Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

FOR NEW AND EXISTING USERS: Get 5,000 Avios or other miles with a Rocketmiles hotel booking

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Hotel booking site Rocketmiles has launched an EXCELLENT Black Friday promotion which can earn you 5,000+ easy Avios or other airline miles from just one booking.

Importantly, this offer is open to ALL Rocketmiles customers.  It is not just for new users – even if you have booked with Rocketmiles before, you can still get the 5,000 bonus points.

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.

Get 5,000+ miles with your next Rocketmiles booking

Via this Black Friday link, you will earn 5,000 bonus miles, on top of your base miles, when you make a booking through Rocketmiles before Monday night.  The stay can be at any point in the future.

You get 5,000 bonus points on all participating hotels.

It is not fully clear what makes a hotel ‘participating’ although they are clearly marked with the 5,000 bonus points.  You do not get the bonus if you book one of the hotels on the site which is offered via the Rocketmiles partnership with booking.com – you need to select a hotel where you complete the booking on the Rocketmiles site.

I did a few experiments and it seems that you need to be spending roughly £200 in total to be offered the 5,000 bonus points.

Of the airlines we tend to cover on Head for Points, the following are included in the offer:

  • American Airlines AAdvantage
  • Etihad Guest
  • Heathrow Rewards
  • Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

“But what about Avios?” you shout …..

I was coming to that.

IN THEORY, Avios is excluded.  The small print of the offer says:

“Promotion cannot be redeemed through Flying Blue, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, JetBlue TrueBlue, Frontier EarlyReturns, Southwest Rapid Rewards, Norwegian Reward, Avios Travel Rewards Programme, British Airways Executive Club, Icelandair Saga Club, Asia Miles, Ethiopian Airlines ShebaMiles, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, OpenTable, Amazon.com Gift Card, Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club, Total Rewards, Rakuten Super Points, Emirates Skywards, American Airlines Business Extra®, Meridiana Club, Smiles, The Home Depot Gift Card, Best Buy Gift Card, Aer Lingus AerClub, OPEN, rewards by flydubai, Uber, Pegasus Plus, Vueling Puntos, flynas nasmiles, or REI Gift Card.

All of the companies highlighted are Avios partners.

However, IN REALITY, you CAN earn 5,000 Avios from this offer.  How?  By crediting to Heathrow Rewards.

Heathrow Rewards Rocketmiles

Why should you credit your Rocketmiles stay to Heathrow Rewards?

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

The Avios airlines, however, are excluded from this offer.

However, if you credit to Heathrow Rewards instead you can ultimately move the bonus to Avios and earn 5,000 points.

Why?  Heathrow Rewards has a lot of 1:1 transfer partners.  5,000 Heathrow Rewards points from this offer can be transferred into:

  • 5,000 Avios
  • 5,000 Virgin Flying Club miles
  • 5,000 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles
  • 5,000 Royal Brunei RoyalSkies miles
  • 5,000 Emirates Skywards miles
  • 5,000 Aegean Miles&Bonus miles
  • £50 Heathrow Airport shopping voucher
  • £100 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.

There is also the opportunity for a transfer bonus

Heathrow Rewards ran some aggressive transfer bonuses in 2017 and 2018.  We have only seen one bonus in 2019, which was a 50% bonus on Asia Miles transfers.  However, we used to see:

  • 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 Virgin Atlantic miles – which is available as a partner under this offer – 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 special Rocketmiles booking page is here.

The bonus points show up during the booking process for participating hotels so there is no risk that you do not get them.  You will see something like this on screen, with the extra 5,000 points clearly marked where it is offered (click to enlarge):

Rocketmiles black friday offer

The three hotels above were the only options for a 2-night Manchester stay in January which triggered the bonus.

Do not book if you don’t see the 5,000 bonus points listed.  It means that your hotel is not participating.

Remember that you need to book by Monday night but the stay can be at some future date.

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

Category

British Airways and Avios, Emirates and Emirates Skywards, Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (40)

  • The Original Nick says:
    30 Nov30 November 13:01

    OT, I’m using Melia app to try and make a reservation for Havana Cuba and it’s showing the currency in AUD. Also shows in USD at the same time. Does anyone know how to change this to GBP? It’s possible to do this via Laptop but then I don’t get the extra 5% off for using the app.

  • Andy says:
    30 Nov30 November 13:08

    OT:

    BA have cancelled my flight to Alicante next year and rearranged it to the morning instead, which is not acceptable.

