Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

We have known for some time that Expedia Group, which owns Expedia, Hotels.com and property rental group vrbo, was planning a new combined rewards programme called One Key.

Details are now available here (only visible if you use a VPN to impersonate a US IP address, I think).

For Expedia Rewards, which is already a weak scheme, the change is minimal.

For Hotels.com Rewards, it amounts to a total gutting of the programme.

One Key hotels.com

Why is (was) Hotels.com Rewards great?

We have been recommending Hotels.com Rewards to HfP readers for many readers. You can see the details here.

For anyone who cannot commit to a specific hotel brand, or doesn’t do enough nights to earn a decent level of status or rewards, it was the best option.

It’s a very simple scheme. Whenever you complete 10 nights, you get a credit towards a future booking for the average ex-VAT cost of those 10 nights.

These means that you are receiving a 10% rebate on your spend.

Even better, the credit can be used as part payment if you prefer. You are not restricted, as you are with many hotel programmes, to booking a standard room as a reward. You can book a suite if you want, as long as you pay the difference.

Another benefit of Hotels.com Rewards is that you can book for anyone you want (with the bookings in their name) and earn the rewards for yourself. I have done this numerous times when booking hotels rooms for my in-laws.

One Key is a disaster compared to Hotels.com Rewards

One Key will give you a combined loyalty account account across Hotels.com, Expedia and vrbo.

You will receive 2% of your ex-VAT spending at Hotels.com as OneKeyCash. This means that rewards are being devalued by 80%.

The OneKey website says “It’s going to change the way you travel.” They got that right, but not in the way they hope.

You will also earn 2% on vacation rentals, activities, packages, car rentals and cruises booked via Expedia and vrbo. Flight bookings via Expedia will earn just 0.2% (£1 on a £500 booking).

What happens to my existing Hotels.com free nights?

The only bit of good news is that your existing free night awards are not going to be wiped out.

They will be converted into OneKeyCash at their existing value. If you have a free night worth $175 to use up, it will be swapped for $175 of One Key credit. The expiry date will remain the same.

What happens to part-earned Hotels.com free nights?

Don’t panic. You won’t lose the value of any existing stamps in your Hotels.com Rewards account.

The stamps you are currently collecting towards your next free night voucher will be turned into OneKeyCash based on their existing value, ie 10% of the ex-VAT cost of that particular night.

When is One Key launching?

In the United States, “mid 2023” is all we know so far.

There is no date yet for One Key to launch in the UK or other markets. It appears to be rolling out across the world on a phased basis.

There is no need to rush to use up existing free nights or complete your next free night, because the value WILL be carried over to One Key with no deductions.

Hotels.com one key

What happens to Hotels.com Rewards status?

One Key has its own status programme, which is based on your combined activity across Expedia, Hotels.com and vrbo. We will cover this in more detail as One Key gets closer to its UK launch.

Your launch status in One Key will be based on your combined bookings at Expedia, vrbo and Hotels.com across 2022 and 2023, as long as you use the same email address for all sites.

Is there any good news here?

To be fair, there are two upsides.

  • once your existing free night vouchers are converted into OneKeyCash, you will be able to spend them at Expedia (for flights – but you must pay for the ENTIRE flight in OneKeyCash) and vrbo (for rentals) – you are not restricted to hotel room redemptions
  • anyone with a few Hotels.com Rewards ‘stamps’ who thought they would never hit 10 nights to trigger a free night voucher will be able to release the value they have built up

Conclusion

I know many HfP readers are big fans of Hotels.com Rewards and put the bulk of their hotel bookings through it. I use it a lot myself – I am cashing in 3 x free night vouchers in the US next week, and made a booking on Monday for my mother-in-law which will earn me ‘stamps’. I doubt I will be bothering with the new programme once I have used up whatever OneKeyCash I end up with.

Hotels.com is taking a gamble, hoping that the bookings it loses from ‘heavy stayers’ like our readers will offset the savings in reward payments to occasional bookers. Let’s see if it works.

Full details of One Key are here but you need to use a VPN set to the US, otherwise it will automatically redirect to the UK site.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

best hotel loyalty promotions

Hotel offers update – April 2025:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

  • Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 29th May 2025. The annual purchase limit is also increased to 240,000 points pre-bonus. Click here to buy.
Category

General

Comments (134)

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

  • Rafal says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:18

    Thats the end of using hotels.com

    Shame

  • Jake says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:25

    What happens to existing bookings with hotels.com for later in the year and completed (and paid) potentially after the change.

    I presume they would have to honour the 10%.

    I booked with hotels.com directly to get the 10% ‘back’ so feel I’d have a strong case for it to be applied

    • masaccio says:
      29 Mar29 March 06:46

      Aye, me too. I have nights booked adding up to nights with an average of 200 quid each. I might be in a litigious for mood for 400 quid. Off to snapshot what Ts and Cs I can find

      • masaccio says:
        29 Mar29 March 06:53

        “We may change our Hotels.com Rewards terms and conditions at any time, with or without notice, including the rules for collecting Stamps, the different membership tiers and their qualification requirements and associated benefits, the rules for redeeming your Reward Night, the list of eligible Hotels.com Rewards properties, and the maximum value of a Reward Night. We may communicate these changes to you by email or on our Hotels.com website so please make sure you check your account regularly.”

