Is it better earning Avios or hotel points from hotel stays?

Is it better earning Avios or hotel points from hotel stays?

In this article we’ll look at whether you’re better off collecting Avios on hotel stays or sticking with the hotel’s own loyalty program.

Most hotel groups already offer their own loyalty schemes, with a variety of rewards to tempt you to keep booking. Whether it is worth joining these or simply collecting Avios will depend on your personal spending and travel habits.

This is a list of British Airways hotel partners.  When you stay at a branded hotel you usually have two options:

earn hotel loyalty points and status credit in IHG Rewards Club, Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless etc, or

hand over your British Airways Executive Club number at check-in and earn some Avios instead

In general, taking hotel loyalty points is a better deal.  You should get far greater value than you’d get from, say, 500 Avios per hotel stay.

However, you will need to do a number of stays at the same hotel chain before you will have enough points for a free night. If you think this is unlikely – and remember that the chain may have tough expiry rules on its own points if you don’t stay regularly – it makes more sense to take Avios.  You can add those to your existing account and you know they will get you some value in the future.

There is a third option, however.

Hotels.com Rewards is the loyalty scheme for the hotels.com website.  This site has hundreds of thousands of hotels on it.  If you book via hotels.com you won’t earn Avios and you won’t earn hotel loyalty points.  You will earn Hotels.com Rewards free nights credits, which get you a free night for every 10 nights you stay. 

If your hotel stays cover many different chains, this could be the best way to maximise value.  This article explains more about Hotels.com Rewards.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works.  You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.4 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also good bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These are available to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.