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…)