Rocketmiles review: Earning miles with hotel bookings – or not?

Rocketmiles was one of the first award programs on the market that lets you earn airline miles for hotel bookings and you will frequently see their ads and promotions with specific airlines, often offering 3,000 miles for your first booking and more miles per Dollar spent on your hotel bookings. I recently reviewed How to earn Miles with hotelbookings and now will take an in-depth look at Rocketmiles.

If you want to earn airline miles for your hotel bookings, Rocketmiles offers a long list of partners, a total of 36. That includes United, American Airlines in the Americas, British Airways and Flying Blu in Europe, Etihad and Qatar in the Middle East and Singapore Airlines and AirAsia Big in Asia as some of the major players. Notably missing are Delta in the US, Lufthansa in Europe, Emirates in the Middle East and Cathay Pacific and Qantas in Asia-Pacific.

Rocketmiles PartnersSign-up for Rocketmiles is easy: you provide basic personal information and your preferred rewards program from the list above and can start booking your hotels.

Rocketmiles BookinThe booking screen is just as easy: Select your destination, dates and rewards program and you are on your way…. except that the next screen is where one of the biggest limitations of Rocketmiles becomes obvious: The severe limitation of available hotels at any given destination. I did three sample searches to evaluate the program and found only 24 hotels in Bangkok (hotels.com had 1,273), 26 hotels in San Francisco (hotels.com had 533) and 68 hotels in London (hotels.com had 1,597). Considering that this small number of hotels in each city is spread over a large area, it doesn’t leave you with a lot of options. If you are flexible with the airline reward program, you can try different ones: For example, the number of available hotels in Bangkok was 58 with AirAsia Big – more than twice the number of hotels with American AAdvantage! If Rocketmiles would carefully curate the most desirable hotels or best values in each city, I’d be ok with the limitation, but that is not really the case. I picked these three cities because I know them well and in each city the short list included very few hotels I’d consider popular or would recommend. While some reviewers see the short list as “helpful”, I’d consider a serious limitation with very little upside compared to other booking sites!

So, where is the value? Rocketmiles offers frequent promotions. You can regularly find sign-up offering 3,000 miles on your first booking! That’s a $45 value and a generous offer worth trying out, if you can find a hotel you like! Rocketmiles also “recommends” hotels with very high miles offers – I found offers of up to 10,000 miles for a booking. Unfortunately, when I compared the prices for these “recommendations” they were the worst deals! For example, the Montien Riverside in Bangkok offered 10,000 miles at a price of $184/night. Sounds great? Not really: The Montien Riverside is available at the same nights for only $68 on hotels.com. Across all of my sample searches (three cities, three hotels each, different dates & room requests), Rocketmiles did well in San Francisco and was worst of all providers in Bangkok. In total, it was significantly more expensive than hotels.com, but cheaper than going directly to the hotel websites when considering the value of miles earned!

Conclusion: If you are planning a specific award trip, need some extra miles to be able to book the ticket and can’t get them via a credit card, Rocketmiles can be an option. It’s especially helpful for one-night bookings with the sign-up bonus. Before you book, I’d recommend to compare to hotels.com or agoda.com to make sure you actually do get a good deal. I’d be especially careful with Rocketmiles “recommendations” as they were the worst deals in each city I tested. I also recommend to read TripAdvisor reviews before booking to ensure those “recommendations” are not hotels well past their prime, in bad locations, with bad service or similar issues! Overall, Rocketmiles won’t be my go-to portal to book hotels, but I will check it out for good deals on promotions!

If you are interested, you can sign-up with a 3,000 point bonus right now using this link! If you want to earn AirAsia Big miles, you can earn 10,000 bonus miles by signing up here! Once these promotions end (or if you want to do me a favor), you can sign up through their referral program here earning you and me each 1,000 points. Check it out to see if you can earn some easy miles, but watch out that you don’t end up paying a lot for those miles with non-competitive rates!


Comments

Rocketmiles review: Earning miles with hotel bookings – or not? — 16 Comments

  1. BEWARE of RicketMiles. It is a scam. They mark up the price of a hotel room by 50-60%. Those bonus miles or reward/rebate gift cards are not free. Check Trip Advisor. My hotel room last week was $106 but Rocketmiles charged my credit card $167. That is s 57% mark up!! I say RIPOFF!! Customer service? They don’t need your business. They will just move onto the next unsuspecting victim who is blinded by the tremendous rewards!!

