EXPIRED This article relates to an offer or promotion which has now expired.
Hotel booking site Kaligo is running a four day “11.11 sale”, with double the usual number of miles or points from any number of hotel bookings made for stays between now and the end of May 2020. This can be a useful way of topping up your balance in over 40 airline loyalty programmes, provided you find a good deal.
The offer
No need to register for this offer, but you must book through the dedicated link for the promotion to take effect: kaligo.com/11-11-sale
This will then trigger double points / miles in the search results, broken down into a regular earn rate and a bonus amount at the payment stage.
In the following example you can see you’ll earn 6,486 Avios points for this stay, double the usual 3,243 points.
Note that this same hotel booking will only yield around 3,400 KrisFlyer miles, 3,700 Asia Miles or 3,900 Alaska Miles, even at the double rate, so it’s worth checking other schemes you hold balances in before committing. For us, 6,500 Avios would be the one to go for.
All frequent flyer programmes are included in the offer, however bank credit card loyalty programmes are excluded. That means you’ll still get a fixed 10 miles per dollar spent using cards like your Citi PremierMiles or DBS Altitude.
Although the promotion is advertised as ending on Monday, in fact it is running in UTC (GMT) time until 11th November 2019 at 11.59pm, which is 7.59am on Tuesday 12th November 2019 in Singapore.
That means you’ll have until early Tuesday morning to make your booking. The promotion is valid for stays between now and 31st May 2020.
This beats the 50% KrisFlyer bonus
It probably goes without saying that this four day sale beats the ongoing 50% bonus on KrisFlyer miles with Kaligo offer, running until 30th November 2019 for stays completed by the end of March 2020.
Don’t be too hooked on checking the KrisFlyer rates though, other FFPs are often more generous in their miles award rates for the exact same Kaligo booking.
It’s not always a good deal
Kaligo works by sharing some of the commission it receives for each hotel booking with you in the form of miles. Since a ‘middle man’ is involved, it often means paying more than the best available rate for the stay.
It also means some bookings will earn you more miles or points per dollar spent than others (where the commission Kaligo receives is a greater percentage).
That’s not to say it is always more expensive though, we have found hotels on Kaligo that are actually the same rate and sometimes even cheaper than booking direct.
The important thing to do is shop around first, then consider whether Kaligo is giving you a good rate for the hotel of your choice.
In the above example earning nearly 6,500 Avios for two nights in the Toronto Airport Westin is probably only worth it if the rate payable comes in at a maximum of S$97.50 more than the best available rate – whereby you’d be ‘buying’ miles for 1.5 Singapore cents each.
That’s arbitrary of course and you may not be comfortable buying miles at that price point, or buying them at all.
Status at chain hotels
Remember if you’re booking a chain hotel you won’t get any points or status credits in the hotel loyalty scheme for your Kaligo booking. Effectively you are sacrificing those for the frequent flyer miles instead.
This makes Kaligo more useful if you’re staying at an independent property, or at a chain you don’t bother collecting points / status with.
Some hotels will still recognise and award your status benefits during your stay, even if you book via an OTA like Kaligo. In our experience Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels usually will honour your status perks in these examples, some Hyatts do and some don’t, ex-SPG properties and Hilton’s usually won’t.
Arguably if you have already secured the status level you desire with a particular hotel chain, Kaligo may make more sense for your booking if the miles deal works out much better than the hotel points, provided the hotel will still honour your status perks during your stay, or if you’re booking a club room anyway in which case you’ll get most of the benefits regardless.
Credit card points can still be better
If you have read our full article on Kaligo from December 2017, you’ll recall there’s normally a better way to earn more miles or points when booking through the service by crediting your miles to your credit card, provided you hold one of the following Singapore-issued cards:
When loyalty points from these cards are subsequently transferred to KrisFlyer, or another frequent flyer scheme like Asia Miles or Avios, each of them will result in a fixed 10 miles per S$1 spent at Kaligo (including taxes).
That can still be a higher miles or points total level than the ‘double rate’ on offer here, since the latter is variable rate based on commission while the credit card points rates are fixed.
In other words, don’t forget to check these credit card options if they are applicable to you as although they are not included in the double points promotion they can still come out on top.
Summary
A nice offer here if you can find a Kaligo rate that works for a forthcoming trip. Always calculate the cost per mile versus the best available rate you can secure elsewhere to ensure you’re not paying over the odds.
It’s definitely worth playing around with different frequent flyer programmes when you make your searches too. We found a few examples where crediting to Asia Miles, Alaska Miles or Avios came in at higher rates than KrisFlyer, sometimes more than twice as generous.
Finally there is always the credit card points option for selected Citi, DBS and UOB cardholders, which can work out as a better deal even though they are not included in the 2x offer.
(Cover Photo: Marriott International)