Consider Booking with Bonus Mile Booking Sites to Get Thousands of Miles (2021)

  Hotel Strategies

Online travel is a competitive business, and different startups have different strategies for trying to carve a slice out of the market. The approach of several companies is to give you large quantities of frequent flyer points whenever you book a hotel room.

Often the most valuable way to book your hotel room is through Rocketmiles, PointsHound, or Kaligo. While you might pay a slightly higher rate and won’t get hotel loyalty program benefits, you will receive thousands of frequent flyer points or other rewards, which can provide enough added value to make it worthwhile.

When better "mileage back" deals are available, you can expect to get several thousand miles for a typical $100-300 room reservation. If you value the reward points at about 1.5 cents each, it isn't unusual to receive 20-25% back in reward value. But, if a good deal isn't available, you may only receive something like 100 miles.

If you aren't interested in frequent flyer miles, some of the programs allow you to earn other types of rewards, such as Amazon gift cards.

How to earn thousands of airline points on your hotel reservation

When you use one of these sites, you can choose which type of rewards to receive, and you'll typically receive large quantities of frequent flyer miles. Expect offers of 1,000 to 4,000 points per night on many hotels and up to about 10,000 per night with a few of the most rewarding options. At a rate of 1.5 cents per point, that works out to $15-60 in value per night, and sometimes as much as $150.

• For any given hotel, each bonus mile booking site sometimes offers the best deal. None of these websites are clearly better than the others when it comes to room rates and reward points. Sometimes one website will be cheaper and/or offer more points, sometimes another site will. To optimize your rewards and pricing, you’ll need to look at all three sites. If you want to skip one site, PointsHound is the least likely to have the best deal.

For example, for the W Lakeshore in Chicago, each site offers slightly different room rates and substantially different numbers of Alaska miles.




• Reward points vary widely for different hotels. While you often get more points for more expensive hotels, the number of points varies wildly for hotels with similar room rates.

For example, if you wanted to stay at Chicago's other W Hotel, PointsHound would only give you 200 miles. You'd almost certainly be better off booking elsewhere.


• The same hotel reservation will earn different number of points with different frequent flyer programs. Making things even more complicated, the number of points you receive is different for different programs and the differences are hotel dependent. For example, while you’ll typically earn the same number of Alaska or United miles for any given hotel, you’ll sometimes earn more from one or the other. And while you would usually earn fewer JetBlue miles than you would earn with either Alaska or American, sometimes you get a lot fewer and sometimes only a little. Once you’ve narrowed down your hotel choices, you might want to compare how many miles you would earn with a few different reward programs (sticking with the same bonus point website).

For example, if we switch the reward program to United, each site provides a different number of miles.




• You’ll receive additional miles for each night of your reservation. However, the number of miles doesn’t scale linearly. Usually you’ll earn a little extra miles for an additional night than you will for your first, but sometimes you’ll earn the same or less.
• Always compare rates to what is available elsewhere. Not long ago, these sites often had significantly higher room rates. But with recent tests, their room rates usually match (or are only slightly more expensive than) the standard "best available rate" available across the web. Sometimes their prices are actually lower. But, you should always compare against rates you can get elsewhere, especially on the hotel's own site, as you can often find a lower "discounted rate" that saves more money than the extra rewards are worth.

• When you book with one of these sites, you typically won't get any elite status benefits with the hotel's loyalty program. If you aren't booking at an independent hotel, you probably aren't missing out on anything. If you are booking at a chain hotel, you won't get points or elite status credit, but you might still get at least some of your elite status benefits.
• If the point payout is high enough, these sites can still be worthwhile, even if you need to pay a higher rate for the room. For example, 4,000 frequent flyer miles has a value of somewhere around $60. The value you may receive from the hotel's own reward program or the Hotels.com reward program may only be around $15. If you are only paying $20 extra for the room, it would still be worthwhile.

Bonus Miles hotel booking sites

• Rocketmiles. Rocketmiles is generally the most useful of these sites. They have the widest range of reward options, including support for things like Membership Rewards points, Amazon.com gift cards, and Uber credits. It is the only one that earns Southwest Airline miles that can be used to qualify for the Companion Pass. And they frequently offer the most reward points for any given hotel.


If you don't have definite plans for using your miles, collecting Membership Rewards points with Rocketmiles is usually a good option. You'll typically receive more points than you would with many of the other programs and the points can be transferred to any of Amex's partner programs.


• Kaligo. For US Hotels, Kaligo usually charges slightly more than the "best available rates", but they sometimes offer more reward points than the other sites. Internationally, they often have the cheapest room rates and the widest selection of hotels. Unfortunately, Kaligo supports the fewest number of US frequent flyer programs. But it does support United and Alaska, as well as a set of useful foreign programs. Provides direct price comparison information, as well as the most powerful tools to filter through the hotel listings.

• PointsHound. PointsHound is probably the least attractive option. Room rates are competitive, but they often provide fewer reward points and usually have the smallest selection of hotels. That said, there are plenty of times where they offer a better deal than the other two sites, so they can still be worth adding to your search. Supports the fewest overall number of frequent flyer programs, but still has generally useful options like Alaska and American.

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