Rove Miles is worth paying attention to. The program lets you earn points for booking travel and for online shopping. Their earn rates are often at top of market. They’ll even award points for prepaid hotel bookings right away (rather than waiting until you stay), so you can use the points for airfare on the same trip. And they offer rewards on direct book hotels as well, where you earn hotel loyalty credit in addition to Rove Miles.
Rove has a 50% transfer bonus to their new partner Japan Airlines through March 31. And I set myself a calendar reminder so I’d take advantage of it, because that’s phenomenal value.
Japan Airlines offers much better business and first class award availability to members spending their own miles than they offer to partner airlines like American and Alaska. You can also book Emirates business class awards for far fewer miles than Emirates charges its own members (and that Qantas charges).
But three weeks ago I took advantage of Bilt’s 125% transfer bonus to Japan Airlines and have all the JAL miles I know I’m going to spend in the near-term. I don’t want to accumulate large balances there, because the points expire after 3 years (and cannot reasonably be extended).
So I haven’t pulled the trigger, and now I’m considering not doing it – and not transferring to one of their other partners, either. Rove lets you spend points directly on travel or transfer to these partners:
- Star Alliance: Air India, Lufthnasa, THAI, Turkish
- oneworld: Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Qatar, Japan Airlines
- SkyTeam: Aeromexico, Air France KLM, Vietnam Airlines, Scandinavian
- Non-alliance: Etihad, Hainan Airlines
- Hotel: Accor
I love getting rewards for hotel bookings that still earn hotel points and elite status credit, and that are eligible for elite benefits. Rove is great for this. However, I simply assumed that if you booked hotels paying with Rove’s points that this wouldn’t be the case.
- That Rove is clearly paying the hotel directly for your stay
- They would be the merchant of record
- These prepaid stays wouldn’t be ‘direct booking’ by rather ‘third party booking’ and thus not loyalty-eligible.
Park Hyatt Chicago
Apparently that assumption was wrong. (Admittedly I hadn’t thought deeply about this or asked Rove about it – it was just a light first impression guess.)
Frequent Miler wrote that you can redeem Rove Miles for paid hotel stays at loyalty-eligibles, and that you earn hotel points on those stays along with elite status credit.
The Lyle, Washington DC
You’re usually redeeming points at around 1.3 to 1.5 cents apiece towards those bookings. I usually like to get more value about of my points than that, but I have plenty of Air France KLM points and Japan Airlines points right now, and I can always use points towards cash hotel stays that will also yield benefits (and points, and bonuses). And combined with frequently earning points faster for travel bookings and through their shopping portal than many other alternatives, that provides really strong value.
Hotel Zena DC
You want to be clear when booking that the hotel and rate is flagged ‘eligible’ (Rove makes this quite clear, in my opinion).
I’m somewhat disenchanted with Rove Miles. I booked a hotel for January 11, using their option to earn both Rove miles and miles with the hotel program (Hyatt). We stayed the night, and Rove Miles shows 913 miles pending. Great. The problem is that Rove says that it should take between 6-8 weeks. As of today, it’s been nearly 10 weeks. I contacted Rove and although they’ve been responsive, the miles still haven’t posted. Honestly? This delay has kept me from booking other hotels through Rove.
Why the photo of the old crow at Hotel Zena in DC?