Eight very clever ways to collect Avios this summer

Words: Hannah Ralph

Did you know that you could spend your whole summer in the garden at home and still collect just as many Avios as someone spending theirs flying around Europe? It’s true: there are no bounds to how many Avios – our frequent flyer rewards currency – you can collect from wherever it is that you’re sitting right now. 

And if you start your Avios summer scoop pronto, that growing balance could see you joining your Europhile friends out in the hidden beaches of Menorca or the desert dunes of Tenerife – and all before the season’s still-toasty end. Depending on how many Avios you stash, you could be heading – in business class, perhaps? – to a macchiato-topped table in some hot, Italian piazza or sipping a cold glass of rosé on a glamorous French promenade. Avios, after all, love to shape-shift into all manner of travel goodies: Reward Flights, cabin upgrades, car hire for endlessly explorable coastlines… The list goes on. 

So, are you ready to stockpile the Avios this summer without anything resembling effort at all? Here are just some of the ways we know how.

1. Take out travel insurance on those already booked trips
After joining The British Airways Club, the next smartest travel move you can make is taking out insurance to cover your trip. The great news is that Avios now has its own travel insurance provider, Wanda by Avios, which not only protects you abroad – covering everything from emergency medical expenses to gadget theft – but puts a little Avios in your pocket, too. Specifically, Wanda will throw in up to 1,000 Avios on each single trip cover you take out, while at the same time protecting up to 500,000 Avios per person covered in case of cancellation.

2. Stock up on some sizzling summer reads 
From school holidays to longer evenings, summer seems to put more hours on the clock: the perfect opportunity, then, to sink your teeth into a good book. Page-turning prowess awaits at two of the UK’s biggest book stores, Waterstones (up to 4 Avios per £1 spent) and WHSmith (5 Avios per £1 spent), which both deliver bestsellers to your door (or click and collect, if you’d rather go and browse IRL). Speaking of home delivery, Books2Door (7 Avios per £1 spent) does exactly what it says on the tin – shipping light reads right to your sun-lounger.

3. Get garden party wines at The Wine Flyer 
Our grape gurus over at The Wine Flyer – the only dedicated online wine shop that lets you collect and spend Avios – say this summer is all about New Zealand’s driest Sauvignon Blancs, skin contact wines from Spain, delicate Provence rosé and anything with bubbles. Whichever you decide to go with, your next Wine Flyer-fuelled soirée promises to put Avios in the proverbial cellar. This classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, will give you up to 100 Avios before you’ve even uncorked. Better yet, The Wine Flyer has a very special offer right now just for you: Collect 2,000 Avios when spending £100 using the code HIGHLIFE here.

4. Upgrade your garden furniture with Nectar
When you think of Nectar, we’ll bet you think of Sainsbury’s. That, dear reader, would be a mistake, for there are some 500 brands under the Nectar loyalty programme, with hundreds of opportunities to convert Nectar points into Avios (400 of the former become 250 of the latter). With this in mind, transform alfresco evenings with this modern fire pit (£280) from Argos and a three-seater sofa set (£380) from Habitat. Sticking with Sainsbury’s, grab these darling festoon lights (£25) on your next shop.

5. Try your hand at a new experience 
Tours, workshops, cooking classes, boat trips, hop-on-hop-off buses, helicopter flights – every major (and not so major) city has its own little black book of experiences that cater to the tourist crowd. And just to make things easy, online platforms such as Viator have collated more than 300,000 of them – all rated and reviewed and offering Avios with every spend on them. Here in the UK, you can learn to surf in Newquay (recommended by 99 per cent of travellers), discover the art of delicious Chinese dumpling making in London, and even build your own fully personalised watch under expert tutelage in St Andrews. 

6. Let the summer glow-up begin
Bet you didn’t know you could collect Avios on a tan, did you? Thanks to Treatwell – everyone’s favourite hair and beauty appointment platform – self-care enthusiasts can get up to 5 Avios for every £1 spent on everything from deep tissue massages to laser hair removal, hair trimming to brow lamination, and all the many unisex treatments in between. Over at LOOKFANTASTIC, travellers can stock up on vital SPF (including this factor 50 face spray), while skin-brightening, hair-strengthening, energy-boosting supplements at influencer favourite AG1 will collect you 8 Avios for every £1 spent investing in yourself.

7. Swell your balance at Heathrow
We’re fast approaching the busiest few months in the annual travel calendar, which means Heathrow’s many Duty Free stores will see their fair share of jumbo Ferrero Rocher, buy-one-get-one-free spirits and Chanel No. 5 ringing through the tills. What you might not know is that you can collect Avios on all these limbo-land goodies as part of Club Avolta’s free loyalty scheme, since flashing your Club Avolta QR code at Heathrow’s Duty Free turns into 1 Avios for every £1/€1 spent. New joiners even get a bonus 250 Avios lump sum on their first Duty Free haul as a participating member. And for anyone who needs another reason to sign up: Club Avolta members also enjoy discounts on multiple airport lounges worldwide.

8. Book a summer holiday day trip – for all the family
Whether you fancy going full Pride and Prejudice at a National Trust stately home, hurtling down Nemesis at Alton Towers or putting the pieces together at LEGOLAND Windsor Resort – Avios come courtesy of all three. These aren’t the only UK day trips to stump up for, either: Go Ape gives you 5 Avios per £1 spent on braving its adventurous heights, while Sea Life and Thorpe Park come in at a respectable 2 Avios per £1 a pop.

Collect Avios on your online purchases

Prices and Avios correct at 20 June 2025