Heathrow Rewards, the Heathrow Airport shopping loyalty scheme, has an interesting partnership with hotel booking site Rocketmiles which can earn you 2,000+ easy Avios or other airline miles.
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.
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.
Before I get to this new deal, let me repeat why I like this partnership.
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 2,000 miles or points. Send those to Avios and you get 2,000 Avios. This is fine but of course you’re not getting any flexibility. Send those to Heathrow Rewards and you would have the choice of:
- 2,000 Avios
- 2,000 Virgin Flying Club miles
- 2,000 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles
- 2,000 Royal Brunei RoyalSkies miles
- 2,000 Emirates Skywards miles
- 2,000 Aegean Miles&Bonus miles
- 2,000 Miles & More miles
- £20 Heathrow Airport shopping voucher
- £40 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.
(Note that Etihad Guest is no longer a partner with Heathrow Rewards.)
There is also the opportunity for a transfer bonus
Heathrow Rewards has been running some aggressive transfer bonuses recently. We have 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 Avios, 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.
You can learn more about the partnership on the Heathrow Rewards website.
Get 2,000+ Heathrow Rewards points with your first Rocketmiles booking
Via this special link, you will earn 2,000 bonus Heathrow Rewards points, on top of your base Heathrow Rewards points, when you make your first booking through Rocketmiles.
Note that this offer is NOT valid for Premium member of Heathrow Rewards or for existing Rocketmiles customers.
You have until 22nd April to book and the stay can be at any point in the future. There is no minimum spend.
Think this through. You will pick up 2,000+ Heathrow Rewards points which – at the very worst – you can, at a time of your choice, move into either 2,000 Avios, Virgin, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Royal Brunei, Aegean or Emirates miles. You could also take a £20 Heathrow shopping voucher or a £40 Heathrow parking voucher.
However ….. if Heathrow Rewards keeps running transfer bonuses ….. you would get somewhere between (as a minimum) 3,000 and 4,000 airline miles depending on the size of the bonus when you transfer! Alternatively, if they repeat the ‘100% bonus on conversions to Heathrow shopping vouchers’ offer, your 2,000 points would be worth £40 to spend at Heathrow.
And, with no minimum spend, you could do this on a £50 hotel room if you can find one. Even without a transfer bonus, you could redeem the points for a £40 Heathrow Airport Parking voucher and almost break even.
The special booking site is here. Remember that you must be a first time Rocketmiles customer.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
When I looked for a hotel in Manchester last week it was very restrictive which hotels were eligible for the bonus. Although the terms may say no min spend it appeared to me that only higher end (expensive) hotels counted which all far exceeded my corporate limit.
Disappointing that they exclude Premium members. That just seems a bit mean.
Premium members get 3000 points!
No bits – OT
Virgin £1 PE competition back again.
https://virg.in/GoldenTicket
Thanks!
Rob states that Premium Members are excluded, full stop! This does seem an unnecessary exclusion. That said, like all of the other agencies listed, RM’s prices are way above those found on Hotels Direct or Trivago…..
Premium members get 3000 points …
Hi Nigel,
Mostly, yes.
i find with independents that’s not always the case.
And if course, if someone else is paying your bill a slightly higher charge might not be an issue
There are different deals for Premium members.
Off-topic.
I need to spend about £500 on my Amex fairly quickly to trigger a voucher.
Does buying travellers cheques still count? Used this a few years ago, bought them then just deposited into bank account.
That route via Amex travel no longer exists.
Damn, never realised that.
Is there any other good ways to manufacture spend? Gift vouchers or something?
Gift vouchers yes. If your council takes Paypal like mine does you could make an early payment of your council tax.
You could load some cash into your Amazon account, which at least for me is the closest thing to outright cash you can get…
Other reward currencies are available! Crediting hotel stays to Avios is generally NOT the best value.
I have found the best stay and park deals at Heathrow have been at the Doubletree, earning lots of Hilton points. IHG have packages too.
