HfP EXCLUSIVE: Get an extra Hotels.com Rewards free night credit on your next stay

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• Dave says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:00

  Worth remembering that hotels.com will price match up until the day before check in. I claimed a few times and they are quick with responses and refunds.

  • JP says:

    5 Feb5 February 08:41

    Although can be some hoop jumping to get them to match, if the terms of cancellation are slightly different or the room type has a slightly different name, ie one has 24 hours and another has 48 etc. or family room vs double with sofabed etc.

    Last time I did they wouldn’t match other hotel portals that were cheaper, but did against booking direct (which was cheaper that hotels.com but not as cheap as some others). It took me three goes to get it because of differences in cancellation policy and it was named differently on one site to another (even though all the rooms were the same at the hotel). I don’t think things like member only rates will be matched either (when the only thing you need is a free account to get the rate (eg IHG, Accor , Hilton etc).

    However they are quick to respond, and advise you to keep trying to get them to match.

    • Graeme says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:51

      I’ve found them to be increasingly difficult with it, usually based on minutely different room descriptions – with enough gentle arguing I’ve always managed to get them to agree. I can’t tell if they’re sometimes being deliberately stupid, but I assume they are.

• Doug M says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:02

  Hotels.com been excellent for me. I’ve dabbled a bit with direct loyalty schemes but too restrictive often for what I want. Incidentally I always try to get the hotel to enter my loyalty scheme number and have had some unexpected wins there. In terms of customer service hotels.com in my limited contact always been excellent, including crediting in full a 4 night stay when a room didn’t have a balcony as stated.

• abbas hamed says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:18

  i felt scammed a few years back. i didnt get any of credits on my account despite 15+ nights visiting asia and the pacific. i wrote in and they just wasted my time, taking three weeks with each reply basically not saying anything. this went on about four of five times – it felt like a real con. avoided them ever since, and its worked out for me better this way. appreciate everyone has different expeierienes and many people much better.. just saying..

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:04

    Bizarre. Never had that problem, the credit for my stay last Thursday turned up yesterday.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    5 Feb5 February 22:47

    Strange, I was missing 3 rewards nights and with 1 email it was promptly sorted

• Cristian rivera says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:22

  When do you pay British Airways platinum fee?
  Any pleas thank you ?

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:03

    Premium Plus fee? On your first statement, but it is refunded pro-rata if you cancel.

    • Cristian rivera says:

      5 Feb5 February 13:47

      Yeah premium plus. Ok Thank you for answering.

• margaret smith says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:42

  I travel extensively on business and always use Hotels.com – It works for me – I build up ‘free’ nights to use on holidays or weekend trips. I have always found them to be very professional and courteous. Their app is also very easy to use. Thumbs Up from me

  • Doug M says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:54

    Oddly I’d say for business the downfall is the VAT receipt situation with them, although if travel non UK then that’s not a problem.
    My only issue with them is the negative feeling created by the over spamming of offers offering nothing. If you turn off the marketing emails you miss out on everything, turn on and almost everyday you’ll get some stupid headline offer like 50% off, but it’s never real or meaningful. Also, if you check hotels in a certain place, you’ll have several emails saying hotels in wherever are selling out fast, don’t miss out and book now. I’m sure they do the research, but I feel they’re in danger of annoying customers rather than creating opportunity.

    • ankomonkey says:

      5 Feb5 February 17:18

      Agree completely. I get 50% off e-mails on what seems like a daily basis. Always marked as “act now, last chance” type stuff. Whenever I genuinely need to search their site for specific properties/locations I rarely see anything like 50% off. I still use them for most non-chain bookings, but I ignore all of their e-mails.

      • Graeme says:

        5 Feb5 February 20:04

        Agreed.

      • cas says:

        6 Feb6 February 16:28

        totally agree BUT, its not that hard to ignore and delete.

• Geoff says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:52

  I agree that this is a good loyalty scheme – we have one reward night in the bank and another pending. However, I don’t think that it is ‘idiot proof’, nor can your reward always ‘be used to book any room on Hotels.com’. Some hotels are not in the reward scheme, and you cannot use the reward if you choose to pay at the hotel – which you might need to do if you want a VAT receipt. You don’t get a reward night if you use any of hotels.com’s own discount codes eg 10% off (although that amounts to the same thing in the end – 10% off one stay or 1 free stay in 10). Also the reward amount does not include taxes and charges so it is easy to unwittingly lose some of the reward value if you are not careful. And of course you don’t get the balance of any unused reward value, or if you book a room that is cheaper than your reward amount.

  It is worth adding that you can earn Avios as well by going through the avios website (not for the HFP offer) although the full headline avios earning rate doesn’t apply if you take advantage of the hotels.com rewards scheme.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:01

    Not sure what use a VAT receipt is on a free night 🙂

    The ‘one night’ issue can mount up. I am about to trigger a free night worth around £300, because we put 8 expensive nights in Croatia through hotels.com last Summer, which means I need to be selective how I spend it. I deliberately pushed a couple of cheap stays towards hotels.com to bring down the average value. Not a terrible problem to have, of course, and the ability to use the free night against suites or club rooms makes it more straightforward to use. The last one I had got used on a junior suite with club access at Park Hyatt Hamburg IIRC.

  • Doug M says:

    5 Feb5 February 12:01

    Just logged in to check, and it says I’ve redeemed 23 nights with them, that’s over about 6 years, almost all that travel would be personal. I’ve never been unable to redeem, although I do notice some of the smaller more niche hotels don’t redeem. I’m a user of the bland chains, concerned almost always with clean over anything else. I think the scheme is very simple, and it’s clear what you’re getting. Yes you sometimes have to be careful to balance expensive and less stays, or you have two reward nights of £90 and £200, but that’s easily sorted by using them thoughtfully.

• David says:

  5 Feb5 February 11:06

  I use them almost exclusively for booking hotels just because of the loyalty scheme which in general I find works well- but I must admit that when there has been any issue, I’ve found their customer services pretty rubbish to deal with even though as a gold member I supposedly receive priority customer services assistance… I recently had a situation where I had one night not credited to my account that should’ve been and after 3 emails back and forth I just gave up as it became more pain than it was worth! All of that said, I’ve saved a massive amount with the scheme so I’ll continue to use it- but reserve the right to have a little moan every now and again!

• Lumma says:

  5 Feb5 February 12:24

  I pretty much only use hotels.com or Airbnb for my accommodation these days, I don’t see any point in staying loyal to a chain especially as I’m usually looking for just somewhere to leave my bags and sleep at night. My only criticism is that they don’t let you filter out dormitory beds. You can filter out hostels in general but some of them have decent private rooms are are generally well located.

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