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?
