How I Earned 21,746 Miles on a Two-Night Hotel Stay in New York City Using Rove Miles

Recently, I needed to book a two-night stay at new york cityand, as often happens in the fall, the rates weren’t particularly good, no matter what I did while exploring my options.

This meant it was a great time to try something new and earn over 20,000 miles on my hotel booking process. That’s more than enough to fly from my local airport in Houston to Paris if you book strategically.

Since I couldn’t get a good price at one of my usual places, I tried something new to me: booking through Miles wandering to test their attractive mileage earning rates.

Related: Earn up to 45 miles per dollar: The best hotel deals you can book right now through Rove Miles

If you’re not already familiar, Rove Miles is a newer program that allows you to earn miles on travel and purchases. You can then redeem those miles for travel through the Rove Miles platform or transfer them to a small but interesting list of airline transfer partners, including some of my favorites (like Air France-KLM Flying Blue), so you can reach destinations like Paris for just 18,800 miles (plus taxes and fees).

You can read all about Rove Miles and how exactly it works. herebut I wanted to put it to the test and see how it all worked in practice.

Book a hotel to earn 28 miles per dollar through Rove Miles

When searching for a hotel in the Big Apple using Rove Miles, my first observation was that most of the options presented were not places I had stayed before. They were, at least for me, mostly off my typical list of big brand go-to places within Hyatt World, Marriott Bonvoy and others similar programs.

However, there are some exceptions: You can even earn hotel loyalty benefits on stays at select chain hotels booked through Rove Miles.

To spot those options more easily, simply turn on the option under “Loyalty Eligible,” as shown in the bottom left of the image below.

But the best overall deals for my trip (when you factor in price, hotel quality, and bonus miles earned) were at some non-chain properties.

During my search, it also became clear that when using Rove Miles to book a hotel stay, you really have to pay attention, as the higher mileage payout rates are only available with a significantly Higher nightly room rate.

For example, as shown below, for a particular property, you could pay around $356 per night and earn 28 miles for every dollar spent. Or you could pay $941 per night and earn 38 miles per dollar spent for a more expensive rate at the same hotel.

That higher earning rate also included breakfast, but it’s safe to assume you could find a solid meal for much less than the nearly $600-per-night premium required to earn an extra 10 miles for every dollar spent.

In the end, I booked the option without breakfast, which cost about $356 (plus taxes and fees) per night and earned me 28 miles for every dollar spent. That totaled 21,746 miles for the two-night stay.

Please note that I owed some taxes and fees directly to the hotel during the stay, which Rove Miles indicated would be $66.56 at the time of booking. In practice, fees and commissions cost exactly that amount.

It’s also worth noting that the price charged through Rove Miles was within a few dollars of what it would cost to book directly with the hotel on my dates.

Published miles very fast after the stay, within one or two days. If I had wanted them even earlier, I could have gotten them instantly upon booking making the stay non-refundable. I wanted a little more flexibility, so I had a refundable rate up to four days before the stay.

How was my stay at a hotel booked through Rove Miles

As for the stay itself, checking into the Life Hotel New York in the city’s NoMad neighborhood was thankfully uneventful, which is always a relief for me when booking through a third-party site.

It was certainly interesting to stay in the building where, as the name suggests, Life magazine was produced. That history is evident throughout the property, from the iconic framed covers of Life magazine to related artwork and even physical nods to the building’s past, such as a golden camera on display.

There’s a classic yet elevated early-midcentury vibe to the lobby that harkens back to the heyday of print magazine journalism in a way that feels nostalgic and important.

The building, as expected given its history, seemed older, with smaller, slower elevators and compact rooms. Truth be told, it wasn’t my favorite New York City stay of all time, but it worked well enough for a quick two-night trip.

In a nutshell

For the two-night stay I needed in New York, booking through Rove Miles netted me 21,746 miles, which I’d conservatively value at over $325, which is kind of a pretty significant cashback on that $843 stay. All that’s left to do is transfer those Rove Miles to a transfer partner like Flying Blue to book a flight like the one to Paris for just 18,800 miles (plus taxes and fees).

All mechanisms for booking through Rove Miles and receiving bonus miles worked exactly as promised. While it remains to be seen if I’ll have to stay at that exact hotel again, I have no doubt that this won’t be the last time I book a trip through Rove Miles if the earning rates stay this high.

If you want to try Rove Miles for yourself, you can earn 1,000 bonus miles when you sign up through this link.