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

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• Alex G says:

  29 Mar29 March 11:00

  One small benefit is a reward scheme for Vrbo. (I just don’t trust AirBnb).

• Iranicus says:

  29 Mar29 March 11:03

  Can someone explain how online agents like hotels.com and booking.com still offer cheaper prices or the same price compared with booking with a hotel directly?

  I understand that the direct hotel website rate may be hoping people just book at that price. But even when I have emailed or phoned hotels directly, often I am quoted the same rate as an online agent.

  From my point of view, why would I pay this money all to the hotel when no extra benefit is given? If I book through booking.com, I will receive X avios per pound spent.

  • Rob says:

    29 Mar29 March 11:17

    Expedia / Booking.com force hotels to sign price parity agreements (Amazon does the same for market place sellers) which bans them from selling the same room for less to the general public.

    This is why IHG etc have ‘member rates’ which get around this.

    A hotel could choose to offer you a better deal by phone but may be too worried about being kicked off the platforms. Most offer free breakfast or more lenient cancellation terms instead. Many hotels are also happy to pay 22% to save the cost of employing their own sales and marketing people. If you want to bring us a brand new advertising client, delivering the contract all packaged up and ready to run, I’ll happily pay you 22% too.

    • CarpalTravel says:

      29 Mar29 March 11:57

      I always expected this to be the case, but have repeatedly been heavily encouraged to book direct. The odd thing there though is that whenever i have checked, there has been zero incentive. Same cost but without even cancellation rights and definitely none of the kickbacks. Happy to keep 3rd parties out of the loop, but it has to offer me some benefit!

      I wish the Inn Collection would do a member rates.

      • The Savage Squirrel says:

        29 Mar29 March 13:39

        Carpal, the point is they can’t run rates publicly.

        If you Email the hotel saying, in the nicest possible way, “Why should I book with you when hotels.com gives me the same rate and free nights they can often offer something.

        If you just mention something large and local then that helps by giving them an out. “I am staying to go to the nearby theatre/museum/university/golf course”.
        Oh that means we can give you the special theatre/museum/university/golf rate sir, which is ….

      • JDB says:

        29 Mar29 March 14:36

        @CarpalTravel as @The Savage Squirrel says, you just need to find the right chat up line! It may not get you very far for one night in a 3* hotel, but for any longer stay, particularly at slightly more expensive places, hotels will do extraordinary deals and most importantly tailored to what you want whether it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, spa, golf, laundry, parking or whatever services they can offer which cost relatively little to provide but are valuable to you. You need to see what the cheapest rate online is and how they structure any deals or packages they have so you are armed with all the facts. Minimum target, the commission, guaranteed proper upgrade, breakfast.

        • Yorkshire rich says:

          29 Mar29 March 19:15

          I can vouch for that. My wife forced me to email a very popular hotel (on here) in Dubai to try our luck and to my amazement they came back to me and said “please keep this confidential, we will offer you”. Knocked all the third party rates out of the water.

        • CarpalTravel says:

          29 Mar29 March 20:25

          Thank you @The Savage Squirrel and @JDB, that is very interesting, not something I had begun to realise was possible.Will definitely be seeing what is out there.

          My success with chat up lines is truly the stuff of legends. Sadly, it is the legends of fail! 🤣 There are a couple of upper mid-range hotels we stay at regularly, I will definitely enquire now next time I am there, see if we can reach a mutually beneficial arrangement.

          For perspective – I am the guy who was stood paying full price for a real Christmas tree one year when a guy marched up next to me and immediately managed to negotiate £5 off the price of an identical tree, leaving me to carry on paying full price for mine….

    • RussellH says:

      29 Mar29 March 13:24

      In my experience, booking.com (and, presumably hotels.com – which I have never used, though I did sign up once when it was promoted here) do not necessarily have access to the whole of a hotel’s inventory.
      It is certainly not unusual to find that a hotel only sells its crappiest rooms through booking.com (at a low price) while better rooms (at a higher price) are only bookable on its own website.

      • JDB says:

        29 Mar29 March 14:27

        @RussellH yes hotels do this and also the rooms are often sold on Booking.com with different room type names so it takes a bit of digging to compare like for like. Additionally, hotels can still have corporate rates and the OTAs can’t monitor that, so the price parity deals are worthless.

      • blenz101 says:

        29 Mar29 March 14:27

        Not my experience at all and don’t see how it would be in the hotels interests to do this. Once you have costed in using the site as a sales channel to your room rates then it makes sense to offer everything you have available. You can usually map directly the room types even at the smallest independent hotel.

        That isn’t to say in a particular room type you will not end up in the crappiest room of that category whilst returning and direct booking guests are kept away from the view of the bins and noise of the elevators

    • paul says:

      29 Mar29 March 21:42

      No longer true.

      I would set my direct hotel rates 7% less than Expedia.

      Due to the way they treat hotels, booking-dot-com were always sent the highest rates.

      I would offer free cancellation to direct bookings, 2 days out to Expedia and non-refundable to booking-dot-com

      After 3 years, my direct bookings were 60% and OTAs the rest.

• JC says:

  29 Mar29 March 11:26

  They removed 33 stamps last week anyway. I have been arguing with their futil online people ever since. There is no expiration date when o e uses the program I was told and they would reinstate them…good joke. My remaining 4 nights for redemption I booked immediately for Cancún next week and cancelled all cancellable nights coming up. Backfiring already for these crooks. I swap to other otas and will mainly do direct bookings anyway.

  • Andy says:

    29 Mar29 March 11:41

    I think the removal of stamps last week (generally, not necessarily specific to your case) is because they seem to have suddenly realised that their scheme had been crediting you for stays, even if you cancelled a fully flexible reservation… a shame, but you can’t really complain!

    • CamFlyer says:

      29 Mar29 March 18:24

      I thought this was just a miscommunication between the hotel and Hotels.com when it happen to me!

• Rob says:

  29 Mar29 March 11:36

  Except it’s a great business model. You’re still making 12% commission and a heavy user could be spending £10k per year. No marketing costs once the word is out.

  What do you reckon Hotels.com will need to spend on ads to replace the contribution from those heavy users?

  • blenz101 says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:30

    Those heavy users will include countless SME’s who don’t use a corporate travel agent and anybody with a relaxed travel policy at work allowing you to book and claim your own travel.

    All these heavy customers will now have zero incentive to use hotels.com generating zero commision for expedia group.

• Roz says:

  29 Mar29 March 12:05

  The value from our existing bookings in late 2023 will be carried over? Is this confirmed in writing?? Tempted to cancel and book direct now

  • Rob says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:15

    No, it seems you are cut to 2% from the date of the switch which is currently unknown. See the Q&A on the linked site.

• Lou says:

  29 Mar29 March 12:09

  Maybe project rewind will kick off in a year’s time

• WillPS says:

  29 Mar29 March 12:14

  At least the Tesco Clubcard vouchers will be slightly better value relatively.

  • babyg says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:24

    Tesco = less worse now… LOL thats one way to look at…

• blenz101 says:

  29 Mar29 March 12:36

  This is just the point I made above. How many more customers like yourself will walk when the incentive to use them disappears.

  They had a scheme funded by the hotels which drove loyalty to their site even when they were not the cheapest and became a de facto corporate travel agent for many SMEs who enjoyed the kickback of a free leisure stay every 10 nights.

  The new scheme will of course improve margins per booking but removes any sense of loyalty and will drive people to compare prices on their competitors.

  • Tiger of ham says:

    29 Mar29 March 12:51

    Be interesting to see if ebookers loyalty will remain the same it’s not mentioned. Maybe it will close fully.

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