I got three nice, small, “gifts” from the miles & points world to start the year

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As a Gold member of the British Airways Executive Club who flies on his own dime and for as few dimes as possible, I can’t say that 2025 has started out particularly promisingly, but the miles and points world has seen fit to give me three nice (albeit quite small) gifts to get the new year started so it’s not all doom and gloom here at TFM.

Gift 1 – Marriott gave me a free gift certificate for no apparent reason

I’m fortunate enough to hold Lifetime Titanium elite status with Marriott Bonvoy, but as my primary hotel program is currently the World of Hyatt (because I actually get to enjoy some meaningful benefits with Hyatt), I didn’t spend many nights at Marriott hotels in 2024 and Marriott got very little of my travel budget.

In fact, If I remember correctly, I had a little under $600 showing as my “annual qualifying spend” when 2024 ended and my Bonvoy account reset for 2025, so I was a little intrigued when an email recently dropped into my inbox with a subject line that read “Enjoy an exclusive thank you gift from Marriott Bonvoy”.

Intrigue turned to surprise when I discovered that the email wasn’t just another piece of junk marketing but a gift certificate for $50.

Yes, the gift certificate was only valid for a month, but as I already had a Marriott booking in place for the start of the year (an award booking), the $50 was easily spent part paying my bar bill.

I’m not sure what I did to deserve this bit of generosity from Marriott, but the generosity was appreciated.

Gift 2 – I earned a lot more Avios from a recent trip than I expected to

As many of you will know, the recently announced changes to the British Airways Executive Club aren’t the first major changes to BA’s frequent flyer program that we’ve seen in the past couple of years because back in October of 2023, British Airways stopped awarding Avios based on the distance flown (for flights booked through BA, American Airlines and Iberia) and began awarding Avios based on how much a booking costs (net of taxes and fees).

For someone like me who, generally speaking, tries to give airlines as few of his hard earned dollars as possible and who does a lot of transatlantic flying between the US and the UK, this wasn’t a positive change to the Executive Club, but as I was committed to continuing to earn elite status with British Airways, I’ve had little choice but to suck it up and to live with the new rules.

Needless to say, all of my transatlantic bookings made since October 2023 have earned me considerably fewer Avios than they would have done under the old rules (the punishment for booking “cheap” transatlantic Business Class fares), but a recent trip broke that cycle of doom.

For a recent Dublin – London – USA – London – Dublin trip, I, as a BAEC Gold member, expected to earn 9 Avios per eligible GBP spent on my fare (i.e. 9 x the fare before taxes and fees). And as the total amount that I paid for the fare (including taxes and fees) came to £1,356 (~$1,700 at the time of booking), there shouldn’t have been any way that I could earn more than ~12,000 Avios for the whole trip.

As things turned out, I earned considerably more than that.

I fact, I earned considerably more than 12,000 Avios just for the Dublin – London – JFK – LAX part of the trip.

Overall, I was awarded ~30,600 Avios for the whole trip and I can’t quite work out where that number has come from as it’s not even the number of Avios I would have expected if they were being awarded based on the distance flown.

I also have no real idea how this happened (BA’s already incredibly inept IT systems may have been bamboozled even further by the numerous flight changes that American Airlines forced me into on this booking), but I’m not complaining.

As I fully expect BA to move to a dynamic award pricing model as soon as it thinks it can get away with it (or as soon as it has an IT system that’s capable of doing more than just spitting out error messages), I’ll soon need as many Avios as I can lay my hands on so I’ll put this down to an early “win” to help offset the inevitable devaluation that’s almost certainly not far down the road.

Gift 3 – ITA Airways gave me a super-easy path to retain its top-tier elite status (SkyTeam Elite Plus status)

I’ve never flown with ITA Airways and I’ve never credited a flight to its Volare frequent flyer program but, somehow, I’ve managed to hold on to Volare Executive status (top-tier status) since I was matched to it a almost exactly three 3 years ago (no, I have no idea how this happened either).

With my Volare Executive status finally set to expire (this month, I think), I was resigned to dropping down to whatever level ITA was planning to drop me to (presumably, the very bottom tier) and I can’t say that this bothered me as I haven’t exactly been making the most of the status that I’ve had for the past three years.

Then, just days before 2024 ended, I received an email from ITA with a subject line that read “How to renew your Volare Club membership” and which contained an incredibly generous offer:

“Book before January 10, 2025 to any destination and fly prior to January 31, 2025 and we will renew your membership in Volare Club Executive for another year.”

Initially, I was inclined to turn down the offer (generous as it was) because I had no idea when (if ever) I was going to get to use ITA/SkyTeam status.

Then, within 24 hours of receiving the email, British Airways dropped the hammer on its Executive Club and everything changed.

The changes that BA is making to its frequent flyer program will leave me with absolutely no chance of retaining its Gold status (OneWorld Emerald status) past April 2026, so as soon as I read the news, I knew that I had to start looking for a new frequent flyer “home”.

Suddenly, SkyTeam Elite Plus status looked a lot more interesting than it had done before, and as I already had plans to be in Europe before the offer deadline expired, locking that status in for the cost of a short-haul trip with ITA seemed like a sensible step to take … so that’s what I decided to do.

Courtesy of ITA’s incredibly generous offer, I will be flying between London and Milan later this month and using that trip to lock in SkyTeam Elite Plus status for a year, to review ITA’s relatively new Airbus A220, and to review the Hyatt Centric Milan.

It’s not going to be a long trip, but the elite status that I retain thanks to it may turn out to be very useful if I decide that SkyTeam and not OneWorld will offer me the more useful frequent flyer benefits going forward and that makes me very grateful to ITA for its unexpected generous offer.