Some links to products and partners on this website will earn an affiliate commission.
I have written quite a lot recently about Virgin America’s ‘Elevate’ loyalty programme, and the fantastic value you can get for redemptions on some of its partner airlines:
- Try Singapore Airlines First Class for 10,000 Miles
- Virgin Atlantic Upper Class to Hong Kong for 30,000 Miles
- Virgin Atlantic Upper Class to India for 20,000 Miles
There’s no doubting the value of these awards, but getting hold of Elevate Miles in the UK isn’t easy – unless you have SPG Starpoints to transfer (or Amex Membership Rewards Points to transfer to SPG first).
You can pick-up 2,500 free Virgin America Elevate Miles by signing up here and referring 4 friends/family members (500 for signing up, and 500 for each referral).
You can also get another 250 free Elevate Miles just for entering this Virgin America competition (takes 20 seconds).
2,750 is a nice start for just a few minutes work, but it’s not going to get you very far by itself!
I was therefore interested to discover that you can currently get up to 10,000 bonus Virgin America Elevate Miles by booking hotel stays through Kaligo.
The Deal
- Spend ~ £345.00 ($500.00) booking hotels through Kaligo and get at least 5,000 Elevate Miles
- Spend ~ £690.00 ($1,000.00) booking hotels through Kaligo and get at least 10,000 Elevate Miles.
That sounds like quite a lot to spend, but the total is cumulative (ie multiple bookings all count towards it), and you can book for dates until the end of the year, so long as you actually make the booking by 31st May 2016.
The offer is open to new and existing Kaligo members, so I would suggest signing up using a referral link first, before registering for the promotion – https://www.kaligo.com/refer/B9QXWWWI.
Using the referral above should get you an additional 1,000 bonus Miles for your first booking, but I don’t know for certain whether the two deals will stack – I think they should do, but haven’t had chance to test it yet.
Once you have got a Kaligo account, you need to register for the promotion here, entering your first name and the email address you used to sign up. The page is a bit odd, and you need to sign out of your account and then follow the link above and register, otherwise the option to register doesn’t seem to come up.
Conclusion
I value Virgin America Elevate Miles (for awards on their partners) at approximately 2 pence each, so this is a pretty good offer – particularly given how relatively difficult it is to get hold of Elevate Miles in the UK.
If you want to know more about Kaligo, take a look at this post.
Terms and Conditions of the Virgin America offer:
- To enjoy this offer, please register your email at www.kaligo.com/virgin-america-promo and book your hotel stays during the Promotion Period: March 28th and May 31st 2016. There is no restriction on check-in dates, so you can book hotels for all your upcoming travel in 2016!
- You can take advantage of this bonus offer whether you are a new or existing customer.
- Earn at least 5,000 Elevate® points when you spend US $500 – $999.99 across one or more hotel bookings during the Promotion Period. Or, earn at least 10,000 Elevate® points when you spend over US $1,000 across one or more hotel bookings during the Promotion Period.
- There is no limit to the maximum number of Elevate® points you can earn as part of this offer.
- Each customer can only qualify for the promotion once.
- Your Elevate® points will be credited to your account within 4-6 weeks after the completion of the required hotel stays.
- We reserve the right to retract a bonus if we suspect fraud, unauthorised stacking of bonuses, collecting multiple bonuses from the same hotel stay (defined as the same travelling party staying consecutive nights at the same hotel), technical errors, cancel/rebooking activity (defined by identical search criteria), or any other deceptive behavior attempted to circumvent the limits expressed in these terms and conditions.
- You cannot use this offer in conjunction with any other promotional offers or apply them to existing bookings or retroactively apply them to hotel stays completed prior to registration.
- Kaligo and Virgin America reserve the right to terminate this offer at any time and without notice.
- General Kaligo Terms and Conditions apply to all bookings made through Kaligo.
These companies are really competing hard with each other this year.
Accor, Hilton and now Kaligo are offering tempting deals. I haven’t even mentioned IHG.
