al1990

Hi guys,

love this forum, absolute lifesaver 🙌🏻

Wanted to canvas opinion, gold member here with 1100 TPs and expiry early March.

Don't have travel planned before my expiry but really want to try and retain Gold, get a lot of value from Gold rewards and double avios bookings over summer.

Would you a) say it is worth it and b) have any ideas as to best ways to do so? Based in London, happy to travel over weekends to retain.

Frustratingly have biz biz flights to LA to book early April but it's > a month after my expiry so don't assume any flexibility from BAEC in that regard.

Would love some thoights! Can't decide what to do.

Thanks all 💗

TyneTraveller

If you feel it's worth it, go for it. So you require 400TP's?

Hmm, A(LHR-OTP) B (OTP-LHR-HEL-LHR-OTP) A(OTP-LHR) all in CE apart from the last leg. Using the lowest fare buckets G/O/Q on the last leg gives a minimum TP earning of 410 for well under £800.

Something different but may be a decent run. Good luck!

mgiarc

I tend marginally to retain gold and think it is significantly better than silver in two respects (for me): a) the F lounge is a nice place to hang out, whereas the J lounges (at least in 5A) are not; and b) the only value I seem to be able to get from my avios stash these days (given the relative pricing of J cash tickets and taxes on 2-4-1 rewards) is using RFS short haul and golds have much better availability in my experience. Having said that, I wouldn't go far out of my way for gold and certainly wouldn't pay anything like £800, but each to his own.

If you are doing a TP run, what about Tallinn?

gypsyjaney

LGW - Malta return in J will get you 160 TP's. It still chilly here in March, but all the wildflowers will be out - freesia heaven! Usually sunny as well.

flyer200

I'm letting my Gold lapse this year.

I'm glad to have to monkey off my back.

I get virtually zero benefit from being Gold other than extra redemption flights available.

I really don't consider the Flounge to be something I'd strive for and even if it was I tend to fly from Gaters and LCY a lot more.

Double avios is not much to write home about since the devaluation either, as Gold I get 625 avios for a flight to AMS

I actually think chasing Gold made some sense in the past but given the product and the devaluation, I genuinely don't care.

And it's refreshing to be free of chasing points.

FrancisA

I personally value gold, having held it for 12 years. With the new F lounge at LGW holding on to it was a no brainer for me.

If you want to get 400 TPs at low cost but with interesting destinations, cheap CE 160 TPs routes are your friend. MLA has been mentioned and has much to commend it year round. FNC or canaries would be good options. HEL is good too but you may need to do a booking with a hotel to keep cost down. IST is normally very good value and pleasant at this time of year.

If you use two weekends on them, a quick JER, BOD or PAR weekend will get you 400TPs.

I reckon if you play around with combined flight and hotel bookings, the whole lot could come at about £800. Not bad for three weekends away.

corporate-wage-slave

Just to welcome you, al1990, to Flyertalk and the BA Forum. It's good to see you here and I hope we will see more of you too.

May be worth having a look around at some of the other threads here, there's one on Tallinn which seems very popular at the moment, and as point out Malta has the benefit of being able to enjoy Med weather in a very relaxing setting. Greek locations will be inexpensive if you include a Saturday night, and Istlanbul is very cheap at the moment, even 4 star hotels at £30 a night. And don't forget to consider BA Holidays Flight+Hotels on the longer sectors too (IST £336 with 2 nights in the Hilton Garden Inn, for example, Club Europe).

Sparth3103

Short answer- no

Im a gold member thanks to work but I don't really see any benefit from it. It's not worth shelling out hundreds of pounds just so that you can use a crappy lounge in Heathrow

G-ARVE

Yep, Gold is worth it for me. No queues at checkin and some really impressive lounges makes a huge difference to travel. Though most of my travel is to places where they really know how to look after premium passengers, -ME and Far East principally and also worth admitting I rarely trouble BA or their facilities. Remember that Gold status is valid for all One World carriers and while BA might be penny-pinching there are others going the other way.
If your focus is on EU or NA then maybe the benefits aren't as persuasive. As others have indicated, it's a personal circumstance decision based on your perception of what you get out of the deal.

mikeday1983

I would say it is worth it for the extra security of soft landing, extra Avios availability and additional tier points. If I were that close, I'd do it.

Swanhunter

I think you have to calculate the cost of retaining against the value you can extract from RFS and Gold Priority Awards. Not sure I see T5 F lounge as much as benefit whereas the CX F lounge in T3 certainly is...

passy777

My bold.

This is a good summary which I can also relate to as I class my BA card now as a 'One World' card.
The associated benefits I get nowadays are mainly from other OW carriers as I try to avoid BA where practically possible.

It's a shame it has to be like this, but when you see other carriers in the alliance improving their brand with BA seemingly hell bent on p*$$ing off their staff and customers at every opportunity, it is only inevitable that others will sample the offerings of other airlines.

I agree with your first point, but I don't think the Flounge at T5 can be described as 'crappy'. Obviously not on a par with the hub lounges of CX/QR etc, and the food is not the best, but it is acceptable.

rossmacd

It's pretty poor for OWE FFs at a home base. Sure beats the packed T5A GCs, but not by much.

Flounge

Retaining Gold is definitely worth it. Flounge, double Avios, being able to choose 1A/K and better recognition, especially on OW partner airlines. You'll also be able to use the new First Wing at T5.

layz

No one has mentioned theoretical seating! This, combined with the new gold wing in T5, made me consider renewing gold was worth it.

I was very likely to slip down to silver after very little travel last year, and although I like the Flounge, I didn't find it alone worth the effort (I only had about 200 TP back in October and my year ends in Feb).

I had some time and did a few quick trips to TLL and now I'm much closer to gold.

I had a couple of last minute (i.e. departing within a few hours) trips in October/November and despite this I managed to get a decent seat which rarely used to happen. Turned out this was because of the way theoretical seating kept back seats for gold members and as I'm likely to be travelling for work more this year it made sense to want to keep this benefit.

The gold wing will hopefully make security easier too.