A night at a hotel gives us 500 air miles if we are lucky. But help has arrived. Booking through sites like Kaligo, Rocketmiles and Pointshound give us 1000s of extra miles. At no extra cost as I have experienced.
Top Tips
- Check these sites before you book.
- For swankier rooms/hotels, you get even more miles. So if you planning to splurge anyway, a great extra benefit.
The Basic Comparison
What you get directly from hotels
- Many do not give us any air miles.
- Those who do, give a set number per night regardless of how much you pay for the room. Based on current Marriott/ SPG basic membership, we get 500 air miles per night.
- If you are a priority member, this goes up to 1000.
What you get from using these sites
- Using Kaligo, I stayed at a great hotel in Hong Kong for 2 nights at USD 312/ night. Earned 5050 Singapore Airlines miles.
- Again through Kaligo, I spent 2 nights in New York at USD 345/night and earned 1900 Qatar miles.
- In both cases, the room rate was the same as other sites, through which I would have got NO miles.
- There were other hotels who would have given me 1000 miles for these 2 nights, but the room cost a lot more.
The Luxury Comparison
Staying in luxury rooms/ hotels give us a huge number of extra miles. See what you get from the swanky Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park, London. As the room rates differ, I added how many miles we get per USD spent to compare.
The results were astounding.
Kaligo gave 60,000 miles at USD 1,366 per day for 4 nights. That’s 15,000 miles/ day or 11 miles per USD spent.
Rocketmiles gave 40,000 miles for USD1735 per day. That’s 10,000 miles/ day or 6 miles per USD.
When I called the hotel, I was told guests would get 500 miles for the whole stay. Their site showed a basic room at GBP1425, about USD 1750. Thats 125 miles/ day or 0.07 miles per USD.
What do the miles get us?
To put the miles in perspective, 72,250 Singapore Airlines miles get you a one-way business class Singapore- New York ticket. Assuming the 4 day Mandarin Oriental stay with 60k miles would extend to a 5th day, you could earn enough miles for this journey. If you are looking to splurge anyway, its a fantastic extra benefit.
In Conclusion
When booking a hotel, check sites like Kaligo, Rocketmiles, Pointshoud. They have links with 1000s of hotels and many airlines. And their per day room rate seems to be the same as booking with the hotel or Expedia, Hotel.com, Booking.com
Have you come across other sites like this? What’s your experience been?
For us who are much “poorer” and can’t stay at fancy places, you can still get miles if you go through AA’s shopping portal, sometimes 2 and 3 miles extra per $ for lower end hotels. Worth looking at…..