✈️ Discovering Rove Miles: Boost Your Travel Savings with Carissa Rawson 🌍💳
In this episode of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, host Justin Vacula chats with Carissa Rawson, Director of Travel and Marketing at Rove Miles, to dive into how this portal can maximize your travel savings.
💡 Learn how to:
✨ Earn extra points on everyday spending + bookings
🏨 Redeem with airlines, hotels, and loyalty programs
🔑 Unlock hidden benefits & unique portal features
🚀 Get a sneak peek at upcoming Rove perks Carissa shares insider knowledge, explains how Rove compares to other portals, and gives us a glimpse at the future of travel rewards.
🎧 Tune in for: Pro tips on travel bookings
Maximizing loyalty programs
Upcoming promos you won’t want to miss
Strategies for credit cards, points, and maximizing rewards 🔥
If you’re serious about stretching your points further, this episode is for you! ⏱️
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Travel Rewards
01:50 Meet Carissa Rawson
03:37 What is Rove Miles?
05:23 Maximizing Rove Miles
08:14 Rove Miles vs. Other Portals
20:59 Future of Rove Miles
24:33 Excitement for Upcoming Travel Plans
25:03 Loyalty Benefits and Booking Strategies
25:52 Rove’s Unique Flight Search Program
27:22 Handling Pricing Shifts and Cancellations
28:05 Addressing Misconceptions About Rove
29:56 Listener Questions and Comparisons
34:28 Upcoming Promotions and Exciting News
36:22 Personal Travel Experiences and Tips
41:18 Credit Card Strategies and New Applications
43:04 Closing Announcements and Final Thoughts
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin: you’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world, at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Rove Miles. With Carissa Rawson. Learn how you can use the Rove Miles portal to earn extra points from everyday spend and travel bookings.
Then redeem points earned with Rove, with airline [00:01:00] programs, hotels, and other loyalty programs. Visit meetup.com/PhillyMilesAndPoints to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel Credit Miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are September 28th and October 19th, 2025.
Find a link in the show notes. For more content between episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on YouTube for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips, community and posts. If you’re interested in using Rove Miles after this episode, use my referral link in the show notes. On with today’s episode, recorded August 31st, 2025.
Welcome back to the show: past podcast guest Carissa Rawson.
Carissa: Hey, Justin, I’m glad to be here.
Justin: We ran into each other [00:02:00] at everyone’s favorite Hyatt property, rio in Las Vegas. Wow. He said, what? What are you doing here? And now it’s a few months later. And you’ve recently joined the Ro Miles team as a full-time position?
Carissa: That’s right. Actually, it was just this week. I started with them few months ago on a freelance level and ended up coming on full-time as the director of Travel and marketing on Monday, last Monday. So almost a week ago. I am super, super glad to be a part of the team. Uh, the program launched in April of this year, and I only discovered it I think maybe June, July.
And I very quickly reached out to them and basically designed myself a job, pitching myself as to how I can help them grow and become a household name.
Justin: Nice. So Carissa Rossin will be a household name, Andro Miles,
Carissa: hopefully right.
Justin: Yes. And you’ve been in the miles and points space for quite some time.
We’ve spoken at conferences together in different presentations, and you’ve been a fan [00:03:00] of this hobby for some time.
Carissa: Yeah. I first got into points and miles I think in 2014, maybe 2015. I was in the military. And like any active duty person knows, it’s a gateway of credit card points since all of your annual fees are waived.
And once I had my first AMX platinum, I was hooked and I’ve been at it ever since. Been mainly like a, a writer, editor, social media person. Turns out that there’s quite a lot of marketing involved with that. I’m just now on the flip side. So yeah, I’ve really, I’ve had a lot of experience and yeah, like obviously we’ve spoken at Fest together, Chicago seminars together, all kinds of events.
Justin: Alright, so business decision. Now you’re with Rove Miles, and for those that have not heard of Rove Miles, can you give us a quick elevator pitch?
Carissa: Rove is like what you would get if you put together Expedia, Rakuten Advantage Hotels and Price Line, put ’em all into a bag, shook it up and span it out. So what I mean by that is that right now Rove is a travel [00:04:00] portal plus online shopping portal that gives you Rove miles based on your spending.
So you can book flights, you can book hotels, and you can use either the, like the website browser, the desktop browser, or the Chrome extension for your online shopping. Where row differentiates is that it gives you way more, way more points of miles on your spending than basically anybody else. And you don’t need actually any sort of credit card in order to use program and earn row miles, which are transferable.
Justin: Alright, so we know the answer to everything is more credit cards, but for those who maybe don’t have great credit, don’t use credit, maybe they’re using rewarding debit cards so they can earn more in addition to their spending. And of course, people who are using credit cards are stacking the credit card rewards with the cash bookings on the Rove portal.
