Rove Adds Aeroplan Transfers — With A 25% Bonus And Live Award Search

Rove Miles has added another transfer partner. They’re the rewards program that isn’t attached to any airline or hotel, but their points are transferable and can be used directly to buy travel.

Without customer base of their own (passengers, guests) they have to be more rewarding than the competiiton to gain business for their travel bookings and their shopping portal. I often find they have the best deals, and they give you rewards for ‘loyalty-eligible’ booking hotel stays that still earn points with the hotel program. They even award points right away on prepaid bookings – book a hotel, the points can pay for your airfare on the same trip.

• Rove has added Air Canada Aeroplan as a 1:1 transfer partner and they’re offering a 25% bonus on transfers to Aeroplan through June 6.

• They also have live Aeroplan award availability searches on their website, which is convenient because Aeroplan makes you log in now to search space, and requires two-factor authentication.

• More transfer partners make even existing points balances more valuable. And Air Canada Aeroplan addresses a gap in the program – they had good options for SkyTeam (Air France) and oneworld (Japan Airlines, Qatar, Finnair) but their Star partners were useful but niche (Air India, Lufthansa). This gives them transfers to a strong program with more airlines redeemable through their points than any other carrier in the world.

Rove keeps adding transfer partners. Last month it was Virgin. The month before that it was SAS. And the month before that they added JAL. Here are Rove’s transfer partners now:

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

• 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

Air Canada is good for premium cabin partner redemptions (as long as you stay off Air Canada, United, Emirates, Etihad) and stopovers cost just 5,000 miles. Since my son isn’t yet two I’m very familiar with their generous lap infant policy of just 2,500 points on an award – much better than 10% of the paid premium cabin fare.

Rove‘s 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.

I think my other major redemption preference is using points for loyalty-eligible paid hotel stays where you can get about 1.5 cents apiece in value, and stack with loyalty program rewards and status credit, so it’s a nice way of earning hotel status.