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Thanks to Hotels.com, I am running a great competition this week to promote the Hotels.com Summer Sale and the Hotels.com Rewards programme.

Between now and Friday, you can win a £500 Hotels.com voucher.  The winner will receive a special code which will save you £500 on a qualifying booking made via the UK site for stays until 31st May 2017.

About Hotels.com

As well as offering one of the largest online selections of hotel rooms, Hotels.com offers its own attractive rewards scheme – Hotels.com Rewards.

I am a fan of Hotels.com Rewards (previously called Welcome Rewards) as I wrote in this article.  It is a very simple scheme:

You earn 1 point for every night you book, whatever the chain.

When you have got 10 points, you get a free night.

The value of the free night is the average price you paid for those 10 nights.

Your points don’t expire as long as you have one stay every 12 months.

There aren’t any catches when you redeem.  You can pick any property on Hotels.com that takes part in Hotels.com Rewards (ie most of them, although a few are excluded) and you can pay the difference if you want to book a hotel which is more expensive than the value of your free night voucher.

With over 285,000 hotels on its site, Hotels.com lets you book roughly 10 times more hotels than all of the ‘big seven’ hotel loyalty schemes combined!

There is a lot of upside here:

ALL of your stays (assuming the hotels you book take part in Hotels.com Rewards, as most do) will count towards free nights. No more ‘wasted’ stays.

Your free night can be used to book almost any room on Hotels.com.  Most reward schemes restrict the ability to book club rooms, suites, family rooms etc. That is not a problem with Hotels.com Rewards.

When travelling, you are free to stay at the hotel which is most convenient for where you need to be – no need to mess around with badly reviewed properties or out of the way hotels purely to find one in your favourite chain.

The one snag with Hotels.com is that you will not earn points or status credit with the hotel chain where you book.  You may or may not find your status benefits recognised.

If you want to give Hotels.com a try, they launched their Summer Sale last week.  You need to book by 4th July for stays by 7th August.

How to enter

I am using the same automated entry software that I used for other recent competitions.

You are allowed one entry per person which gets you either one or two slots in the prize draw:

You get one slot by simply completing the form below

You receive a second slot if you agree that Hotels.com can add you to their email newsletter list – this is totally optional however.  You can also unsubscribe from their email list at any time.

Your details remain private – they will not be shared with Hotels.com unless you tick the box and will not be used by Head for Points for any other purpose.

The rules

You can see the detailed rules by clicking on ‘Terms and Conditions’ in the entry widget. In summary:

You must be at least 18 years old

You must be UK resident and, due to the way the entry software works, you must be physically in the UK in order to entry

Entries are limited to one per person which will get you up to two separate slots in the prize draw, depending on whether you choose to join the Hotels.com email list or not

The winners will have until 31st May 2017 to book and stay using their £500 voucher

The competition closes at midnight, London time, on Friday 17th June

Specific terms apply to the use of the voucher which can be read here.  In particular, the restrictions include amongst other things:

You need to spend the £500 in one booking

You need to spend it against one room (if you book 2 rooms for £250 each the voucher will only apply to one of the rooms and you would still pay for the second one)

A large number of branded hotels are excluded from the use of the voucher so you are likely to find yourself booking an independent hotel.  A full list can be found via this link.

If you cancel your booking you do NOT get the voucher back

The taxes and fees element of the booking must be paid in cash

The nights you book WILL count for Hotels.com Rewards credit towards earning you more free nights

Despite these restrictions, I doubt you will have any trouble finding somewhere very pleasant to spend your £500!

If you cannot see the entry widget below, please click here and you will be directed to a special website to enter.

Good luck.  The winner will be notified within 48 hours of the competition closing.

Category

General

Comments (41)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Mark LLL says:
    13 Jun13 June 05:32

    I love the competitions on HFP. Thank you Raffles. Good luck to all entrants.
    This website is the best.

    • Simon Fisher says:
      13 Jun13 June 21:03

      Good luck to you too Mark!
      I use Hotels.com already and have not had any issues (so far). I earned my second free night this week!! 😉

  • Greg Morgan says:
    13 Jun13 June 06:13

    Once again. “Sorry, this promotion is not available in your region”. Unfair.

    • Ziggy says:
      13 Jun13 June 07:54

      Why is it “unfair” that a UK based website, running a promotion for a UK based subsidiary, with a prize in UK currency, is limiting the promotion to people entering from the UK?