Carissa: I actually would say it’s not only is it for people like, like when they first came out, they oriented themselves as like for Gen Z, the 70 million plus people who are credit invisible. But I think that [00:05:00] there’s also a really strong word to be had for people like me and like you. Who are so deep into points and miles that they either have every credit card, have had every credit card, and no longer eligible for new credit cards, or are at LL 24.
And the sort of rewards that you can get on Rove honestly equate to a welcome bonus. Um, and there’s no limit, none.
Justin: And you’ve highlighted some of these on your personal Facebook page and other spaces where there would be very high multipliers on some of these cash bookings.
Carissa: Officially, we say you can earn up to 25 x on hotel bookings.
Really, hotels is where you get the largest server turned on your spending. Online shopping, of course we’re doing promotions and things like that, but hotels, the reason you can get such really crazy returns, even 25 x is huge. But the way that Rogue works right now is that we pass along the entirety of a commission from a hotel directly to the user.
So, for example, say Expedia is gonna [00:06:00] give you 6% back at your hotel if you’re like a top tier elite. And they’re gonna give you like their one key cash. That doesn’t take into account how much of a commission a hotel is willing to give you. And it’ll be less like during really popular tourist seasons when it’s on the weekend based on demands of travel and patterns of travel when it’s lower.
Frequency stays and when it’s not like a, when it’s a boutique hotel versus a chain, you can get some really crazy commissions, which means that the users can get some really crazy earnings. I have been boasting, I have on my personal page, but I’m also the admin for Road Miles Insiders on Facebook, and we have a private discord, by the way, but where I highlight some of these deals and I think the highest I’ve seen, 74 x at a hotel.
In Dubai, and that’s not like super uncommon. So study Forex is really high, right? Seeing 50, 60, 45, 36 X on hotels is really not that uncommon. In fact, I can’t throw a stick during the [00:07:00] search bar and not find it. Yeah, you can get some really into this. Compare that to something like even Amex, FHR or Capital One’s, venture X bookings where you get 10 x on hotels and it doesn’t compare.
Justin: So America indeed loves math. If you were to book something like a $250 hotel night, you get 20 x Rove points that I would presume post after the stay.
Carissa: If it’s a non-refundable, stay your miles post instantly, which is really big news, I think that you probably recognize why. But yeah, if it’s a non-refundable stand and we’re working on making the option to have every hotel become non-refundable, but as soon as you book your hotel.
You get your miles in your account and that’s good for a couple of reasons. After you sleep, you wanna use them to immediately then book your flight. That’s cool. If you wanna use them to then extend your hotel, stay by three more nights, that’s cool. There are a lot of ways that you can earn a lot of miles and if you book this really expensive hotel and like you miss your flight or your grandma gets sick or [00:08:00] whatever, we’re not gonna punish you for that and you paid for hotel, you’re still gonna get the miles.
Justin: Okay, so that’s interesting. So if you book a non-refundable stay, and those points would post immediately rather than having to wait for maybe a month or a certain statement to close on a credit card. So that’s a nice benefit, and if it is a stay that could be canceled, then you would have to wait for after the stay to get the points, because America loves math.
If you were to book something like a $250 hotel night on the Rove portal. Getting 25 x, you would get a lot of Rove points. Yep. And what might those RO points be worth?
Carissa: Officially, we say they’re worth up to 2.20 cents each. The value is of course, gonna depend on how you redeem them. So right now we have 12 hotel and airline partners.
We have mostly airlines including favorites to like Flying Blue Cafe Pacific, and we have both fan Air and Qatar Airways for obvious. We also have some ones that like don’t. You don’t see anywhere else. You don’t see with Amex. Chase City, capital One, we’ve got [00:09:00] Air India, we have PIN on airlines, we have Thai Airways, and we have Vietnam, Lotus Miles, and those ones are individual to us.
I can easily spout off all of the sweet spots from these programs, but I’ll just say this, for example, air India, you can get a short haul domestic flight, United flight for 3,500 miles. That’s basically free three, 500 miles for your flight. You can also redeem your miles within Rose oral, and the value of that, again, will vary based on for hotels, for commission and for flights.
I think we’re at like a 0.1, 0.1 0.42 cents per mile if you redeem for a flight, which is suboptimal, but better than you’ll get for the Chase staff I preferred, or the Chase staff or reserve after the next two years. It’s obviously better than Amex and all of the others, but you’re just at one step each.
If you’re lucky, if you’re looking at hotels, you can do some pretty crazy things. Again, it’s based on commission and the simper point value is gonna be, is gonna increase according [00:10:00] to the commission. So it coasted maybe two or three weeks ago a deal on the Maldives where you could pay $1,500 for an, I think it was a beach villa, all inclusive.
And it was $1,500 for three nights, which would earn you something like 75,000 road miles. And then you could redeem three more nights for 37,000 miles. So you could be staying six nights, paying $1,500, and then still have what, 30 something, 40 something thousand miles left over. And of course in that example, like the miles are worth an astronomical now.
