Well, the story has made it to the Daily Mail, and there is a poll if you want to express your dissatisfaction

“'Betrayal': Frequent flyers are furious about the new British Airways loyalty scheme. So what IS all the fuss about?”

British Airways seems to be letting that Gilbert guy speak for them, all the articles are just quotes of him talking nonsense vs. Rob from Headforpoints. Is that because no one from BA wants their name in the paper publicly defending this decision, perhaps?

Is there any chance that there will be the ability to double dip like say Krisflyer? I credit my cash spend to PPS for status and the points to LH for status and redemptions. Generally needs to be sorted out on the phone and double checked at check in but it does work. Ideally, my BA spend would count towards GFL but I'd credit Avios to QR for Qpoints and redemptions.

I haven't been gold for years but my memory seemed to think you only had to get 600 points to retain gold. Maybe I have mis remembered

For Moderator: If this has not appeared as a separate thread you wish to post the article/poll, at the moment not many people have responded. I know it is nonsense but no harm in the forum expressing itself!

Yes this is true but BAH has consistently had excellent feedback on here for their customer service and indeed I have personally benefited from their handling of situations.

The extreme end of Ł20k per night villas in the Seychelles is perhaps not necessarily going to be their bread and butter - as others have said this is likely to be via a specialist agent. But if you consider the majority of people travel Y and often choose to spend more money on a nicer hotel for their 7 night holiday rather than paying for J tickets, there is a lot of potential revenue on the table for BA that previously they did not incentivise to be directed to them; now it is.

The BAH online interface is so crude though; compared to something like booking .com

You almost have to do your research elsewhere and see if the hotel is available on BAH

It really is going to be the main way of getting tier points

BA are an extremely good hotel agent, the service from BAH has always been excellent. It may be that FF are not the target market, rather people who would ordinarily use a different package holiday provider, only go away once or twice a year but would like a little added extra that others can't provide. One only has to see the adverts last year providing lounge access by a holiday company ( I forget which) to realise there is a market, importantly for BA, although the clientele, though earning TP and Avios would be unlikely to be in a position to use them due to their travel habits, however, BA get the valuable data they need.
I think that FF who are unwilling or unable to pay substantial amounts of money for "status" need to realise it is not about us.

If only BA had space in the lounges to offer something similar….. oh, wait….

As I am slowly becoming more systematic in evaluating my options for the future (again, already GGL guaranteed till 30/4/26 so I can now start from an almost blank sheet if I want despite having already made a few bookings on BA in coming months I may not have made had I known about the 30/12 announcement), and noting that I am only considering top status (GGL -- compared to MM HON and FB Ulti), I was struck by a particular oddity.

So in a way, BA is portraying to be less prescriptive than the other two by needing "only" 80% of GGL spend on BA. However, I'm only now struck by the fact that BA is the only of the three programmes that counts that "home spend" only on the basis of BA only as opposed to IAG group (which would include at least IB and EI assuming Vueling was excluded) as opposed to Ulti (AF or KL) and HON (J and F only but from any LH group airline and there are now many).

This, to me, and given BA's glaring network omissions makes the "home" component of GGL a lot harder to achieve than for either Ulti or HON. Of course, BA does codeshare in part with - say - QR or IB which increases theoretical coverage, but 1) the codeshared itineraries do not always appear from non-UK originating itineraries (I'm sure they might be bookable in principle but often don't show at all if for instance booking a trip from France or Italy or Spain) and 2) typically increase prices compared to booking the prime flight direct with QR or IB.

I know it's not a big point, but I think that this specific oddity is one of the few we don't seem to have discused in well over 3000 posts on this thread now!!

…and these people are going to spend Ł7,500 per person (after taxes) to get meaningful status? Not seeing it.

I think our wonderful ‘small hobbyist forum’ with its 3200 comments and 560,000 views on this thread alone have already expressed their thoughts eloquently enough. The original article written by a ‘world leading travel expert’ has 92 comments. Just sayin’

aks120

Add in some credit card spend, the odd bonus offer (which will doubtless come for hotel bookings), perhaps some tinkering with the rather bizarre term that the value of the hotel booking will be split equally between everyone in the party, including your toddler, etc. and yes, BAH will be an attractive proposition to many. Even more so now if you travel for work and have a Y only policy so have little hope of attaining silver status without also throwing in a family holiday or two with BAH.

I think some forum members are massively over egging this into being some sort of crisis for BA, when it really isn't at the moment. The IAG share price is down about 1% since the announcement, so investors are hardly panicking. BA would have expected some fall out from EC members as part of this process.

Obviously we need to see how it pans out long term, but I can't see anything to indicate this move is going to hurt BA..

I wouldn't be surprised if BA have not already factored in a "climbdown" to be able to say they "listen." Possibly along the lines of 5000 TP & 20 flights gets you Silver, soft landings properly confirmed or extended if a certain threshold is met.
The fact remains that fundamentally "status" will be spend driven, and many of us will still purchase CE and CW with cash or Avois and get the benefits we wish for, "sales' will perhaps change in their nature because the avois and TP will be reduced for a lower priced ticket.
Essentially flights are for people to get from A to B, I don't get status with GWR however many times I use their services, if I want to travel in First class with them, I do.