    If i accept an alternative flight the following day will BA be liable for Duty of Care still? They are saying they are only liable for duty of care expenses if cancellation occurs within two weeks of travel. Nonsense according to EU261 and CAA guidelines?

    • Shoestring says:
      30 Nov30 November 13:22

      yes there’s no time limit (such as the ‘within 2 weeks of flight’ stated) with duty of care

      complete nonsense & BA will pay out fine, just keep to the rough guidelines £200 hotel/ night, £25 food (can be exceeded no problem), no booze expensable, taxis to/ from hotel

  • Secret Squirrel says:
    30 Nov30 November 13:12

    OT:
    Anyone have the Iberia Groupon contact email as been 15 x days and no avios been credited.

    • Shoestring says:
      30 Nov30 November 13:34

      try Chat with Groupon Spain, I doubt if Iberia can help you

      • Secret Squirrel says:
        30 Nov30 November 18:57

        Cheers SS, found Groupon Spain live chat. They admitted time frame exceeded & asked for screenshot of my IB account to prove no groupon has been credited.

  • Tical says:
    30 Nov30 November 15:56

    OT but hotel related: any recommendations for a hotel very close to Dubai Airport? Landing around 9.30pm with a 1-year old and prefer to check into a hotel right away for the night before travelling to Ras al Khaimah? Thanks

    • Tanya says:
      30 Nov30 November 16:01

      Raffles is very close and nice. The drive to RAK isn’t too bad either.

      • Rob says:
        30 Nov30 November 18:10

        Park Hyatt is very nice.

        There is also a new Hyatt Place very close which I reviewed recently.

        The Meridien opposite is nearest but, as you need a taxi to get there anyway, you might as well do another couple of minutes to somewhere better.

        InterCon / Crowne Plaza Festival City very good too. HI Festival City was on IHG PointBreaks this month. IC/CP linked to the mall which may be handy.

        • TGLoyalty says:
          30 Nov30 November 18:59

          Stayed at the meridian a couple years ago and the royal club itself and the rooms were very good.

        • Tical says:
          30 Nov30 November 22:30

          Thanks – Hyatt Place sounds like exactly what we need and was 5000 points or GBP81 so decent use of points

          • TGLoyalty says:
            1 Dec1 December 11:52

            Are you sure? I’d value the points at £75 but also find Hyatt hardest to earn.

            £81 cash rate less £back and points earned it’s marginal but I probably just get more personal satisfaction out of using my points for stays where I save lots more than the value I give them.

          • Rob says:
            1 Dec1 December 12:31

            You can buy Hyatt points at 1.3p during a 40% promo. 1p per point is what I use although I accept you can do better relatively easily.

  • Secret Squirrel says:
    30 Nov30 November 20:31

    Sorry, another avios question.
    Just purchased an aer club avios voucher, got the email confirmation stating I’ve got it but when i log into my Groupon.i.e. account there is no voucher?
    Even if I click the link in the email – no voucher displayed anywhere – does it take a while to show up?

  • Keith A says:
    30 Nov30 November 22:48

    I have tried booking via this link to the Rocketmiles offer and get all the way through to the payment page and it won’t accept my UK postcode in the “Billing Zip Code/ postal code” box. I’m on holiday in New Zealand at the moment and wanting to book 2 nights in Osaka in Japan in May. When trying to contact Rocketmiles via email it says my 2 UK emails (work and personal) are incorrect too!

  • Erico1875 says:
    1 Dec1 December 08:20

    8000 HR points available Campanile SSEC/Hydro Glasgow for $165 (£128) .I checked Sat 21 Dec versus £106 booking direct

  • Annie says:
    2 Dec2 December 00:40

    Just tried to book the Holiday Inn Sydney airport (00:15 Monday 2nd Dec) but as after I clicked to confirm payment on the Rocket Miles site I received the message below:
    “The reward amount changed when we reached out to finalize the reservation. You can continue with the new amount, or return to the search results to select a different offer”
    It seems the rewards changed from 8,000 to 7,500 whilst I was filling in the booking details as it didn’t go through with the 5,000 bonus reward offer. I spent probably 25 min making the booking as I had to also register with Heathrow Rewards again but the RM site it does warn the points have been reduced before making payment allowing you to opt out of the booking if you wish. Just FYI

    • Laura says:
      3 Dec3 December 11:38

      This happened to me 3 times and in the end the hotel became “unavailable” went with another hotel

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