Collecting Avios can become quite addictive once you get to grips with it. But growing your nest of points can take time.

Unless you are a serious big spender, collecting points on your credit card purchases alone is not enough to reach your travel goals in a timely fashion.

The rest of us mere mortals need to act smarter and thankfully there are several ways of boosting your total alongside your usual spending.

Here are five ways to boost your Avios balance quickly so you can get those flights booked sooner.

Add an authorised user to your American Express card

This is one of the simplest hacks going but one that is often overlooked by new American Express cardholders. When applying for an AMEX credit card you will be given the option to request a card for an authorised user. DO NOT DO THIS.

If you request a card for an authorised user at the point of application there is no immediate additional benefit to the account holder. But that is not the case once you have a live American Express credit card account.

Instead, wait for your account to be opened and then call up and request a card for an authorised user (or request one using the app). This will now see you receive a points reward just for requesting an additional card.

Bonus rewards can vary, but typically you will receive 3,000 Membership Rewards Points (MRP) for adding an additional card holder to an American Express Preferred Rewards (Gold) card and 5,000 points to a Platinum card.

If you have one of the British Airways American Express credit cards, the bonus still applies but you will receive it in Avios instead. The British Airways Platinum Plus card will give you a 3,000 Avios bonus.

However, at the time of writing, the free British Airways AMEX card is offering a significant offer of 9,000 Avios just for adding an additional card holder! This promotional offer is running until August 25, 2025.

Adding an additional card holder is one of the easiest ways of boosting your points tally quickly. Even if your authorised card holder never uses the card you will still receive the bonus. Printing points!

Link a Nectar account to your Avios account

If you already collect Nectar points on shopping at places like Sainsbury’s and Argos did you know that you can automatically convert these point into Avios?

By linking the two accounts together you can set them up so when you hit 400 Nectar points they are transferred into your Avios account without you lifting a finger.

Every 400 Nectar points converts into 250 Avios. I do my weekly shop at Sainsbury’s to take advantage of this. If you’re doing a family shop each week it doesn’t take long to rack up the 400 points required to trigger a conversion. At least once per month.

Use the British Airways Avios shopping portal

This is one of the most effective ways to grow your balance quickly and will likely revolutionise how you think about online shopping.

British Airways has an online shopping portal that is housed within the Avios website. Hundreds of well-known brands have a presence on the portal with special offers to multiply your points collecting on purchases.

Some of these offers can be extremely lucrative. One of the best purchases that can be done on the portal is for booking hotels. A number of established hotel booking websites are part of the portal including Booking.com and Hotels.com.

Booking.com will typically offer between 6-8 Avios per £1 spent on their website via the portal.

At the time of writing they are currently offering 6 Avios per £1, so a hotel booking that costs, for example, £1,000 will net you a whopping 6,000 Avios just for using the portal. That’s on top of any extra points that you might earn for using your AMEX credit card to pay for the booking.

JD Sports is another good option. The sports retailer is currently offering 9 Avios per £1 spent. A recent purchase of three items for my son’s birthday totalling £144 will earn me 1,296 Avios.

The time it takes for points to be awarded to your account varies between retailers and some like Booking.com can take a few months, but it is clear that using the shopping portal effectively is a real smart way to grow your Avios balance rapidly without exceeding your acceptable spending limits.

I’ll be dedicating a future blog post to the shopping portal to explain the pros and cons in greater detail. Use it for things like renewing insurance policies and watch that Avios balance soar!

Refer someone for an American Express credit card

Encouraging other people to take out credit might sound like a big ask, but not if they are looking to start their own points-saving adventure.

If you’ve already got an American Express card and started to see the benefits of saving points for flights, then there is a good chance you have told friends and family what you have been up to.

American Express allows you to share referral links for other people to sign up for its range of credit cards. If they go ahead and are approved for a card, the benefits are two-fold.

For starters, the new card-holder will receive extra bonus points on top of their sign-up reward bonus (providing they are eligible and hit the spending requirements).

But more importantly, you will receive a substantial bonus shortly after their new account is opened, regardless of whether they hit their own bonus target or not.

By way of example, I am currently using the American Express Business Gold card. If someone signs up for the card using my referral link I will receive 9,000 Membership Reward Points as a result.

If you can get a few people you know to all sign up it is not hard to see how quickly these points can stack up. Referring your own family members (aged 18 or over) is fair game as well. So if your spouse takes out a card using your referral link you will get the points.

American Express allows you to receive up to 90,000 Membership Rewards Points (that can be converted into Avios) per year. Similar offers are available on the two British Airways American Express cards but offered in Avios. Referring someone for the free BA card will currently net you 4,000 Avios.

• If you need a referral link for an American Express credit card, message me and I will sort you out with a link.

Boost your Avios balance

The Avios website gives you the option to ‘buy’ Avios to top up your balance. This is only something I would only ever suggest if you are close to reaching your desired target but need to book your flights quickly.

An example of this is if flights are about to go on sale for next year to your favourite destination and you don’t want to risk missing out on seats.

However, a more cost-effective way of increasing your stash is to use the Boost your Avios option.

This tool allows you to boost the amount of Avios you have earned in the last 30 days by up to 300% by paying a cash amount. In certain scenarios, this can be a smart move.

The earn rate per £1 on a boost is much higher than simply buying Avios. If you have collected a large number of Avios in the past month – whether that be through high spend, receiving a welcome bonus, or earning additional Avios through the online store – you now have a chance to double or even triple that total.

For example: In the last 30 days I have accrued 6,261 Avios. Using a multiplier tool, I can pay to earn that amount again, double it or triple it. The more you boost, the cheaper the rate of Avios per pound becomes.

Receiving another 6,261 Avios would cost me £60.11, but if I paid £172.80 I could increase that by three times to 18,783 Avios. If you’re after points in a hurry to book flights, this is a cost-effective way of getting there quicker.

The benefit of this can be felt more evidently when saving for a Business Class flight, when the saving of booking an Avios seat over a cash price seat is huge.

• Smart Avios hack reduced my holiday cost by £500
• American Express launch tempting new welcome bonus offers
• Five ways to boost your Avios balance quickly
• How to redeem a British Airways Companion Voucher
• Why now is a good time to get an American Express Gold Card