PointsHound.com Review – Earn Airline Miles For Your Hotel Bookings

PointsHound is another hotel booking website that lets you earn airline miles in a variety of different loyalty programs (RocketMiles & Kaligo also offer this). In this review we will look at the pros & cons of PointsHound, what airline partners they have, their referral program and other promotions and how their prices compare to other online hotel booking websites.

 

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Allows you to earn airline miles instead of hotel points on your hotel bookings, which most people find more valuable
• Their first booking bonuses are typically quite high (3,000 points)
• Offer a low price guarantee. If you find a lower advertised price, they will refund the difference. This only applies to hotels that are marked as “Price Match Guarantee”.

Cons

• You will not earn any hotel loyalty points on your hotel stays (hotel stays marked as double up will earn hotel loyalty points)
• Your stays will generally not count towards elite status (hotel stays marked as double up will count)
• Your elite status will generally not be honored. For example if you have gold status then you’d normally get guaranteed lounge access/breakfast for yourself and one guest, if you book through PointsHound you might not be eligible for this benefit.
• PointsHound is not listed on any shopping portals. Other online travel agencies (e.g Hotels.com) let you book through a portal (e.g you can get 5x Chase UR points or 7% cash back with Hotels.com)
• Limited hotel selection, they allow you to book with 150,000+ hotels whereas booking.com is closer to 600,000
• Cannot filter by best rate guarantee or double up hotels

Partner Airlines

Points Hound has the following airline partners:

• Alaska Mileage Plan
• Alitalia MilleMiglia
• American AAdvantage Miles
• Asia Miles
• Bitcoin
• Club Premier KmP
• Etihad Guest Miles
• Flying Blue Miles
• Frontier EarlyReturns
• HawaiianMiles
• Icelandair Saga Club
• Jet Airways JPMiles
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Multiplus Points
• PINS
• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
• US Airways Dividend Miles
• Virgin America Elevate Points
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Referral Program

Points Hound does offer a referral program, for every friend that you refer you’ll both earn an additional 1,000 miles after their first booking. You can invite friends at the following url: https://pointshound.com/invites

Typically you’re friends will be better off using one of the other promotions found below. You can use my link if you’d like to help support the site.

Promotions

As we mentioned previously PointsHound usually offers sign up bonuses that are larger than the referral bonus. Here is a list of the current promotions that they are offering:

• 100 Free American Airlines When You Join PointsHound + 2,000 Bonus Miles For Booking Your First Hotel, valid until March 31st, 2015
• 100 Free Virgin Atlantic When You Join PointsHound + 1,000 Bonus Miles For Booking Your First Hotel valid until March 31st, 2015

Low Price Guarantee

PointsHound offers a best rate guarantee (although they just call it a low price guarantee). If you find a lower rate on another site, they’ll refund the difference. There are some rules for them to match the price:

• The hotel room you booked must be marked as “Price Match Guarantee”
• You must find the lower room rate whilst the hotel can still be cancelled (this varies based on each hotels cancellation policy)
• Lower price must be for the same hotel, dates, length of stay and room type
• The site you’re comparing to must be directed towards consumers and operate in the same locale (e.g a website targeting businesses will not count, a website focused on the Ireland market will not count)

If you used a discount, you can still claim but they will use the discounted rate you received to compare to other listings. To file a claim you need to fill out this form, if they approve your claim the refund will be deposited into your account within 30 days.

It’s hard to judge how useful this best price guarantee really is without having personally used it before, I also wasn’t able to find anybody else who’d used it to get their experiences. If you’ve used it before then please let me know in the comments.

All that being said, this is a pretty weak best rate guarantee policy. If I am going to the trouble of finding a better rate, there should be some added benefit (e.g first night free or 10% discount) not just matching the better price. The whole thing also seems to be a bit of a moot point as I wasn’t able to find any hotels listed on their site that do offer this low price guarantee and it’s not possible to search by hotels that offer it.

Earning Miles

The amount of miles you’ll earn is dependent on a few main factors:

• What status level you have with PointsHound
• The hotel you select
• The price of the hotel you select
• The loyalty currency you choose to earn

Your miles will not post to your account until after you complete your stay, typically 2-6 weeks after your stay.