Justin: Nice. Sounds like a really good rebate. Yeah, especially if there are no major properties like Hyatt, Hilton or Wyndham, or maybe those rates are very high. So I could see reasons that people would want to use Rove rather than using points in some circumstances.
Carissa: Yeah, absolutely. I think there are some very specific use cases where it makes a [00:11:00] lot of sense if you’re going to Disney.
If you’re staying at all inclusive, your benefits, your free breakfast don’t matter because you’re at an all inclusive. If you are staying, for example, at a Marriott property, I posted a deal a couple of days ago that was 50,000, 53,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, or 18,000 Rose Miles, and you’re missing out on your free breakfast from your Marriotts day, your courtyard Marriott.
But in exchange, you’re saving 20, 30,000 miles or points. Definitely some reasons why you would wanna use it instead of booking directly.
Justin: Some listeners like Airbnb, particularly because they travel with many people or family, so they want a space for maybe five or six people. Mm-hmm. In a house or some kind of bigger apartment.
How might Rove compare to Airbnb?
Carissa: So we don’t have currently a de, like a dedicated vacation home sort of thing. Like we don’t have Marriott home in villas. We’re still pretty new. But interestingly, we do end up [00:12:00] having some vacation homes on the platform and it’s just whoever has decided to upload it as that.
So I see quite a few of them in popular vacation destinations. Orlando, for example, is huge. Eight bedrooms, 10 bedrooms, Las Vegas. I’ve seen some. So while there’s not like a dedicated tab. For vacation homes, they’re on there. They just take some poking around.
Justin: Are there filter features on the RO portal that might show options that would accommodate more people or more guests?
Carissa: At this point, we don’t have a separator for one bedroom or not, because it’s not technically, it’s technically supposed to be hotel based, but those ones are in there anyways.
Justin: Okay. And maybe different room types would be shown that would host more people?
Carissa: Yeah, maybe like suites. Or if you wanna, yeah, something like that.
Or if you wanna do it by amenities like private pool or something like that.
Justin: What are some features of the portal that you can use to try to narrow or filter for different search results? [00:13:00]
Carissa: We actually have a really interesting one. The way that you do your searches, it’s, I don’t wanna say it’s not like predictive, but it’s like using predictive language.
So it’s things like pet friendly or provides like dog food bowls. It has like hundreds of different things on there that you can like filter it by. And they have all the standard ones, which is connecting rooms, has a pool, has a breakfast included, is all inclusive, has this many stars, has these sort of amenities, cost this much per night.
We also have a toggle for whether we won’t cost this much in drove miles versus cash, things like that. But then we also have that really interesting one that has like hundreds of filters based on anything you can think of.
Justin: Nice. Is this similar to something like the Chase Travel portal, Expedia or other portals online?
Carissa: Something like that.
Justin: And what are some advantages of Rove versus the other portals besides the increased points earning,
Carissa: not only are you earning more points, the points that you’re earning are a lot more valuable, right? There’s no, you can’t [00:14:00] get transferable rewards from Priceline or Expedia or hotels.com or any of that, just full stop.
So for any other, like OTA, of course, we just blow them outta the water. If you’re into transferable rewards, we also blow them out of the water because we have way better earnings and our partners are comparable, they’re competitive. As far as online shopping goes, we’re, we are on Cashback monitor, and you can see on there that we’ve got 7,000 plus stores and our closest competitor, I think is Rakuten, which has 1200 stores.
So we have way more stores than everybody else. I’ll also say this, for our online shopping, we consistently give. 3.2 x row miles per dollar spent on any gift cards bought@giftcards.com, including Visa, MasterCard, gift cards. Oh yeah, I know. Our very first promotion was one that I designed where we bumped it up to four x, and if you combine that, obviously a travel credit card or like venture card, which gives you two x, then you’re [00:15:00] up to 6.1 x on every dollar stamp for those gift cards.
Justin: Yes, unfortunately, I think I got a lifetime achievement award. I can’t place any orders through gift cards.com, MasterCard, gift card.com, or other sites. I think due to past promotions and lots of orders, but maybe some listeners would have success there.
Carissa: Love to take advantage. Sorry, sorry for your luck, but it’s a pretty good one.
No,
Justin: I had a good run while it was a thing.
Carissa: Yeah. Yeah. All the
Justin: fee free promotions and bonuses, negative cost cards of the past. Portal stacking fun times. It’s tough, but back from the dead. Then, if Rove is giving some bonus points on those purchases and for the online shopping, how do people know that they got credited?
Is there a follow up email or some sort of notification to make sure,
Carissa: so I’m glad you asked that because this is something I keep bumping up against when talking to people and talking to users. After you make your purchase within 24 hours on your account page, you have a pending miles thing, you just scroll down to [00:16:00] the very bottom.
It’ll show you your activity. If you have done your shopping and you haven’t gotten your credit the way that you should have gotten your credit. We have a form in our little chat help thing that is like a missing row of miles, whatever. You fill it out and then we send it onto the merchant and then credit from there.
