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Discounts on the stuff you are going to buy anyway are a beautiful thing.
But time is precious. Even saving 90% on a low-cost item we will only buy once probably isn’t worth much effort. On the other hand, with frequent purchases or high cost items even a few percent savings can be significant.
For us, hotels are one of those frequent purchases, so I have put extra effort into maximizing our discounts. Of course the best discount is free, and it is fairly easy to get free hotel stays. For those nights that we purchase, we typically get 20%+ off (as explained here. This post expands on that content.)
This post reviews some of the nuances of maximizing our ROI on hotel spend. I couldn’t find a good summary elsewhere so I decided to write one myself.
Even if you aren’t interested in saving $ on hotels, the thought process may still be mildly entertaining. If not, come back next post for more good times!
Hotels.com
Sometimes one travel website will have lower prices than another for a given hotel (it always pays to check)… but being the 21st century and all, I’ve found the majority of them to be much the same. Except Hotels.com. (“The Obvious Choice”?)
Sure, Hotels.com has the same prices, but they also have a sweet Rewards program:
Hotels.com Free Nights
Stay at any one of the 285,000 or so hotels on Hotels.com and you earn free night credit. After 10 nights, you get a free night.
The value of the free night is the average price of the 10 nights you collected (sans taxes), or 10% off. We used 2 free nights while we were in Europe, and earned another one upon returning to Taipei.
As with most rewards programs, use it or lose it. At least one qualifying stay per year is required to keep it all going.
A couple things to be aware of:
- Stays register 2-3 days post-checkout, so free nights don’t help with consecutive stays.
- A free night must be available at booking time. We can’t book an 11-night stay and automatically get the 11th night free.
- Booking via Hotels.com usually means no rewards points from the big hotel chains (e.g. Marriott, SPG, Hyatt, etc…) These can sometimes be more valuable (do the math) particularly if paired with a hotel credit card.
Bonus: if you’ve never booked with Hotels.com, you can get $50 off your first booking. Just in time for the holidays! (We would also get $50.)
Maximize Value of Free Nights
Of course, a night is only “free” if the hotel price is equal to the amount of credit we’ve built up. In practice, the hotel price is either higher, lower, or equal to the credit value.
- Higher – We lose the surplus. Don’t book a $50 room with a $100 free night credit.
- Lower – We lose future value. Don’t book a $300 room with a $100 free night. The $200 excess would have provided $20 off a future stay (10%.)
- Equal – Free Hotel! Yes!
For any multi-night reservation, the credit automatically applies to the most expensive night.
As an example, we stayed 3 nights at the Eurostars Hotel Plaza Mayor, Madrid (the location was great!) I had 2 free night credits when booking this hotel (~$65 each from our time in Thailand & Malaysia), but chose not to use them at this time.
For this reservation, Saturday would have been discounted from $190.94 to ~$126. $65 off would be nice, but I would rather have an extra ~$12.60 off a future stay ((190.60-65)*10% = $12.60)
Instead, I used the credit on lower cost hotels elsewhere in Spain.
Career Training in Plaza Mayor (one for the resumé)
For bonus points:
Booking 2 or more consecutive reservations may allow targeting the credit to a specific (best value) night. Upon check-in we just inform the front desk that we have multiple reservations. I’ve done this on multiple occasions.
(As an aside, having multiple reservations can also be nice when booking a long stay at a hotel you’ve never seen. We will sometimes make one reservation equal to the free cancellation window plus a day, and a second for the rest of our stay. This allows a night to experience the hotel before committing for the long term.)
Breakfast & Other Extras
If you are going to add breakfast or other services to a reservation, all else being equal it is best if these are included in the room rate.
Free nights are only earned on the room rate, not extras or taxes.
Hotels.com Gift Card Best Practices
In the post Never Pay Retail Again, I outlined how we use discounted Hotels.com gift cards to get additional savings on our hotel bookings. We are able to routinely purchase a dollar for 90 cents, sometimes less.
Now that you have a Hotels.com gift card (or 3… or 20…) how do we use them?
Making a Reservation
Using a Gift Card to book a reservation is as easy as using a credit card. Using my beloved Eurostars Hotel Plaza Mayor, Madrid as an example, the Gift Card payment option is front and center…
… but wait, what if you have more than one gift card?
Combining Gift Cards
The booking interface only allows use of one Gift Card.
But I have $11 left over on one card… and I bought a $50 card for $10 off during a promotion (currently available)… and I got a $100 card for 10.2% off during a Raise.com bonus sale… none of these come close to paying for this reservation.
Don’t fret… we can combine the cards into one on the Hotels.com Gift Card portal. From here we can check a balance, combine multiple cards, or even exchange a coffee shop gift card for a shiny new Hotels.com GC.
