Advice on using Virgin Airmiles

[mocha70]

My husband has a large number of Virgin Airmiles (I think enough for 4 x premium economy return long haul). I am wondering how best to use them for a summer holiday. I am wondering how other mumsnetters have used these miles? Virgin holidays? Virgin flights (and booking accommodation separately), partner airlines or hotels. I'm feeling a bit restricted by their flight destination list with St Lucia/Antigua being the best options. However even if we managed to get free flights some of the hotels look very expensive for a family of four in school hols. I'm not sure if it would be best to book the whole holiday though virgin holidays and hope to get a discount with airmiles or to book the flights with the airmiles and try and sort accommodation separately.

We are in the same position with loads of miles. They don’t make it easy to spend them!
I started a similar thread a few days ago and there was some good advice.
I think you tend to get good packages to Caribbean so not sure you save much with air miles. As you said, Caribbean hotels seen more expensive if you book independently.

You also have to factor in that you still pay taxes on reward flight, just under £500 per person for prem econ, so flights not really free.

Thanks user1478901 - I will try and find your other thread.

The idea is you don’t spend them they cut into there profits and Richard would like that.

Are your airmiles with Virgin Atlantic (which is a separate company to Virgin Holidays, albeit both under the "Virgin" umbrella)? We had lots of airmiles to use and will be using them this Autumn to upgrade flights to the US.

The advice we had - book the flights as soon as you know where and when you want to go - flights are released for sale about 11 months in advance. You can also use the airmiles to upgrade - so pay for economy, but fly (say) upper class. I'm sure you are aware, but if you do this, not all seats can be upgraded - there are only a few on each flight that are eligible, which is why you are best off booking the flights 11 months in advance.

We are using lots of airmiles, and have booked our accommodation and car hire separately. Whilst we've upgraded our flights, booking everything separately has meant that actually the entire thing is more expensive than booking a package.

If you phone Virgin Atlantic direct they will be able to tell you the best way to spend your airmiles to get the most out of them. From a purely monetary point of view, using them for flights, rather than accommodation etc is more efficient.

The airmiles are with virgin atlantic. If it costs more to book sep flights and hotel than to book a package I don't see the benefit in using the airmiles?

We have about 500,000 ba and avios .. nothing seems to be very good value so they just sit there . We used to use avios for days out and they also used to let you use them to reduce the cost of a package holiday . They stopped this which was annoying!!

No advice on Virgin, but I do think Avios is much better under their reward flights scheme. For 9000 miles and £35 you can get a short economy Europe return. More miles gets you further but the trick is to do reward flights and you pay their nominal fee instead of taxes. I convert Clubcard points to Avios for this sole purpose.

We used ours last year for flights to Barbados. We managed to get premium out and Upper in and still have some left. It's almost impossible to find flights that you can use them on on the website. My tip is to phone their booking line and tell them where you want to go with rough dates.