We are in the middle of building the shopping trips tab like you’ll find on Market 10. So that you can track every single shopping trip you’ve done, see whether it’s tracked and what’s going on. So that’s in the process of being built.
Justin: Oh, that’s good. And I’m sure people can see YA by taking screenshots as well as they’ve made the purchases.
So that could be something helpful. ’cause that’s some times a criticism of other portals, like swag books especially, and top cash back and other things that may not track.
Carissa: I’ve had such bad luck with those ones that I honestly, if it’s not on Rakuten or Row, or one of them, maybe the airline ones, I usually don’t even bother.
Like I, it makes me so angry, so I just [00:17:00] don’t do it.
Justin: Yes, the war unhappiness continues. It’s
Carissa: news,
Justin: you know,
both: I
Justin: remember during 20 19, 20 20, there were a lot of. Pandemic offers. Ooh. Spend $40 on wine with bright sellers and get 4,000 swipe bucks back. And yeah, there was a little bit of a hassle getting credit on those things.
Carissa: Yeah, that is just infuriating. But yeah, so we’re really proactive. We’re really, at this point, we’re a really small team and one of the sort of core things about Grove is that we’re trying to keep customer service really high, because right now, currently. We are booking as a third party, and everybody hates booking third parties because obviously you have a reduced service in case things go wrong, and we know that.
So one of the core principles in the ethos for Rove is that everything is staying in-house for customer service, being very customer-friendly, very customer-centric, and helping alleviate any issues and then doing you one better so that if something ever does pop up, we’re not looking to lose you as a customer.
Justin: That’s good to know. [00:18:00] ’cause I’ve heard stories of, oh, I tried to book such and such hotel through the Chase travel portal. Then I called the hotel and they say, no, we can’t deal with it. You have to call the Chase Travel Portal people. So how might that work with Rove?
Carissa: Yeah, so any booking that you have can be dealt with directly through the hotel, but if you end up running into any issues, then the Rove people are online basically all the time and answering your questions and coordinating on your behalf and and taking care of any issues.
It’s not this super bureau, chronic long-winded, trying to deny your service, trying to jilt you outta your points sort of system. It’s not like that at all.
Justin: Oh, that’s good. Not having to go through an archeological dig and look up all these emails and reservations, and then you’re at the property and they’re saying the reservation’s not there, or they can’t honor it.
Carissa: It’s meant to be the exact opposite of that.
Justin: Alright, sounds good. We’ll move into middle of the episode announcements and then return to discussion. If you’re enjoying today’s episode, don’t forget Zork Fest. [00:19:00] 2025 is coming up in Las Vegas, December 5th through the seventh at M Resort Casino Hotel, and Carissa is going to be there with me.
I
Carissa: sure am.
Justin: Zork Fest combines miles points and gambling content all in one weekend. I’ll be there speaking and connecting with the community. Grab your ticket@zorkfest.travel zork.com. Come hang out in Vegas with me. I’ll also be speaking at Chicago Seminar’s Hyatt Regency O’Hare, November 7th through the ninth, 2025.
Use promo code Dy Gerdy when buying a ticket to support me. Also, join me from October 24th through the 26th, 2025 Chicago Seminar’s, holiday Inn, Chicago Oakbrook. Use promo code. I must have a promo code, 20 for $20 off tickets, and you’ll be at both events. Maybe one.
Carissa: Both Chicago seminars and Zork Fest.
Justin: All right. All three. Yeah. And this episode is also supported by card [00:20:00] pointers. If you have multiple credit cards like me, card pointers helps you automatically activate offers and know which card to use at checkout. For maximum rewards card pointers saves me time and money, use my link card pointers.com/herty.
Gerdy travel for a discount on annual and lifetime plans. And if you’re listening on or around August 31st, 2025, there’s currently. A Labor Day sale for even more discounts on memberships. Finally, I host monthly travel and points meetups in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Our next meetups are September 28th and October 19th, 2025.
If you’re local or want to make the trip, it’s a fun, casual way to talk points, strategies. Meet like-minded travelers and share ideas. RSVP at meetup.com/philly. Miles and points. Shout out to some of the attendees who recently came out from Washington DC and Rochester, New York. We’ve also had people flying in from other states.
Alright, back to the discussion. Let’s talk [00:21:00] about the future of Grove Miles. What’s on the roadmap and are there any new features or coming features?
Carissa: That’s a huge question. There is so much planned for row We right now. Functioning as a travel portal with just flights, hotels, and shopping, but as, and that’s just in the last few months since we’ve been a company, but we’re working on so many things.
We’ve got Cardlink offers coming up, and what that means is essentially if we have it on the portal and you have your card link, the portal, then you can be in person in the store and you don’t have to activate the offer as soon as you pay with your credit card. You’re gonna earn the miles. So that’s gonna, that’s gonna open up so much more earning for people, because you’re not gonna have to be limited, obviously, by online shopping.
