Originally Posted by
crazy8534
Just my personal view:
Advantages
Pay deposit now, settle later
Sometimes can have good discounts to book together
Use of the duty desk who are very well empowered to help if anything goes wrong
Slightly/significantly more TPs as full spend eligible
Disadvantages
Can’t access hotel loyalty status benefits
Don’t get hotel loyalty programme points
Usually can’t upgrade flights online
Potentially some diffficulty with same day change of eligible flights, usually can’t do online
If using a holiday to maximise TPs for one member of a family then will be on different PNRs with associated potential problems in IRROPS/downgrade/upgrade, potential issues at the hotel with incorrect number of people listed for room
I was speaking with one of our esteemed Ambassadors and we were musing that in future the system won’t be gamed by “tier point runners” but instead by “ultra expensive hotel night runners”! There are certainly ways to get yourself to Gold in one holiday with BAH…
Agree with all this. We've taken quite a few BAH holidays and found hotel+flight cheaper than booking separately in most cases. Also, when I broke a bone on Day 1 of a holiday that had involved travelling around and staying in 6 different hotels, the duty desk was outstanding and rebooked the remaining stays to other locations and sorted disabled rooms with no extra cost and no fuss. I've found their choice of hotels good, and you can ask for different rooms than shown online by calling up. It does help that we prefer to stay in independent hotels rather than international chains, so loyalty isn't a big deal to miss.