Thanks for all the helpful replies. Just to clarify my main interest is nTPs for my better half in the hope she can maintain Gold, her current nTP balance is 12, 990 thanks to the old double TP offer. We will be flying in First and only using BA Holidays for flights and car. We are frequent visitors to Jo'burg and we will book our favourite hotels and safari.

Agree with all this. We've taken quite a few BAH holidays and found hotel+flight cheaper than booking separately in most cases. Also, when I broke a bone on Day 1 of a holiday that had involved travelling around and staying in 6 different hotels, the duty desk was outstanding and rebooked the remaining stays to other locations and sorted disabled rooms with no extra cost and no fuss. I've found their choice of hotels good, and you can ask for different rooms than shown online by calling up. It does help that we prefer to stay in independent hotels rather than international chains, so loyalty isn't a big deal to miss.

When things go wrong I have found BAH to be excellent.

j
its like double TP before when you had to use car/hotel. The supplier will send their invoice To BA for payment of reference with passenger details. If it differs to pax on holiday BA might cancel or reclaim any TP/bonus TP.

My argument is for BAH. Low balance, more flexibility in changes pre travel often at lower cost and excellent Helpdesk empowered to do more in irrops and other problems.

Seconded - much better than Flight only Bookings.

Hotel status can still help benefits on BAH bookings, undoubtedly luck is involved, but it can't hurt to try...

There's a Marriott I use in Dubai, usually book direct, but the double TP offer made it sensible to book via BAH as I was in F, netting 840TP/trip.

Last November at check-in I asked to add breakfast to the stay and to add my Bonvoy (Gold) number, charged some drinks and meals to the room, gained about 3000 points over five days.

Last week, BAH only had the standard room available when I booked and no breakfast option, a few days before travel I emailed the hotel to say I'm coming back, please add my Bonvoy number and asked about a paying the difference to upgrade to a studio and also adding breakfast, they gave me two-level upgrade to a full suite for the studio price, gained about 5,000 points over 6 days.

No night credits of course, but got some points and the extra level upgrade was excellent.

Also previously had good results with Virgin Holidays bookings - on the off chance I presented Hilton Diamond card at check-in at the Ras Al Khaimah Hilton, upgraded from room to a beach villa and given a surprise bottle of Dom Perignon one night at dinner, and at the RAK Waldorf, showed the card at check-in, given a room upgrade and some freebies.

In my case there is a major price disadvantage to booking with BA for both the hotel and flights. I’m looking at a trip to GIB and have looked at pricing the hotel and flight separately, and then a BAHoliday price. The same room and flights separately come to �2,295 including breakfast, the same thing on BAH is �2,954. To get to that price I have to select the most expensive business class option for each flight and only then it is �69 more than the BAH price.

I know BAH pricing is opaque but that’s a serious chunk of change at �659

Yes, you are quite right not to take it as read that there will be a good discount to book together. It can range from outstanding to non-sensical, as you have seen!

Agree with the last couple of posts. Like most things in life... it always pays (literally) to do your research

One of the things I noticed with a flight and car hire package occurred when my flight home was cancelled. That meant I needed to extend the car hire by a day. BAH said they couldn't do that and I'd need to arrange it directly with the car hire company and claim back any charge. I was only in Glasgow and using Avis, with whom I thought they were partners.

Seemed a bit odd but then I don't do many travel agent package holidays so maybe that's normal.

I know that the new BAC's goal is to incentivize people to purchase packages on BAH, but the execution is so poor that it's a bit silly.

I know BAH won't benefit from status / travel advisor benefits (upgrade, $100 F&B voucher, etc.) but I would be willing to live with that for a few weekend trips per year just to get closer to status. However, what really bothers me is:

• Their own "Avios hotels" offering pays 10 avios per � (sometimes / often more with promos) vs. 1 avios per � spend on BAH
• As previous posts mentioned, the selection of hotels within a city is sometimes limited (and prices sometimes worse than public prices)
• It is so hard to make a booking for anything slightly more complex than a return one-city trip
  • e.g. you fly to Naples but want to stay in Positano and Capri --> good luck
  • same with one-way flights, several destinations in one trip, hotels for just part of the trip...
  • I know there is this different interface / website for "complex" holidays but (i) it's a bit hidden, (ii) half of the time it doesn't work (says no flights available, etc. and then glitches out and you need to redo everything again)

You would think that given this is their priority they would make it easier for people to use....

EDIT: of course, I forgot the "sharing the nTPs accross all members on booking" thing!

I think I have posted this before but I will post it again.

There is advantage in using BA Holidays if it meets certain limited criteria.
Yes you get all the benefits such as paying a deposit and then paying balance much later and all the other benefits posters above have identified.

However, there are some big disadvantages
1. If you are a 5 star hotel traveller then their selection of 5 star hotels is often poor to non existent.
2. If they do have 5 star hotels then very often the price they quote is more expensive than what you could get by booking direct. In the cases I looked at in detail, the difference was thousands more expensive with BAH than direct. As others have mentioned you typically lose all the hotel benefits. plus any spend points This can be considerable in some cases.

For this reason, I have only ever once booked a BA Holiday with a Hotel which was a Hilton and luckily they did honour the free breakfast for Hilton Diamonds. All other BA Holiday bookings have been just Flight and Car with the car hire from Avis.

I have found BAH to be an excellent service especially if things go wrong, first of all.

I believe from the thread that your partner needs to maintain Gold status with a balance of 12990 nTPs (needing 7010 nTPs) so these points are made with that in mind:

1. This year and next we'll get very good bonus nTPs. For F this is 550 nTPs per flight. You'll both get this whether you're purchasing a BAH or not. So for your trip to South Africa you'll both get 1100 nTPs. Total = 14090 needing 5910 nTPs.
2. Since BAHs get split amongst travellers on the booking, you'll need to spend 5910 x 2 = �11880. I suspect you will have no problem doing that with your trip to South Africa in First.
3. You have until April 1st next year to accrue the required number of nTPs - If your partner has a British Airways Premium Plus card then from now you'll get nTPs for spending with this (750 nTPs for hitting �15k, 750nTPs for hitting �20k, 1000 nTPs for hitting �25k by 1st Feb 2026). Again BAH or not.
4. I personally never split booking with my partner. We have had flight and hotel issues on multiple occasions and it would be more of a problem if we were on separate bookings. BAH and BA have always been extremely helpful but there are only so many things they can do if there are flight issues and you are on separate bookings.

So I think you can meet your goal of Gold retention just by purchasing the BAH for both of you on the same booking.

If you are interested in your partner chasing GfL then I recommend your partner pays with a BAPP, looks like you won't have an issue meeting the tier requirements and may even hit them in one go.

You'll need to register for both offers (bonus nTPs from BA and Amex nTPs)

Ironically, I managed to get two seats if F and two weeks car hire for about �7,700!

Great price, so that leaves 5910 - 3850 = 2060 which you have until end of March to get.