This is the fourth – and final – post in a series called How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios.

How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 1
How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 2
How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 3

Right, so I’ve decided which hotel to stay in using my Avios.  So I book online now, don’t I?

NO!  YOU SHOULD NEVER BOOK ONLINE!

I wrote last week about Why You Should Always Redeem Avios Over The Telephone.  In this post I explained that it’s better to book a hotel using your Avios over the telephone because it allows you to:

1. Haggle
2. Make Requests
3. Ask Questions

Booking your stay over the telephone allows you to ask Avios if the cost of the hotel is the best deal they can offer.  When I asked this, they knocked £20 off.  This isn’t a huge amount but it’s still well worth having – it’ll pay for the lounge when I’m at the Airport.  I also made a request for a room with a balcony or a canal view, which wouldn’t have been possible if I booked via the Avios website.  And I asked a couple of questions about the nearest best Airport to fly to and which airlines go there.

Other Tips for Booking a Hotel Using Avios

This series of posts is only really a guide how to identify the best ROI for Avios, it doesn’t take into account the location of a hotel; some people will like to be in the centre with all it’s ‘hustle and bustle’ whereas others would prefer to be on the fringes, so always check you are happy with the location of a hotel before you book.

Another thing to check is if the room rate includes breakfast.  Some hotels will include breakfast on their website but with Avios it will say room only – play them off to get the best deal.  Paying for breakfast every day for 2 (or however many) people can add up.

As I said in my last post, double-check the cash price before you exchange your Avios, both with the hotel directly and via Trip Advisor (which will check against Expedia.co.uk, Booking.com, lastminute.com, ebookers.com, Hotels.com and numerous others).  If you’re not getting a very good deal with your Avios (i.e. upwards of 1p) save them and use them for something else, if you can.

I’m very pleased with the deal I got at the Palazzo Sant’Angelo in Venice.  I hope this set of posts helps you find something you are happy with, too  If you’ve liked this set of posts remember you can keep in touch with Loyalty Program by following our the Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.

This is the third post in a series called How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios.

How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 1
How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 2

I have now looked at all hotels the hotels in Venice which I can book using Avios.  I’ve made a note of their Avios / Cash Cost, Star Rating and Trip Advisor Rating.  Now I need to narrow down my results.  To do this I have decided to add the following criteria to my search:

1. The hotel must be rated 4* or above
2. The hotel must be within the top 50 hotels on Trip Advisor (out of 400+ hotels in Venice)
3. It can’t cost me more than £500 on top of my Avios

I enjoy my creature comforts and so does my fiancée (this is a holiday after all) which is why I would like to stay somewhere 4* or higher.  I would also like to stay somewhere with good reviews (there are over 400 hotels in Venice according to Trip Advisor, so a top 50 ought to provide good service).  And, as I’m saving for a car, I set myself a limit of £500 of my own cash which I’m willing to put into my stay.

This dramatically reduced the number of hotel options, leaving just two for me to choose from:

I am now going to consider how much it would actually cost to stay at each of these hotels if I paid full price.  This is essential if you are going to make your Avios work as hard as possible for you.

• Palazzo Sant’angelo costs EUR 1,332 which equates to GBP £1,152
• Carnival Palace cost EUR 736 which equates to GBP £636

The prices above are the cost of booking the hotel direct.  It’s worth checking that these rates ‘fair’.  This is easily confirmed by checking the rates above on Trip Advisor.  I recommend Trip Advisor because it checks a load of hotel booking websites at the same time (Expedia.co.uk, Booking.com, lastminute.com, ebookers.com, Hotels.com and numerous others).

The prices for booking direct seem reasonable, so I can use them to how much value I am getting from my Avios, based on cost of booking at full price directly with the hotel.

• Palazzo Sant’angelo would cost £1,152 if booked directly.  To stay here I can pay £490 myself and use 45,100 Avios to cover the difference, which is worth £662.
  Avios worth = 1.5p
• Carnival Palace would cost £636 if booked directly.  To stay here I can pay £250 myself and use 43,100 Avios to cover the difference of, which is worth £386.
  Avios worth = 0.9p

I’m surprised at the difference between these figures.  I had to double-check the numbers to make sure I had got them correct because my Avois are effectively worth 63% more at one hotel than another, but they are definitely right.  It just goes to show that it’s worth putting a bit of effort in to ensure you get maximum value when you redeem Avios.  Anything upwards of 1p per  Avois is a reasonable deal, so 1.5p is very good.

