There’s a great offer now at Hotelclub.com to get $50 off $100 booking.
The Offer
- Book a participating hotel on hotelclub.com and receive a $50 promotional discount off the price of a room $100 or more using promo code: VISACHECKOUT.
IMPORTANT: This promo code will only work when paying in Australian Dollars (AUD). $100 AUD is currently worth around $83 US dollars. If you find a room that costs exactly $100 AUD, you’ll pay $50 AUD, which is like $41.50 US dollars.
The $100 minimum needs to be before any taxes or fees.
Remember: There may be foreign transaction fees that your credit card will hit you with. We recommend using a credit card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. See this spreadsheet from Flyertalk for details on which cards charge foreign transaction fees.
Note: Many shopping portals pay out for hotelclubs.com. In this case, we recommend using TopCashBack who offers the highest rate at 14% cash-back. (The 14% rate ends in 5 days.) It’s not guaranteed that the cash-back will post since sometimes it doesn’t work together with a discount/promo code. But more often the portal cash-back does end up stacking with the other discounts.
[UPDATE: I can now confirm that cash-back should post just fine (at least pending) for hotelclubs.com, despite using a promo code. I used the promo code, and I just got the confirmation email from topcashback that I received additional cash-back. When I logged into my account, I see that the cash-back amount is $8.80, 14% of the purchase price of USD$62.92. My purchase price was AUD$74.02, plus taxes and fees, for a total of AUD$89.04. Apparently, they only gave cash-back on the base price of $74.02. After conversion into USD, it ends up somewhere close to the $62.92 that they’re posting.]
Here’s What To Do…
- To increase the discount, start off at topcashback.com, and click through the portal to hotelclub.com. If you don’t want to go through the portal, then just go directly to hotelclub.com.
- Go the the top right corner where it says “USD”.
- Change it to AUD from the drop-down menu.
- Enter the details of where you want to go, and the dates you want to stay.
- Enter: VISACHECKOUT in the field that says “I have a promotion code”. Press “Search”.
- In the next screen, some of the options will be eligible for the promo code and some won’t. The rooms which are eligible will say clearly “Promo code eligible”, and will look something like this:
- Book the room. Make sure the discount is reflected in your total. It will look something like this:
- Pay for the room using Visa Checkout (similar to Paypal). If you don’t have a Visa Checkout account, you can create one now. It takes about a minute.
- [Recommended] Use a credit card which doesn’t have a foreign transaction fee to pay.
The Fine Print
- Booking must be made before December 31,2014.
- Total cost of booking must be AUD$100, excluding taxes and fees.
- Your booking must be for a stay which will be completed on or before March 31, 2015.
- Must pay in AUD.
- Must use Visa Checkout to pay.
- Limit of two promo codes per transactor. [I’m not sure if this means that you can use this promo on two bookings and not more, or if it means that you can use up to two promo codes on one single booking.]
Our Verdict
This is nice way of getting a discounted hotel room. I have a trip planned next month, so I was able to take advantage of it. I started off at topcashback with the hope of getting an additional 14% off the cost of the room. Then I found a room which cost AUD$124. After all fees, the final cost of the room was AUD$89.04. That’s like USD$73.88.
I paid with my Barclay Arrival since it doesn’t have any foreign transaction fees. Hopefully, the portal will come through and give me another $10-or-so of savings.
Many people, myself included, had problems with the credit card declining the charge. I pulled out my phone to call Barclay, and just then I received an automated fraud-detection call from Barclay to verify the transaction. After verifying, I was able to complete the transaction without a problem. It may be worthwhile to just call before booking, so that the charge goes through.
Now, the charge is showing in my Barclay account at $74.07. That’s slightly off of the $73.88, but close enough. Here’s a look at my pending transactions:
The two $1.66 authorizations should drop off on their own, and leave me with a $74.07 final charge. As expected, there was no foreign transaction fee on my Arrival card, though they did manage to nab an extra $.19 somehow. [UPDATE: When the charge actually posted, it came up as $73.53.]
I’ll probably end up redeeming my Barclay rewards toward this charge. Since it’s a travel-related charge, it should be eligible for travel-redemption with Barclay Arrival.
HT: Will via flyinghigh77 on Flyertalk
RELATED: $5 with US Bank and Visa Checkout until December 31, 2014.
RELATED: $10 with Bank of America and Visa Checkout until Jan. 8, 2015.
RELATED: $10 with PNC and Visa Checkout until Dec. 31, 2014./
EXPIRED VISA CHECKOUT OFFER: $100 off $100 on Orbitz.
