Frequent travelers know the value of earning points for their flights. Today, a new service called Rocketmiles launched from a two-month beta to give travelers the chance to earn airline miles for hotel bookings.
Each time Rocketmiles users book rooms at participating hotels, they earn points or miles based on their length of stay and rates negotiated with said hotels. While the benefit to customers is clear, hotels also have a chance to fill unused rooms.
Results from its beta show that Rocketmiles’ users earned an average of 7,000 points per stay. According to Hoffmann, 18 percent of users have already made repeat purchases, which he sees as indicative of the product’s “stickiness.”
“We also learned that customers feel incredibly strongly about how they intend to use the miles,” CEO and co-founder Jay Hoffmann said, in reference to learnings from Rocketmiles’ beta. “For one customer, the extra 60k miles per year will enable a long-awaited trip to New Zealand to visit an old friend. For another, it will allow a family vacation to Florida. It's not just about the mathematics, but about enabling people to be heroes in their personal life.”
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That said, many of Rocketmiles’ potential customers will likely be business travelers who rack up and use thousands of points every year. They are among the reported 25 million Americans who earn and save airline miles every year. Some of these travelers are in the business set, while other, as Hoffmann mentioned, are filled with wanderlust.
The team is hoping to take a bite out of the $50 billion bookings industry that comprises nearly 23 percent of the business travel industry as a whole. CEO and co-founder Jay Hoffmann started Rocketmiles after building new businesses at Groupon, prior to which he led the Partnership business at MileagePlus. He works with COO Bjorn Larsen, who was previously CEO and co-founder of card-linked loyalty company Edhance, which was acquired by BuyWithMe in 2011. Rounding out the team is CTO Kris Helenek, who served the same role at Edhance. Together, they pooled their experience in the travel and loyalty industries to create Rocketmiles.
Today, RocketMiles offers bookings at hotels in 15 U.S. cities including Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Built In Chicago readers can earn 1,000 miles upon their first booking using the code BUILTINCHICAGO or via https://www.rocketmiles.com/refer/BUILTINCHICAGO.
Visit Rocketmiles' website, check out their BIC profile and follow them on Twitter at @rocket_miles.
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