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Did you know you can earn hotel points and airline miles simply for giving your opinions in online surveys? Several hotels and airlines have survey portals where members can earn bonus points and miles for opinions through completing online surveys. Here are the details.
Earning Miles for Opinions via Online Surveys
For as long as we've been keeping track, airline and hotel loyalty program members have been able to earn bonus points and miles when filling out surveys. Survey companies give commissions to hotels and airlines when members fill out the surveys, which are passed on to members in the form of bonus points and miles. Some surveys only give a few miles, while others could give hundreds.
Unlike most other ways of earning miles, you don't have to buy anything to earn points and miles. All you need to take the time to fill out the survey.
The only real caveat is that not all members will qualify to answer the surveys, and members will need to disclose a lot of personal information for the platforms to determine which surveys are relevant.
Each survey portal groups surveys into several categories — such as automotive, business, finance, household, politics, technology, etc. The more information you give about yourself, the more likely you are to qualify for surveys.
Airline and hotel survey portals
Currently, seven airlines and two hotels have a survey portal:
- Alaska Airlines: The Opinion Terminal
- American Airlines: Miles for Opinions
- JetBlue: Jet Opinions
- Southwest Airlines: Rewards for Opinions
- Spirit Airlines: Points for Thoughts
- United Airlines: Opinion Miles Club
- Wyndham Hotels: Opinion Rewards Panel
Delta Air Lines is the only major U.S. carrier without a survey portal.
Bonus points for joining survey portals
Many survey portals offer bonus points just for signing up and completing your first survey. At this time, claim bonus points when joining and completing your first survey in the following portals:
- Alaska Airlines: 400 Mileage Plan miles
- American Airlines: 250 AAdvantage® miles
- JetBlue: 400 TrueBlue points
- Southwest: 500 Rapid Rewards points
- Spirit Airlines: 400 Free Spirit points
Can You Attain Elite Status Through Miles for Opinions Alone?
At the beginning of 2022, American Airlines revamped its loyalty program to have only one metric for earning AAdvantage elite status: Loyalty Points. In addition to flying, travelers can also earn Loyalty Points through credit card spending; booking hotels, car rentals, and vacation packages; spending through the AAdvantage® eShopping Portal; and even taking surveys through Miles for Opinions.
That leads to the question: Can you achieve AAdvantage elite status just by filling out surveys?
Maybe, but it's probably not a good idea.
The biggest drawback with trying to earn 40,000 Loyalty Points — the requirement for entry-level AAdvantage Gold elite status — solely through surveys is it would take hundreds of hours. If you have a job (or a life), you could probably find a better use of your time.
Breaking down the math
Miles for Opinions offers up to 200 AAdvantage miles per survey. That's the upper limit. If you don't complete the survey for whatever reason, you'll get as little as 3 miles — and you might have already spent time answering questions.
The average survey takes about 20 minutes to finish. If you earn the maximum 200 miles (and therefore 200 Loyalty Points) for each survey, you'll need 200 surveys to reach Gold status. At 20 minutes per survey, that's nearly 67 hours worth of surveys. But that's the best-case scenario.
However, it's far more likely you'll get an average of 50 points per survey. Then there's the time you'll spend answering questions, only to find you're no longer qualified to finish the survey 10 minutes in, leaving you with just a couple miles. So it would probably take more like 400+ hours to get the 40,000 Loyalty Points needed for AAdvantage Gold.
Sure, you can go down this path. But most travelers have a better use of their time than filling out surveys for hundreds of hours.
Limitations to Completing Surveys for Miles
As nice as it is to get miles simply for sharing your opinions, the option is not always available to you. If you don't want to share all your personal information and complete your profile, you won't have a lot of surveys available to take.
What's more, there's always a chance you start a survey and are then notified that the quota has been reached or you are no longer eligible to complete the survey. In either case, you'll receive a pittance of miles for your time — as few as 3 miles.
Another disadvantage to signing up for these survey portals is the number of emails you'll receive. Receiving emails — sometimes more than one per day — is a requirement of many programs. If you unsubscribe, you'll lose your membership.
Bans from survey portals
Perhaps the biggest (and silliest) problem with airline survey portals is the chance of getting banned. While some members reported achieving AAdvantage Gold after earning 40,000 miles through Miles for Opinions, other members report being banned after earning 11,000 miles. Perhaps there was something else at play here — such as answering questions in a robotic or dishonest way — but just know it's a possibility.
Our Take
Earning miles for completing surveys could be a good idea in limited circumstances. If you need a few more miles for a flight or hotel stay, completing a survey just might give you the boost you need. It might also be a way to earn miles while waiting at the dentist's office, for example.
On the other hand, if you have a more valuable use for your time, you're far better off just buying the miles or points needed or earning the miles with another method.
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