket surcharge, and absolutely no taxes - just the points - i.e. totally free hotel nights - you can rest happy in a 5* hotel feeling really rewarded for flying a 3* airline
Hotel partners for spending:
- Best Western Hotels (except US & Canada)
- Country Inns & Suites
- Park Inn
- Radisson Blu/SAS Hotels & Resorts
- Radisson Edwardian Hotels
- Regent Hotels, Rica Hotels
- Scandic Hotels
EB point cost per night for all partner hotels above is the same:
Weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) nights - 10,000 EB points per night
Weekday (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) nights - 20,000 EB points per night
OK, so how can easily book these free nights?
To book a 100% free award night, visit
http://www.flysas.com/en/EuroBonus/S...oBonus/Hotels/, log in, chose location, dates, etc, and book.
__________________________________________________
Spending your SK EB points on partner airlines
As SAS is a member of Star Alliance (*A) you can both
earn and spend your points with other *A members (as well as a few SAS-only partners), but unfortunately SAS does not make it so easy to spend points with their partners (not possible to do direct from the SAS EuroBonus website), however as there is a fixed point cost for *A flights from different regions in the world to other regions, the cost of flying an award with SAS or Thai Airways for example is not much more (and now due to the SAS fuel surcharge - it costs the same, or in many cases less in "taxes").
OK, so how can easily book these *A partner award flights?
To book a *A partner award flight, first see
http://www.flysas.com/upload/Eurobon...hart_may08.gif to find out the EB point cost for a return trip and when you have decided where you want to go, you have to
call SAS EuroBonus to both get options for the destinations and dates you are interested in and consequently book you trip.
__________________________________________________
Other ways to spend SAS EuroBonus points on anything but SAS
Car rental from Avis, Hertz or Sixt
__________________________________________________
Improvements and updates to the above will be added from feedback.