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You Can Now Book Cruises With United Miles (And Why You Shouldn’t)

Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomer

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Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Links in this post may provide us with a commission.

united cruises

United Cruises Launch

United announced today that they are launching a new cruise redemption service. Called United Cruises, the service allows you to use your valuable United miles to pay for cruises.

So you must be wondering what kind of rate they give you for your miles. Do they let you book at 1.5 cents each? How about 1 cent? Well not quite.

After reading their press release, I headed over to the site and searched a few cruises. I then went over to the cruise lines site and compared the price in miles to the price in dollars. Here is what I found.

Norwegian Sky

united cruises
Norwegian Sky four day sailing in United Miles.
united cruises
Norwegian Sky four day sailing in US Dollars.

Carnival Ecstasy

united cruises
Carnival Ecstasy three day sailing in United miles.
united cruises
Carnival Ecstasy three day sailing in US Dollars.

The Math

After doing a number of searches, the math always came out the same. United will allow you to book cruises with your miles for a whopping value of .85 cents per mile. Boo.

Conclusion

While United has now opened up a new way to use their miles for travel, the redemption value of .85 cents each is terrible. I highly recommend against going this route. I much prefer using the Arrival Plus to pay for my cruises.

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomerhttps://milestomemories.com/
Shawn Coomer earns and burns millions of miles/points per year circling the globe with his family. An expert at accumulating travel rewards, he founded Miles to Memories to help others achieve their travel goals for pennies on the dollar. Shawn also runs a million dollar reselling business, knows Vegas better than most and loves to spend his time at the 12 Disney parks across the world.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Can one person pay with miles, and the 2nd person in the stateroom pay with cash? Or must both book together at the same time, using the same currency type?

  2. The cruise cost in miles, is it for a cabin of 2 people or price per person? If it is for a cabin for two, sign me up.

  3. Not a great value but if you just have a ton of miles you can’t use it’s way better than I thought. I think either Hyatt or SPG also has a program but it’s worse.

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At Miles to Memories we share the best tips, tricks and deals plus travel rants, musings, hotel, airline and loyalty program reviews and a lot more! Our goal is to help people save money so they can get out there and travel the world! Through our various blog posts, podcasts & videos we teach others how to maximize loyalty rewards, hotel & airline programs and credit cards to achieve amazing things.

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