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Heathrow Rewards adds Rocketmiles as a partner and why this might be interesting

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Heathrow Rewards, the Heathrow Airport shopping loyalty scheme, added a new partner yesterday – hotel booking site Rocketmiles.

Heathrow Rewards gives you 1 point for every £1 spent in Heathrow (1 per £10 on foreign exchange) or on Heathrow Express tickets (online bookings only). Once you’ve earned 250 points you can exchange them for miles or shopping vouchers.

This is not, as you might think, a new spending opportunity.  It is actually a new EARNING opportunity for Heathrow Rewards points, which opens up some interesting options.

Heathrow Rewards

What is Rocketmiles?

Rocketmiles – if you are not familiar with it – is a similar website to PointsHound, Agoda and Kaligo.com.  You can earn airline miles and other loyalty points, in a wide variety of schemes, when you book your hotel stays via rocketmiles.com.

Rocketmiles also has regular ‘first user’ bonus promotions.  These are often worth an additional 3,000 miles or points in your chosen programme if you are a new customer.  There isn’t an offer like this running at the moment as far as I know.

(There is a valuable Kaligo.com offer at the moment.  You will receive 5,000 Avios with £500 of cumulative spend or 10,000 Avios with £1,000 of cumulative spend when you book before 11th July – your stays can be later. Details are in this HfP article.)

The one downside of Rocketmiles is that your stays will be treated as ‘non-qualifying’ by the hotel.  This means that you won’t earn points in the hotel’s own loyalty programme and you probably won’t get your status benefits either.  Rocketmiles, Kaligo.com etc are best used when booking a stay at an independent hotel or at one where you don’t actively collect their points.

Why is this new Heathrow Rewards partnership interesting?

Usually, when you earn miles via Rocketmiles, they are sent directly to the partner of your choice – Avios, Virgin Flying Club, Etihad Guest etc.

However, if you credit to Heathrow Rewards instead you will get substantial extra flexibility.

Why?  Imagine a hotel stay booked via Rocketmiles which would earn 3,000 miles or points.  Send those to Avios and you get 3,000 Avios.  Send those to Heathrow Rewards and you would have the choice of:

  • 3,000 Avios
  • 3,000 Virgin Flying Club miles
  • 3,000 Etihad Guest miles
  • 3,000 Emirates Skywards miles
  • 3,000 Miles & More miles
  • £30 Heathrow Airport shopping voucher
  • £60 Heathrow Airport parking voucher

…. and you could even mix and match across the various redemptions.  You can leave your points sitting in Heathrow Rewards until you are firm about where you need them.

A note on Miles & More

Lufthansa Miles & More is not a Rocketmiles partner because Lufthansa runs its own clone site called Miles & More Hotels.  The Heathrow Rewards partnership now allows you to pick up Miles & More miles via Rocketmiles for the first time.

There is also the opportunity for a transfer bonus

Heathrow Rewards has been running some aggressive transfer bonuses recently.  We have recently seen, for example:

  • 100% bonus on redemptions for Heathrow shopping vouchers
  • 50% bonus on transfers to Virgin Flying Club
  • 50% bonus on transfers to Avios
  • 100% bonus on transfers to Miles & More

Even if your only interest from Rocketmiles is earning, say, Avios points, it may well make more sense to credit your stays to Heathrow Rewards and wait for a transfer bonus.  If there is no bonus, you can still convert at the standard rate and you aren’t any worse off.

The Heathrow Rewards / Rocketmiles home page is here.

If you are an existing Rocketmiles customer you can use this immediately if you wish to switch from taking Avios etc directly.  If you are not, you might want to hold off for a decent ‘new customer’ bonus offer to come along.

You can learn more about the partnership on the Heathrow Rewards website here.