The Combine Multiple Cards link provides a simple interface:
Now we have one GC with the right amount to make our reservation. In this way, we were able to take advantage of all of those low cost card opportunities and make sure we use every penny.
Cash Back Portals
In the comments, it was correctly pointed out that I was remiss to not mention cash back portals in this post.
I’ve been using Ebates to automagically get 3% back on hotels.com bookings. You just click through a portal and cash back appears in your account. I’ve provided detailed examples of this in this post.
There are other portals, some/many of which offer even great savings. Cashback Monitor keeps track of which cash back portal currently offers the best savings. In the comments, befrugal was mentioned as offering 4-7% cash back. Sounds good to me!
Additionally, many of these cash back sites monitor all online coupons and discount codes. At present, there are coupons for up to 8% off select hotels, and $10 off an order of $50+.
In other words, it pays to reserve hotels through a cash back portal!
Both Ebates and befrugal offer $10 sign-up bonuses for new members.
Summary
I couldn’t find a good summary of how to maximize hotel value, so I decided to write one to fill the void.
The overall goal is to get the maximum cash back and minimum prices on hotel stays. We get this by using rewards programs, discounted gift cards, and cash back shopping portals.
The Hotels.com Rewards program provides one free night after every 10 paid nights in the form of a credit on future stays. By booking hotels of similar or equal value, we can maximize the value of this credit. Sometimes this requires making multiple consecutive reservations.
Similarly, we can maximize the value of Hotels.com Gift cards by purchasing multiple cards at the deepest discount, then combining into one GC at time of booking. This way we get the lowest price and use every penny.
Finally, cash back portals offer a combination of cash back and online coupons, which result in even greater savings.
Since we spend a lot of nights in hotels, we’ve tested this strategy and done well with it. If you are interested in getting maximum hotel value in this way, these (affiliate) links will get you started (new customers only):
- $50 off your 1st Hotels.com reservation
- $5 off your 1st discounted Hotels.com gift card from Raise.com
- $10 off and 3% cash back from Ebates (more here.)
- $10 off and 4-7% cash back from befrugal
Happy travels!
This is awesome! Have you done a calculation on approx. how much you have saved by doing this? I’m also pretty interested in how your hotel stays factor into your overall spending. Since y’all are always travelling, although sometimes in cheap stays but also sometimes expensive, it seems like the hotels would add up pretty fast!
Thanks,
Grif
Hi Grif
I haven’t calculated it precisely, but estimate we’ve achieved about 20% total discount.
I summarized the cost of 4 months in Europe, which provides details on the housing expenses. We found Airbnb to be really good value in Europe compared to hotels, and we also used rewards points for quite a few free nights.
I didn’t see mentioned that you can also go through a portal to hotels.com and get an additonal 4-7% cashback
Where do you get 4-7% cash back? I’ve never seen greater than 3% via Ebates
Use of cash back portals is explained in detail in the post Never Pay Retail Again, in case it wasn’t clear from the summary.
http://www.cashbackmonitor.com/cashback-store/hotels.com/
Depends on portal preference, I tend to use befrugal because I have had no problems with tracking. They (hotels.com) also recently ran a rebate offer and often have discount codes. I know you covered portals in the previous post but seems relevant to reinforce here, same as discounted hotels.com gcs.
Nice! I hadn’t seen befrugal before, thanks for that! (If you have a referral code, I’d be happy to use it.)
Yeah, I meant this post to be an extension of the previous one, just explaining some of the practical aspects of using GCs, combining them, etc… Same with specifics on the hotels.com rewards program. I didn’t have anything to add re: portals, so I didn’t cover it again.
Great, happy I could help. Here’s my ref for befrugal: http://www.cashbackmonitor.com/cashback-store/hotels.com/
I’ve also used the other top 3 portals listed with success just FYI in case rates change. Just wrapping up our honeymoon in Chiang Mai and my wife is ready to move here, so I forwarded your monthly CM living costs to her to take a look at (thanks for that post!). If she’s seriously we could retire earlier then planned with how cheap everything is.
I’ve added a section on cash back portals based on your feedback. It needs reinforcement, particularly with opportunity for even greater cash back and additional discounts via online coupons. Thanks!
Chiang Mai is great, I can see why the Mrs would like to live there. Please keep us all updated if the move happens!
Just noticed I botched the befrugal ref link above. That’s what I get for posting via phone while on my honeymoon. On the off chance you haven’t signed up yet here’s the correct link:
http://www.befrugal.com/referral/?ref=JKIUPOH
If you and Winnie are ever in SF, shoot me an email and I’d be happy to buy you a beer. Credit cards, cashback, and reselling are my hobbies and I’m sure we could learn a lot from each other.
