Avanti: Is their Club Avanti reward scheme worth it?

Simple and reasonably rewarding

Sometimes, the complexity of a travel rewards scheme can blow your mind. Avanti’s Club Avanti isn’t that difficult to get your head around. The biggest challenge is actually knowing it exists, so here’s a short guide to a fairly valuable rewards programme.

What is Club Avanti?

It’s a rewards programme from Avanti West Cost. If you’ve travelled between London (Euston) and Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow or Edinburgh then you’ve probably sat on their trains. They also stop off at plenty of other stations along the way.

Hidden away on their website is Club Avanti, a way to get rewarded when you book train travel. Don’t get too excited – this isn’t a points programme, and it won’t help you book business-class flights. However, it may help you get to the airport to take a flight.

How does Club Avanti work?

The scheme has three tiers that you can reach by booking train journeys directly through Avanti. The perks are as follows:

• Silver
  • Get 10% off a standard return ticket upon joining
  • Get a free hot drink on board (one-time use)
  • Get 10% off food and drink onboard (use as many times as you want)
    
• Gold
  • Get one return standard premium ticket when you reach Gold, plus the perks of Silver
    
• Platinum
  • Get one free First Class return when you reach Platinum, plus the perks of Gold & Silver.
  • Get a free First Class lounge pass.

You also get “Priority Ticket Alerts” and “Early Boarding Notifications” at Euston. I’m unsure what the early boarding notifications entail. I used to get platform notifications from Virgin Trains (who Avanti took over from) by SMS, which was highly valuable as they would arrive a minute or two before the platform was announced on the departure boards, but I have not – despite multiple journeys – had the same from Avanti.

The only T&Cs on the free Standard Premium and First Class tickets are that you must book them seven days in advance.

How do you reach the Club Avanti tiers?

Reaching the higher tiers is based on the number of qualifying journeys you take during your membership year. This is relatively simple: for each train journey over 75 miles, you book via Avantai directly.

Avanti seem to include every potential ticket: Advance, Anytime and off-peak journeys, including any that use a railcard. Family tickets will count as just one journey. Return tickets are – rightly – two journeys.

To move from the basic Silver tier to Gold will require nine qualifying journeys. To move from Gold to Platinum requires 21 journeys. All need to be taken in your membership year: journeys do not roll over. A journey is a single ticket, so a return ticket will count as two journeys.

When is a membership year and is there a soft landing?

According to the T&Cs, your membership years begin on the day when you join Club Avanti. If you reach the Gold or Platinum tier then you’ll remain in that tier for the following year.

If you qualify, you will be upgraded automatically to the next Club Avanti Tier Level at any time during your Membership Year. You’ll keep your new Club Avanti Tier Level for the rest of that Membership Year, plus the following Membership Year.

How do you access Club Avanti?

This is the first membership programme I’ve joined where there is no dedicated portal or app. There’s a microsite where you can read about the perks and sign up, but there’s no central place to check on how close you are to the next tier. Everything happens silently in the background, and key events are communicated via email.

When Avanti detects that you’ve had enough journeys to move up a tier you’ll get an email. For Gold and Platinum you’ll get your free journey voucher by email too. I had an email from them last month notifying me that I was Gold, and an email with my free train travel voucher.,

There is a picture of an app from 2023, but no actual app. There is no mention of Club Avanti within the My Account section of the website, or the main Avanti app. Your free train vouchers are not referenced within the my account section either.

Despite the oddity of not having somewhere to view your Club Avanti account, the system works. It’s just disconcerting – and there’s no easy way to check how many journeys you’ve had in your current membership year. The last email you receive from them will list it at the top, however I’ve only had two emails from them this year – the first welcoming me to the club, and the second telling me that I was a Gold and had earned a free train journey.

Update in November 2024: For the first time since I joined Club Avant I received a “monthly update” email. This contains a breakdown of how many journeys I’ve taken this month, and in total during this membership year. It also tells me how many more journeys I need to reach the next level. It also helpfully gives me the barcodes to get a free hot drink, and get 10% off food and drink. The email does say that the barcode for my free standard premium ticket is included, but there is none.

How long do free train vouchers last?

When your free train travel voucher is sent to you (via email) it will contain a voucher code which expires twelve months after the date of the email. The voucher can only be used on Avanti trains, and you have to book on the Avanti website or their main app.

You can change the date and time of a reward ticket once after booking.

Booking for others? You may jump tiers faster.

I look after train bookings for my colleagues, and I book these through the Avanti website. Based on my travels this year, it appears that I am getting credited for each journey that I book rather than each journey that I take as an individual.

That means if you’re arranging travel for friends or co-workers, you could jump up to Gold or Platinum quite quickly.

Update: Getting my vouchers and using them

I talked above about how I haven’t had any emails from Avanti all year. That appears to be because I had changed the settings so that I did not get marketing emails. Once I ticked this I started to get update emails every month. I also started getting early text alerts on platforms at London Euston.

I’ve just made a booking using my free first-class travel voucher. It took me a while to find where to add the discount code, so here’s a summary of how to make a booking;

1. You have to book directly with Avanti, either via the app or the website. I chose the website.
2. Use the journey booking process, making sure you select direct Avanti trains only, and the tickets have to be Advance 1st Single. (You can cancel a voucher journey and have the journey returned to you)
3. Click checkout, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. There’s a discount code box to add in your voucher. Click add and then you’ll see the total drop to £0. This was a confusing page, as there’s a sidebar with a “continue” button that’s visible at the top of the page. Click that and you’ll miss out on the ability to enter your discount code.
4. Finally, you’ll be taken to the credit card page. If the total cost has updated to £0 then no money will be taken from your card.

One final update: the tickets for my journey did not appear in the Avanti app as usual. I caught this the day before I was due to travel, so I ended up having to print them out. I am pretty confident that I was logged in to my account when I booked, so it’s worth printing out (or having the email ready) for when you actually travel.

How to join Club Avanti.

Visit the registration page on the Avanti website, and make sure you check the “Join Club Avanti” checkbox at the end. It’s above the T&Cs so it’s easy to miss it.

Is Club Avanti worth it?

Joining is free; you get a free hot drink for your troubles. That makes it an easy win. The programme is a little odd – no site to login to, and a reliance on emails – which makes it frustrating.

If you’re travelling a lot with Avanti then there’s no downside to joining and just riding out (no pun intended) the quirks and collecting your free train tickets.