TUI launches their own loyalty programme in the UK, Smiles Rewards Club, but what is it?
Back in May TUI announced something exciting. They were launching a rewards club and later in 2026 it would be coming to the UK.
Well, hold on to your hats.
Fast forward to last night: Sam and I are sitting on the sofa when we discover it's now live on the UK website. There's been no press release, or news coverage, no fanfare that we can find.
We would say it's a pretty big moment for TUI, so it's surprising they aren't shouting about it more!
So. Dear readers. Allow us to be the first to tell you all about TUI Smiles Rewards Club.
What is the TUI Smiles Rewards Club?
The TUI Smiles Rewards Club is TUI's first ever loyalty programme, and it's free to join.
Previously launched in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark earlier in the year, the club has now launched in the UK, not that anyone would know about it unless you stumbled upon it on their website, or ours.
The UK version has landed with the same structure and the same three tiers, but with all of the details filled in that weren't public when they announced it would be coming back in May 2026.
You will need a myTUI account to join, and you need to be 18 or over. You don't need to have booked with TUI before to sign up, though obviously you won't get anywhere without booking.
Oh, and you don't earn points. You earn "Smiles".
What Smiles actually are
Despite the name, Smiles aren't a currency. They don't pay for anything. They push you up status tiers.
If you've come across BA Club's tier points, you'll recognise the structure. BA's tier points push you towards Bronze, Silver and Gold; you can't spend them. TUI's Smiles do the same job, pushing you towards three internal status levels with different perks.
The difference is in the naming. BA calls its tier points "tier points," which is what they are. TUI calls its tier points Smiles, which you would think would be collectable and redeemable. But they aren't.
What are the TUI Smiles Rewards Club tiers?
There are three levels of membership to the Rewards Club:
Level 1: 0 - 1,999 Smiles
Exclusive deals and personalised offers across the World of TUI
A curated mix of partner perks to enrich your holiday experience, including 10% off Airalo travel E-SIMs
A monthly spin for the chance to win amazing prizes from dream holidays to TUI Experiences vouchers in our Spin the Globe game
200 welcome Smiles when you join
Level 2: 2,000 - 3,999 Smiles
Even better exclusive deals and personalised offers across the World of TUI
A curated mix of partner perks to enrich your holiday experience, including 15% off Airalo travel E-SIMs
A monthly spin for the chance to win amazing prizes from dream holidays to TUI Experiences vouchers in our Spin the Globe game
Boost your next trip with our Pack Your Bags game and unlock exclusive rewards from onboard drinks to in‑resort credit
Priority chat for added convenience
Level 3: 4,000+ Smiles
Our best exclusive deals and personalised offers across the World of TUI
A curated mix of partner perks to enrich your holiday experience, including 20% off Airalo travel E-SIMs
A monthly spin for the chance to win amazing prizes from dream holidays to TUI Experiences vouchers in our Spin the Globe game
Boost your next trip with our Pack Your Bags game and unlock rewards from onboard drinks to in‑resort credit
Priority chat for added convenience
Priority phone line for our fastest service
So, on joining the club you immediately get 200 Smiles. There was also the opportunity to play a game called “Spin The Globe” which earns me another 50 Smiles. This is a monthly game which gives you the opportunity to win “great holiday prizes”. So I now have the grand total of 250 Smiles!
One important thing to note. Only the lead booker earns Smiles on a booking, which we will dive into later.
How can I collect Smiles?
You will earn Smiles on package holidays, flights, cruises, hotel stays and experiences. The number of Smiles you collect will entirely depend on what you have booked.
So for cruises, holidays, and hotels, you will collect Smiles on a per night basis. Whereas for flights, it's worked out on the length of the flights. Experiences and Tickets are different again, and these are done per person. All Smiles should appear within the dashboard approximately 2 to 3 days after booking.
For ease, the below image shows the table of earn rates in its entirety.
As you can see the most lucrative earners are flights over 7 hours, and staying in The Mora and Royalton hotels, if you’re over 7 hours away from your destination. So let’s say you do a ten night holiday over 7 hours away with return flights, well that is Level 3 locked in immediately.
You can also earn Smiles booking through a TUI shop or a partner travel agent, but not if you book directly through a hotel partner's own website.
Only the lead booker earns Smiles
This is a rubbish rule.
Take two versions of the same TUI customer. One books a single TUI holiday a year, one trip, one booking in her name, and earns a year's worth of Smiles. The other takes four TUI trips a year as a named passenger on other people's bookings (her partner's, a friend's, a sibling's) and earns nothing. She flew four times. She paid her share every time. She earns nothing.
Both are TUI customers. Both have given TUI money. The one who flew four times is, by any reasonable measure, the more loyal one. TUI only counts the one who clicked the book button.
Smiles is a rewards club, not a loyalty programme. It doesn't reward loyalty to TUI. It rewards whoever makes the booking. Everyone else in the party, partners, kids, friends, is invisible to the programme, no matter how many TUI flights they've taken or how many years they've travelled.
Take the family scenario, since families are who TUI mostly sells to. A household of four takes one TUI holiday a year. One parent books. Three people fly and earn nothing. After five years of family holidays, the booker has five years of Smiles. The other three have nothing: not for being named on the booking, not for flying, not for being part of a household that's spent thousands with TUI.
For comparison: BA Club credits every paying passenger their own tier points, regardless of who booked. Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club does the same. Most hotel programmes split stay credit between guests on a shared booking. Given that, I don't quite understand how this wasn't baked in at launch for TUI, and I personally think it's a bit of an oversight.
The only way for two adults in a household to both earn Smiles is to book separate holidays under separate names, which is not how anyone takes a family holiday.
TUI's marketing talks about rewarding customers who choose TUI time and again. The structural reality is that most members of a family booking get nothing for choosing TUI, ever, no matter how many times they fly.
How Smiles can disappear
A few ways your Smiles balance can shrink:
12 months and they expire. Only Smiles earned in the last 12 months count towards your tier.
Cancel a booking and the Smiles come off. Until the trip is actually completed, the Smiles credited at booking can be removed.
As soon as you lose Smiles, your tier is adjusted accordingly.
Can I earn Smiles on a booking I made before joining?
Yes and no. If you join the Club within 30 days of making a booking, and that booking is linked to the same email address as your myTUI account, it becomes eligible and the Smiles get added.
If the booking was made more than 30 days before you joined, or it was made before the Club launched at all, those Smiles are gone for good. TUI is clear that this isn't retrospective beyond the 30-day window. So don't expect to be able to add in your holiday from June, sorry guys.
Is the TUI Smiles Rewards Club right for me?
Before answering that, it's worth summarising what this club is, and isn't.
What it isn't is a points-earning system in the way Avios or Clubcard are. You're not banking points to knock the price off your next holiday, which would have been a genuinely useful feature had TUI built it that way. What it is, instead, is a tier points programme. The points count, but they don't pay. And for most of your family, they don't even count.
If you fly TUI for the family holiday, or any holiday, and you're the one who books, this is worth joining. It's free to sign up, though you'll still need to spend real money to move up the levels. What you're getting is deals, curated partner perks, e-SIM discounts and the chance to win the odd extra, nothing more dramatic than that.
I'm curious to see what the actual holiday deals and offers look like over the coming months, though I doubt I'll see many of them. I'm not expecting to move out of Level 1 any time soon, if ever. Still, it's free, the partner offers might come in handy on the right trip, and a monthly prize draw entry costs nothing.
If you're the named passenger on someone else's booking, though, or one of the kids on the family trip, you'll be joining a programme that doesn't recognise you as a customer at all.
Helena
Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.
Comments