You can now earn Virgin Flying Club miles via hotel booking site PointsHound

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Last August, I wrote about Rocketmiles and PointsHound. These are both online hotel booking services, but with a difference – when you book, you earn a large pile of frequent flyer miles in return!

At the time, both of the sites were US-focussed. However, PointsHound has recently been acquired by Canadian group points.com and is rapidly expanding its partnerships.

For European and Middle Eastern airlines, you can now earn with:

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Etihad Guest

Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles

Icelandair

Flying Blue

When it originally launched, PointsHound offered ‘double up’ rates. These rates WOULD count as ‘qualifying stays’ with the hotel in terms of giving you loyalty points and elite benefits in IHG Rewards Club, Marriott Rewards etc. These rates are not currently available.

If you use PointsHound, you need to be aware of the following limitations:

You will NOT earn stay credit or loyalty points in the hotel scheme of the property you book except for points on additional spending.

You may or may not – depending on the generosity of the individual hotel – get your elite benefits recognised. Hilton generally does still give elite benefits such as free breakfast and internet to Gold members. Other chains are less generous.

You should compare PointsHound pricing with other ‘third party’ websites such as Expedia or hotels.com.

The site is also buggy. If you search by US$ pricing, you are presented with several special deals. On July 29th, for example, I would get 4,350 Virgin miles for booking the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge for $380. Switch to £, though, and I would be paying £212 and earning just 925 miles. All very odd.

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, one has a bonus of 15,000 points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

The UK’s most generous free Visa or Mastercard at 0.75 points / £1 Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 points bonus and the most generous non-Amex for day to day spending Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points: