Virgin Red – the best ways to collect and spend Virgin points

More than just airmiles

Virgin’s loyalty scheme goes across many of their brands, from flights to banking, and experiences to trains.

Find out the ways to earn points and how to get the most value out of spending them.

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What is the difference between Virgin Flying Club and Virgin Red?

Virgin Red is a reward club that was launched by the Virgin Group in 2021. It doesn’t replace the Virgin Flying Club, and you can link both accounts together as a way to accumulate points or miles even quicker.

The Virgin Flying Club allows you to collect points (formerly miles) for all your flights flown with Virgin Atlantic and its partner airlines. Virgin Red enables you to collect even more points through partners or from shopping via the Virgin Red site – a little bit like a cashback site.

And the good news is that the points you have in your Virgin Red account, never expire. And that includes points accumulated in your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account, which used to expire after 3 years of non-activity.

How to earn Virgin Points?

You’ll need to set up an account first with Virgin. It’s free to do so and can be done via their website.

Unlike Nectar or Clubcard there’s no physical or digital card – you’ll need to ensure you’re logged into your account in order to earn the points at partner retailers.

You’ll also need to connect your existing Virgin Atlantic Flying Club or Virgin Wines accounts if you want to earn points on those purchases. You’ll find a “link accounts” option in your Virgin Red settings.

How much are Virgin Points worth?

What your points are worth, depends entirely on what you want to spend them on as redemption value changes for each use.

For example, a Greggs sausage roll will cost you 200 points whilst a three night cruise for two to Belgium will cost you 85,000 points. 

With a Greggs sausage roll currently costing around £1.45 then in comparison the cruise would be worth 425 sausage rolls or just over £600! So you can see that for value, it really does depend on what you spend your points on.

However if you go for “standard” redemptions with fixed values, you’re looking at 0.5p per point. If you swap for things like flights you’d hope to get a little more than that.

Where to earn Virgin Points?

You can earn points through Virgin brands such as credit cards, hotel stays and flights, as well as purchases made through retail partners via the Virgin Red site.

Welcome bonus points

It’s worth looking for any offers running when you first join Virgin Red, which could be worth 1,000 points. For example, if you have a friend who already has an account, they can refer you and you both get 1,000 points. 

And then if you refer friends once you have an account, you’ll both get 1,000 points when they make a qualifying transaction. You can refer up to ten friends so that’s a possible 10,000 points on offer.

Virgin Atlantic flights

Every time you fly with Virgin or with one of its partner airlines, you’ll earn points with the amount being dependent on your flight, cabin, ticket type and membership tier. There’s an earning calculator to find out exactly what you’ll earn for flights. 

As an example, if you’re a red tier Flying Club member you’ll earn 1,636 points on a return economy flight to Boston, 2,127 points for the same ticket if you’re a silver tier member and 2,618 points if you’re a gold member. When you compare that to how much a flight to Boston would cost in points (20,000 plus fees), it’s more like buy twelve flights, get one free!

You’ll also earn points when you fly with one of their partner airlines such as Delta, KLM and Air France.

Virgin Atlantic holidays

Red tier Flying Club members will earn two Virgin points for every pound spent on Virgin Atlantic holidays or Virgin Atlantic flights plus hotel. Silver tier members will earn 3 points per pound and gold members get 4 points per pound.

Virgin credit cards

There are two Virgin Atlantic credit cards. 

The Virgin Atlantic Reward credit card has no annual fee and you can get 3,000 bonus points if you make a purchase on the card within the first 90 days. It then gives you 0.75 Virgin points for every £1 spent and 1.5 points for every £1 spent with Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Holidays.

To unlock benefits like companion flights and upgrades, you must spend at least £20,000 on the card per year.

The Virgin Atlantic Reward + credit card has an annual fee of £160 but will reward you with 18,000 bonus points if you make a purchase on the card within the first 90 days. It then gives 1.5 Virgin points for every £1 spent and 3 points for every £1 spent with Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Holidays.

To unlock benefits like companion flights and upgrades, you need to spend at least £10,000 on the card per year.

These welcome offers are sometimes boosted, and we’ll share when this happens in our credit card deals page.

Virgin Money

From time to time there are offers for bonus points. In the past these have included 20,000 points for switching bank, or up to 51,000 points for opening up a Stocks & Shares ISA.

Virgin Trains Ticketing

Book any UK train travel through Virgin Trains Ticketing and you can earn 3 points per £1. There’s no booking fees with this booking platform and they also offer split ticketing options to bring down the price of your rail travel.

They often have special offers where you can earn 6 points per £1, so keep an eye out on the app for when this is live. Also, look out for extra offers from your bank that might earn you cashback on top of these points. We’ve shared our tips for Virgin Trains bookings here.

Virgin Wines

Virgin Red members can earn points when they link their account to their Virgin Wine account. Points are earned on eligible products which are stated on the product at the time of purchasing, along with the number of points that you’ll earn.

