Sometime over the past day, the Rocketmiles hotel booking website has seen it’s AAdvantage mileage-earning chopped by several orders of magnitude. Hotels that might earn 10,000 or more miles (and status-qualifying Loyalty Points) per night are now earning 200 or 300 miles. This is a strange development, but it does not appear to be a mistake.
The other AAdvantage hotel booking site AAHotels.com now forwards to AAdvantage Hotels and is a white label of… Rocketmiles. And mileage-earning looks substantially different there. According to an American Airlines spokesperson,
Beginning today, American Airlines AAdvantage members have access to AAdvantage Hotels, a new online booking platform that offers the quickest and most convenient way to earn and redeem miles on hotel bookings, all in one place.
The AAdvantage Hotels platform is powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda – the same company behind Rocketmiles.com– and is the most rewarding booking platform where AAdvantage members earn miles & Loyalty Points for every property on the site.
Here, the Moxy hotel in Times Square shows up as ‘500 miles per stay’ for the one night I searched, or 6,100 miles for AAdvantage credit card holders with status.
This is the site where they’re promoting that the Citi Executive Card will earn 10 miles per dollar spent starting July 23.
- This is on top of the quoted mileage-earn on the site.
- That makes these bookings even more interesting, if you’re going to make one anyway!
- But bear in mind that only 1 of the 10 Citi Executive card’s AAdvantage miles earned gives you a Loyalty Point, the other 9 miles are ‘bonus’ miles.
When I’m logged in, it knows that I have AAdvantage status and one of their credit cards, and so shows me the 6,100 miles (without the flat 500 mile earning):
It’s still not as rich as the earning I’d been seeing for this property. Always shop around, because different Rocketmiles programs may earn different rewards. There’s a 3,000 mile first-time booking bonus right now with MileagePlus. It expires at the end of 2069?
That same Moxy Hotel earns 5,000 points per night, so not as good as what an AAdvantage elite with credit card earns. But with the 3,000 mile first-time booking bonus it tops off to 8,000 miles for the night.
Booking through a white label Rocketmiles site you aren’t going to earn hotel loyalty points or elite status credit, and elite benefits aren’t supposed to apply. However the mileage rewards can be rich. Hotels offer wholesale rates to distributors, and public-facing sites can’t undercut chain website pricing. So instead Rocketmiles and similar sites rebate some of that difference to you in the form of miles.
With the American Airlines booking site you don’t just earn miles, but status credit as well and you can earn a lot of credit quickly this way! However if you prefer to just pay a lower rate, HotelSlash.com from the people that bring you AutoSlash is a good place to look.
This is a deciminating devaluation. Rocketmiles is now useless, and the earnings through the aadvantage hotels site are greatly reduced.
Oh – and Gary – you can’t compare the “value” of a AAdvantage rate which includes elite status qualification to the “value” of a MileagePlus rate which doesn’t include progress towards status. Different things. Come on.
@Bob – my point is you need to compare the different options based on your situation and see where your earnings are most lucrative.
@Gary: Key point. The high point sites have higher rates than the straight dollar sites. That premium is the other source of their large point rebates.
Slippery pricing.
@L3 – I was checking for some upcoming dates I have in Las Vegas, and found the rates to be the same or $1-2 more, which is just a matter of rounding I think. Definitely going to bookmark this site because it’s annoyingly hard to earn AA miles compared to United and Southwest.
Looks like the buy-up no longer issues LPs… getting a message that they’re only good for redemption
Some miles are better than no miles but I now have to reevaluate the cost-benefit of booking with AAdvantage Hotels. And the slightly higher miles earned with the MileagePlus program is of zero value to those of use committed to AA (the hole point of trying to earn Advantage miles).
@Jon – what buy up are you referring to? [Buying miles at checkout for a ticket at aa.com now explicitly does not earn loyalty points..]
We’ll, that takes RM off the table for me. Only used it a few times, but I’m after the LP’s way more than the actual miles. RM was a good way to rack up 5k to 10k in LP’s for a nights stay in a major city. Sucks it’s changing
These days, I basically consider earning miles to be pointless. At best I can be motivated by earning Loyalty Points. Offers that do not pay equal LPs to miles are worthless.
@Gary Leff – previously on Rocketmiles when you purchased extra miles with the room, they counted as both redeemable miles and LP. Just did it last week and got 3,000 extra miles and LP for $60. Now there’s a notice on the new AA Hotels site saying the buy-up does not qualify for LP anymore.
It appears to me that you can still earn decent amount of Alaska miles with Rocketmiles. Even with potential devaluation, AS miles are still worth more than AA miles in my book. So why not switch to earning Alaska miles on Rocketmiles?
They just killed the AA portion of Rocketmiles.
