Rocketmiles live with MR – and it’s pretty good

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We recently reported that Rocketmiles would soon be offering the ability to earn American Express Membership Rewards points with hotel bookings. That feature is now live — and I am impressed with my first couple of searches. There are good deals to be had.

a screenshot of a website

The Deal

  • Earn 500-10,000 Membership Rewards points per night for hotel bookings through Rocketmiles
  • Direct link

Key Terms

  • Number of miles will vary by location and rates
  • Rocketmiles bookings typically do not qualify for elite benefits and credits
  • Additional points available to U.S. American Express Card Members with a Card enrolled in the Membership Rewards® program (“Eligible Card Account”) only.
  • Card Members must use an Eligible Card Account at checkout and complete their hotel stay to receive the additional points.
  • Points will be awarded within 8 to 12 weeks after receipt by American Express of the eligible additional points information. If American Express does not receive information that identifies your booking as eligible, you will not receive the additional points.
  • See additional terms on the promotion page

Quick Thoughts

This morning, I posted about how I stacked the Citi Prestige 4th Night Free with a Hyatt Best Rate Guarantee to get an awesome deal at the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos (See: Stacking 4th Night Free + BRG for big savings), so that hotel was on my mind. I looked up a random 1 night stay later this month — August 28th to 29th, 2018. Here were the rates through Hyatt.com:

a screenshot of a hotel

I searched the same date and location through Rocketmiles, and it came up cheaper and with 5,000 Membership Rewards points on top.

a screenshot of a computer screen

In fairness, the $324 rate isn’t for the same room type. In my many searches as of late, I’ve found that the “Master Double” that qualifies as the standard room for the purposes of using Hyatt points has not been available via Hyatt.com, but has been available via 3rd party booking engines. That’s the case here as well — though if you scroll down the list of rates, you’ll see that the Pool View Master Double (the room type shown from Hyatt above) is still cheaper through Rocketmiles at $338 per night (and yes, the rates shown here are all-in including taxes).

a screenshot of a website

Booking that through Rocketmiles wouldn’t make sense if you were looking to use the Citi Prestige 4th night free or a best rate guarantee and certainly not if you were looking to stack both as I did in this morning’s post, but if you were looking for a short stay, this looks like a great return depending on how you value Membership Rewards points. According to our Reasonable Redemption Values, 5K points are worth about $91 — though truth be told, I typically value transferrable currencies at 2 cents each for easy mental accounting. Any way you slice it, that’s an excellent return on spend and well worth sacrificing Hyatt points.

To have a second point of comparison, I randomly picked the Kimpton Carlyle Hotel Dupont Circle in Washington, DC for this Friday night, August 17th. Here are rates found through metasearch site Hotelscombined.com:

a screenshot of a hotel listNote in the image above that neither of the only two options showing a rate of less than $159 pan out. Amoma shows a rate of $137 there, but when you click through to the hotel it says that rate is “sold out” and it shows available rates over $200. ZenHotels shows $130 in the list above, but $147 when you click through to the rates page — and that’s without going through checkout to see what additional fees they add. Suffice it to say that $159 appears to be the going rate. It’s available through Rocketmiles for the same price, with 3,000 Membership Rewards points tacked on.

a black star on a white background

Again, based on the RRV of 1.82 cents per point for Membership Rewards points, that’s like a return of more than $54 in points.

Of course, you’ll be giving up loyalty credit and benefits when booking through Rocketmiles. Perhaps prices will creep up over time to cover the cost of the points or the number of points awarded will creep down. However, as of right now, Rocketmiles looks like a very interesting option indeed for hotel free agents who value Membership Rewards points. With Chase losing Korean as a transfer partner this week, my personal value for Membership Rewards points is on the rise — I might consider this for my next single-night hotel need.

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