Why Rocketmiles is my personal Schrodinger's cat

Rocketmiles, if you haven't heard of them yet, is a hotel room booking service that earns you airline miles with select airlines (excluding Jet Airways and Air India), for hotel bookings done through their portal.

Schrödinger's cat, if you haven't heard of it, is a thought experiment about paradoxes. There's a cat in a box, which could be both dead and alive at the same time, and you won't know which until you open the box. [That is the concept, at least, though I'm sure there's something wrong with my technical understanding!]

I've not used Rocketmiles yet, but it does seem like both a great deal and a very bad idea, at the same time. I am not sure how beneficial it will be to me, until I try them out. And that's why it is my personal paradox. Here are my main reasons why. And why not.

Why

• You can earn air miles on your favourite airline loyalty program, choosing from Aeroplan, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, American Airlines AAdvantage program, Etihad Guest, Flying Blue, Frontier EarlyReturns, HawaiianMiles, JetBlue TrueBlue, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Southwest , Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles, United MileagePlus, US Airways Dividend Miles, and Virgin America Elevate.
• Minimum earnings are guaranteed at 500 miles a night, though it is very very common to see minimums of 1000 miles a night. If you're lucky, they could go up to 5,000 miles a night.
• Hotel room rates are not any more expensive than what you'd normally get with the hotel or other travel websites.
• Rates are usually cancellable within specified time-frames.
• There's a lot of Indian cities that are covered by Rocketmiles, and so one could stay at these hotels while earning air miles with a preferred airline's program.

...but...

• My biggest crib is that bookings with Rocketmiles don't earn you points with the hotel's loyalty program for your stay.
• Hotels are likely not to honour any elite status you may have with their hotel program, including additional miles, better / upgraded rooms, etc.
• You aren't covered by any sort of "best rate guarantee".
• And my biggest concern - Air India and Jet Airways aren't partners with Rocketmiles so you don't earn miles on those programs.

Nonetheless, all experience is good experience, so I do plan to use Rocketmiles to book a hotel room for one of my upcoming stays. I will certainly report on that. Having said that, I'm not sure how much or how consistently I will use them in future. Sure, I could earn miles on Etihad Guest or Flying Blue or any other international airline program that I find value with, but I've not decided on that at the moment. A lot more research would need to go into that.

From an Indian context, however, I can see two circumstances when using Rocketmiles might be beneficial. The first is by overseas visitors into India, who may prefer to earn some additional miles on their current airline program that Rocketmiles partners with. The second is if I'm travelling to a place that doesn't have one of my preferred hotels, and so it wouldn't matter much where I stayed. However, this seems rather unlikely at this point.

The bottomline is, I'm undecided. 

Have you used Rocketmiles? Do you find it useful? If you haven't yet registered with them, you might want to sign up using my affiliate link here. By doing this, you will earn (as will I) a 1000 bonus miles in a participating program of your choice, after your first booking with Rocketmiles. As always, thanks for your support.