I have a few more tips when it comes to redeeming Avios for hotels and I am going to cover these in my 4th and final post in this set.

This post is the second in a series titled How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios.

Click here for How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios – Part 1.

In my last post I demonstrated that there are a lot of bargains to be found when you book a hotel using Avios, so long as you are willing to do a little research beforehand.  I explained that there was a big difference in cost between hotels with the same Star Rating.  However, if you really want to identify the best hotel you need to look at factors beyond the hotel’s Star Rating.  Today I am going to explain why it is also important to consider feedback on Trip Advisor.

Picking up where I left yesterday, I made a spreadsheet in Excel to note the name of the Hotel, the amount of Avios required, the amount of Cash required and the hotel’s Star Rating.  I am now going to add a further field to this: Trip Advisor Rating.

This is where the analysis starts to get very interesting.  You can view the full table at the end of this post.

Trip Advisor is much better than it used to be at providing accurate, real-world experiences of hotels.  There was a time, years ago when results were a bit ‘spammy’ because hotel owners would create fake accounts to leave negative reviews on competitors, however the site is now so popular that it filters out a lot of this.

I really like Trip Advisor for getting an idea of how good a hotel is.  What’s best is that it ranks a hotel on what people think of it, relative to their expectations.  Surprisingly, the number one hotel in Venice at the moment is actually a 2* hotel (there is a lot to be said for under-promising and over-delivering!) but this hotel isn’t actually on Avios.  Given that the only hotels on Avios were 3* and up I do wonder if this is the minimum Star Rating for Avios?

Tip – there is always the option to pay cash for a hotel and save your Avios for something more rewarding (generally speaking, Business/First Class Flights and Upgrades tend to be better value than hotels, unless you find a bargain of course)

I updated the Excel document accordingly and you can see it at the end of this post.  Again, there were some very interesting findings:

• If you expected the top Trip Advisor hotels comprise of expensive 5* ones – you’d be wrong
• The top our hotels are all 4*
• There are only two 5* hotels in the Top 10
• There is even a 3* hotel on the Top 10 – this instantly says to me that this 3* hotel is worth considering

But…

While a hotel’s rating on Trip Advisor can help you identify some relative bargains (and any hotels which are overrated) it doesn’t reflect how hard your Avios points are working for you.  To do this, you need to consider what it would actually cost in the real world to stay at your hotel and see how this compares with the Star Rating and Trip Advisor Rating.  This is what I will cover in the next post.

This post is the first in a series titled How To Identify The Best Hotel Deals on Avios.

I recently booked a hotel in Venice in July with my fiancée using my Avios points.  I used a technique when I did this to help me identify which hotel represented the best deal.

To begin, I made a spreadsheet in Excel to note the name of the Hotel, the amount of Avios required, the amount of Cash required and the hotel’s Star Rating.

You can view the full table at the end of this post.

I then searched the Avios website to show all hotels available on the dates I wanted to stay and copied the information into Excel under the headings above.  The results were amazing and you can see these at the bottom of this post.  Here are some key findings:

• As you would expect, there was a correlation between the amount of Avios/Cash a hotel cost and it’s Star Rating
• There were also a lot of exceptions, which meant there are a lot of bargains to be found if you take the effort to hunt for them

For example, the Cheapest 5* hotel costs 31,700 Avios plus £1,045 Cash while the The Most Expensive 5* hotel costs 42,600 Avios plus £1,405 Cash.
There is a difference of 10,900 Avios plus £400 between the best and worst 5* hotel

The Cheapest 4* hotel costs 43,100 Avios plus £250 Cash while the The Most Expensive 4* hotel costs 47,650 Avios plus £650 Cash.
There is a difference of 4,550 Avios plus £400 between the best and worst 4* hotel

The Cheapest 3* hotel costs 45,100 Avios plus £70 Cash while the The Most Expensive 3* hotel costs 48,550 Avios plus £285 Cash.
There is a difference of 3,450 Avios plus £215 between the best and worst 3* hotel

So it pays to do some research to ensure you’re getting the best value possible for your hard-earned Avios.

But…

Star Rating is a reflection of a hotels’ amenities, not how good the customer service is.  I’ve stayed in some excellent 3* hotels before.  I have also stayed in some terrible 5* hotels.  So while you can use use the information provided on the Avios website as a yardstick, you should really take other things into account if you want to get the best possible deal.  And that is what my post will be about tomorrow…