If you’ve ever wanted to earn airline miles or hotel points without juggling a wallet full of travel credit cards, there’s a new player in the rewards world you should know about and they are called Rove Miles.
Rove Miles allows you to build up miles on everyday purchases, hotel stays, and flights. Plus, there is no credit card required. So, the question is whether Rove Miles is worth the investment.
In this post, we’ll look at what Rove Miles is, how it works, how you can earn and redeem miles, their travel partners, and whether it’s worth your time.
What is Rove Miles?
Rove Miles is a new loyalty and rewards platform that acts like a “universal miles program.” It allows you to earn miles not only for one hotel or airline program but allows you to earn miles across various different programs where you can then book flights or hotels worldwide.
The appeal with Rove Miles is the fact that you can earn miles without having to open up a new credit card to take advantage of the program.
Through Rove’s website or browser extension, you can earn miles when you:
- Book hotels or flights through the Rove travel portal
- Shop online through one of their 1,000s of retailers
- Take advantage of promotions and bonus mile offers
How to Earn Rove Miles
Rove offers numerous ways to earn miles no matter how you travel or shop.
1. Book Hotels Through Rove
Rove has more than 200,000 hotels that you can book through their platform. The Rove site says that you can earn up to 25x on paid hotel stays. The rates and earning level varies, but Rove offers boosted earning rates during certain promotions or for certain hotels that offer a higher rate. I have seen some hotels with an earning rate over 50x.
Most of the time when you book a hotel room through a third party site, you don’t earn elite night credits and hotel points with the hotel. This is always a big drawback for people that travel a lot and want to earn elite nights and points.
Recently, Rove Miles launched “Loyalty Eligible Hotel Bookings” which means that you still earn elite nights and points when booking rooms with Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, Hilton, Best Western, Wyndham, Accor, and Choice Hotel brands while also earning Rove Miles. The stays that offer points and elite nights will be marked like what is in the screenshot below.
If you only want to see hotels that offer elite night benefits you can select that option in the left hand column of the search page. You can then select the programs that you want to see from there.
When you book a hotel stay through Rove, you will earn Rove miles, hotel points, and points or cashback with whatever credit card that you use. You can even stack offers from American Express Offers, Chase Offers, or Citi Merchant Offers.
Rove also offers refundable and nonrefundable rooms. The higher multipliers are going to be on nonrefundable rates. If you book a hotel stay at a nonrefundable rate, they deposit the points into your account right away. This is truly a game changer.
For example, you could book a hotel stay at a nonrefundable rate and those miles would be deposited into your account right away. Next, you could transfer the points to one of their travel partners or use the points in their portal to book your flight(s). No other points program offers that kind of flexibility.
2. Book Flights Through Rove
When you book paid flights through Rove, you’ll not only earn airline miles and points or cashback from whatever credit card that you use but you’ll also earn Rove miles. For example, if you book a United flight you’ll earn United miles, credit card points or cashback and Rove miles all for the same ticket.
If you have status with an airline and you book a flight through Rove, you’ll still earn everything that you normally would when booking directly with the airline.
When booking paid flights, you’ll earn 1x-10x on each flight. You also earn points on any taxes and fees that you might pay. You won’t know how many points you earn until you go to pay for the flight.
3. Earn Miles on Everyday Shopping
Rove’s online shopping portal and Chrome extension let you earn miles from thousands of everyday retailers. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can earn 6.5 Rove Miles for each dollar spent at Nike.
Once you click on your store of choice, you’ll be taken to a screen where you click on shop. There is a little bit of a lag but in a few seconds you’ll be taken to the online store.
When you make a purchase online with the store that you want, you’ll earn the Rove Miles, as well as any cashback or points with the credit card that you are using to make the purchase.
If you like to use shopping portals to earn money or points, a good site to checkout before making a purchase is Cashback Monitor. Cashback Monitor shows you the highest earning rates for shopping cashback portals, travel miles/points, credit card points, and other reward programs.
If you want to learn more about how to use Cashback Monitor, I have a post to help you out.
Rove Transfer Partners
Another nice thing about Rove Miles is the fact that you can transfer them to hotel and airline partners.
The following are all of their partners at the time of this writing.
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue
- Air India Maharaja Club
- Accor Live Limitless
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Etihad Guest
- Finnair Plus
- Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club
- Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus
- Turkish Airways Miles&Smiles
The transfer is 1:1 to each of the airlines and 1.5:1 to Accor. Rove requires a 2,000 point minimum when you transfer points. If the transfer is over 2,000, you can then do increments of 100. Rove states that they plan on adding new partners as time goes on.
How to Redeem Rove Miles
Besides transferring your points to transfer partners, you can also redeem your Rove Miles in their travel portal.
