Originally Posted by
davidcamp6
BA are an extremely good hotel agent, the service from BAH has always been excellent. It may be that FF are not the target market, rather people who would ordinarily use a different package holiday provider, only go away once or twice a year but would like a little added extra that others can't provide. One only has to see the adverts last year providing lounge access by a holiday company ( I forget which) to realise there is a market, importantly for BA, although the clientele, though earning TP and Avios would be unlikely to be in a position to use them due to their travel habits, however, BA get the valuable data they need.
I think that FF who are unwilling or unable to pay substantial amounts of money for "status" need to realise it is not about us.
I have had great service with BA Holidays in the past and used them for quite a number of city breaks.
For my main family holiday this year I drilled quite extensively into options with EasyJet Holidays, BA Holidays and TUI (all Gatwick departures) and a little into Jet2 Holidays.
In the end I booked a BA redemption and the hotel direct.
However some reflections on BAH and probably my business would have gone to EasyJet if booking a package. The website is still no where near good enough to really sort and filter to what I wanted. None of the others are perfect to be honest but BAH is probably the most challenging to use.
I was looking at maybe 5-6 hotels in the end and BAH had maybe 2 of them available, fewer than others.
Most of the others offered a shared transfer inclusive or at minimal cost. You can book some kind of transfer through BA but often it can’t offer a price or is expensive.
Generally speaking BA was coming out more expensive like for like, even after adding extras like checked bags on the others.
The main other plus point for BA was flight times overall, although there are still some very late and very early BA flights to/from Gatwick.
Thinking forward in terms of family holidays we will probably still need to go through a specialist ski operator for ski holidays and will likely book Disneyland Paris direct because of the extra benefits of doing that.
Any shorter/cheaper holidays will likely be in a rental/AirBnB which is broadly not a market BAH are in.
With the tier points being split 4 ways I’m still not sure BAH tier points is going to be compelling for most families.