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

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• Mark says:

  29 Mar29 March 08:49

  May be there’s a reason for the devaluation. Commission on hotel bookings isn’t great and at 10% hotels.com we’re giving most of theirs up.

  It may be that we see a reduction in prices instead of a commission based cash back.

  At the end of the day, if hotels.com comes up 5% cheaper than every other brand you’ll still book with them.

  I recently trained to become an Independent Travel Agent. Puts me in control of who I book with, the commissions I receive and preferential rates with certain chains.

  Some chains hate us, we get nothing from them. Others embrace us.

  • Rob says:

    29 Mar29 March 08:56

    22%.

    • Barry cutters says:

      29 Mar29 March 09:29

      Based on that they do they Run a huge risk that a new company will start the 10% rebate program ?

      • Rob says:

        29 Mar29 March 09:52

        There is no-one else. Expedia Group and Priceline / booking.com control virtually all of the online hotel booking sector, at least for sites which claim to be comprehensive. Hotels.com has over 500k hotels on it – fancy negotiating that many deals to get your new site up and running?

  • Rob says:

    29 Mar29 March 08:58

    Hotels.com is more expensive than ‘member’ rates at the big chains, usually by 10% – but not an issue if not using your own cash and of course their price matches the not-logged-in rate if anyone checks.

    • Chabuddy Geezy says:

      29 Mar29 March 09:53

      Mark are you an independent travel agent through Inteletravel? If so I would be wary of them, it’s essentially a pyramid scheme where very few people make any money.

      • zapato1060 says:

        29 Mar29 March 10:32

        Always weary of these “become your own boss”. Was contacted by a travel agent independent firm that wanted £350 up front for “set up” costs where I could earn millions 🙂 You want me to pay you, so you can get me trained, to pay you. I think not.

    • Tom says:

      29 Mar29 March 09:54

      This is the thing. Without the Rewards, Hotels.com won’t be the cheapest option any more, so it loses its USP. Google Maps hotel search usually does the job for finding the cheapest rates.

  • JDB says:

    29 Mar29 March 09:09

    You can get this down to 15% if you are an owner with big buying power but 18% is generally the standard rate Booking.com gets, but can go as high as 25% which suits me as it leaves plenty of scope for the savvy guest to negotiate better direct deals for price and inclusions.

• wicksey says:

  29 Mar29 March 08:49

  Any idea what happens to hotel bookings already made for 2024 using hotels.com which will by definition not have been taken when the change happens. Will they earn nights credits from the old scheme or 2% cash back ?

• ayearinmx says:

  29 Mar29 March 08:49

  Been booking 80+ nights a year for work, then using the 8+ free nights for myself. Price isn’t a factor for work, so “cheaper” isn’t too big of a deal, but getting those free nights for myself was awesome… Guess I’ll be using booking.com through BA Shop for extra avios, but that really isn’t as good

• Barry cutters says:

  29 Mar29 March 08:52

  For me that’s 133 nights redeemed so far – 26 nights in the bank and 86 stamps due for future stays. .

  The program has been insane for me – booking all my corporate travel plus colleagues and customers for a few years . It’s literally paid for all my holiday.

  Assuming I finish on about 30 nights valued £150-250 you think I’ll essentially end up with one big (approx £6k) voucher ?

• WaynedP says:

  29 Mar29 March 09:10

  Comments overwhelmingly demonstrate those most disaffected are high volume members of hotels.com loyalty program.

  The program changes will benefit (and potentially attract) a different profile of user who rarely expects to spend anywhere close to ten nights a year in a hotel/B&B booked through hotels.com and for whom the free night held little attraction (I would have been in this demographic 25 years ago while building my wealth and squirrelling away spare disposable income into mortgage rather than hotel holidays).

  Hotels.com is essentially offering a lower program benefit (still better than zero) for immediate discount rather than higher discount for ten nights’ deferral.

  They could probably achieve both aims of attracting younger, lower usage patrons and retaining older, higher usage patrons by doubling or tripling the size of users’ 2% pot balances for deferring cashing it in for, say, 8 and 12 nights respectively.

  Perhaps they might achieve something along those lines via “nights booked per year status levels”, in which case one can surely recognise the astute business case for the proposed changes.

  • ken says:

    29 Mar29 March 10:19

    I really doubt 2% is attractive to anyone.

    There will be the inertia effect of people having the app on their phone and booking through that (and being sent push / email “special offers”).

    But a fiver for each £250 of booking ? – simply isn’t worth it.

    Independents hate the agregators and will frequently offer better (ie throw in breakfast) if you phone or email

  • blenz101 says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:03

    The readership demographics of this site skew the comments so of course more people here will be dissatisfied than average.

    That said, what insane business model would you have to be following to switch your loyalty programme to attract a profile of user to a hotel booking website who rarely expects to spend time in a hotel at the expense of higher use patrons.

    2% does not tip the dial for anybody in immediate discounts or future.

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    29 Mar29 March 19:52

    They already had it with Expedia being the low instantly redeemable rebate and hotels.com the higher rate after 10 stays…

• Simon says:

  29 Mar29 March 09:19

  And obviously the child in me is already referring to One Key as beginning with a W, which describes the new scheme perfectly.

  • Andrew. says:

    29 Mar29 March 09:36

    With all the layers of worldwide marketing analysis and research groups, how come nobody noticed the “wonky” problem?

    Or, with some regional dialects, “one” is pronounced “wahn”.

    • Alex G says:

      29 Mar29 March 10:58

      “With all the layers of worldwide marketing analysis and research groups, how come nobody noticed the “wonky” problem?”

      Remember “Wang Cares”?

      And one of TVs funniest moments was Jane Fonda on the Graham Norton show promoting her new movie, “Our Soles at Night”. Boy, was she embarrassed.

      • Alex G says:

        29 Mar29 March 11:02

        Oops. Souls. Not soles!

  • Richie says:

    29 Mar29 March 10:05

    Also a restaurant in London’s China town.

  • FFoxSake says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:02

    Nobody thought Wan-key? I’m clearly even more childish then… 😉

    • CarpalTravel says:

      29 Mar29 March 20:45

      Welcome to the club!

• Lee says:

  29 Mar29 March 09:24

  To be honest I’ve found Expedia group to be uncompetitive on prices for last few months much cheaper options out there hence I was stuck on 6 nights for last 6 months.

• SteveW says:

  29 Mar29 March 10:56

  I’m a Hotels.com gold member with 2 nights in the bank. Problem I’ve found lately with trying to build an itinerary for South Africa is the paucity of choice compared with Bookings.com

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