Booking Hotels
Below is an example of a search for a hotel in New York City at the end of October. When you do a search, they will show you the cash price, as well as the points price through the portal. They also include the cents per point you’ll receive for the redemption of points. On average, you can expect to get from 1.5 to 2.2 cents per point.
Once you find a hotel that you like, you can click on the points box. You’ll be taken to a page where they show you the different room options you can choose. Once you choose a room type, you’ll go to a page to fill out other booking details and then make the booking.
If you make a nonrefundable booking, points will be taken out of your account right away. If it’s a refundable booking, points will be taken out of your account one day after checking out.
Booking Flights
When you do a search for flights on Rove, you can do it from a particular airport to anywhere in the world. It’s very much like the “Explore” feature with Google Flights. You can also pick certain parts of the world to explore like “Europe” or select one airport to another airport.
Once you select a destination, Rove will show you the different flights that you can book. They will also show you if the booking is a transfer booking or if the booking is a direct booking. They also show you the cents per point that you’ll receive for the flight.
Direct bookings are flights that are going to be ticketed by Rove in the portal. These are dynamically priced and they are usually going to range from 1.3 to 1.5 cents per point. With direct bookings you will take care of the flight on the Rove platform. You will check in to your flight with the airline.
Transfer bookings are when you transfer your points out to one of Rove’s transfer partners. Once you select a transfer flight, you’ll be taken to the transfer page. The transfer of your points to the program is almost instant and you’ll finish up your booking on the airlines site.
Like bank programs and other points programs, Rove is offering transfer bonuses to their partners. At the time of this writing there is a 20% transfer bonus to Air France/KLM and to Finnair. So, if you transfer 5,000 points to Finnair, there would be 6,000 points deposited in your account.
Advantages and Disadvantages to Rove Miles
So, should you try to take advantage of the Rove Miles program? Will it be worth your time? So, let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of the program.
Advantages
One of the biggest advantages of Rove Miles is its ability to stack rewards from multiple sources. You can earn credit card points, airline miles or hotel loyalty points, and Rove Miles all on the same booking. This makes it an excellent option for travelers who want to maximize every possible reward.
When you book flights or hotels through Rove, you can still earn elite status credits and points with those travel partners, something that most other third-party booking sites don’t offer.
Another major perk is that you don’t need a credit card to earn rewards. Rove makes it easy for anyone including: students, families, or travelers who prefer debit or cash bookings to start earning travel miles.
The platform also offers flexible redemption options, allowing you to use your miles for flights, hotels, or transfer them to partner programs. Hotel bookings are particularly rewarding, as Rove often offers strong earning potential and credits miles from nonrefundable bookings to your account right away.
Rove’s growing list of transfer partners is another highlight. It already includes well-known programs such as Air France–KLM Flying Blue, Finnair Plus, and Qatar Airways Privilege Club, along with more unique partners like Air India’s Maharaja Club and Vietnam Airlines’ Lotusmiles.
You can also earn extra miles during transfer bonuses or limited-time promotions. On top of that, Rove’s shopping portal and browser extension let you earn miles on everyday purchases.
Rove Miles is a great tool for anyone who loves maximizing rewards or wants a simple, all-in-one way to earn and redeem travel points.
Disadvantages
While Rove Miles has a lot of promise, there are a few drawbacks to keep in mind. It may not always offer the cheapest rates for flights or hotels, whether you’re paying with points or cash.
Travelers who already book most of their trips using bank travel points or direct airline miles might find Rove less useful since they already have strong earning and redemption systems in place.
The shopping portal, while convenient, doesn’t always have the best earning rates compared to other cash-back or points portals.
Additionally, Rove currently doesn’t have a mobile app, which can make it less convenient for travelers who like to manage bookings and track rewards on the go.
Another limitation is Rove’s dynamic pricing, which means the number of miles required for a redemption can change based on demand and market prices. This can make it harder to predict how much value you’ll get from your miles.
While these disadvantages don’t outweigh the benefits for most users, they’re important to consider when deciding whether to make Rove Miles part of your travel rewards strategy.
Final Thoughts
Rove Miles is definitely worth a look for most people. No points program is perfect but as you can see Rove Miles definitely has a lot going for it. The program is new and it will be interesting to see how the program changes over time.
The fact that you don’t need to open a credit card to earn points is definitely a plus. The hotel part of the program is especially strong since you can triple stack points earnings, earn elite night stays, and can earn high multipliers at many hotels. Rove Miles can be another tool in your tool belt to help you save on your travels.
Make sure to check out my travel blog Travelwidstom. You’ll find travel itineraries, ways to save on travel, ways to earn and maximize credit card points and miles, and more.
