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Last week I covered the hidden value in the new American Express Membership Rewards relationship that Rocketmiles offers.
Rocketmiles gives you airline frequent flyer miles (or your choice of other points currencies) for the rooms you reserve. It’s a third party booking site, you aren’t going to earn hotel points for the stays or elite status credit. But that’s still great when,
- You’re staying at an independent chain or with a hotel brand whose program you don’t participate regularly in
- You’re booking for someone else especially someone without status. Since you’ll earn the points instead of them.
They have a variety of currencies you can choose to earn. It used to be that hotels might cost more on their site than on other online travel sites, but they’re owned by Priceline and it looks like they’re now pulling rates from the same sources. So you should do as well price-wise booking through Rocketmiles as you will booking with, say, Booking.com which Priceline owns. And get a bunch of miles back when you do.
In addition to booking through their site the provide a white label for some loyalty programs. The Star Alliance program Avianca LifeMiles has a hotel booking site that is really Rocketmiles. And they have a one-day triple miles offer (there’s only about 12 hours left).
I’m a fan of LifeMiles because their award pricing is reasonable, there are no fuel surcharges, and they make most of their partners bookable online (which is good because if you need to do anything that isn’t online you may have some frustrations with customer service). LifeMiles also frequently sells miles at a discount.
Here’s a two night stay at Aria in Las Vegas for $189 per night. They show you that it’s the same price at Priceline and Booking.com. And you earn 15,000 LifeMiles for the stay instead of the usual 5000. So on a $380++ stay you get perhaps $220 back in LifeMiles.
More expensive hotels, offering them bigger margins, can award up to 36,000 miles per night with this offer. So it could be a good time to book reimbursable business stays for your colleagues.
I got an email yesterday regarding this offer. I had already booked a room for 5 nights in Panama at the beginning of September and was set to receive 8000 Avianca LifeMiles. I cancelled that booking and entered a new one for 24,000 LifeMiles. Sweet!