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Rove Miles is a new loyalty program that gives travelers the chance to earn miles by booking hotels and flights, and by shopping online using the program’s shopping portal or browser extension.
Free to join and touting itself as the “first universal airline mile,” the program aims to provide increased accessibility to free and discounted travel by letting people earn and redeem on multiple airlines and hotel brands through a single portal.
In this article, we explore how this program works, including its earning and redeeming potential, so that you can decide if it’s a good fit for your travel goals.
Rove Miles can be earned three ways:
One way to earn Rove miles is by booking hotel stays around the world through the Rove website. Like other travel portals, Rove lets you search based on your destination and across multiple hotel brands.
The number of miles you earn from each booking is based on the cost of the stay, with earn rates ranging from a few miles per $1 spent, all the way to 50 miles per $1 spent and beyond.
Notably, these miles are also earned on top of any hotel loyalty program points that are available for your selected booking (e.g., Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy).
Additionally, eligible bookings will also let you earn the program-related elite nights and qualifying spend, and even the hotel-specific higher earning rates that can be found on co-branded hotel credit cards like the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card.
Needless to say, this is a massive amount of miles that’s being offered by Rove, especially given that they partner with other valuable airline and hotel loyalty programs that you can transfer your miles to at a rate of 1:1 (more on this below).
Whether these elevated rates will continue to be available over the long-term is yet to be seen, but realistically, it’s likely that these are temporarily inflated while the program gains its footing and market share.
Finally, another neat feature of booking a hotel with Rove is that you can also choose to make your booking non-refundable if you’d like to get your miles deposited right away. This can be valuable if you’re confident that you’ll use the hotel stay and if you have immediate plans for the Rove miles.
Another way to earn Rove miles is by booking flights.
However, when booking a flight, you’re not actually shown how many miles you’ll earn until you get all the way to the payment page, making it difficult to compare earning potential across multiple variables.
Rove says that you can earn up to 10 miles per $1 spent by booking flights through the program’s travel portal; however, it’s not clear which flights qualify for the top end of this range.
This means that you need to search for your flight, select your itinerary, select your fare type, and only then will you be shown how many miles you’ll earn.
Additionally, as you can see at the top of the image above, you only have around 20 minutes to confirm your purchase in order to secure the “offer,” which means that the number of points has the capacity to fluctuate at any time.
Now, on the positive side of things, if the price shown in the Rove travel portal is equivalent or lower than through the airline or alternative options, then booking this way not only earns you some Rove Miles, but you can also earn your airline loyalty rewards by adding your membership number plus whatever currency you earn with your chosen credit card.
You can also choose to pay for a Miles Boost, which multiplies the number of miles you earn on the purchase.
For example, in our example below, you could pay just under $50 to boost your miles 10x, earning 3,460 miles instead of 346 miles.
Given this, booking through Rove’s portal may add just that touch more to your loyalty wallet. However, we do recommend that you do your due diligence on searching and comparing all options for the best prices and promotions.
The third way you can earn Rove miles is by shopping online at over 13,000 eligible stores. With this option, you can either search for eligible stores through Rove’s shopping portal, or you can download the program’s browser extension that will flag eligible stores as you come upon them naturally.
Rove Miles can be redeemed for flights and stays in hotels, and they can also be transferred to a handful of airline and hotel loyalty programs.
Rove Miles can be redeemed for a free or discounted stay in hotels around the world.
Rove’s travel portal lets you search by location or by hotel name, and you can also filter your results by multiple variables, including the option to only show properties that also have their own loyalty program.
During your hotel search, you’re shown both the cash rate per night and the cost in miles, as well as the redemption value for that specific booking.
The most common redemption value appears to be around 1.5¢ per mile; however, we’ve also seen higher values offered on occassion.
Rove Miles can also be redeemed for flights on all major airlines with no blackout dates.
Prior to beginning your award flight search, Rove offers some suggestions for the “best” and “cheapest” options departing from your selected airport. These are pretty fun, as they give you some ideas for easy-to-reach and aspirational destinations.
When redeeming miles for a flight, you can search the same way you would on any travel portal, selecting a departure airport, arrival airport, and date(s).
In your search results, you’ll see all the available flights that meet your criteria, and you’re able to filter these results by cheapest, fastest, and “best” (which means best value per mile).
In our research, we found that a reasonable average to expect in terms of value is right around 1.3¢ per mile, though we did also see redemption values as low as 0.21¢ per mile and as high as 7.68¢ (for business class redemptions).
In addition to the flight and hotel redemption options, Rove Miles can also be transferred to a number of other loyalty programs.
Currently the program has 13 transfer partners:
Transferring your earned Rove miles to many of the above programs can provide some higher value redemption options, especially if you’re looking to book a premium cabin experience.
Additionally, there are occasionally transfer bonuses, which provide an even better exchange rate, so keep your eyes open for those if you’re planning to move your Rove miles elsewhere.
As with any loyalty program, there are a few things that are important to be aware of before you get too invested.
Whether or not you should join Rove Miles is ultimately a personal decision that likely hinges on how many rewards programs you’re already juggling and whether you already have a preferred online shopping portal.
Adding another rewards program to an already crowded portfolio can definitely be a bit cumbersome, but the incredibly high earning potential for hotel bookings and the valuable loyalty program partners make it worth a consideration.
Just keep in mind that i) you do need to compare prices across platforms to ensure that earning Rove Miles doesn’t end up costing you more than they’re worth, and ii) remember that the really high earning rates on hotel have a good chance of being lowered as the program matures.
Overall, Rove Miles is an exciting new addition to the loyalty landscape, and it will be interesting to see how it grows over the coming years.
Rove Miles is a new loyalty program offering travelers the ability to earn rewards on their flights, hotel stays, and online shopping, and then redeem these miles for savings on travel across the Rove platform and through transfers to multiple loyalty program partners.
Advertising itself as the “first universal airline mile,” Rove has set its sights high in terms of how it aims to be used and enjoyed, so it will be fun to see how the program continues to expand and how it fits itself into the constantly changing loyalty landscape.
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