And you’re not gonna have to remember to activate most of, there’s something else you have to activate. But most of these offers are just gonna be on your card by default. So that’s really cool.
Justin: Ah, that’s really nice. And hopefully [00:22:00] Rove is very miles and points friendly as. Lots of us will purchase gift cards or other interesting purchases and splitting tender.
You maybe not going in and making that $2,000 purchase on that credit card, but maybe making it something like 2 99 67, 3 98 64, and hopefully Rove will be on board with that kind of activity and not exclude points for transactions like that.
Carissa: RO is a points and miles company made by points and miles people, and.
I’m on it. So I guess you could probably just, yeah,
both: yeah.
Carissa: Like I said, our first promotion was giving four x on Visa master and gift cards. Yeah. Yeah. So we want to include any type of creative ways of spending. We’re not trying to gate keep because getting users into the program and spending on the program, we’re not trying to make money off of you spending.
We’re making money off of you basically. Transferring your points at a rate like where we can buy them for cheaper [00:23:00] than it’s gonna, than sending them over. And in order for that to happen, we want a huge user base. We want to be able to buy miles in bulk to make them less expensive so that we can then pass them along to you.
That’s how Rove is working. So yeah, the more users the better. That’s it. We’re not trying Gate keep.
Justin: Nice. So we’ll once again, have the first world problem of too many grocery rewards with all those transactions earning the grocery and fuel point.
Carissa: Yeah. Oh darn.
Justin: We also print lots of printer papers still in my back room, by the way.
Carissa: So in addition to Cardlink offers, we have a couple of things coming on. We have more transfer partners coming up, so we’ve got our tool right now. I can’t tell you specifically who they are going to be, but I can tell you that you’ll really like them. You will like them. I like them. People who read frequent Miler will like them.
People who read a word wallet will like them. All of those folks will enjoy these transfer partners. We’re working on a sort of FHR esque program and what that will mean will be giving you like those [00:24:00] high-end loyalty mimicking benefits when you’re booking through the program, and it’s like late checkout, free breakfast row upgrade, whatever those sorts of benefits we’re working on, incorporating that into Grove and then my most excited one,
both: having
Carissa: the hotels that you book be loyalty eligible.
And that, that means if you book a Hyatt using cash, then you are going to get your high elite status pers and you’re also going to get your credit card perks that you pay with, and you’re also going to get growth miles.
Justin: All right. We might see you again at the Hash house, Gogo, at Rio, after all. I know.
Carissa: Honestly, like it’s, that honestly is my most exciting one. I’m really stoked about that because I, as good as the commissions are and on as. Amazing as it is to be able to earn crazy, immense road miles. I am a loyal girl at heart. I love my globalist status and being able to keep that while also earning triple dipping.
That’s something really special. [00:25:00]
Justin: All the stacking, we do love the stacking.
Carissa: Absolutely.
Justin: Yes, and I’ve had some great Hyatt redemptions even going to crack hour crack off in Poland. It was a really nice Hyatt place out there with a very big breakfast. So it would be nice to be able to add those. Loyalty benefits to bookings.
If I were to book through a Rove and the cash rates were very low.
Carissa: Unlike Advantage Hotels, we are not including the price of the hotels in order to basically sell you row miles. Like in Advantage hotels, you’re paying extra on the same hotel. We are not doing that. We do usually price match to about what Expedia has.
So it’s not like you’ve got the super inflated price compared to booking with Hyatt, for example.
Justin: All right, sounds good. And are there any integrations with different search tools, award alerts, or programs like Points Path or Google Flights?
Carissa: So we actually have our own flight search program, if you ever wanna take a look at it.
It’s actually really cool. So it is [00:26:00] unique in that it searches the cash price of rewards in addition to a transfer price at the same time. If you, for example, were wanting to go San Diego to Dallas and it costs you a hundred dollars. Um, it’s gonna show you the cost if you book to directly with ro in what it would cost you to redeem remote your road miles.
But then it’s also gonna show you how many avios it’s gonna cost or how many Cafe Pacific, Asian miles it’s going to cost because it’s gonna be flying American and you’re gonna be transferring over there. So it’s all gonna be in one single search page showing at the same time, so you can make honestly your best possible judgment call.
One search. I will say this, there is a limitation, just like Amex and built our search engine is limited to row’s current search partners. So for example, if there is that American flight from San Diego to Dallas and American has it, but it’s not at a same level, so partners can’t access it, we’re not gonna show it because we don’t have AA as a search partner.
So [00:27:00] it would have to be available partners. It’s limited in that way, so it’s not a hundred percent foolproof. For example, if you wanna have the absolute slam and best deal, you would wanna pair it with something like seat style or something like that, or dedicated search tool. But it does a really good job with showing the live searches simultaneously.
Justin: You mentioned some pricing changes. How might Rove handle pricing shifts? Say for example, if someone booked a $200 cash rate hotel, that was. Refundable, but then the rate went down to $180. Would they have to cancel the initial reservation and rebook it, or is there a way to edit that price shift?
