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Warning for visiting Europe with UK vaccine passports
The FCDO is warning travellers that are due to visit Europe, that they may need to download a paper copy of their vaccine passport again. This only applies to Europe as it’s due to the integration with the EU vaccine passport. If you have printed out the PDF version of your vaccine certificate from the app prior to 1 November you will need to print it out again. This is because the QR code will not scan correctly in Europe to show that you have the correct status for the EU Covid pass which is not integrated with the NHS app.
You could of course just use the app, but it is always useful to have the paper too in case of a malfunction with your phone or the app. Note that the certificates from the app also have a limited expiry date so you may have to download and print it again anyway.
Expedia Rewards changes
You may remember I spoke before about how the brands that are part of the Expedia group such as Hotels.com and Ebookers were looking to merge their loyalty schemes. This can only spell bad news I am sure as some of the schemes were definitely better than others.
Expedia this week has announced some of its loyalty changes. Expedia can be useful for hotels where you can’t get any other offer as not only can you get cashback but then you would also earn rewards with their own scheme. Expedia also can sometimes reduce the cost of a flight by adding a hotel in the same way that BA Holidays does. Personally, I would normally go for eBookers as they have a slightly better scheme and sometimes better cashback.
The changes will come into effect on 1 February 2022.
To summarise the changes:
- The value of points will change from 140 points being worth £1 to 100 points being worth £1
- From 1 February 2022, your points will be devalued to reflect the above value. So spend them before!
- Rates of earning reduce to half what they were on hotels, packages, excursions and car hire to 1 point per £1. Flights stay the same.
- Status members will get better bonuses – Silver members will get a 100% points bonus and Gold a 200% points bonus on hotels, flight and hotel packages, excursions and car hire, but nothing on flights.
- Earning status is also getting complicated. If you only book hotels it will be harder to earn status. You will now earn points on each element of a trip that you book. Things that count as an element are:
- a flight
- a hotel stay or home rental
- car hire
- Activity
So as you can see they are not all created equal. The activity elements are per ticket so you could easily book cheap tickets to things and gain status much more easily than booking flights. Activities include things like transfers as well so it’s not just sightseeing.
You can see the full details on Expedia here.
HT: HfP
IHG status extensions
After Hilton broke cover first and extended status until 2023, Marriott swiftly followed. Next to extend was Accor and then Radisson.
Today IHG announced that they too were jumping on the bandwagon. While it is good news if you haven’t been able to travel, it’s not such great news for those that chose to funnel all their business into IHG to gain status when they needn’t have bothered.
All members’ program status has been automatically extended through February 2023.
This shows the current requirements for status in 2021:
| 2019 | Current | 2019 | Current | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
qualifying points | qualifying nights | ||||
| Spire Elite | 75,000 | 55,000 | 75 | 55 | |
| |||||
| Platinum Elite | 40,000 | 30,000 | 40 | 30 | |
| |||||
| Gold Elite | 10,000 | 7,000 | 10 | 7 | |
| |||||
The good news is that if you did manage to earn status and some, for Platinum and Spire Elite members, all qualifying nights earned in 2021 above the tier threshold, will be rolled over into 2022 and count towards status earned in 2023.
While points never expire for all members with Elite status (Gold, Platinum, and Spire) IHG has also extended points expiry until 31 December 2022 for Club members (points normally expire after 12 months of inactivity).
There was no information about extending Ambassador (paid scheme) status in the details. The Ambassador ‘Benefits Guarantee’ is now suspended for stays up to and including January 31, 2022, due to COVID-19. I let my Ambassador status lapse and I shall only be renewing it when I need to do a two night weekend stay in an expensive IHG hotel!
HG Rewards Club Credit Card Anniversary Night Certificates awarded in 2021 can be redeemed until 31 December 2022.
6 comments
Was in France last week and no problem with their tousCovid app – could just import NHS vacc certificate.
Big problem is teenagers – mine is 15 and needed external testing every 72 hours – although single dosed it is not recognised as fully vaccinated.
Every bar and restaurant will scan your vacc certificate and ask you to leave if you don’t have it – so much more strict than here. Also everyone using masks.
Still waiting for my booster to be added on to my record on the NHS App
I haven’t seen my booster dose added yet either – but I do have a further card with jab and date on it.
Thanks for the heads up Michelle, I’ve updated my Irish and French apps with a fresh QR code – though the French one always worked but I’m taking no chances on this.
Boosters shouldn’t matter for now until you start getting to countries where vaccines are only valid for a certain amount of time.
When you say UK vaccine passport, does that apply to all implementations across the four devolved NHS’s or is this specific to the English NHS vaccine certificate that you can obtain from the English NHS app.
There is a really important differentiator and I would expect new outlets to ensure they describe it properly because there is no UK-wide app or vaccine printout, each nation does it differently.
It’s the NHS app that it refers too.
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