Hotels.com has announced a major devaluation to its loyalty program. Previously you received a stamp with each night stay, when you had completed ten nights you received a free night stay based on the average cost of those ten nights (you could top it up with cash, but if it was under the value you didn’t get a further refund).
The new program is called One Key and is a combined loyalty program across other Expedia brands (Expedia, VRBO, Orbitz etc). The new program offers 2% back on all hotels, vacation rentals, activities, packages, car rentals, and cruises and 0.2% on all flights.
This is obviously a massive devaluation. It looks like the changes go live mid 2023, so aren’t live yet. Existing stamps will be converted to OneKey at 10% of the value listed (value listed is the price of the hotel night so this is a fair exchange). I actually used to use Hotels.com a bit, but this has killed any desire to ever use them again.
Hotels.com is not doing so well: https://skift.com/2024/05/02/expedia-bosses-say-vrbo-will-drag-2024-growth/
I cant seem to get ahold of anyone over at hotels.com (one key) to give me a reason for the following math. 3 rewards nights ($120, $120 and $110) should equal $350 in one key cash, but instead was converted to $322.xx which makes no sense to me. These are not residual stamps but actual available reward nights with a value assigned to them. It is like they charged a fee to convert them or something.
I have 2 hotels.com credit vouchers worth €70 each what will happen to them please?
I understand my reward nights will keep their value.
Today I got a pop-up at hotelsDOTcom offering “early access” to One Key, which, if I understand correctly, would convert my current stamps and reward nights to a combined dollar balance, usable now, according to the new rules. I’m not booking anything today, so I declined for now.
This might be interesting for some who want to combine all their credits into one, and who don’t want to wait until July 6. But I guess it also means bookings would immediately start earning the reduced award rate.
I accepted the offer to convert to One Key now, and my 2 reward nights and 6 accumulated stamps were converted to their cash value. I was immediately able to use the entire balance in a single booking.
If you plan to complete a stay between now and July 6, 2023, you’ll come out ahead with the current program, so you should not convert before you have to. All my planned stays are at the end of summer, so it didn’t matter in my case.
Is it possible to maintain or earn Gold status by collecting stamps? Or is it gone for good?
I am not sure if spending One Key dollars counts towards collecting trip elements.
I want to summarize my analysis of the points made by Carly, Kafka, Simon, and others.
If you have any stamps or reward nights currently, you should be in no extra hurry to use them. The value for these will be retained after the conversion.
If you are planning a hotel stay, and the stay is before July 6, 2023, you should be fine with valuing the Hotels.com stamp at least just as much as before. The stamp you earn will not lose its value in the conversion, and in fact would gain 10% more in value.
Now, if your stay will be after July 6, 2023, you will be earning a lot less than before (roughly 2% instead of 7%, see https://www.doctorofcredit.com/hotels-com-devalues-loyalty-program-from-10-to-2-one-key/#comment-1587282) and so you may want to consider booking somewhere else depending on the final price you’d get elsewhere. It’s a little ambiguous exactly when the conversion will occur (all I see is “beginning on July 6”), but for simplicity we can just assume it to be that day.
Hope this clears up some of the other confusion in these comments, and feel free to chime in if you think I got something wrong.
Something weird going on at Hotels .com…
Trying to check gift card balance: redirects to an Expedia login (?) at microsoftonline… WTF?
And, of course (!), can’t get past the bot to chat personally with an agent. Wants me to sign in when I’m already signed in, or enter a booking number, which I don’t even have yet.
EDIT: That was all linking from the support page.
But when I go here: https://www.hotels .com/page/temporary-balance-check/ it works.
There’s so much competition in this space. If Hotels doesn’t want my business I’m happy to take it elsewhere.
The 2% seems to be based on total price, while the 10% was only of the base rate. The redemptions in the current system also can’t be used against taxes and fees. More importantly, you lose any residual value if you redeem for less than your average of the last 10 nights of stays. Call it ballpark 8% earnings and >10% inefficiency in redemption, about 7% effective return.
These seem like nitpicking, but consider: last year, after staying 10 nights averaging $275ish, my next two stays were going to be $90 rooms, meaning either I redeem a free night for 70% less value, or my free night’s average value drops by 14%. I booked the two $90 nights via Chase instead.
Those problems aside, Hotels.com was a great program, and a devaluation from ~7% to 2% still sucks.
Personally, I never redeemed for a night of lesser value (and never would have). I would pay for the cheaper room instead of using a free night. Most of my reservations were at places with similar rates, though, so I was never faced with the choice you had to make.
That’s exactly what I did
I never got to 10 nights with them and prefer the 2% discount.