Carissa: Currently it’s just cancel. We don’t have a modified button yet. Let me put, let me write that down now, because I think that’s a good tool. Yeah, so currently you basically need to cancel and rebook and there’s no penalty. It’s free cancellation if you, it’s either non-refundable or free cancellation.
That’s pretty much all we offer.
Justin: Okay, so then the cancel and the rebook. So to be periodically checking in on those reservations, just like we would when using [00:28:00] points for refundable flights, refundable hotels, and so on.
Carissa: Yeah, same system.
Justin: Any misconceptions that people might have about Rove? I
Carissa: think there’s a few.
I think at the outset a lot of people are skeptical because it technically is an online travel agency. For now, I’ve spent quite a lot of my career telling people for to book with an OTA. Now here I am on the other side and I think the misconception for RO is that it’s gonna be crap automatically because it’s an OTA.
But as someone who’s on the team who knows the team and who knows that, that’s a principle not to be a crappy customer service sort of situation, I can say that’s wrong. Surprise and delight. So I think that’s one misconception. I think people are also a little bit confused about. Signing up and using it.
Like there isn’t another platform that allows you to earn transferable rewards without having a credit card. Gee, it doesn’t exist. So this is the first one. People will either think that the rewards are not transferable, or they’re gonna think that you need a [00:29:00] credit card to have access to it, or you need to have something special.
No, it’s just for everybody. Um, anybody can use it. They can earn 10 road miles, they can earn a hundred thousand road miles, and it doesn’t matter. It’s free inaccessible to everyone.
Justin: Ah, that’s interesting. Maybe even Dave Ramsey could give the thumbs up, although there were times, of course, he was pitching some questionable products that resulted in lawsuits and he was encouraging people to sign up for a cruise for, I think $1,500 per person rather than telling them how to do other things like, use the phone army and play my Vegas, or status match or do all those other things.
But maybe, uh, give us a shot, Dave Ramsey.
Carissa: Whatcha talking about Justin? You love Dave Ramsey.
Justin: Maybe there’ll be another lawsuit before the end of the year. We are recording at the end of August, so maybe there’ll be a, there’s time another former employee that got fired for dubious reasons.
Carissa: Yeah, we’ll find
Justin: out.
Carissa: There’s always a chance.
Justin: All right, and I have some listener questions. We have addressed some of them, but I [00:30:00] will read them out and maybe you have something to add or clarify from listener Eric. Thanks Eric for. Your questions. The question was, how would you compare the value of gaining a third party hotel commission in points versus benefits offered when booking direct with the hotel?
Carissa: So you always just wanna do the math, right? So for example, if I am, I used that sort of Marriott example earlier where it was a courtyard that costs 50,000 Marriott Bondi points a night, or 17,000 whatever, Rove Mals. Obviously you get to save a lot more miles. You wanna do the math, you wanna take a look at the commission, you wanna take a look at how many road models you’re gonna earn.
Our sort of our floor for what you get on row is 10 x. There are a couple exceptions to that, but that’s basically our base level. So if you’re booking at a boutique hotel or a non-chain hotel, you, there’s no math to be done. Do it through a row. If you’re looking at something that is a promotion, has a registered promotion bonus journey, something like that.
You wanna actually weigh out [00:31:00] the number of Hyatt points you would earn with the promotion versus what you would get with ro. You would also wanna add on if you have your lead status, how much you value benefits, like breakfast, late checkout, things like that. I am a obviously dedicated user of Rove at this point, but there are still stay that I’m booking with Hyatt and with Marriott because, for example, I need to guarantee 4:00 PM checkout.
So that’s something that I would wanna consider. Things like the Maldives, which is such a convenient example for me to use. There’s absolutely no reason to book with a Hyatt or a Hilton or whatever, because astronomical cost in points with Hilton and Hyatt and Marriott nine G to stay in the Maldives to have that sort of brand name, and then you really don’t get benefits anyway because most Maldives hotels will offer you late checkout according to when your C plan out is, and they give every guest free breakfast.
So the cost of that end points versus what you would get booking a boutique hotel with ro, it’s like a no brainer, right? It’s if it’s gonna [00:32:00] cost you 37,000 row of miles for three nights or 700, no, sorry, 600,000 Hilton points for three nights, duh. But yeah, you just wanna do the math. You wanna do the math, or it’s the same thing.
Or if you wanna pay cash and you’re getting 40 x row miles, we say you can get up to 2.20 cents a point, but they can be a lot higher than that if you’re doing your redemptions with intelligence and you’re not doing them willy-nilly. You wanna redeem them for flying blue 60 K across the Atlantic in business class, then you’re gonna be getting a lot more than 2 cents a point.
You’re gonna be getting three, four, or five, 6 cents a point. And if you’re looking at any row hotels that are 50 x or more and their at least 2 cents a piece, your entire booking is free. Essentially, you know, you’re coming out net positive.