Ever heard of upromise.com? You can get 10-12% cash back with their upromise MasterCard. I consistently find upromise better than any other cash back website
I haven’t, but it looks really promising. Thanks!
Cool rewards program benefits GCC! I hadn’t heard of this one before.
One of the reasons that online hotel pricing seems very consistent is due to the fact that OTA (online travel agencies) have really been consolidating the last 10 years. There’s now mainly two major players that own a big chunk of the market (and dozens of different brands) — Priceline and Expedia.
It’s basically an OTA duopoly!
Yessir, Hotels.com is an Expedia subsidiary. And oddly, Expedia used to be owned by my former employer.
Hi, first time commenting on your site, even though I’ve followed your blog for a couple of years. Thanks so much for your tax posts. Real-life examples of your strategies have greatly helped me as a recent early retiree trying to legally reduce taxes owed.
Hotels.com is great, and it’s my go-to OTA when I’m looking for a few nights or less per stay. It also has a program for stays 30 nights or more (trying to book 30 nights will activate the process; it’s also under the Groups tab). You pick a price range that you want to pay per night, and it will assign a live agent who will find you a hotel that will bid in your price range. I tried this in Danang, Vietnam, for $19/night for a month at a new (=clean) 3-star hotel with a pool and decent free breakfast.
But for a really good deal on hotels, I point you to the Citi Prestige credit card’s best deal–the 4th night free perk. Just google it for the latest complete info. It’s like getting 25% discount on hotel stays (of 4 nights or longer)! But if you really want to stack, it gets better. Using this perk, when I book stays at chains that I have membership with, those nights count toward points and status, because the hotel thinks you’ve booked with them directly and are paying for all 4 (not 3) nights. It’s especially sweet if the hotel you’ve booked also has a promo in your stay period. For example, I recently racked up 50,000 bonus points–on top of the regular points–at IHG’s loyalty program with my stays at Crowne Plaza. Last, the Prestige card earns 3x Thank You points on airfare & hotel charges. So, really, 25% discount is great, but you’ll net out even more if the stacking gods are in your favor at the time of booking.
I have no affiliation of any kind with hotels.com or Citi.
Hi Tran, thanks for the great tips!
I’ve had my eye on the Citi Prestige card for awhile, but just spent the afternoon reading more about it. Thanks!
Very cool summary I’ll save for later use. I haven’t paid for a hotel in a long time, but that’s thanks to work providing frequent stay points and the occasional credit card hack. That being said I do for see a time of less business travel in the future where these tips would be useful. For now if we don’t have enough stay points we tend to go Airbnb for longer stays so we have a full kitchen.
We almost never paid for a hotel while I was working, thanks to all of the points earned on biz travel. It is a nice perk.
Thanks so much for the helpful posts. I haven’t used hotels.com yet since we haven’t really traveled and stayed in hotels. The last few years we’ve only been to places where we knew friends, or used airbnb, especially in Europe where it’s much cheaper than hotels. But I’ll keep this in mind.
We used Airbnb a lot in Europe (see this summary.) I think it provided the best overall value; much better than European hotels.
In Madrid (for example) we didn’t have any luck with Airbnb though, so hotels.com helped fill the gaps while still getting rewards/cash back.
I love the IHG Rewards Club Program, including their Credit Card. The annual CC fee is $49 and it includes one free night per year, good at any IHG hotel anywhere, including all Intercontinental Hotels. I believe it has no blackout dates either. DH and I each have accounts, so two free nights for $98 with NO taxes? Sweet! Even better, there is about a two week overlap on the free nights. One year we took a four night trip to a resort over New Year’s and the whole stay was “free”.
They have a rotating Point Breaks program where stays all over the world are 5,000 points per night. Usually not the best properties, but occasionally there’s a winner worth planning a trip around. Two cards allows us to take better advantage of these offers.
Best of all if you hate paying those stinking hotel taxes & fees: Points + Cash Program. You pay for the room with a combination of points and cash. Typically something like $40 + 10,000 points. (It varies a lot.) When you book it, you’re actually just buying extra points, so your stay is not taxed. Awesome! If you book one of these and have to cancel, you don’t get a refund, but you get to keep the points you just bought for a fairly cheap price. Kind of a back door way to buy points.
Finally, they frequently run promotions which allow you to scoop up more points relatively easily.
If anyone knows any other IHG Deals, please, do tell!
I’m a big fan of IHG as well (we have 2xIHG card.) The free night alone is worth the annual fee. The IHG points also got us free nights in the UK and Palo Alto, CA, when rooms were running $200+/night. Not bad for only $50/year… (more examples here.)
