I Tried Rove Miles For A Hilton Stay So You Don’t Have To

After writing my original guide on Rove Miles, I did not want to stop at “this sounds good in theory.”

What really caught my eye was the loyalty eligible hotel angle, where you are supposed to get the best of both worlds: elite recognition and qualifying activity with the hotel, plus a stack of Rove Miles on top.

That is the kind of thing you cannot fully judge from a press release. You need to actually check in somewhere and see what happens.

While I was in Bangkok, I decided to run a live test and booked DoubleTree by Hilton Sukhumvit through the Rove Miles website.

It was one of the cheaper chain options that still offered a loyalty eligible rate, and I did not genuinely need a stay, but I did need data.

So I booked it purely for the experiment and told myself it would at least make for a good story.

How The Rove Miles Booking Worked

On Rove’s site, I chose the loyalty eligible rate rather than the slightly cheaper Rove only rate.

The idea was simple: keep my Hilton Honors Diamond perks, earn Hilton points and elite night credit as usual, pay at the hotel, and then have Rove Miles show up as a bonus layer.

From a technical point of view, the booking behaved the way it was supposed to.

The reservation appeared in my Hilton account without drama, and it looked like a normal direct booking rather than something odd coming from a third party.

So far, Rove passed the first test.

What Happened On The Hilton Side

At check-in, the front desk did recognize my Diamond status. That part was straightforward enough.

My “upgrade” ended up being a switch from two twin beds to a queen bed on a higher floor. It was essentially the same room type, just a few levels up with a slightly better view and not much else going on.

These days, a higher floor seems to be the default status gesture at a lot of properties, and I have mostly learned to treat it as a small courtesy rather than anything more ambitious.

Breakfast was complimentary, as expected with Diamond, and that is where things got entertaining.

When I walked into the restaurant, almost every table had a small “Diamond member” sign on it. It felt like someone had printed too many tags and decided to use them all.

It really drove home the joke: when everybody is Diamond, nobody is Diamond – but when everybody is Diamond, you’d better be Diamond too.

The breakfast itself was perfectly serviceable, but nothing about it made me think, “This is why I stay loyal to Hilton.” The most memorable part was simply how many elites were packed into one room.

At this point, maybe the real flex is having breakfast without a tag at all: “I can afford to pay for breakfast; I booked the breakfast-included rate.”

The Elevators And Why I Would Avoid This Hotel

Now for the part that had nothing to do with Rove and everything to do with the hotel.

I have stayed in a wide range of properties around the world, and I am not easily shocked by small quirks, but I have genuinely never seen an elevator this tiny in a full-service chain hotel.

You could comfortably fit a couple of people with small bags. Anything more started to feel like a group hug.

This was the smallest elevator I’ve ever seen at a Hilton property

To make things worse, during my stay two out of the three elevators were out of service. That meant the entire hotel was sharing one miniature elevator. Every trip up or down turned into a patience exercise, especially at peak times.

In Bangkok, where the general standard of hospitality and operations is very high, this felt lazy. You do not really get to coast when you are competing with dozens of well-run hotels on every block.

This DoubleTree stay also fit into a wider pattern for me with Hilton in Bangkok.

At Conrad Bangkok, I was quoted a pretty eye-watering price just to have the lights on at the tennis court as a staying guest.

At Hilton Garden Inn Bangkok Silom, there is a weed shop right by the entrance, and you are greeted by the smell of cannabis before you even reach the front desk.

Hilton Garden Inn Bangokk Silom Entrance

None of this is catastrophic on its own, but in a city with as many strong options as Bangkok, it is not exactly a glowing report card.

So if you are planning a trip here, I would strongly suggest looking beyond DoubleTree by Hilton Sukhumvit and Hilton Garden Inn Silom.

Conrad Bangkok is generally fine (tennis quirks and a slightly awkward location aside), and there are many other properties in the city that deliver a smoother experience for a similar price point.

When The Rove Miles Finally Posted

Back to the Rove side of the story.

The good news is that the Rove Miles from this loyalty eligible stay did post correctly.

The bad news, depending on your level of patience, is that it took about six weeks after the stay for the miles to actually show up in my account.

Nothing went missing, I did not have to chase anyone down, and the setup worked the way Rove says it should. It was just slow.

This is the key real-world takeaway from the experiment. Loyalty eligible bookings are not something you should rely on if you need Rove Miles quickly.

They behave more like a slow rebate that arrives a couple of months later rather than a near-instant top-up you can immediately transfer to an airline and redeem.

If you go in expecting that, you will be less annoyed watching the empty balance in the meantime.

Was The Loyalty Eligible Angle Worth It

From a points perspective, the structure still makes sense. On this one stay, I earned Hilton points, elite night credit, on-property Diamond perks like breakfast, credit card rewards from paying at the hotel, and eventually a stack of Rove Miles on top.

If you are already planning a paid hotel stay and the price difference between booking direct and booking via Rove is small, that is a useful amount of stacking.

You are not giving up your usual benefits, and you are adding a flexible currency on top.

Where things get less appealing is when you factor in the delay, the extra complexity of involving a third party, and the quality of the actual hotel.

In my case, the data was nice to have, but the stay itself was so underwhelming that it made the experiment feel like a bit of a waste.

The conclusion I came to is that Rove’s loyalty eligible option is worth keeping in the toolkit, but it is not something I would use for a “special” stay or a complicated trip, and definitely not something I would use to justify a hotel I already have doubts about.

How I Would Use Rove Miles Hotel Bookings Next Time

Going forward, I will treat Rove as a nice extra layer, not the main event.

For routine paid stays, I will compare pricing between Rove’s loyalty eligible rate and booking direct, and if the numbers are the same or only slightly higher on Rove, I am happy to take the extra Rove Miles on top of hotel points and status credit.

If it is an important trip – a special occasion, a family holiday, or anything I really do not want to complicate – I will still book directly with the hotel chain just to keep everything as clean and straightforward as possible.

I also plan to use Rove more as a discovery tool, especially for boutique or independent hotels where I am not chasing status anyway.

If they are running a boosted Rove Miles promotion on top of a decent rate, that is exactly the kind of scenario where I would feel good about booking through the portal and quietly stacking a bit more value in the background.

Conclusion

This little Rove Miles experiment in Bangkok did what it was supposed to do on a technical level.

My Hilton Diamond status was recognized, breakfast was included, the stay credited properly with Hilton, and the Rove Miles eventually showed up after roughly six weeks.

On the other hand, the hotel itself was forgettable enough that I would not send anyone there, especially in a city where good hotels are practically a default setting.

Rove’s loyalty eligible model still earns a spot in my toolkit, but with some clear boundaries. For simple, low-stakes paid stays where the loyalty-eligible rate is priced in line with booking direct, I am happy to lock in the extra Rove Miles as a slow-burn bonus.

For special occasions, family trips, or anything where I do not want a third party in the middle, I will continue to book straight with the hotel chain and keep the moving parts to a minimum.

Where I am most excited to use Rove is with boutique and independent hotels, especially when there is a boosted earning promotion on top.

That feels like the right use case: discover something interesting, stack a flexible points currency in the background, and avoid tying the whole experience to an underwhelming big-box stay with a single working elevator.