Reversing an unpopular decision
Hotels.com had the first rewards scheme that I really used. It was simple and easy to use. Instead of collecting hotel points that expire by the time you want to use them, you just had to book ten nights, and you would get one for free. They would take the average nightly spend over the ten rooms you booked and give you one free night in any hotel up to that value. Their decision to remove this scheme was deeply unpopular, and three years later, they’ve partly reversed that decision.
What did they do?
Back in 2023, Hotels.com removed its popular rewards scheme. It represented a significant downgrade, and since that change, I have had zero interest in the Hotels.com brand. I was loyal to them, unless there was a significantly cheaper option, but then my loyalty stopped.
That scheme was both simple and effective. If you booked ten or more hotel room nights over the course of a year, then you would get roughly 10% of the total spend back to spend on another stay, or in even simpler terms: buy ten, get one free. The reward night could be used at any hotel on the website.
We used it many times and loved it. Then the Expedia Group (owner of Hotels.com, Expedia and many more, plus the engine behind the Avios Hotels website) decided to consolidate their reward schemes into “One Key” rewards. It was not particularly good.
Customer feedback was poor, and Expedia eventually slowed the rollout of One Key. It felt inevitable that a change would be made.
What has been announced?
Hotels.com is launching a new rewards scheme that’s closer to the original scheme, but not quite the same. They are rolling this out between 8th April and 8th May 2026.
For every ten nights you book with Hotels.com you get £100. That takes us back to the simple 10-night scheme they ran in the past, there is a flaw.
Firstly, you have to spend £75 on a room for it to count, which feels like a reasonable floor. However, you’ll quickly realise that if you’re spending more than £100 on a room, the £10 feels insignificant. If Hotels.com want to attract the big spenders, this scheme doesn’t feel right for them.
If you’re regularly booking cheap hotels for yourself or work, then this scheme could work for you.
It’s also worth noting that the £75 mininium if the average over a booking. If you book a single night it has to be £75 or more. If you book multiple nights, the average has to be £75 or higher.
The £100 reward will be added to your account between 3 and 35 days after you complete your 10th night. The £100 will sit in your account for as long as you book an eligible (£75+) hotel in a twelve-month period. Any nights you have collected towards the ten-night goal will also be active as long as you have made a booking in a twelve-month period.
How does this compare to Avios Hotels?
The Avios Hotels website is the way we earn tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of points each year. You earn 10 Avios per £ you spend (that includes taxes & fees). Occasional offers increase this to 15/£. It is an exceptional earn rate, which almost always beats any other Avios reward at a hotel, or aggregator.
At the time of writing, you can earn 8 Avios/£ at Hotels.com via the Avios Shopping website. Over the last year, the lowest earning rate was 5/£.
Real-world examples
Let’s take two recent bookings I’ve made:
- We booked a single night at the Radisson Blu at Manchester Airport. This cost us £136.
If we had booked this using Hotels.com we would have effectively gained a £10 reward. Using the Avios Shopping website we would have earned around 880 Avios (the earn rate is based on the room rate minus taxes and fees), which is worth £8.80, for a total reward of £18.80.
Using Avios Hotels we would have got 1,360 Avios. If you value Avios at 1p/point that’s £13.60 - We booked eight nights at the Marriott Al Messila resort in Doha at a price of £2,525
With Hotels.com we would get a £80 reward, and around 16,000 Avios for a total reward of £240.
Using Avios Hotels we got 25,250, valued at £252.50.
However, there are some big differences between Avios Hotels and earning points via hotel websites on the Avios Shopping website….
Why Avios Hotels (nearly always) wins
Firstly, the Avios Shopping website is notoriously, occasionally, unreliable. I say occasionally because most of the time it works fine, then it doesn’t. Things you’ve bought, or hotels you’ve booked, will sit there for months, then the points will be declined. Based on my experience, you are more likely to miss out on points when booking hotels. You simply cannot rely on the points landing.
With Avios Hotels, you will 100% get your points. The reason for that reliability is simple: you make the hotel booking through the Avios Hotels platform, and they can track your booking in their own back-end. When you buy something via Avios Shopping, that site uses cookies to determine if you have made a booking on a hotel website. Lots of things can happen that break that tracking, meaning no reward.
Secondly, Avios Hotels will reward you around 30 days after your stay. Hotels and aggregators’ websites on Avios Shopping take 90 – 120 days after your stay, and sometimes much longer.
Given the risk of earning zero Avios points from a hotel booking, I don’t see the value of the Hotels.com reward scheme except in specific circumstances:
- You regularly book rooms at or very close to £75/night OR
- You have no interest in Avios points
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