Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

April tends to be a big month in the travel sense for the cherry blossoms! They’re a thing all over the world, including in Japan, South Korea, Washington D.C., and more!

It also generally marks the beginning of spring time, with warmer weather slowly but surely on its way! After all of the snow I had to shovel this past winter, I need that warm weather asap ☀️

Even in NYC and the surrounding areas, there are spots with some cherry blossoms, like in various parks in the city, as well as some in NJ too! Hopefully I can catch them while they are blooming - they are so pretty to look at 🙂 

Speaking of pretty to look at, hopefully today’s newsletter and story is worth a look too!

In today’s edition:

• 🪙 Rove Miles 101 🪙

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🪙 Rove Miles 101 🪙

Rove has been around for a little under a year now, when they launched and also clarified details and questions on a reddit post. I wasn’t too big on this and I still don’t really use Rove, but it definitely is something that needed to be covered here, so here we go!

Basically, Rove works as such:

• Book hotels, flights, etc. on Rove’s portal (or shop online using Rove’s chrome extension, similar to Rakuten, etc.)

• You get Rove miles for those purchases, as well as the credit card rewards for whichever card you used to make the purchase (double dipping)

• You can then redeem Rove miles through their transfer partners, or travel portal!

It’s an OTA, like Expedia, except they pass on more of their commissions to the user through Rove miles.

The most exciting part of all this to us points & miles people is Rove’s transfer partners:

• Aeromexico Rewards

• ALL Accor

• Cathay

• Etihad Guest

• Finnair Plus

• Air France-KLM Flying Blue

• Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club

• Air India Maharaja Club

• Japan Airlines

• Miles & More

• Qatar Airways Privilege Club

• SAS EuroBonus

• Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus

• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles

• Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles

• Virgin Atlantic/Virgin Red

All transfers are 1:1, except for Accor (1.5:1). But otherwise, this, on paper, is pretty exciting! When you aren’t doing a points booking, you can book through Rove and then redeem Rove miles later to book a flight or hotel. Some solid transfer partners in there too - Japan Airlines catches my eye, especially as a 1:1 partner (Capital One has JAL as a transfer partner, but not at 1:1).

The earnings for some purchases are massive, at even 25x per dollar, or more! That certainly adds up, and is a big part of the value proposition here for Rove. With massive earnings like that and a solid list of transfer partners, this seems like a great option for when you’re not booking with points!

Yes, I’ve raved about Rove so far. But its a startup and is VC backed and is not profitable yet (burning through investor cash). That could mean a number of things, of course. There are already some user reports that the points take a very long time to post to the account…

After that whole Starbucks Rewards thing I did, I thought I’d be temporarily done covering new rewards currencies, but I totally forgot about Rove! But that’s about it: I personally won’t be using it, since I almost exclusively book flights and hotels with only points these days. But for other people, it could definitely work!!

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here! New transfer bonuses not present the week before are in bold. Two notes: 1) that any transfers to Avios essentially include British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, and Qatar, and 2) that if you have the Chase Aeroplan credit card, any Aeroplan transfer bonuses are 10% extra!

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Amex is limiting referrals to 5 per user per year…

• 🔃 If you have airline elite status, you may be eligible for a status match to Flying Blue!

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® / Reserve®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thanks for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to helping you maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

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