Originally Posted by
bogglesuk
My ego is a million miles away from that. It was more, can i call them up and book 2 nights here, 3 nights there etc? That would involve asking them what Hilton hotels are available in the area etc and turns a booking that could be done on the Hilton app in 2 mins into a long winded phone call.
Even if it is possible my thinking is that life is too short but was wondering what the collective mind of FT thought.
I think it is worth it, as the benefits of GGL are important to me.
I have pretty much resigned myself to spending 40k a year to retain it, as I want my wife to have a gold card as well so that we can use the first wing at LHR and go to the first lounge with our two kids. The ability to move / cancel avios bookings with no cost is helpful as is the upgrade vouchers which offsets some of renewal cost. And I really value being able to call and someone just picking up the phone.
Some of that 40k will be paid for by my employer through work travel but I will probably have to put my hand in my own pocket for at least 20k of it. The ability to do it with one or a small number of BA holidays is quite attractive actually as it means you can now get material nTP from only one trip whereas last year I was on 93 flights which is quite draining. I worked out that if you really put your mind to it you could get GGL renewal with only one trip if you were prepared to sink the cost into flexible first class flights and a very expensive hotel room.
I would be very interested in whether you can select a different hotel than those which appear on the search by calling them.