Agoda PointsMAX Review – Earn Airline Miles (E.g United, Delta, etc etc) For Hotel Bookings

In early 2016 Agoda launched PointsMAX, a booking portal on their website that allows you to earn loyalty points from different main stream programs by booking hotel rooms with Agoda. If the idea sounds familiar, it is with Rocketmiles, PointsHound & Kaligo already offer this with their hotel booking engines [Read: Kaligo Vs PointsHound Vs Rocketmiles – Which Hotel Booking Site That Offers Airline Miles Is The Best?]. It’s not really surprising that Agoda are entering this market, with Priceline acquiring Rocketmiles for $20 million in 2015. Let’s get stuck into our review.

pointsmax agoda review

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • You earn airline miles instead of hotel points. The majority of people value airline miles at higher rates than hotel points
  • Good range of participating airline partners

Cons

  • You do not earn any hotel loyalty points
  • You probably do not earn any cash back when going through a portal
  • You do not earn qualifying stays for elite status with hotel chains
  • Your hotel status is not valid for your stays (e.g if you usually get free breakfast due to your status with a chain, chances are you won’t receive it if you book through rocket miles)
  • No best rate guarantee (on the actual booking tab it says Agoda price match guarantee, but in the fine print it says this isn’t included)
  • PointsMAX bookings cannot be adjusted online using the Agoda self-service tool or by contacting Customer Service . To amend your reservations, you will need to cancel (subject to the cancellation conditions of the reservations ) and re-book your reservation. Cancelled reservations will not earn points, regardless of the financial cancellations conditions

Airline Partners

At the time of publication, Agoda has 15 airline partners:

agoda pointsmax program

Referral Program/Promotions

At the moment Agoda does not offer a referral program or any on going promotions. It might be possible to earn portal cash back on these bookings, but I suspect that isn’t possible. If it is then you’d get a further 6.6% discount currently.

Comparisons To Other Hotel Booking Websites

Search Comparison

All hotels in the Agoda system show when you do a PointsMAX search, unfortunately not all hotels will earn airline miles. That being said, I was actually pretty impressed by how many hotels did earn airline miles – especially when comparing to the limited selection other airline earning hotel booking websites show.

Price Comparison

Agoda is usually very price competitive when comparing to booking directly or with another online travel agency, something that other hotel search engines have failed to do when combined with this loyalty point model. Let’s see if this holds true with PointsMAX, or if Agoda are simply increasing the price shown and offering some miles as a consolation prize.

I did quite a few searches and from what I saw, there was always two prices listed. One for a booking with no PointsMAX and one with PointsMAX included.

agoda pointsmax program

Apart from the miles you earn, I see literally no difference between the two bookings apart from the price. In the above scenario you’re earning 3,900 united miles but you’re paying $109.66 more. That basically means you’re paying 2.811¢ per point, not a good deal at all.

How Many Miles Will You Earn?

The amount of miles you’ll earn is tied to the price of the hotel itself and also the airline partner you choose. For example, you’ll earn a lot more AirAsia points than Delta or United miles. United seems to be the lowest earning currency and the lowest rates I saw was about 2.8 United miles per $1 spent, although I’m sure it’s possible to get a lower rate.

If you can’t earn portal cash back on these bookings, then you’d be paying more than 2¢ per point just by forgoing that cash back. This is in addition to the 2.811¢ per point figure we got above from the difference between the two rates.

Final Thoughts

When I first saw this I was initially excited. Finally an online travel agent that lets you earn airline miles at a lot of different hotels with good pricing. The more I looked into it, the more I realized what a terrible deal this was. Agoda are basically just flat out selling miles at a high cash rate and then putting additional restrictions on the bookings (no price match and presumably no portals). I’d much rather stick with Hotels.com and their generous one free night after ten night policy (with portal cash back & coupons & discounts on gift cards).

What are your thoughts on this offering by Agoda?

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2 Comments
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pingo
pingo (@guest_264740)
June 2, 2016 13:13

Anyone know if they’ll credit you for previous bookings? I had a few within the last 90 days.

Matthew
Matthew (@guest_714644)
January 30, 2019 23:37

Given you end up paying more for the room, I don’t think so.