Justin: Yeah, so once again, America loves math, so it pays to run the numbers.
Try to find the best rebate. On the stays and it’s a good problem to have with so many options. We end up having to evaluate what those are rather than what just [00:33:00] sitting home and doing nothing or end up paying tons of cash and getting no rebate, not maximizing miles and points in credit cards.
Carissa: Yeah, absolutely.
Justin: Finish with the listener questions we addressed, Hyatt, maybe Hyatt coming, maybe not. Some partners coming. In the future, can the Rove miles or points be cashed out for some other thing besides travel?
Carissa: So at this point, Rovero Miles can be used only for flights, hotels, and transfers. I don’t know that we have a future where it’s gonna be something like cashing it out at uh cent or something per point, but for the majority of the people who are gonna be earning roof miles or at least all of the Points of Miles, community, I don’t think anybody would wanna do that anyway.
I do think actually that we have some partnerships in the works where you can integrate it with your shopping, but at the risk of sounding not all that, I probably wouldn’t do it. Okay. I would always make sure that I’m getting the best value for every mile that I’m [00:34:00] redeeming, so I would stick with something like the hotels or the transfer partners.
Justin: Yes. And with the transfer partners, whether airlines or hotels, in many cases, those points aren’t going to expire, so they would just be for. Future travels anyway.
Carissa: Yeah. RO road models also, before you transfer ’em, they don’t expire at all.
Justin: Yes, we’re in it for the long game. Oh, and the ro, the Rove points don’t expire.
Is there anything about account activity they have? Does your account go inactive at a certain point if you don’t use it for a year or two years?
Carissa: Nope. All good.
Justin: Alright. Anything else you’d like to add about Rove?
Carissa: I do have one thing I wanna say. So this is, this podcast is going live pretty soon here, you said, and to that I say our.
Next big promotion is coming out not this week, but probably next week, and I’m freaking excited for you guys to find out about it. I designed it. It is my promotion that I made up. I can’t tell you exactly what it is ’cause then I’m gonna be breaking my own embargo that I made up the coolest freaking promotion and I cannot wait [00:35:00] for everybody to see it and interact with it.
Tell me what they think about it. ’cause I think it’s something really big and I think everybody’s gonna love it and including you Justin.
Justin: Alright, early September. Look out for that. If, if Giant Weiss Acme might be some in-store cashback or points, I’d be very happy to see that. But hopefully I can be excited if it’s not,
Carissa: I’m not even that excited about that.
But you know what, that’s actually probably even, that’s oh,
Justin: even better than supermarket sweep
Carissa: in my opinion. I think I’m right, but in my opinion, it’s a good one. It’s a big one.
Justin: May, maybe some free chicken noodle soup. Maybe that’s
Carissa: maybe like a lifetime supply pudding. Who knows?
Justin: Oh, okay. All right. High hopes for early September.
Yeah. And where can people find you online?
Carissa: So I am, gosh, all over. So if you want just my personal sort of socials, I am just plain points like an airplane, P-L-A-N-E, just plain points all over. Otherwise you can find me. I have the Rove Miles [00:36:00] Insiders Facebook group, like I said, and everything with Rovero Miles.
Join Rove. We’ve got YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. Like I said, we have that Discord, which I would highly recommend people join because I’m putting stuff in there that I’m not putting anywhere else.
Justin: All right. Give us a shot. Give RO miles a shot and find some good value.
Carissa: Yeah, absolutely.
Justin: And any recent travels that you’ve gone on, perhaps using RO points or other currencies?
Carissa: I redeemed my very first road miles yesterday, and at the risk of, sounded like a broken record, I redeemed them for the Maldives because I have a Travels Z voucher that I purchased last year that was five nights in an Overwater villa for I think it was like $2,100 all inclusive.
And I was booking my flights, all my award flights. And as is the case with. Award flights. The availability I wanted was like really stupid and really early. I had to do some really wonky routings and ended up getting them mal those two nights [00:37:00] early rather than stay in Malay at one of their, ’cause I’ve seen them before.
Rather than stay in Malay at some crappy city hotel, there is a fantastic island resort that’s just a 10 minute speedboat away. From the airport. And so I redeemed my road miles for two full nights there and then I’ll have them just speedboat me back so I can get on the seaplane to go to my Travel zoo voucher, my first row redemption.
Justin: And was that Travel Zoo you said? Yeah, travel Zoo. Okay. Can you explain that for listeners who might not be familiar?
Carissa: Oh yeah. So Travel Zoo is a sort of travel deals aggregator that negotiates special relationships with a lot of travel providers. ’cause they have a gigantic network. And I tend to talk about them a lot because they have these awesome deals like.
So $2,000 or $2,100 for a voucher that you can redeem within the space of a year. And that includes only like an Overwater villa in the Mal Dems with your food and your drink. And you compare the price of that to something like redeeming or Hilton [00:38:00] points or whatever, and it shakes out way better with the voucher.