I booked a hotel yesterday on Rocketmiles and it offered more miles than the same hotel on aa.com/hotels. 2000 loyalty points for a 118/night room seemed like a good score.
aa.com/hotels frequently doesn’t offer any miles for booking hotels. There must be an alogrithm driving it based on traffic. I had wanted to ask on this site if other folks had seen the aa.com/hotels not offer miles also for some time.
Any word on if they will honor the LPs and bonus LPs on existing bookings?
This is a huge devaluation of what used to be a decent program. Yesterday, I made a number of bookings through the “Hotels” link on the website…it defaulted to AA hotels powered by booking.com. You could receive more miles than you can today (even as an EP with a card) and could buy more miles if you wished. All counted as LPs. Now, it appears that Rocket Miles is the only option and mileage earning is no longer as lucrative. A major step backwards, IMO
@Gary – I never used Rocketmiles for my own bookings, as I value the elite credits, but I would often book contractors’ rooms there as I could earn miles/LPs on my AA account for booking their rooms. Do you know if this is possible on the new AA Hotels website?
I kid you not, yesterday I booked 3 vacation trips. 2 Mexico. 1 vegas. The base miles (which count as loyalty) were through the roof exceptional. for $6336 I will get 138,000 LP.
When I went back today to look for more deals, I noticed it was all gone. My bookings are ok, but I feel lucky I booked when I did. And feel annoyed that it’s all gone now. What a bummer. One more trip and I would hit EP just by vacationing.
The last Mexico trip was still in the checkout cart today. And the payment went through just now. and they are honoring the LP. Phewwww.
I am bummed though as I thought this could be a great way to relax AND rack up LP.
@Gary just to be clear…where it says “earn 6,100 AAdvantage miles per stay”, do these also count as loyalty points?
@Melinda – You are 100% right. That offer was from booking.com, the former default website. As NB d all those miles DID earn LP as they were all base miles. It’s why I never used Rocket. Sadly, that site no longer appears accessible through the website and it’s unclear whether you can still get AA miles t hg rough them.
@LarryNYC yes
There was bound to be a correction in earning miles and loyalty points from hotels
I stayed a 4 night beach trip and earned more miles on a 1400 stay with 30% multiplier than a business class ticket costing over 5,300
I am Platinum with AA, back in May I stayed three nights in Zurich booking via Rocketmiles and got 14,000 miles/Loyalty points and was so pleased. Sorry to hear this update, just checked exact same hotel on AA Hotels for same number of nights and would get 12,900 because of my status. Apparently the amount of LP /miles you earn on AA Hotels changes depending on your status on AA Hotels whereas I don’t think it did before with Rocketmiles? Same hotel on Rocketmiles now would only earn 400 miles so AA Hotels is the way to go. Still, big bummer ref: RM.
As an AAdvantage credit card member with AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, I am killing it on the AAdvantage Hotel site. I’ll have my Exec Platinum status secure for next year by September.
Total revamp of the system….with The AA hotels being supported by Rocket Miles and Agoda now, even the big mileage payouts are severely reduced, and any buy up no longer counts as loyalty points, so there is zero reason to pay more for devalued spendable points. The great program they had in place is now totally gone. I think it will no longer be worth it to pay extra for a handful of loyalty points . Now I’ve got to rethink all of my airline loyalty strategies for the rest of the year. This was very bad news. Thank you for letting us know before we did more bookings.
I have five upcoming reservations that I’d booked at the former booking.com-operated “bookaahotels” that came with very generous amounts of Base Miles. When I access those bookings on the new Aadvantage Hotels website, each one arbitrarily demotes some of the miles to Bonus Miles. One booking even fails at math when they add the two lots together. I sent a message to the “concierge” for an explanation yesterday, but have thus far heard nothing back.
Fingers crossed that when this new Agoda-operated site gets the bugs out and finds its sea legs that Base Mile offerings will be similarly generous — at least to customers with both status and an AA-branded citi card. Otherwise, what’s the point?
@tom pre booked before the change correct?
Me too!
Last month I booked 2 hotel stays for later in 2023 (Sep. & Nov.). Will the miles in my confirmation email be honored? I don’t see an answer to this question.
@RebeccaP – Try using the Manage Reservation link in your confirmation email. Then click See Details. The new Agoda-operated site will show you the booking, but has now downgraded a portion of the miles you are supposed to earn from Base Miles to Bonus Miles. I’m still waiting to hear back from the concierge team after inquiring yesterday. You should try reaching out, too!
@ GB in LA – I still see the correct number of miles when I log in to Rocketmiles using my confirmation “manage reservation” link. However I don’t see anything about Base Miles or Bonus Miles… it just says “total miles earned”. Am I looking in the wrong place?
@RebeccaP – Ah, the new website may be friendlier to existing RM reservations. (I incorrectly assumed your booking, like the five that I’m looking at, was made at “bookaahotels” which was operated by booking.com.)
