Rocketmiles vs Kaligo vs PointsHound (Part 4) – Miles Earning Opportunities (UK)

July 9, 2015

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This is the fourth in a series of six posts in which I’m taking a closer look a the 3 big “miles for hotel stays” websites.

Part 1 – A look at the choice and quality of loyalty programs offered and a look at the selection of hotels available on the sites.

Part 2 – A look at the prices the sites are offering.

Part 3 – A look at mileage earning opportunities – USA Centric Analysis

Part 4 – A look at mileage earning opportunities – UK Centric Analysis

Part 5 – A look at what miles you should be electing to earn

Part 6 – A look at other benefits offered, positives/negatives to using these sites & a summary of the findings with conclusions.

What are Rocketmiles, Kaligo and PointsHound?

These are hotel booking sites which allow you to earn miles, in a variety of loyalty programs (predominantly airline loyalty programs), when you book hotel stays.

Which one of the sites offers the best miles earning opportunities?

The honest answer to this question is that it may vary from day-to-day. These sites often offer bonus points and other incentives that could sway a user’s decision on any given day. The best I can do for the purposes of this exercise is compare them right now and show you what the results look like.

Your decision on which site to use may be guided by which loyalty program’s points/miles you’re most interested in earning, but what happens if more than one site offers your choice of loyalty program?

This test was conducted from a UK centric standpoint (if you’re reading this as a USA based reader this may still be of use but I posted a more US focused post in part 3 of this series).

Notes:

For UK based travellers the main airline currencies are British Airways Avios and Virgin Flying Club miles so those are the loyalty programs I chose to focus on.
Unfortunately only two of the sites (Rocketmiles & Kaligo) offer British Airways Avios. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how the earning rates vary between the two sites.
As these tests look to compare miles earning opportunities over the longer term I have ignored any one-off bonuses available for first time users of the sites.
The same hotels, resorts and locations that used for the tests in parts 1, 2 & 3 of this review were used here.

The Results:

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles earned for a 7-night stay (double-click to enlarge):

British Airways Avios earned for a 7-night stay (double-click to enlarge):

The results followed a similar pattern to those found when I looked at the earning opportunities for AAdvantage, Mileage Plan & MileagePlus miles in part 3 – Rocketmiles wins most of the time.

For both loyalty systems Kaligo offered the most miles for just 4 of the 20 hotels/resorts sampled, with RocketMiles offering the most for the remaining 20.

For the one UK loyalty system that PointsHound offers (Virgin) it failed to give the highest number of miles for any of the hotels/resorts.

There were two, further, interesting factors:

Firstly: There was very little difference between the number of Avios on offer or Virgin Flying Club miles on offer at any given hotel/resort – the biggest difference was a difference of 2,700 points spread across 7 nights.

RocketMiles offered the same return for both British Airways Avios and Virgin Atlantic Miles in 13 out of the 24 hotels/resorts sampled while Kaligo offered the same number of miles in 20 out of the 24 hotels/resorts sampled.

Secondly: Rocketmiles failed to show inventory for 2 out of 3 New York hotels when British Airways Avios or Virgin Atlantic Flying miles were selected as the reward currency. When the reward currency was changed to AAdvantage miles, Alaska Miles or United miles the inventory became available again.

From a purely “how many points can you earn?” standpoint there appear to be two conclusions this data points towards (although I accept that this sample isn’t statistically significant):

Rocketmiles is the more likely to offer the most miles for a hotel booking if Avios or Virgin Flying Club miles are what you’re collecting.
There is little variation between the loyalty systems when it comes to how many miles you can earn at any given hotel.

WINNER – Rocketmiles
Second: Kaligo
Third: PointsHound

What happens if we factor price into the equation?

Another way of looking at the return you can get from the miles-earning hotel sites is to see how many miles are offered per $ spent. This is probably a more meaningful bit of analysis for someone shopping for vacation accommodation as it will show if you’re actually earning more miles with a particular site or if you’re just paying for them.

Virgin Flying Club Miles earned per Dollar spent:

British Airways Avios earned per Dollar spent:

As with the previous test, Rocketmiles comes out on top once again and PointsHound fails to be the best option for any of the hotels/resorts sampled.

WINNER – Rocketmiles
Second: Kaligo
Third: PointsHound

Having already done this analysis for some of the US airline loyalty programs I was less surprised about the results this time (the UK results mirror the US results quite nicely) but there’s one thing that bears repeating:

PointsHound was almost always the cheapest option when I analysed the data from a price/night standpoint so it wouldn’t have been unfair to expect that site to perform quite well in the miles/$ spent test. In reality it performed quite poorly.

Without performing the miles/$ test it would have been easy believe that you earn more miles with Rocketmiles because you pay more – but that doesn’t appear to be true.

The results in these tests would seem to indicate that you get more points for your cash with Rocketmiles than you do with either Kaligo or PointsHound – but to get those miles you have to spend more. Not more per mile but more overall.

Results so far: