Originally Posted by sdsearch

You haven't explained how this cashback toward upgrades works. If it's for longhaul international, does it require the difference between deep discounted coach (the only kind of airline fare I buy) and normal business normal fares to be paid with the cashback? And at booking time? If so, forget it, I'd never accumulate enough cashback to upgrade a $1500 flight to a $5000 flight, without losing hundreds of thousands of hotel points.

At least RocketMiles gives me real airline miles, which I can combine with the miles I earn in other ways (flights, car rentals, credit cards, online shopping, etc) to book outright business class awards (which is simpler to me than trying to guarantee upgrades on paid flights). But other than the singup bonus (an extra few thousand miles), I haven't found Rockmiles interesting either, because I'm price conscious at hotels (they're all booked on my own dime and not reimbursed), and it doesn't give very many miles on inexpensive hotels, while I have to give up hotel points and perhaps hotel elite status earning / perks.

I don't expect something extra for nothing extra, but that seems to be the problem, all of these systems that want to add on to hotels either take away from what I already get at hotels or provide such meager benefits that it's not worth the bother over just booking directly.

I just read about the new HotelUpgrade app, which says it works with existing hotel programs (and booking through their websites) somehow, but it's for IOS only right now (and I have an Android phone) so I can't even try it, and it doesn't explain the specifics well enough on its website (www.hotelupgrade.com) or give an example to see if it would work for me (if it had an Android version). And it seems to work only with specific hotels that it has contracted with.