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One Key to replace Hotels.com and Expedia Rewards from 8th July – what you need to know

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Expedia Group has announced that One Key, the new rewards programme, will launch in the UK from 8th July.

It will be a staggered roll out, with all Expedia Rewards and Hotels.com Rewards accounts converted to the new structure by 16th September.

This means that you shouldn’t book a Hotels.com stay for check-out after 8th July if you don’t want to risk having your rewards cut from 10% to 2% of the pre-tax room rate. If you already have a non-refundable booking, you’re stuck.

Details are available here.

One Key to replace Hotels.com and Expedia Rewards soon

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

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

However, the change has one benefit – you can cash out the value of your accumulated Hotels.com Rewards now without having to wait until you hit 10 nights. You don’t even have to use the money for a hotel – you can redeem it against an Expedia flight booking instead. It’s a short term gain, but long term you will be worse off.

Why is (was) Hotels.com Rewards great?

We had been recommending Hotels.com Rewards to HfP readers for many years. 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 is your 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 ex-VAT 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 hotel rooms for my in-laws.

One Key to replace Hotels.com and Expedia Rewards soon

One Key is far weaker than 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%.

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.

Let’s look at my own personal statement.

  • I have achieved 7 of the 10 ‘stamps’ required towards my next free night
  • the average spend to date across those six stays is $166.97

When One Key launches, I will receive a starting credit of ($166.97 / 10 * 7) $116.88.

As it turns out, I also have $1.50 in Expedia Rewards credit. This will be merged in, to give me an opening One Key balance of $118.38.

One Key to replace Hotels.com and Expedia Rewards soon

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 once the programme has launched.

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

A switch date ‘between 8th July and 16th September’ is not helpful

To be honest, I was expecting a firm date to be announced for the One Key switch. Giving members a two month window is not hugely useful.

I suppose this is better than the original four month window though, which said that the switch would happen ‘between July and October’.

You can make Hotels.com bookings for stays up to 8th July with some certainly that you’ll get your 10% return via Hotels.com Rewards. (In fact, 5th July may be more realistic, because it may be that a stay which posts to your account after the switch date is treated at the new rate.)

You should NOT make a hotel booking for after 8th July if your main reason for making it is Hotels.com Rewards credit.

Let’s look at the upsides …..

To be fair, there are two upsides to changes:

  • 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 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 used it a lot myself, especially when making hotel bookings for family members.

Hotels.com is taking a gamble, hoping that the bookings it loses from ‘heavy stayers’ like our readers will be offset by occasional bookers who are attracted by a reward they can spend immediately. Let’s see if it works.

You can find out more on this page of the Hotels.com website.

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Comments (102)

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

  • NigelT says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:11

    I’m very surprised at the suggestion only 5% actually achieve free nights. I’m a very light user of hotels and I still tend to rack up one or two per year.

    As with all such “Good news” moves, let your feet do the talking. Punish them by not using them – I shall be leading the charge!

    • Andrew says:
      10 Jun10 June 09:58

      If you’re booking 10/20 nights per year then I’m not sure I’d call you a “very light user of hotels”. Remember most of the world is not HfP.

      • PeteM says:
        10 Jun10 June 10:14

        Exactly, I was discussing with my source how much of a bubble we live in…

      • CarpalTravel says:
        10 Jun10 June 11:48

        It isn’t that difficult to rack them up though, especially with families. My friends went away with their teenage kids to Florida, 2x rooms for 14 nights.

        They’re going again next year and the in-laws are joining, that would have been 3 rooms for 14nights. I don’t think that is a particularly wild booking, but look how quickly the nights add up.

        • PeteM says:
          10 Jun10 June 13:17

          Given the average salary for a full-time employee was £34,963 in 2023 I am not sure how many families of 4 are jetting off to Florida for two weeks…

        • Mr. AC says:
          10 Jun10 June 20:35

          Surely you’re joking if you consider that a representative example!

  • Shane says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:35

    It may be just the places I visit (mainly South and south East Asia) but for me Hotels.com has, for most hotels I’ve checked, been completely uncompetitive for well over a year.

    90% of the hotel bookings I’ve made in that time have been with Agoda. The difference in headline rates has often been substantial, and as a HSBC PWE card-holder I often get an extra 10% or so off the already good headline rate.

    That benefit alone means it is worth paying the annual fee of £195 for the HSBC PWE card even though, having also the basic Barclaycard avios card plus an Amex platinum card, I make no other use of the card.

    True, the Agoda reward scheme is virtually useless, but, now that I’m paying for my travel out of my own pocket, I’d rather have better up-front rates than any reward scheme.

    • Numpty says:
      10 Jun10 June 08:20

      You also can often get an ‘extra’ discount on Agoda if you book through the app.

    • RK228 says:
      10 Jun10 June 08:31

      We also prefer to travel to Asia and I agree that Agoda has had some really competitive rates recently. I have found I just can’t really trust Agoda though. For instance, I booked a triple room with three beds with Agoda in Osaka for July (for wife, son, and me), but in double checking with hotel, it was actually only a double without third bed. Agoda Customer Service agent didn’t see anything unusual about a triple room advertised as having three beds only having two… After one or two other discrepancies, I decided to move our bookings elsewhere.

  • Paul says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:38

    From my understanding is that it will pay 6% to top tier members?

    If so, I find this better than 1 in 10 spent back, as I book hundred of cheaper rooms for work, but find it worthless to redeem £50 free night for holidays when I find having top status in Hilton/IHG/Mariott better value.

    • Rob says:
      10 Jun10 June 07:41

      Yes, you’d get 6% as Platinum. That is still a 40% haircut on what you get now though.

      That said, in your case I can see why the new structure would make sense.

  • JimmyJimmy says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:09

    What a pity. I have just checked by account with them and have redeemed 15 nights of vouchers and with 1 still to use.
    My remaining booking will probably be cancelled and it’s bye bye!

  • Matarredonda says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:20

    Big shame as always thought Hotels.com was an excellent back up to my IHG scheme. Big advantage with Hotels com you could get rewards for rooms booked for other people.

  • Chris W says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:21

    ‘What you need to know’ is that you never need to bother with the new program.

  • Dale says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:22

    This will probably push me to Booking.com, although I always price check on Trvago (saved me a fortune on a 5* beach resort last year). If you are Genius status and choose Genius discounted hotels then you can save 10-20% on each booking plus sometimes VIP extras. Plus you still get BA shopping avios.

  • Lili says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:40

    I’m actually kind of glad they’re killing this program as it was the last thing holding me to their website. The experience of searching for hotels in the last few years has rapidly declined, to the point I’m dreading having to use their website. I really don’t understand what happened but it’s become buggy, laggy, and absolutely user-hostile. I have started going to booking.com, and then once I narrowed down on the hotel, going to hotels.com and checking if, with 10% discount, they are price-competitve. I always felt a bit guilty towards booking.com about it. Now there’s no such temptation, I can put all my stays on booking (which has MUCH better choice of places, especially in the “small family run B&B / boutique hotel” category) and just forget about hotels.com. Not sure if it was change of management, they laid off too many IT people or some other less obvious reasons, but that’s my silver lining about the whole thing.

    • CarpalTravel says:
      10 Jun10 June 11:35

      I do totally agree with you on this, though I am not sure the website/app were ever any good!
      Map filters used not to work at all and even now on the map view, when you zoom in and then select a hotel, the popup more often than not is buried under a big black banner “zoom out to see more results”.

      My limiting properties to those listed on their platform used to drive P2 crazy. No longer a problem.

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