Travel blogger The Points Guy opens UK office to help Brits get cheap flights

‘We’ve had a contingent of UK readers for years but we’ve never really tailored the content’

An American frequent-flier organisation, The Points Guy, has opened a London office – and hopes to enthuse British travellers to adopt US techniques for saving money on flying.

The Points Guy himself, Brian Kelly, told The Independent: “The idea is to bring the expertise that we’ve brought to a lot of Americans on how to maximise on loyalty programmes and airline miles and give it a UK focus.

“We’ve had a contingent of UK readers for years but we’ve never really tailored the content.”

The points game in the US is far more sophisticated and lucrative than in Europe. At its heart is the intense competition between financial institutions for customers, particularly for credit cards. They try to lure customers with the promise of frequent-flier miles – which the banks buy from the airlines with transactions involving billions of dollars each year.

In turn, the financial institutions pay a referral fee to frequent-flying websites for each reader who clicks through to obtain a new card.

With card firms able to extract a significant margin on subsequent credit-card purchases, the whole industry is effectively underwritten by the retailers who surrender part of their profit margin.

In Europe, however, the landscape is very different. The EU has imposed a cap of 0.3 per cent on the so-called “interchange fee” between charged by credit-card issuers from a merchant's payment service provider.

The European Commission even mentions frequent-flier points in its explanation of why the cap was imposed: “The customer who pays with a debit card or in cash pays for the air miles given to the customer who is provided by his bank with a credit card.”

Echoing this conclusion, The Points Guy tells British consumers: “One of the cardinal sins of the points and miles world is using a debit card or cash to make purchases. When you think about rewards credit cards as earning a valuable currency, you’ll want to leave your debit card in the sock drawer.

“Each purchase made with a rewards credit card means you’re inching closer to a reward.”

The Points Guy recommends the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold “as a great place to begin due to the 10,000-point welcome bonus and fee free first year”.

It goes on to say: “A one-way flight in Europe on British Airways can be as little as 4,000 points.”

However, this touches on the next problem: high taxes and fees. BA will charge £17.50 for that 4,000-point European flight.

For return flights to long-haul destinations, the costs rise sharply – as shown with a British Airways London-New York economy return flight. Booking six months ahead, the "free" flight using 26,000 Avios points is subject to taxes and airline charges amounting to £373.

This is £75 more than the cheapest fare on the same dates for cash from BA, priced at £298.