You can earn points from booking a hotel room, but is it worth using them for a room?
The excellent Avios Hotels website is a gateway to earning tens of thousands of points. It is, in my opinion, the easiest way to earn points, and at scale. However, you also have the option to use your Avios to pay for rooms. Is it worth it?
What is Avios Hotels?
It’s a hotel booking platform that is powered by Expedia but owned by Avios. You earn a generous 10 points per £ you spend on a hotel booking (occasionally that rate is boosted). You can also use Avios to reduce the cost of the hotel booking to £0. That’s what I’m going to be exploring in this article.
I’ve written before on how to use Avios Hotels. It’s incredibly easy, and it’s a powerful way to boost your points. The only downside is you have to wait around 30 days after you check out for your points to land. That isn’t a huge deal. The earn rate is sometimes boosted even higher. I have occasionally seen it as high as 15/£, and at the moment Amex themselves will boost your earn rate with an extra 5 points per £ spent. You do have to opt in to that offer and it’s on the (paid for) British Airways Premium Plus card.
The Avios Hotels booking platform underwent an upgrade recently, making it easier to use. It operates in a similar way to any other hotel aggregator, although the interface isn’t quite as slick.
How do you pay for hotels using Avios?
Firstly, visit the Avios Hotels website and search for a hotel or location. You’ll be shown both the cash price and the points needed for your stay. Booking is as simple as selecting the room type, then completing the booking process. The points will leave your account immediately.
Example 1 – A single night at an airport hotel
For this example, I’ve searched for the Sofitel at London Heathrow.
A one night stay in September 2026 would cost me £313 in cash. This is the same rate as booking direct, and it matches the rate on Expedia and Booking.com. I would collect 3,125 points for that booking.
Alternatively, I could use 62,600 Avios. Unlike Avios flight redemptions, there is no cash element. That values my Avios at 0.5p per point, which is really the lowest value you should accept.
Example 2 – A week-long stay at a luxury hotel
I looked at the Raffles hotel in Singapore for a week-long stay in October 2026.
The most basic room costs a total of £7,688.82 for the week. Or 1,537,775 Avios points. That is the same as the previous example: 0.5p per point.
Example 3 – A long weekend in New York at a mid-priced hotel
I looked at The Bowery for a Friday to Monday stay in November 2026.
The cheapest room is £2,265 per night, or 452,975 Avios. That’s the same 0.5p of value per point.
When is it a good idea to book a hotel using Avios?
There are a few reasons why you would want to use your Avios points to pay for a hotel. You may be points rich and looking to get some value from them. Alternatively, you might have a chunk of Avios that you will never end up using, and you can burn them on a cheap hotel.
The missing feature from the Avios hotels site is part-payment. It would be great to use just some of your points to reduce the cash cost of a hotel. This isn’t possible, but it could be something that they launch in the future.
Ultimately the value you get from using Avios for flights will almost always be higher than using the points for hotels.
Do other airlines have something similar to Avios Hotels?
Yes. Aer Lingus has its own Avios Hotels website. You earn 10 Avios for every euro you spend. Qatar have a less rewarding hotel booking engine which earns you just 1 Avios for every 1 USD you spend.
You can also earn Avios using Avios Shopping portal. This lists a number of hotel brands and aggregators. The rates are often lower: at the time of writing Booking.com is offering 6 Avios per £. Agoda is offering 10/£. Hilton will reward you with 4 Avios per £ you spend, and IHG offers 15/£.
There is a big difference between booking through the Avios Hotels website, and booking via the Shopping portal, and that’s reliability. For technical reasons (cookies) your hotel booking may not track properly if you go via the Shopping portal. I had a lot of issues with Hilton historically. It also takes much longer for the points to appear, usually a minimum of ninety days. I now book all my hotels through Avios Hotels, as I have a 100% booking-to-earning rate.
Can you transfer Avios to hotel schemes?
Yes, you could transfer your Avios to Marriott Bonvoy or Accor Live Limitless. You can’t do this through BA, so you have to move them to a Qatar or Finnair account first. It is easier to do it the other way: you can move Hilton Honors, Accor All Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy points, MeliaReward points and IHG One Reward points to your BA account.
For some hotel groups this can be done online. There is usually a requirement to transfer them in specific blocks, for example Melia asks that you transfer them in groups of 100 points. Some hotel groups require you to contact their customer services team to initiate a transfer.
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