"S Tier" Strategy with Rove
Copy and paste this redemption strategy before your morning coffee gets cold…
We’ve mentioned Rove here before and they operate similarly to Rakuten.
Instead of earning Bilt or MR Points as cash back, you earn Rove Miles for hotel bookings, flights, and using their shopping portal.
Many hotels through Rove have elevated earnings - and after booking a nonrefundable room, you get those Rove Miles instantly.
Miles can then be transferred to one of 17 travel partners, which now includes Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Red as well.
A strategy gaining traction in the points and miles community is booking hotels through Rove, earning miles instantly, and then using the miles to book your flights to that destination.
We were inspired and had to replicate this strategy ourselves.
Here’s a London hotel for 7 nights in September for less than $200 a night:
You would earn nearly 13,000 Rove Miles from this hotel booking...
So let's take those 13,000 Rove Miles and cover our flights to and from London!
Here’s your flight there:
Here’s your flight home:
One thing to note is that it does appear that Virgin has recently increased it taxes and fees on award flights - but those taxes and fees are still well below the cash retail price when booking without points.
Now, how could you maximize this redemption even further if you're traveling with a Player 2?
One of you could book a hotel through Rove and use the Rove Miles earned for one round trip flight.
The other could transfer 12,000 points to Virgin from any major points currency and book the same flight.
Then the two of you split the hotel, lowering the cost per person of that hotel to about $90 a night.
So you’re looking at 7 days in London for:
12,000 points
$90 per night
$500 round trip (taxes and fees)
That's a pretty great deal!
If you want to reverse engineer this yourself, then try using the Virgin Atlantic Reward Seat Checker to find the lowest point prices for different travel dates.
Take those dates, plug them into Rove, and find a hotel with a good Rove Miles multiplier.
Book the hotel through Rove, earn the miles from the hotel, and then book the Virgin Atlantic flights.