Rove Miles: Guide for Canadians

New and creative ways to earn transferable points are arriving faster than ever, and Rove is the most exciting addition so far. While Rove operates similarly to transferable miles from banks, there is no financial product attached to it, meaning everyone can earn transferable airline miles! 

While Rove is established in the US market, Canadians can actually participate in the Rove Miles program and benefit from what it offers; I’ll show you how.

What Is Rove?

Rove is a travel platform that allows its users to earn miles, billed as the “first universal airline mile”, for making purchases on their site. You can book hotel stays, flights, or click through the shopping portal (similar to the Aeroplan eStore) to earn miles on purchases you already planned to make. 

The “Rove miles” that you earn can be redeemed directly for flights or hotels at a rate around 1.5 cents USD per mile, or (and more importantly) you can transfer them to a host of over eighteen travel partners, including Canadian favorites Air Canada Aeroplan, British Airways Avios, Air France KLM Flying Blue, and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, to name a few.

There are also many transfer partners, including Air India Maharaja Club, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, and more that are harder for Canadians to access, making Rove Miles a unique value proposition.

Rove Miles transfers at a rate of 1:1 for most travel programs, and Rove continues to add partners all the time, so I would expect to see more additions in the future.

How to Join Rove as a Canadian

If you want to participate in Rove Miles as a Canadian, you can sign up here. When you sign up for Rove, you’ll need to input a phone number to create your account. Using your Canadian phone number is perfectly acceptable for this.

However, even though Canadian phone numbers are listed, you’ll have to put your country of residence as the USA. While that’s an odd step, I’ve been assured in person by employees of Rove that Canadians, or anyone for that matter, are encouraged to use the platform. Keep in mind this will mean that all pricing you see will be in USD, so it’s best to use a credit card with no foreign transaction fees or a US-issued credit card if you’re more advanced.

If, after reading this article, you’re inclined to start using the platform, consider signing up via a referral link for a bonus 500 miles. There’s a referral bonus happening currently where you can earn 10% of your “referees” miles. So if you’re in two-player mode, the way to maximize this is to have your P2 sign up for an account, and then P2 refers you to an account, so the account that has the majority of the miles is the enthusiast, and you get an extra 10% in P2’s account. 

Rove miles can easily be combined between anyone’s accounts just by chatting online.

What are Rove Miles Worth?

As with anything miles and points, when it comes to valuation, it depends on how you redeem your Rove Miles. But Rove miles are worth a lot to Canadians because we don’t have easy access to mileage programs like Japan Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Turkish Miles and Smiles. 

Some sweetspots you could be taking advantage of if you had these miles would be:

• 6,000 Virgin Miles and $250 to fly YYZ-LHR (Toronto to London) in Virgin Atlantic Economy
• 48,500 Virgin Miles and $450 to fly YYZ- CDG (Toronto to Paris) in Air France Business class
• 55,000 Japan Airlines Miles and $500 to fly YVR-NRT (Vancouver to Tokyo) in Japan Airlines Business Class
• 60,000 Japan Airlines Miles and $200 to fly JFK-MXP (New York to Milan) in Emirates Business Class

As a baseline, you can count on 1.5 cents USD per mile (at least for now), as you can generally redeem your miles against hotel stays for that much value.

How to Earn Rove Miles as a Canadian

Booking Hotels Through Rove

Rove’s hotel booking platform is very generous regarding the number of miles they hand out. Often you’ll find a minimum of 10x, with the occasional deal in the 30x-60x range. Rove has a free Discord channel you can join, where members will often flag hotels that are running promotions in the higher range of multipliers. 

One of the most unique features of Rove is that if you book a non-refundable rate, you get the reward miles right away. So you can book yourself a hotel, and then get the miles for your flight immediately to book your way there.

I’ve also used Rove hotels for family members who don’t care about points and miles. I offer to book their hotels for them (they give me their card details in advance), and I keep the miles in my account.

As you can see, there are plenty of lodging options, so even budget travellers should be able to participate in the program.

You can also book loyalty-eligible rates, which is potentially the most exciting side of Rove. You’ll want to ensure you toggle over to the loyalty-eligible side of things, which I’ve highlighted here.

This means you’ll earn 5x Rove Miles and all of your elite benefits, points, and elite nights. It opens up the door to triple or quadruple dip rewards. For example, you could:

• Book through Rove for 5x
• Earn loyalty points from Marriott Bonvoy
• Earn 5x or 6x Marriott points from spending on a co-branded card
• Earn a cash back rebate from a card-linked offer

All loyalty eligible rates will earn 5x Rove miles, but if you’re searching for those huge multipliers, start with a broad search term, and then you can sort hotels by multipliers. It seems in recent times the 50x hotels are harder to come by, but you can still find some excellent multipliers out there.

Using the Rove Shopping Portal

While the shopping portal won’t be useful for everyday goods as the site is all US-focused, you can still maximize with the online travel agencies. For example, booking an activity through Viator, or if there’s a VRBO property that doesn’t appear on Rove’s search tool.

StubHub, Disney gift cards, and other VPN services are also useful merchants where you can earn some extra Rove Miles. Note that Airbnb gift cards must be used by an account registered with the country they’re purchased from, so unless you have US credit cards, I’d shy away from purchasing those. 

If you’re ever purchasing points, you can also get a few extra rewards by clicking through Rove as well. It’s worth considering the Rove Chrome extension, as I’ve seen many instances where I didn’t even think to search Rove, and the reminder popped up that I could earn some miles on the purchase.

Booking Flights Through Rove

While booking flights is technically a way to earn Rove Miles, I don’t think I can be bothered to do it myself. I don’t book that many flights with cash to begin with, and the earn rate is only 1x on almost every flight I looked at.

You’ll still earn your usual airline miles, but I’d recommend booking direct versus going through Rove’s portal.

How I’ve Earned & Redeemed Rove Miles

My Experience Earning Rove Miles

Most of my earnings have been from gift card purchases, the bulk of which came from a $2,000 Airbnb gift card purchase for a family ski trip, which resulted in a cool 6,500 miles. I did have to spin up a new Airbnb account to use them, but as I have a US phone number and (many) US credit cards, it was simple. And for what it’s worth, the stay was in Canada.

As mentioned, I was able to take advantage of a few high multipliers for some family members, one stay in particular netted me almost 5,000 miles as it had a 24x multiplier!

My Experience Redeeming Rove Miles

So far, I’ve only made one redemption, and that was transferring my miles to Air India Maharaja Club for short-haul United flights within the US. It’s amazing, they’re only 3,500 Air India Miles and about $10 in taxes and fees, which is a steal compared to what Air Canada or United would charge for the same flights.

Sadly, Air Canada’s award chart for Air India Miles is not as attractive, as short-haul flights start at 8,000 miles. But it’s still worth checking to see if the seats are available. But likely booking WestJet with Flying Blue Miles will be a better deal for these short-haul segments.

Transferring miles to Air India will take about 24 hours, so it’s a somewhat speculative transfer as the award space could disappear by the time your miles arrive.

Conclusion

Rove is an excellent addition to the points and miles world. Adding the ability to earn transferable points for anyone is a huge win, and unlocking some extra foreign airline programs for Canadians is valuable. 

While it’s more difficult for Canadians to participate, booking hotels, activities, or purchasing gift cards are all excellent ways to earn some extra miles and diversify from the Aeroplan eStore, while still having the option to transfer your points to Aeroplan if it suits.