Qantas Devalues Points Plus Pay & Hotel Redemptions

On 5 August 2025, Qantas will increase the number of points you need to book a Classic Flight Reward by 10-20%. The airline has given plenty of notice about this. But it gave no notice when it recently devalued Points Plus Pay redemptions as well.

This isn’t the first time Qantas has reduced the value you get when redeeming points towards a Points Plus Pay booking. In fact, over the past decade, Points Plus Pay redemptions have gradually become almost 40% less valuable.

And that doesn’t even account for the fact that airfares have become more expensive over that time as well. That has increased the amount of points you’d need for a Points Plus Pay redemption even further.

The different types of Qantas flight redemptions

For the uninitiated, Qantas Frequent Flyer offers three ways to redeem points towards flights:

• Classic Rewards, which cost a fixed number of points but have limited availability
• Classic Plus rewards, which are available on many flights but the price is dynamic and directly linked to the airfare
• Points Plus Pay, which lets you use points to cover some or all of the cost of any flight bookable on the Qantas website

The value of a Classic Reward booking varies, because the price is based purely on the distance you fly and the cabin class. You could be getting anything up to 5, 6 or even 7 cents per point worth of value, when using points for a booking that would otherwise be very expensive (such as a round-the-world trip in Business Class or a flight to Lord Howe Island).

Meanwhile, Classic Plus redemptions have a fixed value of:

• 1.5 cents per Qantas Points on international premium cabin flights
• 1.25 cents per Qantas Points on domestic premium cabin flights
• 1 cent per Qantas Points on Economy flights

Qantas has changed the value of Points Plus Pay

You’ve always got less than a cent per point worth of value when using Qantas Points towards Points Plus Pay. But Qantas has drastically reduced the value of Points Plus Pay bookings over time…

• In 2015, points used towards a Points Plus Pay redemption would be worth 0.82 cents each towards the cost of an airfare
• In 2019, Points Plus Pay bookings got you a value of 0.65 cents per point
• In late 2024, the value was 0.61 cents per point

Now, in June 2025, Qantas converts points to cash at a rate of just 0.5 cents each when you use Points Plus Pay. This is less than the value you’d get when using points towards a hotel booking, and exactly the same as the “value” you get redeeming for wine or a toaster.

You can see this when viewing the Points Plus Pay quote for any flight on the Qantas website. For example, if you booked a flight costing $155.32…

…you would now need 31,064 Qantas Points to cover this. This conversion rate values each point at exactly half a cent.

Classic Plus has largely replaced Points Plus Pay

Before Qantas introduced Classic Plus in 2024, its website used to show Points Plus Pay pricing if you searched for a flight with points and there were no Classic Reward seats available.

Now, the website shows either Classic or Classic Plus pricing when viewing flight options. If there is no availability in either category, the website now just says “No seat”, rather than showing the Points Plus Pay pricing upfront. But Points Plus Pay is still an option on the payment page.

The main reason for this is that many flights that don’t have Classic Reward seats do now at least have Classic Plus availability.

By definition, Classic Plus seats provide either double, 2.5x or triple the value of a Points Plus Pay redemption. Classic Plus also comes with the increased flexibility of a reward booking. So, Qantas would rather show the Classic Plus pricing upfront than Points Plus Pay.

Hotel redemptions worth less

Separately, it appears that Qantas has also reduced the value you get for your points when using them towards hotel and holiday bookings, compared to last year.

Currently, if you used your Qantas Points towards a hotel booking you’d be getting around 0.7 cents per point worth of value. That’s compared to around 0.84 cents per point last year.

However, you’d still be getting better value now when using Qantas Points on hotels compared to before 2022, when Qantas announced it had increased the value of hotel and holiday redemptions by 30-45%. Before that announcement in February 2022, you would have got around 0.6 cents per point in value on hotel redemptions.

Either way, Classic Rewards and upgrades remain the best value ways to use Qantas Points.

Velocity Points Plus Pay redemption value

Velocity Frequent Flyer also offers Points Plus Pay redemptions on Virgin Australia flight bookings. When using Velocity Points to offset the cost of any Virgin Australia flight, you’d be getting up to 0.6 cents in value for each Velocity Point. That’s 20% more than with Qantas Frequent Flyer right now.