BW now a AVIOS partner with BA
 

As per the (Award Winning) Raffles you can now set your earnings preference to taking Avios

http://www.headforpoints.com/2017/09...-status-match/

This seems to me, a much better use of a night's stay than earning points with Best Western, unless you are paying a lot for your hotel room. As you receive 500 Avios per stay which is worth around £5/$6.5 sometimes more.

But this does create a conundrum given the almost total worthlessness of status with BWR (at least in Europe).

Room upgrades do happen just very very rarely. The welcome gifts are also hit and miss (even at the same hotel) and are usually restricted to a bottle of water and a cheap chocolate bar. The only reliable benefit was the extra 30% points you received.

Now as I am getting more valuable Avios points at the same rate as I would whatever my status, there is no point chasing status.

Now in my book chasing status is a mugs game, but it would swing things if the choice of hotels were pretty much equal on price/location/amenities/etc. But this only adds to my perplexity about a "loyalty scheme" which seems dysfunctional.

But whether's it's better totally depends on how much use you have for BA Avios and how much use you have for BW points.

BA Avios is a very poor program for doing longhaul business class OW redemptions, compared to, say AA. BA Avios works best for nonstop (or close to that) longhaul economy redemptions (which I never do) or shorthaul redemptions (which are hard for me to find in cases where they're not cheap with cash anyway).

And there are lots of ways to collect Avios, but very few ways to collect BW points other than stays.

Meanwhile, I often go to somewhat "remote" areas (far away from "cities" but near national parks or other outdoor attractions) where BW can be the only hotel program around! In those case, BW points can be invaluable IME. (But if you only travel to big cities where there are lots of hotel programs around, I can see how you could look at BW in a completely different way.)

And it depends what you mean by "in Europe" and on what you're doing "in Europe". There are places in Western Fjords region of Norway (inland along the fjords themselves) where the only chain hotels you'll find are either Best Western (in some places) or [Nordic] Choice (in other places). So I find Best Western very useful "in Europe", because remote locations along the Western Fjords of Norway are some of my favorite locations "in Europe". Similarly, I wanted to visit Netherlands a couple years ago mostly to go see windmills near small towns, and I found Best Western better than most other programs for basing in small town near enough to some windmill sites and getting free parking. All the other chains only had hotels in the middle of big cities, and charged for parking. And Netherlands is certainly "in Europe" as well.

Everyone has a different experience. The location of my companies warehouse is in a town with only one hotel, so I am rather tied to it. I find though the Accor programme far more consistant and generous.

Avios works much better for me so programme has improved from my perspective. Just odd at it makes status irellevent.

Just about BA LH economy. That is generally considered the absolute worst option for using your Avios. With a BA Amex I can get two 2 for 1 vouchers so LH J works for me.

What I meant about the BA chart is that it requires about 50% more than other OW airlines such as AA. What AA wants 60k miles for, BA now wants 90k Avios points for. :eek:

Obviously, if you don't belong to a second OW program and have no miles to use for a lower rate and thus never do that comparison, you might not realize that.

This "divergence" only happened a couple years ago, when BA greatly devalued longhaul business partner redemptions. (Before that, what a longhaul business flight on a third OW airline required in AA miles and BA points was usually fairly similar.) And BA metal on trans-Atlantic flights has ridiculous "YQ" fees, almost as much as the economy ticket outright would have cost, which other OW carriers don't have (except IB has some though not nearly as bad as BA). So it's because of those "YQ" fees that, being based in North America, I would only want to fly partner longhaul, not BA metal longhaul, on trans-Atlantic award flights. But obviously, that may be quite different for someone based in Europe whose longhaul flights on BA aren't always trans-Atlantic).

What BA did was take the Avios 2x "prices" that used to get you partner business class longhaul awards and changed it to be only partner premium economy longhaul awards. Even though many of their OW partners don't (yet?) have premium economy cabins. And then business class redemption went to requiring 3x, instead of just 2x, of economy redemption Avois points "prices".