@ GB in LA – I’m sorry about the confusion. People were talking about both AAHotels and RM… I have existing bookings on RM so I was asking about that. I don’t know if the miles will be honored. No idea who to ask either! Good luck with yours & a response from the concierge team!
QQ – since there is a cap of 15k/per stay at Advantage Hotels… Can one maximize the number of LPs they earn by simply booking multiple consecutive stays? So, for a 10-night trip where you’d earn 7k a night… you can earn 35k vs 15k? Thoughts?
*** Correction to my post **** 70k vs. 15k
I had the same thought. The little playing around I did revealed breaking up stays as short as three nights into consecutive stays of one and two nights may yield more Base Miles/Loyalty Points. Longer stays offer the chance to try different combinations of consecutive bookings to land at the biggest number of points in total.
In other threads, some have mentioned potentially doing multiple stays at the same destination. Meaning if going to Las Vegas for 4 nights, book into a bunch of hotels as you’re in Vegas anyways – and if you come across a deal, well you can multiply your time while there.
Is it a waste, against TOS? I don’t know. But If I saw a good opportunity I’d do it
Well damn, they killed AAdvantage Hotels. Used to be good deals. Now it’s just RocketMiles with a different face, lower points, and the extra points you can buy are just useless now, since they don’t count as Loyalty Points anymore.
Funnily enough, I got an offer to Boost my way to Platinum Pro status. I’m only 20,000 miles away at the moment, so I’ll hit it in a month or two anyway, but clicked through to see how much. They were asking $3130 or 315,000 miles. How ridiculous is that when I’m so close anyway. Even with the nerfing of AAdvantage Hotels, I could still earn enough points just by booking 3 or 4 nights at a hotel for less than half that, and get to have a vacation. Do they even think about value when they offer these things?
The most you can earn on a 1 week trip to Vegas, Cancun, Italy, Puerto Rico or Miami is 15,000 points. Gone are the. 25-35K miles for a week stays on AA Hotels. They totally yanked miles from the system. Unreal.
Seems that now the aadvantagehotels site is suggesting all stays generate base miles and it I’m reading that these convert to loyalty points 1:1. Some folks are negative and advising thats not the case… anyone with actual loyalty points posted recently? Is it same as the total specified “miles” on each stay?
It previously and currently gave base miles, which do convert 1:1 to Loyalty points. Previously though, it allowed you to buy extra miles at checkout, usually you could get 3000 miles for $75, and you could purchase 3000 for each night you were staying. On the old AAdvantage site, these miles were also base miles that counted 1:1 as Loyalty points. On the new AAdvantage by RocketMiles site, the extra miles you can buy are bonus miles and don’t count at Loyalty points at all. It’s the status of these extra purchasable miles that changed, and the amounts given seem to be less also. The extra miles are obviously not worth purchasing anymore.
Got it. Thanks. I’ve been booking nights with massive base mile and LP values so really happy that I’m on the right track. Several posting comments advising no LPs at all now but if you read the fine print about the extra purchasable miles, it specifies those would not qualify for LP, thus I assume the booking itself will qualify.
Hey so I used to rack up status by booking through Rocketmiles. I see that it now says if you have a AA credit card you can earn additional miles. Do you need to book with the AA credit card to earn these miles?
I ask because I travel for work a bunch and need to book on my work CC. HOWEVER, if I could earn extra miles just by having an AA credit card I’d get one.
Gary, there was and still is a “Buy Up Bonus Miles” function at the RocketMiles/AA Hotels checkout. Previously they counted as “base miles” with LP earnings. Now they are only “Bonus Miles”
One big question though, so this 10X Citi Card Bonus, does that show up on Your statement or something? I’m very confused on this. Is the AADVANTAGE member Bonus they show during shopping for a room different than this 10x “bonus”? All very confusing and not as straightforward as it used to be.
@Benjamin G – the 10x posts with card statement, it’s a bonus for paying with that card (and those points do not count as loyalty points)
Hi Gary – here’s a scam you should make your readers aware of. I booked a “Hotel” on AAdvantage “Hotels” and it turned out to be a condo building. When I called them on it they disputed my definition of “hotel” and wouldn’t guarantee a refund even though I refused to stay. Its clearly a condo building with no lobby or front desk, no on-site personnel whatsoever (and of course no room service, on-site restaurant, or anything else a hotel has besides beds). It belongs on AirBnB. I was really surprised and disappointed because I’ve used AAdvantage hotels in the past and been satisfied. I will be much more careful in the future. The 3rd party scammy “management company” is called AvantStay and when I called them on their deception they insisted on pretending its a hotel. Very weird and totally unethical. Property I visited was 121 30th Ave in Nashville.