Hotel.com was my go to for hotels but i only gotten 1 free night reward with them. With all the Hilton & Marriott free night certs and points. Expedia points and finding cheaper rates on agoda and I haven’t got the chance to use them much. Just been collecting discounted giftcard so now im stuck with $800 hotel.com gc
From https://www.hotels.com/one-key :
I read this as you will NOT lose the value of already earned hotels dot com reward nights and that all stamps will be converted at full value to onekeycash w/ an additional 10% of value added.
Here’s what I heard directly from hotels.com specifically related to my situation but you can infer… “All reward nights collected will be converted into One Key Cash at their full value and automatically transferred to the One Key account. There’s no loss of value to the traveler, so if you have a free night worth 200 USD, this will be converted into 200 USD in one key cash.
If you already have accumulated 8 free nights, you can get the full value of these nights in one key cash. If you have remaining stamps in your account that are not part of a reward night by the date you become a One Key member, 10% of each stamp will be converted to One Key Cash. For example, 1 stamp worth $100 will be converted to $10 in One Key Cash.
If stamps are pending for a stay not completed by the date you become a One Key member, then you will earn OneKeyCash based on One Key rates.”
So the earned nights will convert 1:1 but pending nights are converted to the new rate scheme – I’m thinking the silver, gold, platinum rates in the updated table. Gold converts higher than silver, platinum higher than gold.
That’s full value. Previously, 10 nights of $120 rooms gives you a 1 $120 value. This is better because previously if you only had 9 nights, you’d have a $0 value certificate because you were missing that 10th night.
Also it rewards people who use their platform more. It will be interesting to see how things play out over time. I’m not a fan of expedia but used vrnbo on occasion. Hotels com (as w/ airbnb) have stellar customer service in my experience. Hopefully the competitors such as airbnb, kayak, tripadvisor, etc add more loyalty incentives down the road.
Really bummed out since I prepaid a trip with Hotels.com after July 6th , all 8 nights average out to $192 dlls and now I have pending points next to each night for a total of 17.24 dlls . Did I get screwed or what ! Worse is I can’t cancel all of those nights since I got them none refundable. This key cash program is terrible . I loved the reward stamp program and was a loyal customer for these past 14 yrs !
Do you know if it is possible to earn platinum membership status via spend on the hotels dot com reward credit card either before or after the launch of this new program?
Wow that’s HUGE, no? I was already pissed at Hotels.com for not refunding me during COVID. This kills them for me.
Expedia continues to become more irrelevant.
Yeah, I agree with you..this will make me not use them near as much, if at all…
I have 18 pending days worth of reservations for end of June early July for an international trip. It’s too late to rebook elsewhere at this point. If I can’t squeeze in before the devaluation I’m going to be so upset.
I was all set to get my last 2 stamps to reach 10 in early June. Guess I’ll cancel that reservation and book elsewhere.
Will have to find another loyalty program. This is a very significant devalue, by 80%! Disappointed, I guess it was too good the last.
exactly..what a shame, I used it a lot
Dang, this was my go to site to get those stamps. Total bummer. Any recommendations for future booking that doesn’t inflate prices like Chase?
Capitalone travel perhaps, just find some good property at 30% lower price than anywhere else. Plus 10x miles.
hotels.com is pretty trash now vs what Capital One Travel offers, that and Airbnb and it’s fine, hotels.com was ever any good when they consistently had 20% off gc
I’ve never been a huge user of hotels.com, but they used to have discout codes you could use with the discounted gift cards and cashback sites. (You could not earn hotels.com loyalty stamps when you used the discount code). But the discount codes have dried up, and they’ve dramatically limited the cashback. The Expedia group charges a higher commission than booking.com, so it rarely has the best prices now without combining the discounts.
Hotels.com Devalues Loyalty Program (From 10% To 2%) .. in 99.9% of the cases
Hotels.com Devalues Loyalty Program (From 10% To 6%).. in some cases if someone is a platinum member in the new program when you book stays at VIP Access properties
Hey doc, would love to introduce you to a better platform where you can stack brand loyalty rewards and the platform’s own rewards program.
It was a pretty great program while it lasted. I’ve collected 7 free nights over the years. I’ll only book direct from now on.
I have used hotels.com for most of my hotel booking. Recently I have noticed the price on Hotels.com is higher than book directly from hotel website, and it became more diffcult to use hotels.com website and I feel they are forcing me to use their APP. Given the devaluation of the reward program, I really see no reason to continue use it.
Mark D, hotels.com offers price match. I’ve done it myself. It’s a little annoying to do, and sometimes the price match price they see is different from the one you see, but it’s still doable.
