Roame Travel: A New Search Engine For Award Flights That Takes 12 Seconds (2023 Review)

Roame Travel is a new player in award flight search engines. With its pretty UI and useful pricing information, it appears to be a solid competitor to other options we have reviewed, such as AwardFares, SeatSpy, Point.me, and others. It also claims to be one of the fastest ones, with an average search time of 12 seconds.

In this post, we put it to test. Let’s dive in!

Roame Travel Review (2023)

What is Roame Travel?

The airline programs it covers are:

• AeroMexico Club Premier
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France / KLM Flying Blue
• Alaska Mileage Plan*
• American Airlines AAdvantage
• Avianca Lifemiles
• Delta SkyMiles
• Emirates Skywards
• Iberia Plus
• Jetblue True Blue*
• United Airlines MileagePlus*
• Virgin Australia Velocity

The site is still under development, but it has already been well received positive reviews for its simplicity and ease of use. They claim that Mileage Plan, MieagePlus, and True Blue availability may be subject to their sources.

To Roame is to simplify credit card rewards for the average person. We want to help you find the best redemptions for your credit card points and airline miles. […] That is why we created Roame. We want to help the everyday person realize the value of their points, save them time, and create more loyalty to the banks and airlines that offer these rewards.

Key Features

Searching for awards flights with Roame Travel

After signing up and creating an account,, you can start using it. I love that you use a magic link instead of a nasty password to log in.

Here are some searches I tried on some flights I wanted to book. From Boston (BOS) to Buenos Aires (EZE). You can easily apply some main filters from the top menu, such as cabin type and number of passengers.

Then, on the bottom part, you have more filters, including frequent flyer program, airline, number of stops, and “premium”. You can open a flight by clicking on it to see the full details, which they display beautifully.

Unlike other tools, one key differentiator with Roame is that it lets you search by credit card reward program too. Their algorithm not only considers direct redemptions for flights but also points transfers between the credit card programs and the frequent flyer programs, which is great!

For example, if I filter by Amex Membership Rewards, the tool shows me award flights on Delta Skymiles, and shows me that I can transfer 275,000 Amex MR points to Skymiles to get this flight (plus $11.20).

another great thing is that they account for transfer bonuses, which I’m assuming it gets updated as they different credit cards change their promotions. Here’s one alternative flight transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan. You can click on the link to read a point transfer guide.

One interesting filter, which IMHO is unexplained, is their Premium Percentage, and how it impacts the search results it shows.

Email newsletter with deals

Once you are part of Roame Travel, you get deals directly in your inbox. The frequency is every couple of days, and so far, there’s no way to customize which program, destination, or type of award flights/deals you are interested in.

Guides

Although there’s no landing page, and it is only accessible through the main navigation menu, Roame offers a Guides section with articles covering different credit cards. There’s also a “Getting Started” guide with the first steps.

Friends of Roame (Premium Features)

Roame Travel offers a premium subscription package called Friends of Roame, which includes access to advanced filters, unlimited non-commercial searches, early access to new products, priority support, and a feature called SkyView (in beta).

SkyView

SkyView is a beta product only available for Friends of Roame. SkyView searches the top 2,000 most popular routes over 24-48 hours. As a Friends of Roame member, you may also request to include additional routes.

SkyView allows you to quickly search for all award flights from region to region (e.g. NYC to Europe) and up to a week at a time by toggling on ± 3 days.

Here’s how SkyView looks like. I’ve set it up to search for First Class awards from Europe to United States using AAdvantage, during July. SkyView is similar to the regional/continent searches you can do with AwardFares. With Roame, you can also set up a cap on the number of points you want to use.

Pricing

Roame Travel is free to use (free forever), but they offer premium features in a package called Friends of Roame. It costs $9.99 per month, or $109.99 paying annually. They also have an Enterprise/agency package.

Things to improve so far

• Some bugs in the UI. I’ve detected some small/constrained dropdown menus when selecting frequent flyer programs in SkyView.
• Only possible to search one way. While it makes perfect sense, there’s no way to ‘save’ searches, so it gets tricky when building round-trip or multi-city itineraries. Some other tools let you save legs while you are working out an itinerary.
• Results are only shown in list-view only, which makes it hard to browse and compare. Other tools, such as AwardFares show results in different ways, such as Timeline View and Map View.
• Explanations could be more clear. For example, the Premium Percentage is not explained anywhere on their website.
• Point transfers can take time. And this is not clarified so much. Since the moment you initiate the point transfer until you get them on your frequent flyer program, the award flight might have disappeared.
• Heavy US focus.

Commitment to transparency

Great initiative from their team about being transparent with the credit card offers that appear on their site. It’s perfectly fine that they make commissions from recommending cards (just like this blog, it is reader-supported through affiliate links).

Just keep in mind that there could be other credit card offers to rack up points faster, outside of the recommended ones.

The credit card offers that appear on the website are from credit card companies from which Roame.travel receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). This site does not include all credit card companies or all available credit card offers. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

Conclusion: Is Roame Travel worth it?

Roame Travel is another great tool to search for award travel in 2023. The fact that it is free forever makes it very attractive and an excellent entry point for people who are starting out and don’t know exactly how to use their credit card points or miles. Its UI is beautiful, and its performance is blazing fast, letting you get results within seconds.

The strong points: I think it has great potential to be a game changer for people with one or more credit cards that don’t know how to get free travel. It’s straightforward to get started, and the linked guides on transferring points to frequent flyer programs are fantastic for beginners who want a “Step-by-step” guided journey from the search results to an issued ticket.

The drawbacks: for advanced users, results can be hard to explore. Some filters lack explanation, and the difference between the regular search and SkyView adds an extra layer of logical separation that could be merged into a single interface. It’s also heavily focused on US programs and credit cards.

I love seeing new tools, and I believe it is fantastic that there are more options to choose from. I take Roame Travel as a tool under development with a great starting point. Kudos to the initiative! At $9.99/month, the Friends of Roame program might need a couple more features than SkyView to justify the price in the long run. But it’s worth upgrading if you are after those last-minute deals.

What’s your experience with Roame Travel? Let me know in the comments below, or via Instagram.

Until next time,

Germán

Other posts you’ll love

• AwardFares: Best tool to find Star Alliance availability (2023)
• Best ExpertFlyer Alternatives: Top Free And Paid Options! (2023)
• SeatSpy: Best way to find British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Reward Flights (and more to come!)