It really does feel that someone within BA read about ex-EU trips or something and has now become obsessed with preventing people from earning tier points unless they take exactly what they consider to be a holiday. It's completely insane that what does or does not count as a holiday for tier points purposes is so incredibly convoluted and it's just going to piss off people who were not remotely trying to take advantage of anything to prevent a tiny number of people from 'gaming' the system.