So Travel Zoo is really good for that. Luxury Escapes is another version of that. And then obviously Rove, if you want to do like high end hotels. They also have a bunch of those too.
Justin: And any upcoming travels booked with Rove or other currencies?
Carissa: You wanna hear my route for the Maldives?
Justin: Another Maldives?
Carissa: No, this, it’s coming up next month. Lemme, lemme just, oh, okay.
Justin: Okay.
Carissa: Lemme tell you ’cause you’re gonna gag. So I am in Scotland right now and I am in the middle of doing a lot of traveling and moving to New York War, Rove and also being like a speaker and stuff. I paid $700 for a multi-city trip to go from.
Edinburgh to Miami and then New York to London so that I could get New York to London to go back to get ready for my moldy strip. Ah, world
Justin: tour.
Carissa: I land in London and that was $700 for that multi city trip, and I didn’t have enough AA miles to get all the way from Lake JFK to Ma. I only had like [00:39:00] 50,000 AA miles.
So then I spent 42,000 AA miles to get from London to Mae with Ittihad. But it goes. London, Abu Dhabi, Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then Ma. So that’s just to get there, right? And then to get back, I redeemed 17,000 a miles transfer from the city to go to go. Ma Colombo
Justin: am my fun. All this time in the air.
Hopefully you have a Nintendo Switch with you that you got with Dell Credits. Everyone’s favorite Dell credits I
Carissa: have too.
both: Oh,
Carissa: I’m a bad reseller. No, then I go to Doha. Sorry. I go to Doha and then I booked. Doha to Edinburgh and direct. We using 43,000 Avios Edinburgh in Miami, New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Colombo, Malay Colombo, Doha, Edinburgh, and then back to New York.
Justin: Wow. Lots of flying. Too bad it’s not with JetBlue though, you’d get that 25 for [00:40:00] 25 challenge in. Ah,
Carissa: I haven’t booked that final leg yet.
Justin: Ooh, two. Another goal. Yes. We’re in it for the long game. So 25 years of mosaic status and all those bonus miles or points every year. It sounds appealing.
Carissa: Yeah, maybe I should.
Anyway, so yeah, so that’s my upcoming travel and that’s how I redeemed my miles and spent my money just to make all that happen.
Justin: Oh, nice. So you’ll be living in New York, so you’ll have an apartment there.
Carissa: Yeah. And then sorta I, until January, I’m gonna be living in hotels. I wanna get my goal list and my titanium, so I’m gonna be going through that.
There’s a Hyatt in Jersey City about 10 minutes away from work that lets you do a one bedroom LP suite booking for $113 plus 6,000 points a night. And my sister’s a Marriott employee, so I’m staying at the West and for 98 bucks a night.
Justin: Oh wow. Nice. All right, so you’ll be in Jersey so you can get started with online blackjack.
You’re right. Yes. Oh, [00:41:00]
Carissa: I’ll be messaging you later. Interesting. Yeah, so I’m gonna be in New York living in a hotel until January.
Justin: Oh, nice. So miles and points makes it happen.
Carissa: Absolutely.
Justin: All right. Very good. Anything else that you’d like to add?
Carissa: No, I think that’s all I know that I’ve dumped on you about all my plans.
Justin: Oh, no, always fun. And any recent credit cards? Any new credit cards? At the beginning you were saying about maybe the veterans are running low in credit cards. I was excited to hear about the New Caesars credit card. Got that, and I got the new MGM iconic credit card. I got the Cardless cutter or Qatar Visa Infinite card, and looking forward to more cards in January.
Spacing out my applications. Following a July app, I also went for the New Atmos Summit card with Bank of America, the new Alaska Hawaiian merger loyalty program. That got denied. I got a denial letter, lack of [00:42:00] investment or other accounts with us. So on Tuesday I’m hoping to call them to reconsider the application.
I might need to hook up, hang up call again, but hopefully the first rep will be cooperative.
Carissa: Yeah. Oh, I’m surprised. Most recently had a, was targeted for a no lifetime language. Amex Gold a hundred K Business Gold. Which I just got, and I think that was really it. I had another one, I wanted to say it’s not a card, but as a veteran I got to go to MGM and ’cause I lost my MGM Gold and so I went over to MGM Rewards desk and I had them give me the Veteran’s Pro card, so at least I get free parking.
If it’s not as good as real status, but it’s better than nothing.
Justin: All right. If you’re gonna be in New Jersey and New York, we can definitely get that MGM Gold through credit card spend and BET MGMI just requalified for MGM Platinum in the end of August as we’re recording. So gold I think is very doable.
Carissa: I think I’m gonna have to get some more cell phones.
Justin: Oh yes, the phone Army. All right. Thanks for coming on today.
Carissa: Yeah, [00:43:00] thanks for having me.
Justin: Thanks everyone for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. Some closing announcements: for more content between podcast episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram.
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