Virgin America Adds Morgans Hotels to Mileage Program

The subject line on

Virgin America's

email earlier this week was an attention-getter: "Announcing Our Newest Elevate Partner …"

Another improvement to Virgin America's Elevate program?

So far this year, Virgin America has adopted a significantly more consumer-friendly

points-expiration policy

; added a

mileage mall

to allow Elevate members to earn points for purchases at more than 150 online retailers; and tied up with

Hilton

, awarding Elevate points for stays at more than 3,400 hotels throughout the world.

The newly added partner: the

Morgans Hotel Group

.

Notwithstanding the rather grand-sounding name, the Morgans Hotel Group is more like a hotel handful than Hilton or Marriott's extensive portfolios, comprising thousands of properties in multiple price brackets.

In fact, the Morgans list is short enough that we can easily itemize the group's hotels: the Ames in Boston; the Delano, Mondrian, and Shore Club hotels in South Beach; the Clift in San Francisco, the Mondrian in Los Angeles; the St. Martins Lane and Sanderson in London; and the Morgans, Royalton, and Hudson in New York.

That's it—all of 11 hotels, in just six cities.

But they're distinctive hotels. And they're in the right cities. And, through the end of the year, Elevate members will earn 1,000 points for every Morgans stay.

On the landing page for Virgin America's program partners—which now includes two rental car companies, two hotel groups, a mileage mall, and a credit card—Elevate members are invited to "keep checking back, there's more to come." So it would seem.