        Hardly a surprising clause

      • John says:
        1 Apr1 April 11:01

        Just been looking at an existing booking for end of May. which I hope will redeem before the change happens as it gives me 12 stamps because I booked rooms for myself and Friends.

        It says the following:

        One Key™ is arriving in mid-2023. You’ll earn rewards at the new One Key rate on stays after launch, plus you’ll unlock new and exciting member benefits. It has a link to click through to find out more that doesn’t seem to work.

  • Neil says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:28

    What would Captain Obvious say about this gamble?

  • zapato1060 says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:31

    “you will be able to spend them at Expedia (for flights – but you must pay for the ENTIRE flight in OneKeyCash)”

    So a £50,000 spend will net you a £100 flight. Takes the notion of more money than sense to a whole new level.

  • CarpalTravel says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:33

    In many ways that is good for me, bad for Hotels.com though. I have always limited my searches to whatever I can get through them. The reward night and going via referral links has always worked out really well for me, being sure of course to check that the price doesn’t increase due to the referral. (Always did, via the “Pound”Co referral).

    Now though, I can almost guilt free broaden my searches to whatever suits me best, and at the best price. Player 2 will be delighted as often I have excluded properties not on Hotels.com.

    This is the same as Three killing off their “Feel at home”. For me it was their USP. Very, very foolish.

    • Paul says:
      29 Mar29 March 07:25

      I agree with you about Three. They threw their customers under a bus and I’d be interested to know just how many customers walked. In this house 4 did 3 to Tesco and one to O2 all who offer a level of free roaming.

      • Will-h says:
        29 Mar29 March 08:33

        Three’s own MVNO, Smarty, offers free EU roaming. Bizarre, isn’t it?

        • Rhys says:
          29 Mar29 March 09:22

          I realised this the other week, very odd. Might switch to Smarty – O2 hasn’t been amazing for coverage imo. I feel like I get more dead spots/3G in London than I ever did on Three.

          • Alex G says:
            29 Mar29 March 10:00

            I’m with EE. but I got a PAYG Sim from 3 when I went to NYC in 2019. It was unusable. They give you 3G and throttle it back. I kept going into Subway stations to use WiFi.

          • Anouj says:
            29 Mar29 March 11:01

            1p mobile is the best (despite the what the name suggests) Runs on EE, free roaming, 5g, wi-fi call and no throttling of speed

          • CarpalTravel says:
            29 Mar29 March 11:51

            @Paul – Three lost 3 contacts in this household, mine was a gift for them as I was an insanely light user really, £12pm for virtually no use at all over the last 4 years due to no travel and WFH. Just between you and us that is 7 contracts lost. Seems very stupid.

            We have all moved onto 1p (after a brief foray with o2, who just tried to up my line rental by 17.3%). Never again shall we consider any contract that lasts longer than 12months and right now, 1month!

          • Lady London says:
            29 Mar29 March 20:15

            Three is not so good either in quite a few quite central parts of London. Paddington Basin used to be a black hole on Three and it wasn’t the only one. Vodafone had much denser coverage.

            Though Three did say in early pandemic they had realised their London coverage needed improving and said they would invest in this.
            And perhaps they have after I cancelled all with them except one PAYG backup line when they lied about Brexit, said they had no plans to introduce roaming fees then promptly led the charge to impose roaming fees. After that breach of trust I was gone after 15 years solid with multiple lines and contracts with them.

          • Will-h says:
            30 Mar30 March 14:03

            Was with Vodafone for years, but their 4G was entirely full in the West End in December, entirely useless. It’s pure idiocy to make people sign a new contract for 5G to alleviate the problem! I’m pretty happy with Smarty so far; for travel outside Europe I just buy an esim or two via esimdb.com.

        • Rui N. says:
          29 Mar29 March 13:45

          Sames for PlusNet, which is the MVNO from EE/BT.

      • Andy says:
        29 Mar29 March 09:13

        I went to O2 as I’m out of the UK often enough for it to make a difference

      • Andrew says:
        29 Mar29 March 11:02

        The problem was Three’s extremely generous roaming package (remember it wasn’t just EU but included the USA any many other places) had been pushed by MSE and others. I expect that for every loyal Three customer who went abroad a couple of times a year there were many, many more who got a one month rolling contract, went on holiday and then cancelled it having only ever used the phone overseas. I know I did at one point for a short trip to the States.

    • zapato1060 says:
      29 Mar29 March 10:25

      Not fully accurate. They killed it off for contracts as I was in, before I moved to Voda. Feel at home is still available for PAYG customers so a 1 month data sim such as 1GB for £3 or 16GB for £8ish are great ways to still use feel at home whilst abroad. normal 12GB limit applies.

      • CarpalTravel says:
        29 Mar29 March 11:54

        Interesting, thanks. I was not aware of this, will look into it when next venturing abroad.

  • blenz101 says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:43

    Never understood this either. I can see why they would want to encourage genuine affiliate links so bloggers / reviewers direct people to book on their site.

    But it makes zero sense when someone is going to book a room to give them an additional kick back, particularly when they know it is an existing customer who they are going to already going to award a loyalty stamp.

  • Ana says:
    29 Mar29 March 06:51

    Have you tried using a VPN for booking cheaper hotels / flights? Did it work?

  • Tankmc says:
    29 Mar29 March 07:30

    The best cash back deals seem to be for new customers though. When I last checked it was 2% for existing accounts.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!