If there were ever a time to use Qatar Airways Privilege Club Qmiles, it’s when Qatar Airways releases a round of Easy Deals. Similar to the deals you’ll find with Singapore KrisFlyer Spontaneous Escapes or the Flying Blue Promo Awards, Qatar’s Easy Deals are a great chance to get the most bang for your buck. In fact, you can find award tickets for half off the miles required.
Honestly, considering that Qatar Airways crushed its award chart with huge devaluation in May 2018, the Easy Deals might be the only thing saving Privilege Club. Frustrating but that’s the current state of play, so we might as well find the sweet spots where we can.
How To Earn Qatar Privilege Club Qmiles
Qatar Privilege Club Qmiles are pretty easy to earn these days. You can transfer both Capital One miles and Citi ThankYou Points at a 2:1.5 and 1:1 ratio, respectively. Additionally, you can transfer Marriott Bonvoy points at a 3:1 ratio. Here are a few of our favorite cards that can help you earn more Qmiles.
American Express and Chase both offer co-branded Marriott cards which can be useful if you stay at Marriott properties. If you have Marriott Bonvoy points, remember that when you transfer 60,000 points, you’ll receive a 5,000-mile bonus.
Check out some of our favorite ways to redeem Capital One miles and Citi ThankYou Points.
Qatar Airways Easy Deals
Qatar Airways’ Easy Deals are divided into 3 categories:
- 30% discount
- 40% discount
- 50% discount
As with Singapore KrisFlyer and Flying Blue, these deals are only bookable for a limited time and travel dates are restricted. For example, you can book these deals between August 8 and August 31, 2019 and you must travel between September 1, 2019 and October 21, 2019. Keep in mind that your travel must be completed within this window of time and connections will require more miles.
Now, let’s check out some of the best Easy Deals available right now!
You can find the complete details and a list of eligible routes on Qatar’s dedicated Easy Deals page.
Great Deals Going On Right Now
The deals mostly stem from Doha — you might find a fifth-freedom option too — and there are lots of options to Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and even the U.S. As mentioned above, the options cycle in and out so keep an eye out for one you can use. Here are a few of our favorites that can be booked right now. Before running your search for award space, you can check the Qmiles calculator to see the usual award rate and calculate the discounted rate.
Business Class Doha To Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City
If you want to tack on a trip to Asia with a trip to the Middle East (or vice versa), you can fly to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Whichever you choose, you’ll get a 50% discount to bring down the miles required from 67,500 Qmiles to 33,750 Qmiles. Now, that’s great deal if you ask me!
Flying to/from Hanoi, Qatar Airways currently has two different aircraft on this route – an A330 and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. If you can swing it, book the Dreamliner. If you’re flying to/from Ho Chi Minh City, you’ll have your choice between a Dreamliner and an A350. You really can’t go wrong with those options!
Doha To Brussels And Many Other European Cities
This is definitely one of our favorite deals of the bunch. Qatar Airways has several European routes of note listed at 40% off business class:
- Birmingham
- Cardiff
- Gothenburg
- Manchester
- Munich
- Nice
- Prague
- Zurich
Typically, you can book a one-way business class flight to/from Doha on these routes for 58,000 Qmiles. However, with 40% off, that means you only need 34,800 Qmiles. Not too bad for flights listed at up to 7.5 hours.
If you fly to/from Helsinki, you can get an even better 50% discount on this rate which brings it down to 29,000 Qmiles for a one-way business class flight. Regardless of which route you book, give a quick look to the aircraft type as some of these routes have narrow body jets. If you can find a flight with Qsuites, consider yourself the winner.
Just in case you forgot, we’re big fans of Qatar’s Qsuites product.
Economy Doha To Washington, DC
If you’re up for an economy flight to/from Washington, DC, you can get 50% off the standard 50,750 Qmiles. That means you only need 25,375 miles for the flight. Yes, that’s a long flight for economy but, if you’re looking to use as few miles as possible, it’s not a bad way to go. For a quick comparison, American AAdvantage requires 40,000 miles to book the same flight.
How To Search And Book Award Space
This is the tough part.
If you don’t have Qmiles in your account, you can run a search but you won’t get any search results. This leaves you with a couple of options. First, you can search with American Airlines or British Airways. I lean toward American as it has a calendar search option so you can easily see which dates have award space. Alternatively, you can call Qatar Airways (800-988-6128) and ask a phone rep to search for award space.
We’d suggest starting a search with American then calling if you don’t see award space on the date you really want. Since Privilege Club members might have access to more award space, this could be the key. If you really don’t want to talk on the phone, you could transfer some points to your Privilege Club account and then run the search. There’s no guarantee award space will be there, so have a backup plan.
When you have Qmiles in your account, you’ll need to make sure you include the promo code “EDEALS08” when you run the search to see the discounted award rates. Keep in mind that this promo code change with the release of new Easy Deals. You wouldn’t want to use more miles just because you forget this step!
One more small, but important, note. Qatar Privilege Club imposes a $25 booking fee for economy awards, $50 for business class and $75 for first class.
Final Thoughts
Qatar Privilege Club might not be a world-class program but these Easy Deals really do provide some great value. While American miles are often a great way to book award flights on Qatar Airways, it doesn’t partner with any transferable points programs while Qatar partners with Citi and Capital One. That’s a huge advantage for Qatar. Additionally, Privilege Club members sometimes get access to more award space which can be key when you don’t have flexible travel dates.
Hopefully, they’ll rotate through more destinations in future promos so that you can find an option that works for your travel. Until the next promo, we hope you enjoy this one!
* Discount is only applicable between Doha and the above listed destinations…
(From the easy deals page).
So discount is only *to* Bucharest.
You might want to correct the *from* bit 🙂
S&S
Can i run the search on Qatar site with just 1000 miles in my account or do i need to have enough miles to make the actual booking for the search to work ?
My understanding is that you need enough miles to book to search, but it’s worth trying. Alternatively, you could call Qatar Airways and have a phone agent search for you.