Spending Airmiles

Greenow

I have 20,000 airmiles saved up and am looking to exchange them for a package holiday.

The package holiday section on the airmiles website lists various categories of package holiday and then a few companies that they deal with in each category. But there are no links.

So I emailed them asking how I spend my airmiles on a package holiday and just got back a rather vague answer almong the lines of pick the holiday you are interested in and call us and then we will see what we can do.

I emailed again asking what the value of the airmiles would be and the answer was again a pretty vague "we work with many companies and the discount varies by companies and holdiays" but that as a minimum I can count on a £50 discount every 1000 airmiles. That's a pretty disappointing figure to me - I thought they were worth at least double that.

I'm pretty flexible about where I go and just want a good deal - but it seems impossible to compare offers and shop around to ensure I get value for money on my airmiles - I just seem to have to shop blindly and hope for the best. Any tips/suggestions/ideas for getting best value from my airmiles?

budgetflyer

Id use them to "self Package"

ie 12 to 17 OCT

RTN flights from London to say Malaga with BA are 1500 pp

A 4 star hotel ie Tryp Almeda is as little as 4700 miles

So a couple could have 3 similar type holidays for just over 20K miles.

Im so jealous. How did you get 20000 miles?

Greenow

budgetflyer wrote: »

Id use them to "self Package"

THe kind of thing I'm looking for is 2 weeks luxury 5 star all inclusive somewhere warm (I'm looking at places like Cuba, Dominican Republic or Indian Ocean) for 4 people between mid September and mid October. I appreciate my airmiles wont pay for it themself, but I hope they will make it somewhat affordable.

Doing a DIY trip, the airmiles can cover the flights for 4 people (in the 5,000 air miles zone - somewhere like Dubai?) or 3 people (in the 6,500 airmiles zone - somewhere like Cuba/Dominican Republic or 2.5 people in the 8,000 airmiles zone (Mauritius or Maldives).

I'm not totally convinced that this gives me the best value though.

For example - this holiday (I got from Travelzoo) is listed at £899 per person (Cant link - hotel looks really nice on Tripadvisor: Cant link)

If I book it independantly, I can get 3 flights with my airmiles, so I have to pay for 1 flight and 4 people in hotels. Equivalent Hotel looks to be about £500 per person. Flight looks to be from about £500. So that's about £2500 in total.
If I get a package holiday for £900 per person, thats a total of £3600. So the value I'm getiing from my airmiles is about £1100 by doing it independantly. I may as well book the package and use the airmiles as a discount (minimum discount of £1,000, hopefully more)

budgetflyer wrote: »

Im so jealous. How did you get 20000 miles?

Mostly from Tesco Clubcard points - I've been using Airmiles as a dumping ground for my clubcard points for years, mainly so I dont have to worry about expiry date.

MSE wrote:

Sorry as a new user you are not allowed to post with links. This is done to stop spammers clogging up the site. Please edit your message below to continue.

I've had to delete my links from the post.