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Earn up to 10k AA miles/night with hotel bookings
Yes, there are a few different ways you can earn AA miles for hotel bookings. Rocketmiles is a great source, but AA itself has come out with a new hotel booking site: www.bookaahotels.com. It’s powered by booking.com, and AA members are receiving emails regarding a pretty lucrative offer of up to 10k points per night. I fiddled around on the site and found that not only were hotels offered, but also villas, homes, and condos. While the 10k AA miles are offered on the more expensive properties, there are situations whereby rates are competitive with other OTAs, and even the hotel’s website and you’d earn a grip of AA miles. Not bad! Let’s take a look at AA’s new site, and how you can earn up to 10k AAmiles/night with hotel bookings.
Let’s take a look at Chicago over labor day weekend.
You can sort properties by how many AA miles you’d earn.
The Raffaello priced in at $974 for 3 nights and 19k AA miles
While this isn’t 10k points per night, it is 6333. Everyone values points differently, but say you value AA miles at 1.7 cents, you’d be earning back $323, or essentially a free night. Backing out the AA miles you’d be paying $651 for the hotel.
If you compare this to Expedia
However looking at Momondo, you see you can get a better cash deal with hotels.com, but if you’re wanting AA miles it’s a debate.
Where can I earn 10k AA miles a night tho?
I searched in LA and found that a stay at the Beverly Hill Hotel would offer 10k AA miles/ night. But you’re paying A LOT.
If you’re in the market for a large home for a bunch of people…$450 a person for 3 nights. Not bad.
The site at least provides options and opportunities to buy miles at a discount.
If all things are equal, and the price is competitive, AND you’ll earn AA miles – this could be a good deal for you.
I’d suggest approaching opportunities like these as two separate transactions, buying the hotel, and buying the points. AA sells miles all the time, but the cheapest I can recall was roughly 1.72 cents during the June sale, and why I use that valuation. If the bookaahotels site is offering a good bonus, and the price is competitive, you could end up purchasing miles for much less than that, and then redeeming them for much more.
Keep in mind. This is powered by booking.com, an OTA ( Online Travel Agency), so my guess is the nights will be treated as such.
This means you won’t enjoy the Elite benefits you may carry with the hotel’s loyalty program. And the nights won’t count towards regaining status. There are exceptions, but that’s the basic rule you should keep in the back of your head. Sometimes a hotel will honor certain benefits if you show your membership card at check-in, but my experience hasn’t been great.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
80k offer in branch currently – I think this should be online soon
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash , Ink Business Unlimited you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
There is currently an 80k offer after $4k spend in 3 months available in branch, and up to 90k after $6k spend in 6 months. I suspect some version of this will be online soon if you don’t want the hassle of going into a branch.
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back. .
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
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