American Express has just announced a meaningful expansion of one of the most valued perks in UK points and miles. From today, 20 May 2026, BA American Express cardholders who book a British Airways Holidays package using Avios - either as full or part payment - can now redeem their Companion Voucher to receive 25% of those Avios back.
Until now, the Companion Voucher could only be used in one of two ways: take a companion on the same Reward Flight in the same cabin (the famous 2-4-1), or claim a 50% Avios discount on a solo Reward Flight booking. Both routes require BA, Iberia or Aer Lingus reward seat availability - and as anyone who has tried to use a Voucher around school holidays knows, that availability is the bottleneck more often than not. This new option neatly sidesteps that problem.
What is actually new
25% of the Avios used on a BA Holidays booking are credited back to your BA Club account
British Airways American Express Premium Plus cardholders can reclaim up to 200,000 Avios per booking
Standard British Airways American Express Credit Card holders can reclaim up to 50,000 Avios per booking
The offer applies to BA Holidays bookings made before 31 March 2027
You can book any cabin on any flight that forms part of the package, with no need for Reward Flight availability
Bookings are valid for up to nine travellers (versus two on a traditional Voucher use)
You do not need to fly your outbound before the Voucher expires - as long as the Voucher is valid at time of booking, you can travel any time after
Only one Companion Voucher can be redeemed per booking
How you redeem it
Within 72 hours of making a qualifying BA Holidays booking via ba.com/holidays, with Avios selected as full or part payment, you submit a short online form to redeem your Voucher. 25% of the Avios you redeemed are then credited back to your BA Club account.
American Express's worked example is putting 40,000 Avios towards a Tenerife holiday, with 10,000 Avios returned. The caps only really bite at the top end. To actually hit the 200,000 Avios refund cap as a Premium Plus holder, you would need to redeem 800,000 Avios on a single booking. For the standard Credit Card's 50,000 cap, you would need to redeem 200,000 Avios. Most people will be well below those thresholds.
One detail worth flagging: tier points are still earned on the total cash price of the holiday package, calculated before any Avios or the Companion Voucher are applied. With BA Club now running on a spend-based status model, that quietly makes BA Holidays a more interesting tier point earner than you might assume - you keep the full tier point credit even if the cash you actually paid is much lower.
Is it actually good value?
Time for the maths, because the marketing language deserves a sense check. Avios redeemed on BA Holidays are generally worth around 0.5p to 0.6p each, depending on the size of your redemption and the package. A 25% Avios refund effectively boosts that rate by a third - so call it roughly 0.7p per Avios on a typical large package booking, versus the 1p+ I aim for on premium cabin Reward Flight redemptions.
Put differently: a 200,000 Avios BA Holidays redemption gets you around £1,060 off the cash price of the holiday, and now also returns 50,000 Avios to your account. That second part is genuinely useful - the equivalent of a short-haul off-peak Club Europe return, more or less - but the underlying per-Avios rate is still below what those Avios could do on a long-haul Club World Reward Flight with the traditional 2-4-1.
So this is best understood as a third use of the Voucher rather than a replacement for the existing two. It does not change which redemption is the highest-value play. It changes what is possible when the highest-value play is not available to you.
My take
As a Gold member sitting on a couple of Companion Vouchers and watching peak-summer reward availability evaporate the moment it loads, I see real value here - even with the modest per-Avios rate. The two most painful constraints on the Voucher have always been finding reward seats and the outbound-before-expiry rule. This new option lifts both of them.
For families especially, the up-to-nine-travellers element is quietly significant. The traditional 2-4-1 only ever covered two passengers, which is why I always hear from readers having to nominate one parent and one child per Voucher and then juggle two cardholders to cover a family of four. Being able to apply a single Voucher to a booking that covers the whole group is a genuine practical win, even if the per-Avios value is lower.
That said, I would not start redeeming Avios on BA Holidays just because this option now exists. If you can find premium cabin reward seats on the dates you actually want, the traditional 2-4-1 on a long-haul Club World redemption is still where the maths gets exciting. Treat the BA Holidays use as a useful backup: pull it out when reward availability is non-existent, when you need more than two seats, or when the convenience of having flights, hotel and car wrapped into one package is worth accepting a lower headline return.
Worth it for you?
If you already hold a BA American Express card and you have a Voucher in the cupboard, this just made it considerably more flexible. If you are weighing up whether to push for the £15,000 spend threshold to earn one in the first place, the broader range of uses tightens the case - particularly if you have struggled to actually use Vouchers in the past.
Worth bookmarking too: our beginner's guide to the BA Amex Companion Voucher covers the full rules around the existing Voucher uses, and our Avios flight cost calculator is handy for benchmarking the Reward Flight alternative before you commit to a BA Holidays booking. For a wider refresh on which Avios-earning credit cards are worth holding right now, see our best UK Avios credit cards guide.
Are you planning to use a Companion Voucher on a BA Holidays booking? I am keen to hear which redemptions you are running the maths on - particularly anyone planning a larger family trip where the nine-traveller allowance opens things up. Drop me a reply.