      If you’re a UK resident and happen to be out of the country then you may be unlucky or unfortunate but you still have the option to dowload software that hides your current physical location. There’s nothing “unfair” about any of this.

      • Raffles says:
        13 Jun13 June 08:52

        Whilst I know it seems odd, as these are global businesses, the bottom line is that the UK arm of the company arranged this and funded this to drive some publicity for the UK site.

        It also removes the risk that someone sticks a link on Baidu and 500,000 Chinese decide to enter!

      • Janet says:
        13 Jun13 June 08:58

        Hi Raffles, I am currently in London but it still reads “Sorry, this promotion is not available in your region.”

        • harry says:
          13 Jun13 June 09:08

          Lot’s of company ISP’s go through a non-UK country, my wife’s is in France.

        • Rob says:
          13 Jun13 June 09:50

          Odd. Do it on your phone, I doubt that can fail.

    • Matthew says:
      13 Jun13 June 11:48

      I got that and I’m in the UK!

  • Mark says:
    13 Jun13 June 06:23

    I’m currently in India for work and home only on Saturday. How do I get round this “Sorry, this promotion is not available in your region”??

  • Colin says:
    13 Jun13 June 06:56

    Despite the article saying that you must be both resident and physically present in the UK I have successfully entered, although I’m resident and located outside the UK in the Channel Islands.

    • Raffles says:
      13 Jun13 June 08:49

      I added in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man about a year ago after someone pointed out that the default UK setting excluded them.

  • Colin Elliott says:
    13 Jun13 June 07:47

    Despite being in the UK, I too am getting the ‘not available in your region’ message!

    • Raffles says:
      13 Jun13 June 08:50

      Odd. Should be OK on your phone even if your home or work PC is looping via an overseas ISP.

      • Colin says:
        13 Jun13 June 11:17

        Unfortunately I get the message on my phone as well.

        • Rob says:
          13 Jun13 June 11:24

          I assume you mean on 4G and not wi-fi? That is bizarre.

          • David says:
            14 Jun14 June 02:44

            Gleam is very cookie fussy, if you have previosuly visited a page when it assess you to be ineligible (say you were outside the UK at the time, etc) and then you return to the UK – even though you would not be eleigible, the previous cookie they set stil blocks you.
            Seems an odd defence, must be only a tiny subset of people who (1) know how to get around a geo block, but (2) don’t know how to clear their cookies.

            Another issue is if you are resident in more than one country – hence could comply with different sites competitions at different times – they don’t seem to have the concept of people like this, you must make sure you are very strick on separate email addresses, twitter IDs etc.

  • Tracy says:
    13 Jun13 June 09:04

    Also getting thr ‘not available in your region’ message.

    The irony is that I am overseas, enjoying a holiday booked on hotels.com.

    • harry says:
      13 Jun13 June 09:07

      Why irony? You’re overseas.

      • Simon Fisher says:
        13 Jun13 June 21:06

        Harry look up up the definition of irony!!

        Hope you enjoy your holiday Tracy!

        • harry says:
          13 Jun13 June 21:22

          You look up ‘irony’, perhaps.

          There’s zero irony in getting the ‘not available’ message when the OP is not in the UK, because this comp is UK only.

          There’s no irony in being in a hotel booked on hotels.com, when HFP launches a hotels.com comp. Perhaps OP meant ‘funnily enough’ or ‘by coincidence’.

          • David says:
            14 Jun14 June 02:40

            What is ironic is that a travel company forgets its ideal UK customers will be … people who travel heavily and could quite easily be away form the UK for a week. Therefore the ironic factor being the exclusion of some of the very people who should be particularly targetted.
            Requing a verified UK address for service of the prize is the simple practical way to ensure it would be open people who should legitimatly fall under the umbrella as being of interest to the hotels.com UK markeing team.

  • fiona says:
    13 Jun13 June 09:05

    1783 entries already!

  • JamesWag says:
    13 Jun13 June 11:18

    A list of hotels which seem to honour your status with their chain when booked through hotels.com would be seriously useful.

    • Rob says:
      13 Jun13 June 11:22

      Hyatt and Marriott are generally seen as the best. I would need to check but I think Hyatt’s T&C’s even address this.

      You can always pull your weight at other hotels though. The May Fair could have refused to move me from my sh*tty room last month but I persuaded them that a Gold member, even though booked on a wholesale rate, deserved better! Upgrades are easier to process than benefits such as free breakfast which have a direct cost to the hotel though.

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