I think they are - we do quite a lot of leisure travelling typically 5 star hotels , F travel plus car hire. Under the old scheme we both easily qualified for GGL and would typically get 5000 - 6000 TP each year for a BA spend of �30-40K on mostly long haul flights in F. We did use the BA Holidays double tier points offer quite frequently over the last 2 years but never used the hotel element as it never makes financial sense from a room rate point of view or from a loss of benefits point of view. I have just price compared the option of going on one of our typical trips using BA for the flights only and paying for the hotel direct as we normally do (which would mean I get my hotel benefits as Lifetime Hyatt Globalist) versus putting the hotel and flights into a BA holiday. It is �5k more expensive for the BA holidays option plus I lose around $170 per day in Hotel benefits plus the lost points which have a value. It just does not make financial sense to use BA Holidays and I suspect this is the case for most premium leisure travellers.

Under the new spend based system of tier points and due to the large uplift in equivalent new tier points to reach GGL , I don't think either of us would reach GGL on our existing spend pattern. I think our spend would be enough for us both to reach Gold each year but as we are both Gold for Life anyway there is little point in going for Gold. I was within 20k Tier points shooting distance of GGLFL on the old scheme which would have been achievable in 3 or 4 years without much effort and say �40-50K expenditure with BA for my flights etc over those 3/4 years. Under the new scheme, to reach GGLFL would cost just under �200K plus as we invariably travel together another �200k for my wife. It is a non starter and alienated is perhaps a mild term for how we feel.

Same here, late December/early January I start looking at booking my 3 or 4 annual US trips with BA Holidays, been Silver 7 or 8 years now and Silver to end of March 2026, now looking at other options from my neck of the woods, mostly Icelandair who offer VERY competitive fares and I'm flying in the right direction to start with not down to LHR and back over the house 5 hours later to the US, plus point mostly the travel time, Icelandair circa 3-5 hours quicker via KEF than via LHR, minus points, I'll miss the Lounges despite not usually prevailing of the beer/wine/spirits, I will miss the hot shower in the North or South Lounges if enough time in transit at LHR when returning from the US, also, despite being Silver until 2026 I'll doubt I'll get any benefit unless I book a domestic or short haul Euro via LHR which I doubt, so looks like so long BA it's been good whilst it lasted, but I think you've shot yourselves in both feet.

I don�t understand, most of my el-cheapo BAH are exEU?

Icelandair isn't a lie flat product though so you would be having a less premium experience

I'm blue, I've always been blue, I probably always will be blue. But this year as a couple we've tipped �7000 into BA Holidays and for that we've got 150TPs each- and that's with the double TP offer. Under the new scheme we'd be 85%-ish of the way to bronze and one more city break would do it.

My view is that the ones complaining are the ones who have the time and dedication to do LHR-SOF-LHR-JFK-LAX instead of just flying LHR-LAX. Even though LHR-LAX direct was more expensive, it nets a fraction of the TPs you'd get from the convoluted routeing.

The old scheme rewarded sectors flown and cabin choice, it didn't reward spend. From the airline's perspective you can see why they've reached the conclusion they have.

And the feedback will have been carefully curated from the sorts of people (high spend, time-sensitive) who would agree. Anecdote isn't the same as data and all that, but I know one GfL, and he gets his status by flying to the Middle East once a month on flexible business (company paying, obviously) and has been doing it for 20 years. He's very much in favour of the change!

And there are also people that like the convolute routing, especially when the price is good, regardless of TPs.
And the biggest complain has been on the method and timing of implementation.

Who decided to award double TPs on holidays for UK and US members?

Of course

Does he think there are enough of him to fill all the BA planes?

I've snipped the rest of your post for clarity. I largely agree with what you're saying.

For leisure passengers, the changes to the BA Holidays offer is obviously the way BA believe they can get additional spend. Instead of booking flights and hotels separately, there's now an incentive to bundle your hotel in with your flights. Whether that incentive is strong enough to offset the competing incentive to credit to the hotel's own loyalty scheme will be for each person to decide for themselves. Certainly for me I have several city breaks in a year , usually flying economy and using the savings to pay for a better hotel, and the changes would incentivise me to credit to BA.