The Virgin Wine Discovery Club also has incentives of bonus points when you sign up and purchase a case. The current offer is for a bonus 3,000 points, which is not a bad deal when you get 12 bottles of wine for £65.88 and you can cancel the monthly subscription at any time.

Retail partners

There are lots of online retailers to click through to from the Virgin Red website and earn points from. For example you can earn 3 points per £1 spent at Boots or 8 points per £1 spent at Mountain Warehouse. There are also travel sites such as Booking .com where you’ll earn 8 points per £1 and Hertz where you’ll earn 5 points per £1.

You have to remember to click through the Virgin Red website to these online sites to earn your points. It’s very similar to cashback sites like Quidco and TopCashback, so you have to decide whether you’d rather make Virgin points or get cashback on your purchases. 

As there is no set monetary value for Virgin points it’s hard to say what they are worth, but in most cases you’re better off using cashback sites on your purchases. 

But, if you want to save as many Virgin points as you can, then shopping through Virgin Red will definitely help add more to your collection.

Octopus Energy

If you use the link on the Virgin Red website to swap your energy provider to Octopus Energy, you’ll earn 7,400 points over three years when you switch your gas and electricity. Switch over as a single fuel customer and you will earn 3,700 points over the course of three years.

If we take a value of 0.5p per point (which is the value of many of the lower conversions for spending points), then this is worth £37 for duel fuel and £18.50 for single (more if you spend your points on something with a higher points value). But if you compare this to using a friend referral link for Octopus, that would earn you and your friend £50 each, which is a far better deal.

Tesco Clubcard

You can convert your Clubcard points (with a minimum value of £1.50) to Virgin points at twice their value, that is 1 clubcard point is worth 2 Virgin points. And even better, 

if you sign up to auto-exchange your Clubcard points to Virgin points for the first time by 18 July 2024, you’ll receive 5,000 bonus points. Find out other ways to use your Clubcard points here.

Buy Virgin points

If you need a few extra Virgin points to upgrade a seat or get access to an airport lounge, then you can buy Virgin points in increments of 1,000 up to a maximum of 100,000 points each year. Points cost £15 per 1,000 points plus a £15 transaction fee. So if you were to buy the maximum amount, the cost per point would be 0.66p.

There are occasionally bonus points offered so keep an eye out for these to get the most points for your money.

Points booster

You can boost the points already earned on a Virgin Atlantic flight. For example you could double the miles on a London to New York flight and get an extra 13,832 points for £138.32. 

This is a better deal than just buying the points, since 1 point costs 1p (if you were to just buy points as above, 1p gets you 0.67 points), but you will have to be flying on or have flown on a Virgin flight to get this deal, as you can boost points on past flights, future flights, and even reward flights.

Virgin Red Games

Quite randomly, there are a number of quick games on the Virgin Red website that you can play to be entered into free draws to win points. So if you’re on the Virgin Red website, it’s worth a quick two minutes to give these competitions a go.

Where to spend your Virgin points

In most cases you need to trade your points for vouchers via your Virgin Red account, though you can redeem them directly with some Virgin brands if your account is connected.

Here’s a breakdown of what you can spend your points on and whether we think it’s good value or not.

Virgin Atlantic flights and upgrades

Using your points for flights and upgrades is probably the most obvious way to use your Virgin points and the reason why most people are usually saving up their points.

The price in points of a return flight to the US starts at 20,000 points plus around £280 in cash to cover fees and taxes. Virgin Atlantic states that reward seats (the name they give to seats purchased with points) are available on all flights with a guaranteed minimum of twelve reward seats on the day a Virgin Atlantic flight goes on sale – eight in economy, two in premium and two in upper class.

And an easy way to find if reward seats are available when you want to fly, is to use the Virgin reward seat checker.

If you don’t have enough points to cover the price of a reward seat, then you can pay in part with points. As an example, a New York return flight that costs £589 in cash, costs 20,000 in points plus £280, so one point is worth 0.65p.

Or to pay in part with points, you can get £16.50 off with every 3,000 points. That means you’ll pay 0.55p per point. So if you can, you may be better off holding on to your points and saving them for a trip where you can pay in full.

Upgrades on the other hand, do seem like a better way to spend your points – as long as you’d be prepared to pay more for your flights. 

For 7,000 points plus just over £100 as an example, you could upgrade from economy to premium on a flight from London to the Middle East. Or for 37,500 points plus £434 you could upgrade from economy to business class on a flight to the US. That seems a much better deal than paying partly in points for flights.

If you have purchased a companion seat with your Virgin credit card, and you want to upgrade, you can with Virgin Points or money. Your companion however, can only be upgraded if you pay with money. 

Virgin Holidays

Just like the flights, you can get money off your Virgin Atlantic holidays when you pay in part with points. For every 3,000 points you spend, you’ll reduce the cost of your holiday by £16.50. Again this deal doesn’t seem good to me and there are better ways to spend your points that are worth more.