    • Sorry you had a bad experience. As I mention in my review, I found some of the same cases of overpriced rooms and recommend to use another search site to compare prices before you book – I have compared Rocketmiles with Kaligo and Pointshound here! I have also reviewed hotel search engines to find the best hotel price here!

  2. I have a horrible experience with them. I booked for one night stay at a hotel in Germany via Rocketmiles. Rocketmiles charged my credit card in advance for that stay. However, their credit card in file did not work for the hotel, and the hotel later charged me again for my stay. When I notified Rocketmiles about the extra charge, they simply ignored my claim and did not refund me the extra payment. It is a big scam, stay away if possible.

    • Thanks for sharing your experience, that sounds like terrible customer service from both Rocketmiles and the hotel.
      Once the dual charge has happened, I recommend to open a dispute with your credit card company, showing that you were charged twice for the same service. In my experience, that resolves the issue quickly.
      In general, I suggest to resolve issues like this at the hotel – they should have resolved this directly with rocketmiles, rather than making it your problem.

  3. DO NOT use them !
    I have booked and paid for a double room for a romantic break with my hubby for a week in Bratislava.
    However; Rocketmiles booked a twin room and are now refusing to change it because the price has now gone up by £8 per night.
    Shocking customer service via email and they obviously do not give a dam about customer satisfaction.

    • Thanks for sharing your experience – twin beds would ruin any romantic getaway. A good reminder that location, a nice room and good service are just as or more important than a low price or earning miles!

  4. I have a tape recorded conversation with a hotel agreeing to change my reservation if Rocketmiles will allow.

    Rocketmiles refused saying the hotel refused.

    • That’s terrible – thanks for sharing your experience as a warning to others. I’d follow up with Rocketmiles to resolve this!

  5. BEWARE! They are legitimate with miles, but completely crooked on advertising. Read their fine print. They say right there that they take no responsibility for Misinformation provided about the hotel. There is false advertising abound. Of course, no one will take responsibility for it. They blame the hotel, the hotel blames them. My last reservation I very specifically was looking for certain amenities. Much to our dismay, they were not available. If you really want to use them that bag to get the miles and you need specific amenities, be sure to call the hotel first.

    • Sorry to hear about your experience. I’d always read some reviews on other sites to compare before you book or like you suggest, if it’s important to you, call the hotel.
      But I don’t think Rocketmiles can just wash their hands of this, regardless of their statement on the website. They have contracted a specific service and are responsible for delivering it. I’d not let them off the hook so easily and demand compensation to make up for it. If they decline, you can take them to small claims court over it!

  6. BEWARE. I used Rocketmiles and have regretted it. I made a reservation, and apparently the room I selected was non-refundable. This was in the fine print, but was actually fine with me because I had no intention of cancelling my reservation. HOWEVER, as I clicked on the button to confirm the reservation, I realized I made it for Tuesday, the 11th instead of Tuesday the 4th. I immediately called them to change the date. They had the room available, but would not change it even though it was only minutes after confirming online. I did not want to cancel and I did not want my money back. Just a simple date change. They just completely refused to make the change and kept all my money. I had to make and pay for the reservation again, but this time I went directly through the hotel. NEVER AGAIN, ROCKETMILES!

    • I’m sorry to hear about your experience, thanks for sharing.
      I consider this very poor customer service. Most airlines have a 24h cancellation policy to address these types of honest mistakes and there is little reason why a hotel or Online Travel Agent wouldn’t offer the same.

  7. I booked three times with rocketmiles, and paid almost 6000 USD, the rooms were what I have selected, no problem with the hotel at all, but they credited my miles in their account (Rocket miles account) and not in the airline account. So I cannot use them, the miles are useless. anyone has the same experience ?

  8. I’ve been a customer of Rocketmiles for years now and what you did to me tonight was a discrace to customer service! I booked 3 nights in a hotel in Dubai yesterday, full amount has been deducted but when I arrived at the front desk today they said that I don’t have any booking, I contacted your contact center but they said that there is a problem in the system and there is no booking, they could not do anything, I asked for a compensation but the lady said no compensation! I am now roaming around the city looking for somewhere to stay, this is extremely disappointing, bad system, bad service and I do not recommend anyone to use this company.

    • Sorry about the bad experience you had. Should Rocketmiles refuse to reimburse you for the stay, I recommend to dispute the charge with your credit card company!

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