For business passengers its a bit more complicated but I do wonder if the increasing use of economy-only corporate travel policies has pushed some of the change.

The tiers should be aspirational but no so far out of reach that they feel unattainable. I have a sneaky suspicion they've overshot on some of the tier thresholds- even for business customers a �20K net spend is a big old chunk of money- and this is where any walking-back (should there be any) will take place.

Well done BA for losing a customer, VS Holidays and booking portals much less buggy than BA... Talk about greener pastures...

Someone who does three or four last minute fully flex bookings a year to the US for example wouldn�t get Gold but might have spent �20k+ on those flights. Under the new system now they would.

We have friends who have really expensive BA holidays but only in Y. So rubbish TPs but huge spend. They are likely to get Silver now whereas they didn�t even used to make Bronze.

I am still trying to understand who thought that the BA Holidays (hotels count towards status) would be seen by the road warriors as something they'd entertain? We get status though the hotel's loyalty programme and this gives us upgrades, premium WiFi, late check-outs, breakfast etc - and the ability to spend the hotel points on family vacations (where we also hopefully get upgraded).

Many of us have lifetime hotel status but this isn't usually honoured unless you book directly with the hotel.

I'm all for renting a car through BA Holidays as Avis recognises your status. Unless BA Holidays allow you to earn hotel points and status (and it's recognised by hotels) the new change seems to miss the mark. I see no effort to have hotels award points and benefits when booked through BAH. Individual exceptions have occurred but that's not the norm. The US major airlines such as Delta and United have tie-ups with the hotel chains (i know BA does have with Hilton for GGLs) but in the US it is far deeper relationship.

Ironic, since if this was the work of one of the top management consultancies, all of the consultants know very well about hotel loyalty schemes - and they'd not give them up.

Because you are talking about �8k or so to reach Silver now which is vastly different than the current (old) system where it could easily be done by an un savvy traveller for around a quarter of that with two BA holidays. Some friends of us became silver accidentally because their two holidays to the Canaries put them over the threshold. Again, about �1000 per trip.

Acquaintance of mine will probably do exactly that. Every year goes to MLE for 2-3 weeks at one of the crazy expensive places. He'll probably be able to get GGL for his entire family with two BAH bookings. Then for all his other flights (he almost certainly does 100+ flights a year) he'll use other/better options unless BA truly happens to be best on a particular route. My guess is he would have gone out of his way to take more BA flights under the old system.

I would suggest you look at how much hotels pay agents in commission, how much of that is pure profit for BA, and rethink why these changes are being made.

This is the real problem with this strategy and Rob at Headforpoints has pointed this out well. As much as I get the BA wants to displace Expedia argument, it doesn�t make any sense at all in combination with what they�ve done to thresholds, since the main travellers that would be happy to book more through BA Holidays are the ones they�re pushing away!

- High spend corporate travellers will be forced to continue to book hotels through their corporate travel agent, so unless BA is planning to buy a corporate travel agency to add to BA Holidays, no dice here. On top of this, BA Holidays is unable to offer status benefits as a further blow, which will prevent BA capturing a lot of the leisure spend of these travellers outside of work
- Small business owners have just been told to get lost by the new thresholds
- The very wealthy in West London spending �65K on a holiday to the Maldives often won�t even be booking it themselves, their PA will be. Assuming they are booking it, they will probably go to a specialist luxury travel agent who can ensure they get the right layout of villa at Cheval Blanc and arrange the amenities they want in the room, not book it online through a faceless website that doesn�t currently even properly list the room type due to IT limitations. Are you really telling me they were booking this Maldives vacation through Expedia before this change came along and now they�ll use BA Holidays?
- Middle class leisure travellers not tied into a hotel program who probably were happy to book through BA Holidays have just been told to get lost and won�t retain Silver any longer

I don�t think any of my friends who don�t chase status have even HEARD of BA Holidays. People booking through BA Holidays I would guess are largely those who used the airline and found out about BA Holidays through that. The sequencing of this change feels totally off to me.