Hotels.com Rewards gutted – rewards to be cut from 10% to 2% of your spend

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• No longer Entitled says:

  29 Mar29 March 05:18

  Time to start investing in your favourite hotel scheme again.

  • blenz101 says:

    29 Mar29 March 06:35

    My sense is that people were perhaps loyal to a chain (or in some cases more than one) where they could build status and get a benefit but for everything else, even chain hotels, it made more sense to use Hotels.com and collect the free night.

    The balance is now tipped entirely towards booking directly with the hotel be it independent or in a chain because the 2% ex-vat is so negligible vs. a direct booking with a hotel where you are a more valuable/profitable guest and may well find yourself first in line for preferred rooms / upgrade.

    I find it surprising from a marketing perspective that they didn’t launch the new scheme with the same earnings rate in place. A devaluation could have followed in time if they were so minded. As it is, they will launch the scheme that will universally be seen as garbage. I don’t doubt we will see promotions for double, tripped One Key cash’ etc. so it may not be a complete 80% gutting but the scheme will launch and forever be seen as a stinker.

    • Andrew says:

      29 Mar29 March 10:46

      “I find it surprising from a marketing perspective that they didn’t launch the new scheme with the same earnings rate in place”

      The whole point of this change is to create a unified loyalty scheme across all of the various Expedia brands. You can’t have do that and have hotels.com giving 10% and expedia 2% on an identical booking. I’d imagine the hotels themselves would also be a bit miffed: “if you can give customers an instant 10% ‘cash’ back when they book my hotel then you can pay me more too”. Yes it’s 10% now but the existing scheme is a lot more opaque with some purchases not qualifying, rewards only paying out after 10 nights and credit expiring.

      • Rob says:

        29 Mar29 March 10:53

        Credit will still expire and I suspect that rules over non-qualifying transactions won’t go away.

        I think you’re missing the point though. The only value in any company having multiple brands is if each appeals to a different market. There is a big market (in terms of nights, if not people) who will send their business to whoever offers them the best incentive. There was merit in Hotels.com appealing to this segment whilst Expedia took a more mass-market approach. Better to earn a reduced commission than none at all. I suspect that this market also tends to book more expensive hotels than average.

        • Andrew says:

          29 Mar29 March 11:25

          Completely agree on the different brands appealing to different markets. It would have made perfect sense to keep expedia and hotels.com completely separate from a rewards point of view. But once you take the decision to merge the loyalty schemes then you also have to standardise the earnings rates. You can’t have hotels.com paying 10% and expedia only 2% for exactly the same product. If their prices were identical then it wouldn’t take long until no one was using expedia. I know that’s effectively the situation now but they pay out in different ‘currencies’ so the comparison is less obvious.

        • blenz101 says:

          29 Mar29 March 12:59

          I maintain that they should have launched with the status quo. There is no compelling reason to standardise the earnings for the casual booker and heavy users would have already been on the hotels.com scheme. Expedia Group still get the booking.

          If they had noticed significant leakage of margin to hotels.com following the launch they retain the right to devalue the earnings or run promotions to drive people to expedia.

          If you just highlight that you are booking with the same company either way and everything is identical (and a poor return) you drive people to priceline, booking.com, agoda etc. to compare

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        29 Mar29 March 19:53

        So change the redemption rate and then merge them afterwards. At least still keep the earnings cut separate from the scheme change

• Peter says:

  29 Mar29 March 05:42

  I’m not saying that I won’t dump One Key after using the credit transferred from Hotels.com Rewards, but there’s one more upside here if you needn’t use your rewards on a per-night basis. In that case, you could choose to use the credit for a super-expensive one-night stay, or indeed a longer one if you use lodging that is cheaper than the average value of your stays. It’s more choice. After that, of course I’m out!

• Greenpen says:

  29 Mar29 March 05:50

  I have used hotels.com for years. I do not travel for business so all my bookings are holiday and I have always felt it is too difficult to get meaningful benefit from the corporate hoteliers as I do not stay enough in any one of them to get anywhere.

