You were never supposed to be this good at collecting points, so they're changing the game to status

By now I'm sure you know the BA Premium Plus Amex is having its Avios earn rate trimmed, from 1.5 Avios per £1 down to 1.25 from 7 October, with the 3 Avios earn rate on BA and BA Holidays spend also being reduced down to 1.25 Avios per £1 spent.

Whilst the cuts to the Avios earn rate captured most of our attention as points collectors, it is the other half of the announcement that I want to bring your focus towards.

Amex isn't just taking Avios away with the change to the BA Premium Plus, it's giving you tier points instead (by default, instead of an opt in benefit), one for every £10 you spend, up to 3,000 a year, from April 2027. The end result is that you're being paid less in the currency that gets you to the Maldives, and more in the currency that helps you get to Silver.

I've got a couple of theories, and I think both are true at once.

British Airways Galleries First Lounge in Heathrow Terminal 3 - Review here

Theory one: points are hard work, and status isn't

Here's the elephant in the room about what we do here at Points Well Made. We've written guides on reward availability by route, on booking windows across the Avios airlines, how to actually find Avios availability, and built a couple of calculators because working out what a redemption is worth is annoyingly fiddly.

Our bloody mindedness to help you isn't the flex you think it is. In fact, it's a symptom. A currency (because that's all points are) needing this much explanation is one that most people never get full value from, and that's by design.

IAG issued 200 billion Avios in 2025, up 13.1%, and in the first half of this year issuance grew faster than redemption. People mean to use them, then the dates don't work, the seats aren't there, the taxes look steep, and the balance sits another year. Some never gets spent at all, and yes, the points that are never redeemed are the most profitable. But it also creates a negative public sentiment around the programme. Last week I created a Reel challenging the notion that Avios are useless because you have to fly BA, which you will of course know is not true, but if you're in charge of these programmes, a section of your potential market already has a misconception of your product.

Whereas status, once earnt, asks nothing of you. There's no availability calendar for Silver. You don't need a strategy, or a spreadsheet, or us (RIP). You turn up, your lanes are shorter, your bag should come off first, the lounge is waiting for you every time. To a lot of people, that tangibility of the potential reward helps their decision making in either keeping the card they currently hold, or to take another one out entirely.

Does getting access to airline lounges regularly matter more to you? - Qatar Airways lounge at Heathrow T4

Theory two: we were never meant to get this good at this

You and I were never the original target. Points began as a thank you to the real frequent flyers who spend lots of money with an airline. Then cards started handing them out hand over fist, and the proletariat then got very good indeed at collecting them, ruining this hobby for the people it was built for.

Sorry, not sorry!

The by-product of mass adoption by the masses is that collecting points is no longer a clean indicator of a valuable traveller. Yes, you and I are still likely to engage more with an airline or hotel if we're in their programme, but the revenue from those with status keeps climbing.

The airlines aren't changing your cards out of kindness. They're following the customers who still spend the big bucks. Hence status related perks on cards.

This is where the money turns out to be

Loyalty Status Co sells status matching for a living (we've covered status match offers extensively), so you'd expect them to talk it up, but their chief executive Mark Ross-Smith has put it simply. Status, he says, "might be the greatest untapped ancillary revenue opportunity that currently exists in travel today." His CFO, Stuart Melim, provides the numbers: elite members are 3% to 7% of an airline's customer base and generate 20% to 30% of its revenue. I'm sure you can follow the money there.

They're obviously biased I hear you say, so take IAG's own 2025 results instead. BA Holidays revenue from people who hold status within the British Airways Club is "growing more than 15 times faster" than revenue from members who don't hold status.

And it's working. On IAG's half-year call in July, BA Holidays said average booking values keep climbing, and put part of that down to Club members chasing the tier points that now come with a holiday booking.

The Americans reached this conclusion first. The United debit card that launched here in March earns Premier Qualifying Points alongside miles, capped at 2,500 a year (as you can earn up to 2,000 on spend, and another 500 on renewal), while the American versions of the same card give up to 28,000, enough to climb most of United's ladder without leaving the sofa. That gap isn't United looking down on us, instead the lower interchange fees (the fee per transaction) in the UK, which we've covered before, but the direction of travel is identical either side of the Atlantic.

So what do you do with this?

I started at the top by talking about the changes to the BA Premium Plus card, and this article is not designed to scare you, nor enrage you, but to simply guide you as to where the industry is currently heading. Even with the changes, I have just taken out the Premium Plus thanks to the 60,000 Avios welcome bonus offer, after spending my two years in Amex purgatory.

It's now been over four years since Barclaycard introduced their Avios cards, and they're due a refresh. Do they spot a gap in the market and keep the Avios earn rate higher than the BA Amex at 1.5 Avios per £1 spent, or follow everyone else by allowing you to collect some sort of status?

Going forward, I expect that when all new cards are brought to market, that status earning element will be high up the priority list for airlines, hotels and card issuers.

I think we'll know sooner rather than later on that point.

Sam

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.