Virgin Voyages

Virgin Voyages have limited time offers of cruises for points. For example, at the time of writing you could cruise to Spain for 6 nights, for two people including food and soft drinks for 170,000 points. 

Or how about a two week transatlantic crossing from Barcelona to Miami for 280,000 points. If you actually worked that out in terms of sausage rolls, it’s only 1,400 free sausage rolls (200 points each) which equates to £2,030.

Eurostar

Not a great value way to use your points, but you can exchange 2,000 points for a £10 Eurostar voucher, working out at 0.5p per point. But seeing you can get a reward flight to Paris for 4,000 points plus £37 (one-way), you might be better off flying!

Train travel via Virgin Trains app

200 Virgin points unlocks a £1 discount on train travel across the UK, which also works out at 0.5p per point. You can use more points to get more discounts and even get your train travel paid completely with points.  Here’s what they’ll be worth:

• 200 points – £1 discount   
• 500 points – £2.50 discount   
• 1,000 points – £5 discount   
• 2,000 points – £10 discount  
• 4,000 points – £20 discount  
• 5,000 points – £25 discount  

Virgin Hotels

You can use your points to stay at some of the Virgin Hotels and Virgin Limited Edition resorts. From a hotel stay in Dallas for 25,000 points to a luxury safari stay in Kenya for 320,000 points. 

If you have enough points, you could even stay on Richard Branson’s private island, Necker Island. You’ll only need 630,000 points plus an extra $5,700 for a three night stay.

Virgin Wines

You can swap points for wine at Virgin wines and there’s a pretty good point value if you do this. Whilst you can swap your points for Virgin Wines vouchers at a value of 0.5p per point, which isn’t a good return on your points, the cases on the other hand offer good value if you like wine and champagne.

The luxury champagne box has six bottles of champagne worth £212 (if bought separately). You can get this case for 25,000 points which makes the point value on this one 0.85p per point, which is one of the highest values we’ve found.

There are smaller, and less expensive cases available such as a mixed case of six bottles of white wine for 9,000 points and with a value of £69.94 it works out at 0.77p per point. But some gift style cases such as a three bottle white wooden gift box for 6,250 points, don’t work out as well in terms of point value (0.58p per point), so you have to do your homework as there are 25 cases to choose from.

Greggs

Now I know I’ve made some comparisons to the points needed for sausage rolls, but although quite comical, it does work out as a good way to compare the value of your points. If you only have a small amount of points, then Greggs may be your answer to use them up.

For 200 points you can get a sausage roll or a sweet treat. Since these now cost £1.45, it means 1 Virgin Red point is worth 0.73p.

Or for 300 points you can get a savoury item or a hot drink. For 385 points you can treat yourself to a breakfast combo of a bacon roll and a hot drink. And for 500 points you can choose a sandwich or a salad.

Cinema tickets and offers

You can also swap points for cinema tickets as well as food and drink but the value really depends on what your local cinema charges. 

For example, you can swap 1,350 points for a Vue ticket, but my local Vue sells tickets starting at £5.99 so this works out as a really poor points value (0.44p per point). 

A Cineworld ticket is a whopping 1,900 points but since the tickets in the Cineworld near me are more expensive, the points value is worth 0.52p which fares a little better. 

And Showcase tickets which you can get for 1,800 points work out even better at 0.75p per point since the ticket price (based on my nearest venue) is £13.50!

Virgin Experience Days

There are loads of experiences you can swap your points for, with experiences ranging from 4,000 to 50,000. It’s much better value to select the exact experience rather than swapping your points for Virgin Experience Days vouchers, which are only worth 0.5p per point.

Live events

There are lots of VIP tickets available for concerts across the UK and with prices ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 for two tickets in a VIP suite. It’s not bad value really when you see the price these tickets can cost. 

So if you fancy some VIP seats for Peter Kay this summer, it will set you back 60,000 points for two tickets. Of course, you need to ask whether you’d ever really pay these prices when standard tickets are also available for less.

Gift Cards

All the point exchanges to gift cards seem to work out at 0.5p per point so it’s not a great swap, but if you want to spend smaller increments of points then you’ve got lots to choose from including Cafe Nero, Costa, Pizza Express and Miller & Carter.

Charity donations

At a really great value of 1p per point, you can donate to nine different charities, so if you’ve got points you don’t want to spend anywhere else, then use them for a good cause.

Are Virgin points worth saving?

If you like to travel, and would like to get something back from your miles, the Virgin points are definitely worth collecting. And since there’s plenty of ways to collect additional points, they can quickly add up. 

Spending points suits both big savers and individuals with fewer points. Unlike Avios, Virgin Atlantic have lots of availability to redeem your points for free flights, so it’s not hard to use up those well earned points on travel options.

There are some good offers to redeem your points, but saving them up for travel will be the most efficient way to use your points.

And don’t forget, Virgin Red points never expire, so no matter how far away that stay at Necker Island seems, you’ve got all the time in the world to save up enough points to make it there!