  Hotels.com pricing through a cash back site is almost always cheaper than direct or through an agent, sorry Emyr, even with the benefits and of course there are lots of independent hotels I stay in too.

  For example, in the next few days I am staying in a Raddison, then the Lebua (independent) and Capella in Bangkok and a independent with floating rooms elsewhere in Thailand. All booked through hotels.com!

  However, as one door shuts another opens but there is a lot of slamming going on at the moment!

  • JDB says:

    29 Mar29 March 08:39

    @Greenpen you allude in your post to Hotels.com almost always being cheaper than go via any agent which is of course because the people in the chain are sharing some of their 15-22% commission.

    However, the key for me is that booking via any agent almost always has a fixed price where the hotel direct price is most definitely negotiable in respect of both price and benefits (and usually provided on better terms than any agent route). This applies as much to chain hotels as independents who are both happier to deal with the guest directly and offer them a deal rather than pay away commission to some faceless agent.

• Wallaj4 says:

  29 Mar29 March 05:54

  I have have been using hotel.com for all my travel for many years. I am sitting on around £1500 free night awards plus I have quite a bit of stamps in future months which will generate . Disappointing to hear this change

  • Paul says:

    29 Mar29 March 08:08

    But I assume you can use the £1500 in one go? Something like 3 nights at the Savoy?

    It’s the only upside i guess.

• BJ says:

  29 Mar29 March 06:00

  No great loss, compared to ebookers it was always mediocre anyway.

  • Erico1875 says:

    29 Mar29 March 06:09

    Generally I could get most hotels more than 10% cheaper using other sites such as Trivago, Google etc anyway

    • supergraeme says:

      29 Mar29 March 06:14

      Yes, but that’s when you get hotels.com to price match.

    • Rob says:

      29 Mar29 March 07:39

      Doesn’t matter if it’s not your money.

      • BJ says:

        29 Mar29 March 08:13

        Good point! Just preferred ebookers as it was easy to get and retain top tier status. That got lounge passes, breakfast and they even shift you to thers hotels if there’s problems. They also have a habit of adding the odd £10-30 to your account frome time to time. No problems with going via third party sites when worthwhile.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        29 Mar29 March 10:29

        This is the point here – 10% back was decent return for business stays, yet still actually not a million miles off booking direct if you have top tier status so the model seemed sustainable.

        For most business travellers with flexibility to book outside corporate TAs I suggest the loss of the 10% will prompt most out to look at the market again and either book direct for benefits surely worth more than 2% or a competitor like Booking.com

        As mentioned elsewhere the puzzle here is the choice to tarnish the new program name with a huge devaluation. It seems a crazy move to associate this OneKey with negativity right out of the gate like this

• G says:

  29 Mar29 March 06:09

  This means there’s no point in using hotels.com anymore, big shame as it was my #1 preferred reward scheme.

• TeflonMan says:

  29 Mar29 March 06:09

  Isn’t ebookers part of the same group?
  What’s happening to their scheme?

  • supergraeme says:

    29 Mar29 March 06:20

    It’s just hotels.com, Expedia and Vrbo.

  • zapato1060 says:

    29 Mar29 March 06:23

    https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/03/07/review-ebookers-bonus-loyalty-scheme/

• supergraeme says:

  29 Mar29 March 06:18

  I was getting fed up with their attitude to price matching which these days seems to be a blanket ‘no’ until you complain, but this makes the decision to use all other sites (which I would do for lower value bookings anyway) easy.

  A loyalty programme that puts you off using the company is impressive!

  • Gary Colclough says:

    29 Mar29 March 08:58

    exactly

    they were going to crap anyway with their attitude to price matching and uncompetitive prices, I’ve been gold with them for years (not worth anything but shows I use it a bit) and this will be the end of any meaningful customer relationship with them

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