Rove Miles Adds Virgin Atlantic And Virgin Red As 1:1 Transfer Partners

I’m impressed: Rove Miles has added another transfer partner. They’re adding airlines quickly – they’ve now added Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Red as 1:1 transfer partners.

Virgin can be super cheap on lightly booked flights across the Atlantic, but they can price very expensively as well. They offer reasonably-priced redemptions on some SkyTeam partners. I don’t consider this a top tier program, but it’s strategically useful.

Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 Business Class

Here are Rove’s transfer partners now:

• Star Alliance: Air India, Lufthnasa, THAI, Turkish

• oneworld: Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Qatar, Japan Airlines

• SkyTeam: Aeromexico, Air France KLM, Vietnam Airlines, Scandinavian, Virgin Atlantic (and Virgin Red)

• Non-alliance: Etihad, Hainan Airlines

• Hotel: Accor

Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse New York JFK

The recent additions of Lufthansa and JAL, the program has been getting more valuable. As this point they’re the only one with Lufthansa as a transfer partner, and Lufthansa Miles & More has much better premium class availability for its own members than partners (and opens up the possibility of Lufthansa first class redemptions more than a few days prior to flight). JAL offers better award space for their own members and deals on Air France and Emirates redemptions, too.

I’ve noted in the past how Air India lets you redeem United flights starting at just 3,500 points (7,000 for domestic first class). Nonetheless, I find quite a bit of use for Finnair and Qatar but especially Air France KLM which tends to have quite reasonable redemptions to and through Paris even if not at the lowest 60,000 point level.

To gain traction and scale Rove needs to offer more value than competitors or else they won’t attract customers. They don’t start with a built-in customer base the way an airline would, or the way Bilt built one processing rent payments for large landlords. Rove is currently the only U.S. transfer partner to SAS EuroBonus (just like they’re the only one that transfers to Lufthansa – so far).

I’m rooting for them each time they add something new, because competition benefits all of us even if you don’t make bookings through Rove – but I find I do occasionally use their shopping portal (when it offers the best deal) and they offer points for booking hotels that still earn hotel points and elite status credit, also.