Hotels.com – stamps ‘carried over’ means what?

[Cranzle]

I reviewed my hotels.com free night progress and noticed the following message:

We’ve given you a head start!
We’ve automatically carried over all of your stamps from your last membership year to count towards your future progress. You’ll see the stamps you’ve already collected and those that have been carried over reflected in your account. Please note that these stamps will count towards your membership progress only, and not reinstated towards your reward nights.

I’m unclear as to what the implications of last sentence are.

I have four ‘stamps’ from stays in 2019 which still show up. If I stay another night, will the four stamps be valid for another year?

[memesweeper]

Mine also shows this:

We want to offer you the flexibility to make the most of your stamps and unused reward nights, so we’re extending your expiry date until 30 June, 2022.

We’ll remind you of this date 3 months in advance so you can plan your travels accordingly. Just book once, complete your stay before then, and your expiry date will be extended by 12 months from the stay date.

I’m pretty sure when I booked the nights there was no expiry. @Rob, article perhaps? I’m not sure what to make of this.

[Rui N.]

Doesn’t this simply means that they stopped extending the free nights and stamps and they now revert to the pre-pandemic “activity extends all deadlines by 12 months”?

[Thegasman]

There was always a requirement to have 1 stay every 12 months or you forfeited stamps/nights. I lost some stamps back in 2015 for this reason. They suspended the requirement during the pandemic (& reinstated stamps/nights that expired in the few months before they introduced the policy) plus they rolled over Silver/Gold status. These waivers are coming to an end on 30th June as advertised on App & website. I’ve also had a couple of e-mails reminding me.

You can preserve your stamps by “staying” 1 night somewhere cheap. A hostel in India will be available for <£5/night.

[Thegasman]

As regards Cranzle’s point, this relates to status. You have a membership year (mine is Feb-Feb). If you stay 10 nights in that period you become Silver & 30 = Gold. They have rolled over nights so for me I started the year with 9 nights so only need 1 by Feb ‘23 to keep Silver. In Feb ‘23 my status nights will revert to 0.

This is separate to stamps. Stamps & Free Nights rely on a rolling 12 month expiry from the date of last stay. If you keep staying 1 night within the 12 month window they never expire.

[The Savage Squirrel]

Thegasman has covered this perfectly.

The only thing I’d add is that Hotels.com tend to leave further extension announcements until very late in the day. I know this because I paid for an Indonesian hostel at the end of 2021 to preserve some stamps, then the extension-for-all announcement came out the next day. £2 wasted there 😀