Booking.com v. Avios Travel for hotel booking – collecting points

[Misty]

I wish to book a week in a hotel in Madeira, and would like to gain some reward points for it. I have read quite a lot of the forum and there are a few tales of Booking.com points not being awarded, or being awarded and taken back randomly at some point.

Would I be better off doing through AMEX travel even though it is 3 points per pound instead of 8. I don’t want to be greedy, but I would like to get something as the spend is approx. 1.5k

[yonasl]

There is also 8 Avios per £ on hotels.com

A few days after booking you get an email confirming the avios that will be eventually awarded so the system seems to work fine with that website.

[FatherOfFour]

I have a 100% success rate with both Avios and Booking. Avios slightly more pricy in some cases, but for higher rewards (though now 10/£ instead of 15)
For all estore purchases, I’ve found using incognito far far more reliable than using my main browswer where I’ve presumably put tracking cookies everywhere while researching purchases!

[The real Swiss Tony]

I have had problems with Booking.com points being removed but there has always been some underlying issue with the booking. I’ve either amended it before the stay (should have cancelled & rebooked) or amended it during the stay (water cut off in a villa, spoke to Booking.com, they refunded the unused part of the stay but that triggered a full recovery of the awarded avios).

Other times they have posted fine. So not sure it’s quite as random as some make out.

[Dom]

I made a total of 11 bookings through BA Estore using Booking.com and Hotels.com for a trip I took in September. Booked all of them around July time, all tracked fine as pending within a day. The points have now been awarded for all of them, they all came through roughly a month after completion of the stay, this is much quicker than I remember it being in years gone by where it would often be the full 90-120 days after stay which it states.
I was fortunate to be booking at a time when the estore had boosted avios offers on for both for them, currently looks like booking.com is 6/£ instead of 4/£, pretty sure they were offering 8/£ when I booked mine.

[masaccio]

yonasl wrote:

There is also 8 Avios per £ on hotels.com

A few days after booking you get an email confirming the avios that will be eventually awarded so the system seems to work fine with that website.

Kinda. There’s 8 if you don’t credit to hotels.com rewards, but 4 if you do. In my experience the non-reward rate is significantly higher than the reward rate. So when not logged in, the price is higher (by ~10%) which is not enough to keep the higher Avios rate.

I’ve found that I am using the 10/£ Avios site a fair bit more now as it matches other rates more often. Still plenty of instances where it’s more expensive and the £35 cancellation fee means I am more reluctant to take a punt on a rate that I can cancel later.

[Misty]

Thank you so much for your replies, I have you booking.com in the past but not through the BA eStore, I will also check the price directly to make sure there is no premium added to the eStore booking, at the end of the day hard cash is worth more to me. I will also look at hotels.com as it seems that it’s less hit and miss.

I’ve made two bookings via the estore recently one for brandalley, and the other for M&S. I’ve been awarded the points for the first and not the second.

I did read a post on here that suggested that if you did two purchases via eStore immediately after each other the second one didn’t seem to track. It was a small amount at M&S and I haven’t the stomach for the flight.

Thanks again for your input.