Rove Miles is a currency you can earn booking hotels and shopping online. You can earn airline miles or bank points that way too, of course. And Rove is independent. The only way they win your business, since there’s no reason for you to be brand loyal, is to offer you more value than anyone else.
I’m not sure that’s a sustainable business model, but it’s a lucrative one for the consumer. Here’s a hotel they’re offering that will earn 51 points per dollar. That is literally insane and I don’t see how the economics of this can work out for them.
At 51 points per dollar, then transferred to an airline, this probably costs them 3/4ths of the room rate rebated to you. Now, the way that many of these programs work is that they get a discount on the hotels (or they take a commission) and then pass on some of the savings to you in points. They often can’t undercut the hotel’s public pricing, but they can rebate rewards.
Still, even with distressed inventory, they cannot possibly be getting this hotel at 75% off to cover the points you’re getting (and that wouldn’t cover any of their overhead – website, programming, staff etc.). This is just too insane to fathom.
I’ll be honest. I’ve accumulated some Rove points. I transferred them out to Air France KLM Flying Blue with the 20% bonus they offered. You can redeem Rove points towards paid travel of your choice, or transfer them to:
- Star Alliance: Air India Maharaja Club, Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
- oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Finnair Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- SkyTeam: Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles, Aeromexico Rewards
- Non-alliance: Etihad Guest, Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club
- Hotel: Accor Live Limitless
When you book through Rove, a deal like this is similar to booking through another online travel agency site – you give up the hotel loyalty program points and elite status credit. Rove also has rates where you’ll still earn that credit, but the rewards are lower. Either way, it’s pretty attractive. I need to be checking Rove every single time I book a hotel because the rewards can be this compelling.
On the other hand I will probably keep transferring points out rather than letting a balance accumulate there. That’s the opposite of my usual advice, since I prefer the flexibility of keeping a transferrable currency transferrable instead of locking points into one program. But they haven’t explained how the economics can possibly work here. So I’d rather trust my eventual balance in a Flying Blue account (which is, effectively, too big to fail – a put from the French state) than inside a Rove account.
As if we needed yet another metaphor for the macro-bubble that is the market right now…
Thanks for exposing us to Rove. Have not made any bookings through them yet but would do the same thing and transfer points out asap if I do. Too new and unreliable long term. Still don’t really understand their model. But if folks want to hand out outsized value, great!
@ Gary — 51 ppd is probably the only way to entice people to stay at this awful hotel. Moxy? Yuck. Times Square? Double yuck.
@Gene — The Moxy at SYD isn’t bad; it’s where Qantas will put you up during a mechanical overnight… (guess how I know…)
WARNING when booking – false advertising
I booked two rooms at a hotel at exactly the same rate, with the same conditions, with Breakfast Included, in two separate bookings. This was at a chain hotel.
However, when checking in, one room was denied breakfast. I paid exactly the same amount (to the cent!) for both rooms (and each time under the “Breakfast included” offer and booked. Both bookings were for the same room type (as displayed on their website – the cheapest room).
Now they claim that one booking was a different room type with no breakfast included, despite the other room having breakfast included and it being the same room and same cost (hotel has give me the same room type at checkin).
Support has been unhelpful and basically told me bad luck, and we don’t care. They said they paid a different rate per room to their provider (a higher rate for the room with breakfast), but then charged me the same amount per room including the one supposedly without breakfast with no explanation of why. So seems it seems that either their booking system is broken and doesn’t display inventory correctly or they are falsely advertising breakfast being included, making users pay and then keeping the difference.. (side note, i did get errors booking a few times but retried and it worked)
TLDR;
Be aware when booking “breakfast included” rates through Rove. You might not get breakfast.
Been playing around with this and found other 51x miles examples. Obviously the prices are inflated in the 51x category. But one example: a ~$1000 hotel stay in NYC Midtown on Dec 6 when booked direct through Marriott was ~$1600 through Rove, but 51x miles so you’d get 82k Rove miles. Right now there’s a 20% transfer to Finnair so that gets you roughly 100k avios for an extra $600. Rounded the numbers here but wow. If you are basing it off the $1600 it’s kind of the type of pricing you might find it you were just buying miles outright from an airline. But if you were going to spend the $1k on the hotel anyway, $600 for 100k miles could be a pretty good deal depending on what you value the miles at (if you valued at 1.2cpp, that’s $1200 of value for $600).
I did see other rates for 34x miles at this hotel that approximated the $1000 Marriott rate as well, but when I clicked on it it said not available. Hard to say – wonder if the whole thing is just buggy and has some “error fares”. But worth monitoring/checking.
I’m surprised that your article missed what makes Rove Miles so groundbreaking – the fact that they now offer elite-eligible hotel rates with the major hotel chains, so there’s basically no reason to book away from them, since their earning rates crush what Rakuten, TopCashBack, and the Cartera/airline malls are offering. They’re also offering double miles on booking through the end of this month, and there are referral bonuses offering 1500 miles just for signing up and another 5000 miles after one’s first booking for $500 or more (just Google to find these bonuses). For the time being, all Rove purchases (airfare, hotel, etc.) code as “hotels” and I did earn 4 miles per dollar with the CSR as well. So I’m basically triple-dipping on bonuses through Rove right now. I understand that they’re still making further improvements such as eventually allowing direct hotel booking (rather than through Rove) and bringing on a new airline partner soon. And finally, no, I don’t work for these guys – I just recognize value when it hits me in the face like this.
@1990 – You’ve got Moxy, kid.
@Christian — Bah! Those Moxy hotels have a lot of neon and funny sayings. Like, the elevator had ‘get on my level.’ At least they were trying…
@Daniel M – the prior article from October 14 published on this site about Rove was focused on what you mention. I also think it’s great that you can toggle by “loyalty eligible” bookings. Also good to know about the codes – would have preferred 1500 miles to sign up versus the 500 they gave me, i’ll definitely look for the 5000 one for when I make my first booking.
The 10x miles do not crush Rakuten at all, they just crush what you would get if you booked direct with the hotel and used Rakuten. Rakuten often has other portals like Agoda etc. at 10x and Rove is dropping to 5x after 10/31. I did a whole analysis of one example booking in the comments on the October 14 article where even with Rove at 10x, AA hotels came out as the clear winner versus Rove, Agoda and booking direct with Marriott, but YMMV of course.
Nice to know that it is coding as ‘hotels’ – was certainly a question I had about it.
Here in the loyal comments section we are focused on outsized value. I think you are right that Rove Miles + CSR 4x + Hotel Status + Points is outsized value! But what this article is highlighting is ridiculous 51x miles outsized value (which only seem to be appearing on the non-loyalty eligible rates). I’ve gotten good deals through AA hotels before, but they cap out at 15,000 extra miles per stay (which is great especially because that’s potentially 15k LPs + 20-30% bonus). But this is a whole other level!!!
@gene – I’ve had no issues with Moxy and I’m not their target consumer. Over the hill white business traveler. But if the cost is right, no problems staying there. On the flip side, i had a great time with a 2/5 at the Banff Moxy that did have the right vibe for the town. Laid back and somehow both 20 year old single and family friendly. Loud DJ covered the noise of kids and dual pools where people just kind of made one pool for kids and one for drinkers.
Gary, they are selling points. You can book that same hotel directly for at least $235 cheaper.
Just do the math.