One of the easiest ways to earn Avios points
If you’re booking hotels, even just for one night, then you should be using the Avios Hotels website. It’s one of the easiest ways to earn Avios and at a significant rate. Read on to understand more, and how to leverage more points from your trips.
What is the Avios Hotels website?
BA/Avios operate a hotel booking website where you can earn points on every stay, or use your Avios to book rooms.
I have never used Avios points to book a room. That’s just down to personal preference. Avios points, to me, are about business or first-class flights. In my view, a point is far more valuable spent on a flight than a hotel. I do, however, use hotel points (e.g. Hilton Honours points) that I collect on direct bookings on accommodation although I do sometimes transfer those points.
The website used to be quite clunky, but the user experience has recently been updated. It is not a perfect website, and there are moments (especially when searching) when it does not feel as polished as Hotels.com or Booking.com. That said, it is not an awful experience. Booking a hotel is relatively painless.
How do you book a hotel through the site?
The site works the same way as other hotel aggregators. You enter the city or hotel you want to book, plus the start and end dates of the trip and the number of rooms and guests you want.
The results page looks exactly the same as any other hotel booking website. The big difference is that instead of just listing a price for the room in your local currency, it lists how many Avios it would cost you to book this room. You have two options for paying for a room:
- Pay using Avios points from your balance. This is an inefficient use of points, but you may have some spare points to burn.
- Pay using cash and earn Avios points. The number of points you’ll get will be listed below the price.
What’s the checkout process like?
Finalising a hotel booking is pretty easy. It feels like there’s a few more stages than a typical hotel website, but the process does use information you’ve previously entered (such as your address) to make checkout a little easier. You can pay using any debit or credit card (including the BA American Express and the Barclays Avios earning credit card).
Once you’ve booked you’ll get a booking confirmation email, which helpfully lists how many Avios you’ll earn from the booking. You can see all of your upcoming and past hotel trips using the “order history” button on the website.
What is the customer support like?
I’ve booked a lot of hotels through this site, and I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had to contact them. There is a dedicated contact page which isn’t particularly useful. There are no phone numbers listed.
There is, however, a chat function in the bottom right of every page. This is semi-automated, in that it gives you a series of options to choose from, and it’s an Executive Club chat, not an Avios hotels chat. That means that despite you being on the Avios hotels website, it gives you options related to flights, which is a little confusing.
I’ve been through a few of the chat options and the best way to speak to a human being is to type “agent” into the chat.
How many Avios can you earn?
The base earning rate is 10 Avios per £1 you spend. Of course, if you pay for the hotel using an Avios-earning credit card, you can earn up to 11.5 Avios per £.
Avios Hotels runs regular offers. One that’s just ended gave you 20 Avios per £1 spent. That’s a significant amount of points. We booked all of this year’s hotels through that offer, and we will take home just under a hundred thousand Avios. That’s almost enough points for our next long haul flight.
In addition to boosts to the earning rate, bonus amounts are sometimes paid out. Last August, they had an offer where you could earn up to 3,000 Avios per hotel you book, on top of the usual 10 Avios per £1.
If you’re planning a trip, booking your hotel through this site is one of the easiest ways to earn Avios, and the rate is incomparable to other earning sources.
Is there a better way to earn Avios on hotels?
If you use the Avios Shopping website you can earn Avios by booking through the usual aggregators. The earning rate is much lower. These rates do change quite a lot, but at the time of writing:
- Booking.com is offering 6 Avios per £1
- Hotels.com is 8 Avios per £1
- Agoda is 8 Avios per £1
You can also earn Avios by booking direct (Having clicked on the link on the Avios Shopping website)
- IHG offers 6 Avios per £1
- Hilton offers 6 Avios per £1. I have found Hilton to be deeply unreliable for Avios earning.
- Marriot is 6 Avios per £1
- Radisson is 8 Avios per £1
- You can also earn 2 Avios per £1 you spend with Airbnb
Even at the lowest base rate of 10 Avios per £1, Avios Hotels still has the highest earning rate for hotels. If you’re deep into your points earning you might end up with more value by booking direct, and then earning more points from the hotel rewards scheme, and then turning these back into Avios.
When there’s a bonus offer, then Avios Hotels becomes unbeatable.
How does the pricing for rooms compare?
I’ve checked a number of hotels and compared them with the Expedia price (which powers the Avios Hotels site) and the price on the hotel website.
The pricing below is for the cheapest room for one night for two people on the 31st August 2025. Directly comparable rates have been used, i.e. “with breakfast” or “refundable” rates.
| Hotel | Avios Hotels Price | Avios Earned | Expedia Price | Hotel Direct Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holiday Inn Express LHR T5 | £114 | 1,150 | £114 | £111 |
| Hyatt Grand Central New York | £423 | 4,225 | £459 | £394 |
| Radisson Blu Hotel Shanghai New World | £124 | 1,250 | £124 | £124.31 |
| Atlantis The Palm, Dubai | £451 | 4,500 | £455 | £367 |
| Kimpton Clocktower Manchester | £158 | 1,575 | £159 | £154 |
What’s fascinating about the pricing on the Avios Hotels website is that it is sometimes cheaper than the site that powers it (Expedia). You can see a significant difference above on the Hyatt pricing. The Atlantis and the Kimpton are marginally cheaper.
In most cases, booking directly with the hotel will be cheaper. The Holiday Inn Express is £3 cheaper, but the Hyatt is £29 cheaper. The beautiful Kimpton Clocktower in Manchester is four pounds cheaper than booking directly.
Should you book directly with a hotel brand or via Avios Hotels?
There are a few things to consider when you’re looking at booking direct or via a third-party site. In my experience, you are more likely (but in no way guaranteed) to get an upgrade if you book directly. Booking direct also means that if you have status, you can use those perks. For example, I’m a Hilton Gold, which means I get free breakfast. If I book via a third-party site, that valuable perk can’t be applied.
If you book direct with a hotel then, as long as you’re a member of that hotels scheme, you’ll collect points with them. I find hotel points to have a lower value than Avios, and aside from Hilton (my go-to brand) those points will just sit in my account. Sometimes I end up losing them as they lapse, or I move them to BA or another airline.
Finally, in favour of Avios Hotels, there are the Avios points you get. For the Hyatt, those 4,225 points would cost almost a hundred pounds if you bought them. If you used the Avios Boost option to get those points that would cost you just over £40. At a minimum those points are worth more than the price difference between Avios Hotels and booking direct with the Hyatt.
The reality is that most people prefer to collect points for “free”, and don’t buy them. That makes the points you earn from Avios Hotels worth more than the price difference. If you need those extra points to book a flight then the theoretical cash value isn’t really on your mind.
How many points do you need to book a room?
If you want to use your Avios to pay for a hotel room each Avios point is worth around 0.5p, which is a relatively low earning rate. Most Avios valuations put the value at 1p per point. So a £306 per night hotel room will cost you 61,255 Avios which is 0.499p per Avios. Or another way to think about it is two nights at £306/night would be enough Avios for a long haul flight in business class.
How do you access the Avios Hotels site?
The site exists on the Avios.com domain. Visit the site directly and log in using your BA Club details.
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