DoubleTree is nowhere near Heathrow 🙂
Correct. However, the package includes parking at T2 / T3 car parks. You park at the hotel overnight, in the morning you drive to the car park and then get the free shuttle bus.
Interesting post – i use RM fairly frequently when staying in London and client gives me a fixed budget for hotel.
Is there any other brands that can link back to Heathrow Rewards points?
No, but they are trying to get more partners. A credit card (and I have no idea if they would do one) would be outstanding given all the redemption options. Heathrow is also less bothered about making money from HR than it is about promoting the airport, so I think they could afford to run a very generous credit card.
Agreed – this would be excellent!
The BA e store has a new partner for booking airport hotels and parking, can’t recall the name!
ParkCloud, but it is a direct BA partner.
OT.
4 days in USA. 2 in New York. Where should I spend the other 2?
Plenty to do in NYC for 4 days! Must visit USS Intrepid aircraft carrier museum.
If you must go elsewhere – drove down to Atlantic City for a night in mini-vegas.
Altantic City is not like Vegas. Especially during winter months!
Philly, Washington, Boston are all easy to get to and I would favour them in the order listed.
If travelling in the Summer there is the Hamptons or significantly better is Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard but 2 days would be a stretch.
Lots of good resorts on the Jersey Coast in the summer too and reachable by train.
If you were to stay in NYC for 4 days, you could take a day trip on the train to DC
OT: Any issues with booking a stay at Hilton Doha for a colleague under my profile? (I know its fine in the UK and other countries just wondering if Doha has restrictions)
Also any experience of a good discount code to use with Hilton?
Average hotel. Find the intercontinental, St Regis or W far better and can be had for similar rates.
But to answer your question not sure as I checked in as myself but they did check ID
OT: I’ve just been credited with 2019 Avios labelled as a special promotion but I can’t think where they’ve come from? I’m not complaining just curious, any ideas?
Got these too. It says ‘Birthday Promotion’ on my recent transactions even though I got 2,018 on my actually birthday!
It’s almost exactly 6 months from my birthday though?
Must be a BA error! I’m sure the more widely it’s known, the less likely it is that they’ll take them away!
As no bits today… Got the HSBC Premier Credit Card a week ago and have reached the £1000 spend already with my tax bill 🙁 via curve. Anyone have any experience of how long it takes for the rewards points bonus to drop and how long it takes for points to land in general after a transaction as it’s still at zero. TIA
I’ve had my HSBC Premier World Elite for more than a month and my points balance is still zero despite hitting the bonus target and more. Due to get my statement soon so I expect it’s after every statement?
OT (Sorry)
Have to spend £200 by tomorrow on my Amex to trigger £15k spend bonus….can I just buy a load of Amazon vouchers? Any other efficient way of triggering the bonus?
Yep you can just directly top-up your Amazon account. Gift cards from the supermarket a good way too if you don’t want it all as Amazon credit – if you have a Morrisons nearby then use them and pick up some More points too.
We’re looking for someone to take one for the team and stay at the Staybridge Suites 🙂
If not there’s currently an offer at the Marriott Heathrow for certain dates which comes with free parking. Parking’s usually £15 a day so the cash saving may be worth more than avios.
I’m leaving it until 1st Feb as I have an Accelerate target which requires a February stay!
Good God man you can’t go! They’ve got saucepans in the bedrooms!
Thank you. I also realised this question was asked above in a similar manner after posting!
Sometimes these 3rd party point suppliers work out and, usually, they don’t (if one pays with one’s own funds). So let’s see. I have an early May layover at AKL to meet a 7am departure and the airport is nowhere near anything that can be described as a town worth staying in. So Novotel or Ibis it is then, and the possibility of a few bonus HR points as a sweetener? Ibis std double room comes in at …
RM = £75.67 (inc. 500 HR points)
Expedia = £76.00
Ibis website = £75.40
Looks like I’ve just bagged 500 HR points for 27p. Bargainous. And, if the 2,000 HR Bonus points actually come to fruition then it’s quintuply bargainous.
Assuming no value on Accor points / avios through a direct booking.