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Forget Flying, Earn Airline Miles Through Booking Hotels

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Interested in earning extra airline miles? Forget credit cards or actually flying, two new websites offer miles for booking hotel accommodation through their platforms. Meet PointsHound and Rocketmiles, the travel hacker's dream platform that caters to frequent business travelers by offering miles in exchange for booking hotels.

“A typical online travel site spends a portion of their commission on advertising and search in Google . That is how they acquire customers,” says Pete Van Dorn, co-founder of PointsHound, when explaining the website's business model.“We are taking a different approach and instead of spending a lot on online advertising, we are passing that commission to users in the form of points or miles.”

Book your next flight using miles earned from hotel stays. Photo credit: Alexandra Talty.

The site only offers hotel bookings that will give travelers extra loyalty points on over 20 different programs, including Bitcoins. What started off as a pet project for founders, quickly grew to the 100,000 active user platform that PointsHound is today.

“A lot of people think that they really need to fly in a plane in order to have enough miles for a redemption but the reality is, with different credit cards and things like PointsHound, you can have a pretty high frequent flyer mileage without even getting on a plane,” says Van Dorn.

How does this work exactly? Book a room at the Hyatt in San Antonio and earn 1,000 Delta Sky miles for your week-long stay. The longer you stay, the more points you can accrue. So far, Pointshound's record for bonus-points earned through booking is one man who, on his two week-long vacation to Bali, earned 73,000 American Airlines Advantage miles.

One of the downsides of booking through these third-party websites that offer bonus airlines miles is that it is impossible to accrue hotel loyalty points, similar to a website like Kayak or Expedia. If you already have elite status at a hotel chain through a credit card or through previous stays, this might not be a problem, as your elite status is honored.

“The only time when you are really at risk [by booking through third-party websites] is when you are trying to earn that status or renew that elite status,” says Scott Mackenzie, travel hacker behind site, Travel Codex. “If you are just concerned about having your benefits recognized, there is no loss if you book through PointsHound or Rocketmiles.”

But, if your goal is to earn elite top-tier status, which Mackenzie believes is worth it thanks to freebies like automatic suite upgrades, the ability to earn double points and flexible cancellation policies, it is smarter to book directly through the hotel website.

“If you want top-tier status, like Hyatt Diamond, Starwood Platinum or Hilton Diamond then you are staying many, many nights a year and you are more likely to see the rewards of booking through a hotel website. If you are earning that status you receive suite upgrades, the preferential treatment, the bonus points and then the scales really start to tip in the favor of these hotel websites,” explains Mackenzie. For more information on what top-tier status means at each hotel chain, check out Mackenzie’s detailed breakdown here.

Alexandra Talty is the Editor-in-Chief of StepFeed, the homepage of the Middle East. After leaving New York City in 2013, she used her personal finance (and journalism skills) to travel the world, before settling down in Beirut, Lebanon. She is also on Twitter.