Virgin Atlantic has been a partner with Kaligo (hotel booking website that lets you earn airline miles) since June, but they’ve just added a new partnership. You can now use your Virgin Atlantic miles to book hotels on the Kaligo website. The official Kaligo website for this can be found at: https://www.kaligo.com/#/flyingclub-spend
Redemption Value
Hotels on the Kaligo website are now broken down into three categories when booking with miles:
- Standard: 20,000 miles per night
- Premium: 30,000 miles per night
- Luxury: 40,000 miles per night
I looked at some properties in London for one night (two people) for September 2nd-3rd and this is what I found:
- So Paddington: Standard (20,000 miles per night) or $141.01 + you earn 300 Virgin Atlantic miles (0.716¢ per point)
- Hilton London Syon Park: Premium (30,000 miles per night) or $244.57 + you earn 600 miles (0.831¢)
- The Grosvenor: Luxury (40,000 miles) or $295.32 + you earn 740 Virgin Atlantic miles (0.752¢ per point)
I did a few other searches and it seems like you’ll get anywhere from 0.7¢-0.85¢ per point. You need to keep in mind though that Kaligo doesn’t usually show the best prices and you don’t get any hotel points, the stays don’t count towards elite status and if you have any status it’s often not recognized unless you book directly. You can view the difference in price between Kaligo, direct, another third party website yourself or you can read our review on Kaligo here. I’d also recommend reading our post on Kaligo vs PointsHound vs Rocketmiles (and the individual reviews for PointsHound & Rocketmiles as well).
Booking Process
To be honest, the booking process currently sucks and I hope it’s improved. Here is what you currently need to do to book a hotel night with Kaligo using Virgin Atlantic Miles:
- Get an eVoucher(s) for the category you want to stay in by using the FlyingClub helpline
- Go to http://www.kaligo.com/flyingclub-spend and select the property you want to stay in
- Enter your eVoucher number on the payment page (you can enter multiple eVouchers for stays that are longer than one night)
It would be nice if you could just link your accounts, or book directly through FlyingClub somehow. It could be frustrating if you wanted to stay at a particular property and it suddenly becomes unavailable. It’s also annoying that it’s necessary to call each time.
Exclusions
Before you get any grand ideas of staying at the Savoy for 40,000 miles, not all properties in the Kaligo database are available to be booked with miles. For example, when looking at London (again for September 2nd – 3rd) there are 809 properties that can be booked with Kaligo if I pay cash but only 254 properties can that be booked with miles.
Our Verdict
Virgin Atlantic miles aren’t too difficult to come by, Bank of America offers a Virgin Atlantic credit card which currently and frequently offers 75,000 miles after $12,000 in spend. At the top end that would be worth $637.5 and on the lower end $525, but that’s before you discount the price difference between Kaligo and other hotel booking websites and also the fact that you don’t earn points/elite stay credits/have status recognized.
Personally I don’t see a lot of value in this program currently, but I know Kaligo plans to add other partners to this new program so let’s hope they can stream line the booking process and offer more than 1¢ per mile in value.
I’d love to know your thoughts about this new partnership in the comments below.
Hat tip to reader Stef