Levels

There are four different levels with PointsHound:

• Level one. When you sign up you’ll automatically be level one with PointsHound.
• Level two. You need to book 5 nights or more to achieve level two with PointsHound.
• Level three. You need to book 20 nights or more to achieve level three with PointsHound.
• Level four. ??, if you’re level four let me know.

Comparisons To Other Hotel Booking Websites

Search Comparison

When I look at a new hotel booking website that I am unfamiliar with I always like to compare it to other sites that I am familiar with based on a few key criteria: number of properties available, cheapest property, most expensive property.

I’m thinking about heading to London soon, so I thought I’d do a search for February 28th, 2015 for a one night stay which is a Saturday. I then compared this to three of the larger hotel booking websites (Agoda, Booking.com & Hotels.com). Below are the results for this booking:

	PointsHound	Agoda	Booking.com	Hotels.com
# Of Properties	?	1532	2210	?
Available Properties	157	948	1242	1284
Cheapest Property	$63.99	$29.20	$45	$38
Most Expensive Property	$1,026.99	$1,507.47	$        1,029	$1,027

Search Problems

• Only lets you sort by price (low to high), would be nice to be able to sort (high to low) as well. Not a big issue as you can just go to the end of your low to high results and work backwards.
• Cannot search for hotels that are “big earn”, “double dip” or “low rate guarantee”
• Cannot filter by amenities (e.g pool)

Price Comparison

Whenever you shop for hotel rooms, you should always do several different price comparison to make sure you’re getting a good deal. I compared three hotel rooms listed on PointsHound and looked at the prices on Agoda, Booking.com, Hotels.com & the price if you booked directly using the hotel website. I looked at the following three hotels, again using February 28th, 2015 as my date for a one night stay for two people. Where possible I compared like with like (e.g the same room types).

• Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer Street Hotel ($627.90USD + 6,700 American AAdvantage Miles)
• Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes London ($327.46 + 2,700 American AAdvantage Miles)
• Holiday Inn Express London City ($106.45 + 200 American AAdvantage Miles)

Table 1. Base Prices Compared

	PointsHound	Direct	Agoda	Booking.com	Hotels.com
Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer Street Hotel	$627.90	$546.89	$544.74	$542	$545
Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes London	$327.46	$269.13	$268.07	$267	$268
Holiday Inn Express London City	$106.45	‎$ 107.10	$107.14	$107	$107

The only hotel PointsHound was competitive on was the Holiday Inn, it actually had the best price by $0.55. On both of the other hotels, it was by far the most expensive. Obviously this is before factoring in the value of the American Airline points, let’s have a look at what happens when we include other discounts for all of the hotel sites.

Table 2. Prices Compared Including Discounts

We gave the American Airline miles two different valuations, one a generous valuation of 1.75¢ per point and the other 1¢. The other websites have the following discounts currently (although keep in mind this changes quite a bit)

• Agoda: 6% through topcashback
• Booking.com: 4.25% cash back through Simply Best Coupons or $14 cash back per stay through Savings Star
• Hotels.com: 7% through topcashback and 10% through their every ten night stays = one free night stay promotion.

Here is what the prices look like when we factor in those discounts:

	PointsHound (1¢  per point)	Direct	Agoda	Booking.com	Hotels.com	PointsHound (1.75¢  per point)
Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer Street Hotel	$560.90	$546.89	$512.06	$518.97	$452.35	$510.65
Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes London	$300.46	$269.13	$251.99	$253	$222.44	$280.21
Holiday Inn Express London City	$104.45	‎$ 107.10	$100.71	$93	$88.81	$102.95

PointsHound was a bit more competitive when we gave the airline miles a high valuation of 1.75¢ per point but were still easily beaten by Hotels.com (which can also earn 5x Chase URs instead of 7% cash back which if given a value of 1.75 per point would be even better).

Our Verdict

PointsHound’s rates weren’t really competitive, until you gave airline miles an extremely high valuation and even then other online booking sites offered better value. It might be worth getting the sign up bonus with PointsHound, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for regular bookings.

Whenever you come across a new hotel booking website, make sure you research it first to ensure you’re getting a good rate. PointsHound was pretty disappointing and it looks like they are lagging behind competitors RocketMiles & Kaligo.

In the next few days I’ll compare all three of these sites together to see which is the best out of the hotel booking websites that award you with airline miles. Check out our review of other hotel booking websites that award airline miles:

• RocketMiles Review
• Kaligo Review