PS.  There is one odd thing about how Rocketmiles works.  It returns a different number of results depending on your partner.  In London for 21 July, it offer points with 32 hotels if you select Heathrow Rewards, 79 for Avios and 80 for Virgin Flying Club.  For Sheffield, it offers 7 hotels for Heathrow Rewards but 18 for Avios and 52 for Virgin Flying Club.  The reason seems to be the distance used – in Sheffield it only shows Heathrow Rewards hotels in the city centre, whilst when you switch to Virgin as a partner it shows you hotels as far away as Barnsley!

PPS.  Heathrow Rewards points under this offer do not count towards ‘premium tier’ status – this requires you to earn 500 points purely from Heathrow Airport spending

Hotel offers update – April 2024:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

  • Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 14th May 2024. Click here.
Category

Heathrow Rewards

Comments (17)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Tom H says:
    20 Jun20 June 07:10

    Slightly OT, I had some orphaned emirates miles in an account I set up for my mum, which i converted to £220 of HR vouchers afywr the recent offer, the only issie is that they are in her name and she wont be traveling in the next 12 months through LHR. anyone have experience of spending these vouchers with a different name on (we have the same surname)?

    • Rob says:
      20 Jun20 June 08:57

      Won’t be an issue. My wife will be spending some in my name.

      • lgflyer says:
        21 Jun21 June 00:53

        I got vouchers in a different name refused at WorldDutyFree LHR T3 airside. The clerk checked with a supervisor but he said no. I ended up using them at M&S T3 arrivals and they did not question anything.

  • ankomonkey says:
    20 Jun20 June 10:54

    O/T: I’m saving for a Marriott Travel Package and plan to transfer some SPG points from my wife’s account (same postal address so allowed) to my SPG account and on to Marriott Rewards. Has anyone done the SPG transfer to another account at your address? Is it subject to a limit? Would doing this prevent me from also buying SPG points for my account? Any experiences of these types of things very welcome! TIA.

    • Genghis says:
      20 Jun20 June 11:07

      I remember reading something about a 30k cap last year (which included purchases) but looking at the SPG website there is no mention of this now. Remember also that Marriott Golds+ can transfer 50k p.a. to another Marriott account.

    • Rob says:
      20 Jun20 June 14:57

      I have done wife’s Marriott to wife’s SPG, wife’s SPG to my SPG, my SPG to my Marriott.

      Obviously my wife could have just rung Marriott and moved them directly but it’s not worth the hassle in making her do this!

      • ankomonkey says:
        20 Jun20 June 16:39

        Thanks Genghis and Rob.

        Rob, was the amount you transferred from your wife’s SPG to your SPG over 30k Starpoints? Like Genghis, I thought there was a 30k annual limit.

    • RIcatti says:
      20 Jun20 June 22:45

      Both SPG accounts must have the shared address for at least 30 days.

  • Mr Dee says:
    21 Jun21 June 08:07

    These type of sites usually mean your paying over the odds and they use the profit to fund these promotions, fair enough but long term I would be looking elsewhere than these type of sites.

  • Mark says:
    21 Jun21 June 11:21

    Slightly OT. If a hotel stay is booked as a flight+hotel through BA Holidays, does that stay count for status in that hotel’s loyalty programme? I suspect that it doesn’t, but confirmation one way or the other would be welcome.

    • Scallder says:
      21 Jun21 June 14:02

      In my experience it doesn’t. Did a BA Holidays to Dubrovnik a few years ago staying at the Hilton just outside the Old Town (nice property, and good lounge with lovely terrace overlooking the old town), and didn’t get points/nights

    • Alan says:
      21 Jun21 June 20:01

      Nope, not normally – they’re buying the hotel room at cheap rates so the property won’t want to give elite credit – sometimes you’ll get lucky but I was go into it eyes-open assuming not.

    • bill says:
      22 Jun22 June 10:16

      I booked a holiday package via BA Holidays for a stay at the Marriott. I cant even get them to add just the stay to my account let alone the possibility of any points or status.

  • HayMow says:
    23 Jun23 June 21:16

    Heathrow Rewards not yet offered as an option on the Rocketmiles app

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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