Last month, Rove Miles launched a terrific new feature called “Loyalty Eligible” hotel stays. When you use most online travel agencies (like Expedia or Priceline) to book hotels, you don’t receive hotel points, status benefits, or elite night credits. Rove Loyalty Eligible stays are eligible for all of those hotel program-specific benefits and also earn Rove Miles at the same time.
Earlier this week, Rove announced another appealing enhancement to Loyalty Eligible stays: the hotel will now be the Merchant of Record (MOR). That means that, regardless of whether you pay in advance or at the hotel, the charges on your card will be from the hotel itself, instead of by Rove. This is great news for folks who may want to put that spend on a chain’s credit cards or trigger a card-linked spending offer.
The News
- Rove Miles has now changed the Merchant of Record for Loyalty Eligible stays booked through its platform. This means, for instance, that the charge from a Hyatt stay will appear on your credit card as the Hyatt you stayed at, not as Rove.
- This will be the case for prepaid or pay-later Loyalty Eligible stays.
- It will allow you to earn hotel-specific points on the credit card of your choice.
- It will also allow you to stack card-linked offers (like Amex or Chase offers) with stays that earn Rove Miles.
- Rove Miles earned on Loyalty Eligible stays will now take longer to post to your Rove account.
Quick Thoughts
Wow, I’m impressed with what Rove has been able to do in such a short time with Loyalty Eligible stays. To recap, when you choose this booking method, you’ll now be able to:
- Earn transferable Rove Miles on the booking
- Earn hotel points like you normally would, based on your elite status
- Earn credit card points based on the brand you’re staying with
- Receive all your normal elite benefits
- Trigger any card-linked offer you might have for that brand
That’s an incredible combination of benefits, so long as the rate that you’re paying isn’t significantly more than what you’d pay by using another method to book.
Essentially, Rove is functioning like a traditional shopping portal for Loyalty Eligible bookings, even though you’re making the booking through Rove. You pay the hotel directly, earn points, and receive benefits like you would booking directly. Then, once Rove receives their commission from the hotel, they deposit the miles into your account.
Understandably, this means that Rove Miles will take longer to appear in your account, just like you’d have to wait for a payout from a shopping portal. However, to my mind, being able to pay the hotel directly is more than worth the wait.
It’s still a good idea to compare the rates that you’d receive through other portals to what you’re earning via Rove (I like Cashback Monitor for this), but keep in mind that Rove Miles are transferable to travel partners, and can easily be redeemed for more than 1 cent per point value.
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I think I need a “Rove for Dummies” video. I tried to book a Loyalty Eligible Hilton, and I don’t see any place to add my Hilton number to the reservation.
Would you trust the Rove booking to credit your Haytt elite night if you were chasing Globalist during a 20 night challenge, that is my question. I’d love to use those tool, but I would hate to bungle my status run.