Earning points for things you were going to do anyways is always nice. Earning more points for those same activities is even better. This week is all about the latter for PointsHound users as the company announced two big updates to their earning rates.
More points for most stays
Most hotel stays will now earn more points per dollar thanks to revised payout metrics the company adopted effective today. The examples they’ve shown reflect increases up to 50% in the typical earn rates at many hotels. Not every hotel/airline combo will realize increases that high (no surprise that the best increases are highlighted) but the increases are very nice and include chain properties as well as independents.
More Big Earn locations
Want 30,000+ more opportunities to earn big bonuses on your stays? You’re in luck. PointsHound has added a massive number of new options for their “Big Earn” option where the number of points offered is significantly increased over the regular earn rates. Depending on the room chosen the Big Earn rate can be nearly 4x the regular numbers. And it is now on offer at way more locations.
The current sign-on bonus is an extra 250 points for you and the referrer on first-time bookings if you use the referral link; no bonus points if you don’t. That’s not the highest they’ve ever offered but the other increases make the site worth another look, even if you’ve passed it over previously. The new earning rates are now very competitive with RocketMiles (still offering 1000 miles each for first referred bookings) in some cases, sometimes even offering more points. That’s a scenario which was virtually unheard of previously.
The market is getting more competitive and in a manner which is beneficial to the consumer. That’s all sorts of good news.
Related Posts:
- Why did Delta bail on the big hotel bonus booking engines?
- PointsHound adds Frontier, Alaska Airlines as partners
- Double Up points earning at more than 3200 hotels via PointsHound
- PointsHound offers up airline points for hotel bookings
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What I’ve noticed is that they seem to have eliminated the problematic (e.g. never worked) filter for Double-Up rates, meaning rates where you would earn status as well as the additional (fewer) miles. In fact I couldn’t find any Double-Up rates available on a recent search.
Not thrilled with Pointshound. Still waiting for miles to post from an April stay.
I haven’t found a Double Up available hotel room in more than 6 months. I’ve searched multiple cities on multiples dates in 2014 and 2015, and nothing ever comes up. I think it’s just an advertising scam at this point.