File this under ‘highly speculative with little substance’ but it’s rumored Hotels.com is planning to launch a co-branded credit card. The obvious banking partner would be Capital One as they partnered with Hotels.com to offer 10x rewards when using the Capital One card. That being said American Express partnered with Uber for a benefit on the Platinum card and now Barclays issues the Uber co-branded credit card so it could be another issuer.
The problem with any potential Hotels.com card is what benefits could it come with to make it useful, one of the reasons why Hotels.com is so popular is that you can stack discounts to save 30%+ off. A big part of that is using discounted gift cards purchased elsewhere though and that’s a big reason the Capital One benefit hasn’t seen much use. Obviously if the sign up bonus is big enough people will consider it, but in terms of the card being worth keeping long term I can’t think of anything that will make it useful. What benefits would you like to see on a potential Hotels.com card?
Thrifty Traveler is reporting that Capital One has confirmed that they will discontinue the special 10x Venture relationship.
Edit: On 1/31/2020
A useful benefit of a hotels.com card would be removing the expiration date of earned night credits
They extended mine when I called and asked.
Good to know. I will call them because I kept getting emails ‘nights about to expire’. Thank you
That’s good to know. In the past I’ve booked a cheap hotel in Asia for $1/night to extend the expiration date of earned night credits. Free is obviously better!
You only need one booking per year don’t you?
“What benefits would you like to see on a potential Hotels.com card?”
A lack of connection to Capital One.
Initally got excited since this card could be useful for an upcoming trip to Copenhagen where there isn’t much hotel selection for award bookings, then I saw it’s Capital One which never approves me for anything 🙁
It’s entirely speculation at this point.
Not speculation anymore. I received a survey asking my thoughts on possible benefits.
Maybe Citi? Citi offers an Expedia card (Expedia bought Hotel.con).
I could see it being useful if they added an annual free night and gave card holders small chain like perks late check-out (not sure how they could without vendor agreements in place. But say 2 free stays every 15-16 nights? Instead of 10 ?
In a similar vein, I could see a card anniversary bonus of getting X free nights towards one’s ’10 nights, get 1 free’ promotion. If it’s, say, 5, a person would only need to book 5 nights to trigger the first free night bonus rather than 10.
Won’t help everyone and less valuable than a standard free night offered by other CCs like Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, etc., but I could see this as a decent perk for a no-AF hotels.com CC.
The problem here is that what value would hotels.com attach to those anniversary bonus 5 nights? The way ’stay 10 nights, get 1 free’ works, is hotels come tracks the average value of the 10 nights you stayed and that average would be the limit of your 1 night free redemption.
I would say average of the 5 nights.
Using the card to buy the discounted gift cards, thereby earning more Hotels.com rewards 😉
But yes, hard to determine. The Orbitz card gives 5% back, for example (issued by Comenity). The Citi Expedia card gives various perks. I would actually assume the card would be issued by one of those two banks, since Expedia already has a relationship with them.
An AirBNB credit card would be a huge hit!
100% agree but don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. They need some kind of loyalty program first.
isn’t their loyalty program 10th one free?