12 miles per $1 spent on Kaligo bookings with Citi credit cards in June and July

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Hotel booking site Kaligo.com launched a new offer today with an additional 2 miles per S$1 on bookings made through their site over the next two months with several Citi credit cards, bringing the total earning rate to 12 miles per S$1 spent.

If Kaligo is new to you, don’t worry because back in December last year we wrote a detailed breakdown of how you can achieve a significant boost to your annual miles accrual simply by diverting some or all of your hotel bookings through their site, provided it works out as a good deal each time.

The Details

• Payment with your Citi PremierMiles Visa, Citi PremierMiles American Express, Citi Prestige or Citi ULTIMA card.
• Promotion period: 1st June 2018 to 31st July 2018.
• Stay period: 1st June 2018 to 31st December 2018.
• Citi Miles or Citi Dollars will be credited within 4 weeks of departure from the hotel.

Bonus Miles

The bonus miles are awarded as follows:

• 30 Rewards Points for every S$1 spend with your Citi Prestige or Citi ULTIMA credit card(s) including supplementary cards (equivalent to 12 miles per S$1).
• 12 Citi Miles for every S$1 spend with your Citi PremierMiles Visa or Citi PremierMiles American Express credit card(s) including supplementary cards.

The Citi PremierMiles offer link on the Kaligo site states you must register to take advantage of the bonus – and this is where we came across a bit of confusion. For us just changing the earning preference to the Citi PremierMiles card meant the bonus miles reflected automatically. That may be because we have signed up for previous Citi PremierMiles offers through Kaligo.

We couldn’t get the bonus miles to show initially for the Citi Prestige and Citi ULTIMA cards though, which were displaying the regular 25 Citi Dollars per S$1 spent (i.e. 10 miles per S$1).

We reached out to Kaligo and they clarified with us that these cardholders will have to sign up for the promotion and complete their booking using the site links below to take advantage:

• Citi Prestige – kaligo.com/more-rewards
• Citi ULTIMA – kaligo.com/premium-rewards

Example

Here’s an example of a last-minute ‘staycation’ booking this weekend in a Superior Room at the PARKROYAL on Pickering.

As you can see the bonus miles are automatically added, so instead of 3,490 Citi Miles here you’ll earn 4,188 Citi Miles for the booking in total (worth about S$80 if converted to KrisFlyer miles, in our opinion).

Once we got the sign-up right through the dedicated link for the Citi Prestige card – that worked out with the bonus too.

The Benefits of Citi

One of the main benefits of the Citi miles earning credit cards is the ability to transfer miles into 11 different frequent flyer programs and two hotel loyalty programs at a 1:1 ratio (with the exception of Hilton Honors which is a 1:1.5 ratio).

Airlines

• Air France / KLM (Flying Blue)
• British Airways (Executive Club)
• Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles)
• Etihad Guest
• EVA Air (Infinity MileageLands)
• Garuda Miles
• Malaysia Airlines (Enrich)
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Qatar Airways (Privilege Club)
• Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer)
• Thai (Royal Orchid Plus)

Hotels

• IHG Rewards
• Hilton Honors (1:1.5 ratio)

While we don’t see good value in transferring to the hotel schemes, we do use Citi Miles ourselves occasionally to transfer into airline frequent flyer schemes where it’s otherwise difficult to accrue miles in Singapore – such as British Airways Avios points. Of course Citi Miles are also good for transfer into KrisFlyer.

Summary

We always make a point of checking Kaligo when we’re looking to book a hotel stay but remember their rates are not always the most competitive.

For the stay tomorrow night in the PARKROYAL on Pickering for example it’s possible to book the same room type for S$329.56 by booking directly with the hotel (or the same price via booking.com). You’re therefore paying an extra $20 for 4,188 miles (about 0.5 cents per mile). For us that’s a great deal – we’ll ‘buy’ KrisFlyer miles if necessary at up to 2 cents each and below 1 cent you basically can’t lose. Our average redemption gives us 2.9 cents per mile in value.

It isn’t always that good with Kaligo though, you may find you’re ‘buying’ the miles at well over 2 cents each, or if the rate is getting close to that you might prefer to book directly to earn points through the hotel’s own loyalty scheme (which Kaligo bookings do not).

Also note that some hotel chains will not recognise status benefits for third-party bookings, something to consider if you would normally be entitled to lounge access for example.

(Cover Photo: Marriott International)