How to Stay 1 Night at a Hyatt and get a Free Virgin America Flight

I love taking flights on Virgin America. Their purple mood lighting, the meals, the super-soft seats and fun flight attendants make for such a departure from some of the other airlines. Other people must love it too, like the person I surreptitiously took a quick phone snapshot of who wore hotel slippers right onto the plane.

Rocketmiles has a promotion going on right now where new members can get an additional 3,000 bonus points on their first booking by September 30, 2015. Rocketmiles has this same promotion occasionally, but not everyone knows how great it can be.

For those not familiar with Rocketmiles, they are an online hotel booking site where you can earn airline miles for your booking, sometimes up to 20,000. One of the main drawbacks is that if you have elite status with a hotel program the stay will not count towards elite requalification, you won’t earn points on the stay and your status level may not be recognized.

There are other negatives too. When doing a search the list of available properties returned is often not comprehensive and leaves out many hotels. Pricing can be higher than on competing hotel booking sites too. However, this promotion can be particularly rewarding and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Let’s use the Hyatt House San Diego Sorrento Mesa as an example. I’ve stayed at this property before, and you can read my hotel review here. Using a random date of Saturday August 15, 2015 for a single night stay the rate on Rocketmiles shows up as $154 for a King, and although the rate is prepaid it is also fully refundable until the day prior to arrival.

Hopping over to Hyatt’s website I found that the best available rate for the same date was $169, and the advanced purchase non-refundable rate was $154.

If this was your first booking with Rocketmiles you’d earn 4,000 Virgin America Elevate points, which is enough for a free Virgin America flight.

Looking at Virgin America’s website and choosing the random date of Saturday September 12, 2015 for Chicago to Los Angeles, the price was $99.

If redeeming Virgin America Elevate points, the same flight requires just 3,907.

This is just one example, and I was able to find several others just with a simple search. The hotel stay doesn’t need to be a Hyatt, it just happened that I came across a few Hyatt properties that worked well. Points needed for flight redemption vary, but while the sample stay above earned just 4,000 there are also many hotels that offer 6,000 Virgin America Elevate points (including the first-time bonus). Yes, some hotels are priced higher than they are on other websites and you don’t get to enjoy elite hotel program benefits when booking through Rocketmiles. If you don’t have status and are just looking for a hotel though, this promotion definitely offers a good opportunity to get more than enough miles for a free flight.

Here’s a link to the Rocketmiles promotion booking page.

Use promotional code ELEVATE when booking on a mobile device.

Have you used Rocketmiles before?

Terms & Conditions:

This offer is strictly limited to new Rocketmiles customers only. To be eligible for this promotion, the hotel reservation must be booked via the Rocketmiles mobile app with promo code “ELEVATE” OR using this promotional link (www.rocketmiles.com/virgin-america-3k-bonus) before 11:59PM CT on 30 September 2015. Limit one per customer. Limit one per stay. Promotional offer cannot be applied to existing bookings or retroactively applied to bookings not made using the link above. This promotional offer cannot be combined with any other offers, including a sign-up from referral bonus. Rocketmiles reserves the right to retract a bonus at any time if it detects technical errors, cancel/rebooking activity (defined by identical search criteria), or any deceptive behavior attempted to circumvent the limits expressed above including multiple accounts.

If Rocketmiles is not contacted directly with a refund request until after points have already been posted, any approved refund amount may be reduced by up to the full retail value of the reward. Rewards that cannot be posted due to incorrect or incomplete information may become ineligible after 12 months and no customer response to our e-mail outreach.