I suppose the best thing to do is stick with one loyalty program but it’s tempting with the rival offers that are showing up atm.
Obviously it’s always good to see any sort of promotion (and I think the Accor one and this one are fairly decent), but generally I think promotions are a bit weak at the moment. Double Points like Hilton and Starwood are difficult to get excited about, Club Carlson’s offer is a bit rubbish, Hyatt’s offer requires too many stays to be realistic for most Europeans given their limited coverage, Marriott seems to be just 1,500-2,000 bonus per stay rather than megabonus free night certificates, and IHG don’t seem to be having a promo at all for non-US members this quarter (or are leaving it late to announce it).
Personally, I’m intending to mainly burn hotel points rather than earn them over summer I think (though I will probably complete the Accor and the Kaligo offers).
I know there are arguments both ways, but I tend to spread out my points across programmes. Obviously you don’t want to go too thin such that you can barely ever make a meaningful redemption, but my air miles are largely spread between Avios, Virgin FC, Etihad (love ’em) and Lufthansa (frankly don’t bother unless it’s a Mileage Bargain), while my hotel points primarily sit with Hilton, IHG and SPG.
I just find this way you’re in more of a position to spring on deals when they happen, but of course I am a fairly intensive points earner. If you’re only getting a modest number of points in, you’d be ill-advised to start developing a portfolio of a handful of points in a number of schemes.
The 10k SPG points gave me a tremendous launching point, bu there aren’t many hotels around the UK alas. But the points are valuable so I’ll be waiting on those competitions when they come around.
I haven’t stayed in an IHG hotel for a while, though I did make a purchase in their 100% bonus promo last December that paid for a couple of nights at the Indigo Kensington and saved me a lot of money. I don’t look at Club Carlson or Hyatt.
Regarding Lufthansa, do you earn Miles and More points with them, or miles via a partner that you can then spend on Lufthansa? I’ve heard Air Canada’s Aeroplan offers the best rewards deals for Lufthansa First Class.
For my sins I am a M&M earner. As I mentioned, I then redeem them for Business Class Mileage Bargains or Fly Smart reward flights.
Frankly, given the taxes/surcharges, redeeming M&M miles any other way makes very little sense to me. If anyone knows an alternative good use of M&M miles, I’d be delighted to hear it, however…
You are also right, there are “travel hack” ways of, for example, redeeming Aeroplan Miles and Avianca LifeMiles for great value in Lufty premium cabins, but given that I don’t ever earn either of these (and have not yet got around to doing a “buy points at great value and redeem with Lufthansa” wheeze yet), I can’t speak from experience.
Finally, in response to your point about the lack of SPG hotels in the UK and so ability to spend your SPG points, you are of course quite right that they are nevertheless valuable, not least because you get a 5k bonus when you transfer 20k SPG points to air miles.
Thanks for clarifying. One of the things I’d very much like to do is experience Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal at Frankfurt!
Agreed. If you use a relatively broad range a range of programmes, it allows you to benefit from whatever the best promotion is at any given time/best value at that destination etc. It also means you end up with a wide range of Points, which allows you to take advantage of all the various sweet-spot redemptions (and have less risk of there being no award space when you want).
Example: I was in Nottingham a few weeks ago on a Saturday when cash rates were really high, but because I had Club Carlson Points I could get a decent hotel for just 15,000 Points – which is nothing. Being able to use Points for Club Carlson category 1 and 2s is great, also Hilton Category 1 and 2s, IHG Pointsbreaks, SPG Category 1 and 2s etc.
I pick up the easy Avios/ Virgin FC Miles but focus more on ‘exotic’ Miles like Etihad, Singapore, Virgin America, American, United, Alaska, because of the various sweetspots they all have. Being able to transfer Clubcard Points means I’m never short of Avios/FC Miles if I need them.
The 3 main ‘transferable’ points in the UK are Clubcard, SPG and Amex MR – and the flexibility being able to transfer to a range of partners gives you – makes them relatively very valuable, and is where I would focus my efforts if I was just starting out.