Not when you can also use discounted Hotels.com GC + go through a portal. However, discounted Hotels.com GC is getting harder to find.
No reason not to book direct now.
I have one free night left to use, and maybe $100 in hotels.com gift cards. After those are used up, they are unlikely to get much business from me.
You wrote the precise words I was thinking.
Have used hotels.com for years, the combination of discounted gift cards, cash back portal, and 1 stamp per night offered excellent value… suppose it was too good to last. I’m close to another free night, after that will have to find another program.
The hotels.com credit card is not devalued with the change, you get $11 rewards for every $500 spent still-actually might be an upgrade there as you can book a hotel more or less than $110 now and still get full value. It seems like you can also use your hotels.com credit to book flights and rental cards? We will see, could make it a 2.2% cash back cc for any travel. But if you don’t have the CC this is a horrendous devaluation.
I think that is a low return on things considering card points are worth more and more flexible.
It would be better to use that card only for general purpose spending (only in exact multiples of $500, by the way), for which you would normally only earn 2% or less, and then have more rewarding cards for travel, groceries, dining, gas, etc.
hotel dot com gift cards easily get 20% off (bestbuy kohl’s offer etc from chase) but i’ve never seen booking dot com gift card. Any tips about saving on booking dot com?
Some credit cards have a built-in discount with the site. It’s an obscure thing, only one I know right off hand is the US Bank FlexPerks Gold.
Doesn’t Booking dot com just show pretty good discounts to certain properties right there on the site, without any hoops to jump through? (I haven’t checked the site lately, though.)
Why do they still need Hotels.com? If the price and the reward program are identical, they can simply redirect hotels.com to expedia.com.
Illusion of choice.
How very kafkaesque
Devalue deez nuts! Fuck Hotels.com
I’ll be using up my accumulated gift card balance on my upcoming trip, and after that I’ll jump ship for Booking dot com or some other program where loyalty is actually rewarded.
Now I’m really glad WF denied my application for the credit card!
P.S. From the announcement: “…One Key. It launches in mid-2023, and it’s going to change the way you travel.”
No shit.
Used them pretty much exclusively for their program. I suppose we’re breaking up.
Do they say how existing reservations will earn after the change? I have a trip booked for November expecting to earn stamps (converting at 10% would be fine).
“One Key Rewards earning terms applies to all travel completed on or after the date you become a One Key member”
Can they change the terms of an existing booking? Seems like a bait and switch, but there’s probably something buried in the terms saying they can do whatever.
“I actually used to use Hotels.com a bit, but this has killed any desire to ever use them again.”
Agreed. I’ve used them quite a lot as well and have redeemed over a dozen free nights with them over the years (meaning I’ve booked over 100 nights through them – wow). For independent properties, or properties from brands where I had no loyalty account, the discounted hotels.com gift cards plus what was essentially an extra 10% off through reward nights made it a no brainer.
Oh well.
My 5 stamps expired last month, and I suddenly feel even better about walking away.
Too late to save your stamps but you could have booked a $2 hostel in Laos or Cambodia to extend them for 1yr
Tell me how this works. Do I need to check in?
No, just book the cheapest non refundable rate. Since it’s non refundable, you’ll get charged and it will count as a (cheap) night. I used to book non refundable nights at “Central Backpackers Hostel Ha Giang” in Vietnam, although it seems they now have fully refundable rates. I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s only $1.5-$2 to try. I never visited SE Asia btw.
I think this would bring down the average value of your last 10 stamps, so your redemption would have a lower max. Better than expiration, of course.
Of course it would bring down the average, but not the total earned. E.g. if you earned $100 average over 9 nights, that has value of $90. Doing a $2 night stay will bring the average to $90.2 but the value is still over $90. The only waste is $2 spent on a hostel you’re not going to use (actually it’s $1.80 because you get 20c back).
And leave a nice review of the property and staff as an incentive to continue the status quo. 😉
Only reason I used hotels. Com was for the free nights. Now I might be better off using the chase travel portal for a much higher cashback rate.
Except half the prices through Chase’s shit portal are inflated by 10% so its not much of a win
It says this starts in mid 2023 so in the meantime I wonder if we still earn stamps. Their app seems to imply users will still earn them.
“One Key Rewards earning terms applies to all travel completed on or after the date you become a One Key member”
Until then the old terms continue to be in effect.
What happens to existing stamps? I’m at 9 stamps right now with an average of around $75. Do I get like 90% of that in the new program?
Yes. As per the FAQ: https://www.hotels.com/one-key
“We understand some may be on the way to collecting 10 stamps so we will also award 10% of the value of each stamp collected in OneKeyCash. These will be automatically transferred to your One Key account and will retain their current expiration dates.”