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Agoda launches PointsMAX – a Kaligo-style miles earning booking site

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You may never have heard of Agoda.  It is a Hotels.com-style hotel booking website, originally launched in Asia.  It was acquired by Priceline and is now a sister company to booking.com.

The reason that Agoda has become interesting is that it has started to offer frequent flyer miles with every hotel booking you make via a new service called PointsMAX.

This puts it into competition with Kaligo.com, Rocketmiles and PointsHound – PointsHound also being owned by Priceline.

Neither British Airways or Virgin Atlantic are PointsMAX partners, unfortunately.  On the upside, it does work with a large number of other airlines where it is often tricky for UK residents to earn miles without flying.

Agoda PointsMAX partners are:

  • AirAsia BIG
  • Asia Miles
  • Delta SkyMiles
  • Fortune Wings Club
  • HawaiianMiles
  • Singapore KrisFlyer
  • Philippine Airlines Mahubhay Miles (new one to me!)
  • SkyPearl Club
  • United MileagePlus
  • American Airlines AAdvantage
  • China Airlines Dynasty
  • Eastern Miles
  • GarudaMiles
  • JetPrivilege
  • Malaysia Airlines Enrich
  • Ping An Wanlitong (another new one to me!)
  • Qatar Airways Privilege Club
  • Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus

The earning rate, based on American Airlines, seems to be roughly 1 mile per £1 spent.  There are special promotions on certain rooms.  What you won’t see at the moment are any generous new customer bonuses of the sort regularly offered by Kaligo.com or Rocketmiles.

Remember that any room booked via Agoda PointsMAX will NOT earn hotel loyalty points from the hotel itself as it will be treated as a third-party booking.  You may or may not get your status benefits depending on the chain and the attitude of the individual hotel.

You can have a play around with PointsMAX to check out the earning potential here.

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Comments (7)

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

  • William Charles says:
    10 Jul10 July 06:23

    Few notes:

    PointsMAX was launched early 2016, so isn’t that new now
    When you look at the PointsMAX rate, you’re basically just purchasing miles at an expensive rate (they give you two options, with or without PointsMAX). It was basically pricing points at close to $0.03USD per point/mile, not a good deal.

    Wish it was the standard Agoda rates and inventory with miles/points bonus, but it isn’t.

  • Genghis says:
    10 Jul10 July 07:48

    Indeed. 6% cash back on the standard rate is to infinity better than buying miles for 2p each!

  • CV3V says:
    10 Jul10 July 09:45

    Don’t know if it still applies, but Agoda used to have a nasty habit of hiding local taxes until you were about to pay, other booking websites included such costs upfront, so the initial impression was that Agoda was offering the best rates.

  • Lady London says:
    10 Jul10 July 12:08

    I have found Agoda to have exceptional rates in Asia, including at peak times when every other site priced a particular hotel or location high. For certain Asian-owned hotel groups they also seem to have arranged good deals that occasionally can be used at hotels located n other geographies

    They seem close enough to about th esame pricing as other sites for other geographies and non-Asian owned chains though. Watch out, their rates do not always include all the taxes, even sales taxes.

    I make a point of not forgetting them if I’m booking for Asia.

  • Ray says:
    10 Jul10 July 12:30

    I use Agoda as her price is always lower than Expedia, however I am not book from Agoda just use Agoda’s price to BRG Expedia, it is alwasy works!

  • Jake says:
    13 Jul13 July 16:13

    @Raffles – PointsHound is owned by Points.com…not Priceline. Rocketmiles is owned by Prilceine.

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

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