The Offer
- BJ’s Wholesale online is offering $100 Hotels.com physical gift card for $84.99.
The Fine Print
- Online only
- No limit on how many you can buy
Our Verdict
Try using a shopping portal for additional cashback. Hotels.com becomes even better when stacking discounts/deals, full guide to that can be found here.
This is surely the most difficult to use gift card I’ve ever come across.
For anyone who might not know, hotels.com gift card is NOT usable at many (majority for me when I attempted to use the gift cards got from BJs or elsewhere years ago) hotels listed on hotels.com and available if you pay by credit card/cash.
As you might have guessed it, the very limited list of hotels where you can use the gift cards are usually not worth it even if you can get the gift card at 35% off, let alone 15%. (For example, paying with credit card, you can reserve a hotel for $100 a night on hotels.com, but in order to use the gift card, the only available choice is another hotel nextdoor with similar star-level, similar or worse ratings, and costs $200 per night.)
I travel full time so I know I’m not typical but have to say that I rarely run into a property I can’t use the gift card at. They’re out there, certainly, but maybe 3 hotels in my last year?
I’ve been using hotels.com for business travels for quite some time.
When you could get the GC at 15% off, add in the rewards program approx 10%, and 5% cashback through Samsung Pay, the overall discount is 30% for me.
I rarely run into hotels where they wouldn’t let you pay with GC.
They do ask that you need to pay in advance in order to use GC.
For some chains like Quality Inn or Choice which do not require advance payment at all, this might be reason for the issue.
The readers here are so amazing, their comments explain everything.
With this information, I am not joining BJs for $10 and not buying hotels.com gift card
Do you think it’s worth it to join BJ’s just for this deal? There don’t seem to be as many hotels.com deals anymore and I like to have a small stash of them for when I need to book a hotel. Not sure that I’d use my online membership for anything else though.
Hotels.com has indefinitely disabled balance and transfer tools (both online and automated telephone). This is no “deal” as these cards are now way too hard to use.
it does suck having to call to talk to someone now but I have not had any problems. I have merged a few thousand since the system has been down.
If they would just get rid of the $2k limit and/or the one gift card per transaction limit.
It was well worth it for me, but it will depend how many gift cards you plan to buy. I have only ever purchased gift cards from them and they have deals on many different ones. I’ve purchased thousands in uber, hotels.com, and amtrak gift cards at 20% off since joining in december.
I want to buy a lot of hotels.com gift cards
On another note the online hotels com took to verify or combine gift card balance has been offline for a few months. Anyone know why?
I see the same problem. Any one knows alternative way to merge the balances?
You have to call in. A rep needs to do it. Very time consuming specially when they keep keying the wrong numbers.
Thank You. Call support always make our time waste. Not sure why they removed the merge option from online
Membership is required. There is a $10/year online membership. All cashback portals I have checked exclude gift cards and I have never had them post with cash back. This offer says it is good until 5/8 or while supplies last.
an idea which portals still track for these?
I assume you need to be a member?
They offer an online membership for $10, which works for online purchases. I bought the membership along with 60 gift cards for an upcoming trip (got denied at first due to suspected fraud). Awesome deal. Thanks doctorofcredit!