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Miles & More has expanded its long-running Booking.com partnership so that as well as earning miles through Booking.com purchases, members can now use their miles towards the cost of accommodation booked on the platform.
How the redemptions work
- Redemptions start at 3,000 miles, with the maximum available determined by the member’s own account balance and displayed during the booking process.
- Members choose how many miles to apply using a slider, and the miles are deducted from the account in real time.
- Miles cannot be applied to certain local fees and charges, so some, possibly all, bookings will leave a cash balance that has to be settled with a standard payment method.
- Miles can only be applied when the ‘Pay now’ option is selected on the payment page. Deferred payment and payment on arrival are not eligible to earn miles.
- Members have to sign in to their Miles & More account during the booking process, and consent to their data being passed to Booking.com the first time they do so, but not on subsequent bookings.
- Booking.com’s Genius discount still applies to bookings paid for partly with miles.
- No miles are earned on a redemption booking (not even on the taxes and fees cash element).
- In this initial phase, the bookings can be made through the Booking.com desktop and mobile websites. Miles & More does not mention the Booking.com app.
Access is through two separate co-branded Booking.com pages linked from the Miles & More website, one for earning miles and one for redeeming miles, and eligible properties are badged in the search results.
Miles & More says that promotions offering extra miles are planned as the partnership develops.
The redemption rate
Miles & More hasn’t published a cents-per-mile figure for these redemptions and the press release doesn’t give one, so the only way to see what a mile is worth is to run a search on the redemption page and read the cash reduction off the slider.
That slider only appears for an account that’s logged in and holding at least 3,000 miles, which means members with an empty balance, like us, can’t see it at all.
The partner page on the Miles & More website hasn’t been updated either, and still describes the earning side only.
Quick thoughts
This is a fixed-value cash offset, which is the same shape as every other pay-with-points hotel portal, and those are almost always a poor use of an airline currency compared with a premium cabin award.
Until the rate is established as being a good one (and we strongly doubt that it will be), this use of Miles & More miles should probably be treated as a route by which to use up a small number of miles that would otherwise go unused and then expire.
Miles & More miles expire 36 months after the date of the activity that generated them, at the end of that quarter, unless the member holds Frequent Traveller, Senator or HON Circle Member status, or, in some countries, a Miles & More credit card.
With only 3,000 miles needed to use the Booking.com option, this is likely to be an easier route to clearing out a small Miles & More balance than the route involving an award booking.
Finally, it should be noted that even if turns out that there are times when using miles to book stays through Booking.com is a good deal, that booking will be viewed as a third-party booking, so at most chains there will be no elite night credits awarded not are any elite benefits likely to be honored.
Bottom line
Miles & More members can now use miles towards accommodation on Booking.com as long as they have at least 3,000 miles in their accounts. The miles will be deducted in real time, the Booking.com Genius discount remains in place, but any hotel fees or local taxes will have to be settled with a credit card as miles cannot be used to cover those.
We don’t yet know what he redemption rate looks like (it’s unlikely to be impressive), but if you’ve checked out the redemption page, please let us know the value/miles you were offered.
