Can now redeem for AUD vouchers at A-Club

[oz_mark]

Somewhere along the line, A-Club have added more currencies to the list for redeeming A-Club hotel vouchers. AUD is one of them.

60 AUD E-Reward (2,000 Points)
90 BRL E-Reward (2,000 Points)
30 GBP E-Reward (2,000 Points)
40 EUR E-Reward (2,000 Points)
60 USD E-Reward (2,000 Points)

 

[futaris]

Yay. 60 AUD is worth more than 60 USD, especially once you take into account conversion the fees at Australian Hotels.

 

[Ghostdunks]

I'd like to think my complaining about the previous process had something to do with this

I've been staying in an ACCOR hotel(Novotel) during the week for the past year and had racked up a fair few points, and I was doing a SC run around Australia, September 2010 when I decided to use some of my A-Club points to pay for one of my hotels during the run. Redeemed the points for a few vouchers(which were in USD), and tried to pay for the hotel with the voucher. Around that time, we had hit parity and I think 1 AUD was worth just over 1 USD. When they processed the vouchers, they had to first convert it to AUD at their shockingly bad rate(which was something like 1 AUD: 0.95 or 0.93 USD), which included the hotel commission for foreign currency exchange.

I politely enquired(cracked the proverbial $hits) why I was paying the hiked up hotel commission when I was paying for it using their own "hotel currency" vouchers and they said it was just hotel policy. I can understand it when I'm trying to pay for something using foreign currency that the hotel make some money off the top for converting the currency but when I had no choice but to redeem the points for their hotel USD/euro vouchers, I didn't think they should make anything extra off that. Explained the situation to hotel management(who knew me quite well as I had stayed there for a year) and they were very understanding about my frustration with the process and said they would look into it.

Didn't think anything would come of it(as with most feedback/complaints I give to various companies), but lo and behold, about a month later, hotel management contacted me and told me they had escalated the matter to Accor head office in Europe and they would now issue vouchers in more currencies, including AUD! I was actually amazed someone had actually done something about it, and credit must go to hotel management that they actually took my issue seriously, rather than just filing it away somewhere.

Might just have been they've been having so many complaints about it, and mine may have just pushed it over the edge, but I'm glad they finally introduced something to fix it.

 

[MiLK_MaN]

I just converted 20000 A|Club points for $600 in vouchers. Staying at Mercure in Sunshine Coast, and the online booking required pre-payment, but after calling up the hotel directly they said they'd accept the vouchers and not require pre-payment.

Good to know that you can still get a special rate while using vouchers.

 

[oz_mark]

They were there, and now they have gone.

Apparently done in by exchange rate fluctuations.