Earning miles to get more from a hotel booking, availing car rental discounts or promotions offered by airlines and hotel companies, is nothing new for frequent travellers. But a new OTA is putting a different spin on loyalty for frequent fliers and it’s not a another new programme.

Travel suppliers signing partnerships with other suppliers to complete the journey of travellers and running cross-promotions has been around for a while.

Sensing room for improvement, Rocketmiles, a new Chicago-based hotel booking site, is promising frequent fliers ‘unheard’ quantities of frequent flier miles and points when booking rooms.

Rocketmiles, which launched in April this year, works with hotel suppliers in major business travel cities. The company relies on its technology to come up with an offer for travellers, taking into account their preferred loyalty currency, and the hotel chosen, to calculate the size of the offer. The site promises that users can book rooms at desirable premium hotels for similar rates as found on popular online travel agencies, and at the same time earn an average of 3,000 reward miles a night. It should be noted that the focus is on offering miles instead of discounts. The goal is to enable more people to take their dream vacation.

The company believes one of its strengths lies in offering hotels a premium business traveller clientele, and letting them capitalise on demand, without publicly discounting rates. The company clarifies that generally hotel rewards points will not be earned in addition to Rocketmiles’ preferred currency.  

At this point, one can earn miles from American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, HawaiianMiles, United MileagePlus, and US Airways Dividend Miles.

In conversation with Rocketmiles chief executive and co-founder Jay Hoffmann, EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta finds out about the new venture.

EFT: What are the common complaints of frequent travellers today and how does your venture address these?

JH: Our primary research reveals that many business travellers today enjoy saving up their miles so that they can be a hero in their personal life. The founders of Rocketmiles are seasoned road warriors - as a group we have logged more than 2 million airline miles and stayed at over 1,000 hotels. One year, I spent 163 nights on the road, which can take its toll. Booking through Rocketmiles allows frequent travellers to earn miles faster so they can take more trips, travel more comfortably, bring more family or friends along on their vacation and visit farther destinations.

EFT: Isn’t your service in competition with hotels then?

JH: The increasing opportunities for travellers to earn miles beyond credit cards and flying further validates the importance of services like Rocketmiles. What our customers appreciate from us that they can’t get elsewhere is a curated list of properties hand-picked by expert business travellers and the ability to maximise the amount of miles received across these high quality venues. Rocketmiles customers also get to elect to which frequent flier programme they want their miles directed to so they are not locked into one specific airline.

EFT: Who owns the customer who books via your site; are you ready to share customer profile details with hotels and airlines?  

JH: Customer data is treated securely and our technical team came from the travel and payments industries where security is a crucial element of a scalable platform. Over time, as we learn more about our customers, the platform presents search results customised to that individual.  

EFT: Can you share how a frequent flyer who typically books ten to 20 room nights a year can benefit from your venture?

JH: Absolutely. This is one of our favourite questions. A traveller who books 20 nights per year stands to gain an extra 60,000 miles. That’s the difference between celebrating an anniversary in Palm Springs and celebrating in Paris.  

EFT: What would you say has been the most challenging aspect of this venture so far?

JH: Deciding where to focus. Customers told us that they were interested in a more simple travel shopping experience across the spectrum of travel - car rental, black car, and hotels. Several elite restaurants have inquired about finding better ways to access premium travellers. We decided to begin with hotels because of customer's willingness to try new distribution channels and due to the economics of this category.  

EFT: How do travellers today struggle to make the most of the points or miles they have accumulated?

JH: There are a segment of customers overwhelmed by the vast array of choices available in the market. Our goal is to offer a simple shopping experience with premium hotels that offer meaningful mileage incentives. On average, customers are earning 7,000 miles a booking on Rocketmiles.  

EFT: Loyalty is now a big deal for OTAs too.  How do you think the face of loyalty programmes in the OTA space in changing?

JH: Great question. It seems like an interesting debate rages between whether customers are loyal to the OTAs or loyal to the meta-search sites. Some have developed their own currency, but it’s hard to build awareness for a new programme when the average US household is already enrolled in 18 loyalty programmes. For that reason, we utilise currencies that are already familiar to our customers.  

EFT: A leisure traveller, who travels once or twice a year, would be a relatively expensive customer acquisition for Rocketmiles right? So is this venture more targeted towards frequent flyers?

JH: We developed the product with frequent travellers in mind, but have been delighted to find that leisure travellers have also been using Rocketmiles. One customer from Phoenix contacted us recently asking for a new feature that simply lists the best mileage offer for any hotel in our system.