Since we sold our house a few years back and now live exclusively out of hotels it is important that we save as much as we can.  After all this is kinda our mortgage so to get 25% off is a nice discount.

Hotels.com has a rewards program that gives a free night after 10 nights stayed. The free night is valued from the average price of the 10 nights stayed so 10 nights at $100 is going to get you a $100 free night.

Fees and taxes are not included in calculating the free night. So to be sure when you redeem your free night stay in a $100 hotel(for example) before the fees/taxes are added to maximize the benefit.

Hotels.com Gift Cards

 

Hotel.com has gift cards that are often sold from various vendors like Amazon, Ebay, grocery stores, office supply stores, online gift card retailers, various apps, etc. One of my favorites is through Samsung Pay.

Most places will often have sales up to 15% off and more. Combine the gift card with the rewards program and you are looking at an easy 25% discount. Mmm, I do love the smell of a good discount stack in the morning.

You can only load one gift card when making a booking, so if you have several cards you’ll need to combine them into one first before redeeming. One can only load up to $2,000 a card.

**Unfortunately, they’ve been working on this page for a few weeks now. You can call in and have the rep do it until then.**

 

Often I’ll get discount offers from Hotels.com or a portal that will pay out more for a booking that is exempt from the Hotels.com Rewards program. Basically if those offers are not at least 10% then its best to get the 10th night from the Rewards program.

Find a better price somewhere else? No worries. Their  Price Guarantee is good up until the day before the stay. Easy online form or I’ve had luck calling in.

One big bummer – Hotels.com is a third party agency so like most others, Priceline, Orbitz etc., your status at any major hotel chain won’t be recognized. You get what you pay for. No upgrades, free breakfast, stay credits, etc. No “Welcome Mr. Rob and thank you for being a Platinum member”. Boo!

3 Levels of Hotels.com Benefits

They do have their own 3 levels of status:

Not much difference between Silver and Gold though. I have received some pretty good rates via their Secret Prices and VIP status.

Now for the Portal Double dip. If I’m buying the GC (gift card) online, I go through a portal, purchase the GC and then I go back through a portal a second time to Hotels.com to make my booking. That’s what I love about this hobby, stacking deals to maximize $$.

Wrap Up – Cheap Hotels

Living out of hotels, getting a savings – or a cheap but great hotel is really what we are always searching for!  To get a savings of 25% off of Hotels.com is usually a good way to go for us.  Unless of course we are working towards getting our status at one of the top hotel chains like Hyatt for instance.  

How do you save on hotels when travelling?  Do you use hotels.com or something else?  We would love to hear from you!

By the way – we do not make any money from hotels.com – it is just such a good product that we like to write about it.  If it saves us money, then most likely it will save some for you!