A new hotel booking site has launched this week to offer a straightforward way for travellers to earn miles from various loyalty programmes with their hotel stays.
Called Kaligo.com, the service has 300,000 hotels in its database, covering 200 countries. The range of loyalty schemes featured at this point is still rather limited – AirAsia's BIG, AAdvantage, Asia Miles, British Airways Executive Club, Jet Privilege and US Airways Dividend Miles are listed – but the company promises that the number of partners will grow.
“The online travel space is really a single landscape – it’s all mass market, discount focused and ripe for disruption,” Kaligo co-founder and chief executive Kyle Armstrong, says, claiming that the amount of points can often go up to 10,000 per night, "enough for a free flight or upgrade."
The company says that it is targetting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that allow their staff to book their own travel, although it also points out that Google is one of the first big corporations that let their employees control their own travel budgets.
The website is easy to use: enter your destination and travel dates and the system will offer a list of choices, each with the price and reward miles clearly listed. There are also quick references to TripAdvisor reviews.
It's worth noting, however, that many hotel chains do not extend points from their loyalty programmes to those who book their stays from online travel agents.
Reggie Ho
