Redeem Rove Miles for a paid stay at a loyalty-eligible rate and earn hotel points

A reader reached out with an interesting data point: when you redeem Rove Miles for a loyalty-eligible hotel rate, you can also earn hotel points and elite credit, which can add a nice bump to the effective value you’re getting for your Rove Miles.

Redeeming Rove Miles for a paid hotel stay

We’ve written quite a bit about earning Rove Miles (such as through promotions or paid hotel bookings) and about redeeming Rove Miles through transfer partners (such as with Rove’s new partners with JAL and with SAS). We haven’t written as much about redeeming Rove Miles for paid hotel stays.

However, reader Mike emailed us to highlight how this can be a strength. At redemption, you can typically get 1.35-1.5c per point toward the full rate (with taxes & fees). On the surface, that’s not bad, but perhaps not as exciting as partner redemptions. However, Mike points out that if you’re booking a loyalty-eligible rate, your booking is treated as a prepaid member rate, meaning that you’ll earn hotel points and elite credit and trigger any associated promotions.

For instance, the Courtyard hotel shown in the screen shot below has a cash rate of $117.92 plus tax (about $137 total).

It is possible to redeem 10,000 Rove Miles to pay for that stay, yielding a value of about 1.37c per point.

However, you’ll also earn Marriott points on this loyalty-eligible stay. You’d earn 10x as a base level member, 11x as a Silver member, 12.5x as a Gold member, or 15x as a Platinum member, or 17.5x as a Titanium member.

At the top end (Titanium), a member would earn 2063 Marriott points. That’s about $15.68 back based on our Reasonable Redemption Values. Additionally, there is a current hotel promotion that yields 2,500 Marriott points per stay (worth $19 by our RRV of 0.76c per Marriott point)

If you were staying one night and accounted for both promotions, you could look at it as 10,000 Rove Miles buying you a $137.14 stay + $15.68 in Marriott points on the nightly rate + $19 in Marriott points for the promotion. In all, you’d be getting a total value of $171.82 in exchange for 10,000 Rove Miles — a value of more than 1.7c per point.

In some cases, it could get even better. There’s a current Hyatt promotion that yields 5,000 points for a 5-night stay at a Hyatt House or Hyatt Studios property.

As an imaginary but realistic example, let’s say that you found a Hyatt House that costs $100 per night or 7,000 Rove Miles per night (a value of about 1.43c per point, which is realistic). A 5-night stay would cost $500 or 35,000 Rove Miles. In exchange, you could expect to earn around:

• 2,500 Hyatt points at the base member earn rate of 5 Hyatt points per dollar (give or take a little since you don’t earn Hyatt points with Hyatt based on taxes)
• 5,000 Hyatt points from the current promotion
• 5 elite night credits.

Based on our Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.8c per Hyatt point, the rebate there (7,500 total Hyatt points) is worth about $135. Here’s how that works out in terms of value for Rove Miles:

• 35,000 Rove Miles buys a $500 Hyatt House stay + $135 worth of points (7500 points)
• $635 in value / 35,000 Rove Miles = 1.81c per Rove Mile

It could get even better if your stay was at a new Hyatt House or Hyatt Studios property that is offering 500 bonus points per night. The above doesn’t include any value for the elite night credits, but keep in mind that it also relies on you valuing Hyatt points the same as 1.8c each. In reality, your own valuation may be more or less. The point here isn’t to say that you should value Rove Miles more highly for paid hotel stays, but that it is possible to get solid value per point when redeeming Rove Miles for paid stays, all things considered.

The point is that Rove Miles buy more than just the hotel stay, and sometimes that return can be significant.

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