I’ve never had luck with the point break nights, but we’ve done well with the Accelerate programs.
I’ve been trying to rack up my Marriott/SPG points but will have to take a look at hotels.com as well.
I use both. Hotels.com is useful for everything that isn’t in the big hotel chains. Combined with a hotel credit card, the rewards programs from SPG, IHG, etc… can be pretty powerful
Great post. Thanks! When I start booking our Europe vacation hotel rooms I’ll try to circle back and use your hotels.com referral link since I don’t think I have an account there (looks like last purchase was 2010 for a few nights in DC and I checked out as a guest). I just noticed their gift cards at cardcash.com for 12% off the other day (my giftcard portal though I’ll have to check out raise.com too!) but that might be a black friday promo pricing and they are sold out now anyway.
But wow, looks like an incredible deal to stack ~10% off gift cards + 10% discount for free nights + 3-7% through ebates or befrugal (that last one is new to me). 27% off all hotels in the world (plus whatever sales hotels.com has too??) – that’s how you’re able to travel the world so cheaply! ;)
Any way to score 27% off airbnb?
I haven’t figured out a way to get big discounts on Airbnb, other than asking the host directly for them. They did just have a bonus, if you bought a $250 gift card they gave you another one worth $50. They also currently have an offer where you give them your work email address, and after one “business trip” they give you a free $50. So now they have my @gocurrycracker.com email.
I’ve had no luck with cardcash, whereas Raise always has hotels.com cards. Currently they are 7.5% off, and this weekend they had a promotion code for an extra 3% off. Hotels.com is also currently selling $50 gift cards for $40 (one per customer)
With the hotels.com free $50 thing, you have to signup with an email that has never even received their promotion emails. It has to be a completely new customer. We have multiple accounts… the Mrs values her independence after all.
BeFrugal was new to me too, so I started looking at the details. They have this in their fine print: “No cash back on purchases with gift cards applied as payment.”‘
This made me go back and read the Ebates fine print:
“Cash Back is not available on airfare, and on the purchase or redemption of gift cards.”
I don’t know if this is new or not strongly enforced, because I’ve definitely gotten cash back on hotels I’ve paid with gift cards. I’ll have to investigate further. But at a minimum, the portal will make you aware of any discount codes available, e.g. currently 8% off select hotels.
I think I’ve paid for lots of other stuff with other merchants using gift cards and still received cash back. Maybe that’s a generic T&C and not actually enforced (or not able to be enforced given their current coding framework for affiliate sales).
We found another killer travel deal for cruises. Carnival cruise gift cards were around 20% discounted at cardcash last year, so I bought $300 worth and paid our (mandatory) on board gratuities for $60 less than face value. Also works if you buy bottles of liquor on board (which is already 40-50% of US prices).
This is awesome and my next “homework” assignment. We’ve been staying in our condo on vacations but when we start our #emptynest adventures next fall, there will be a lot more hotel stays. We have no “loyalty” to any hotel programs and this sounds like a great place to start. We’ll be staying in a hotel Christmas night (and possibly the night after) – so we are going to start with hotels.com and give it a try!
Christmas night can be expensive, but checkout the online coupons available too:
https://www.ebates.com/coupons/hotels-com/index.htm
With the link in the main post, you could potentially get $50 off, plus an additional $10 off from being a first time Ebates or Befrugal customer, plus currently a $50 off bonus on $300+ holiday bookings (code HOLIDAY16.) Plus, either the gift card discount or the portal cash back, possibly both (?)… Lots of options :)
I found a decent place for around $100 (we’ll be in Tallahassee, Florida) and its just to sleep. There are a bunch that are even in the $80 range. I’ll use your link here too. I see they sell the hotels.com e-gift cards at Sam’s Club at a discount ($95.88 for $100 card) and then use Chase Freedom 5X bonus category this month. I think that would work too… You’re right about options!
Hi,
Do you know if cash back or gift cards work in Europe? I think the cash back concept is pretty much American. I live in Denmark, so just wondering what are my discount options.
I typically try to avoid hotels because, in my opinion, they are too expensive. The vast majority of my time in a hotel room is spent asleep, and it doesn’t make sense to me to pay a lot of money for a dark room.
However, this post is very timely because I am about to book a (potentially very expensive) hotel room in New York, which I don’t think I can avoid. Thanks for the tips.
There are a lot of couch surfing options in NYC
Thanks for this, I have a feeling it’s going to come in handy. As relatively recent travel hackers, we have pursued miles over hotel points, knowing that we usually stay at non ‘brand’ hotels or VRBO’s. I wonder how many independent or non-brand hotels are on hotels.com? I can feel a search coming on!
All of them is my guess.
Great stuff Jeremy. Does hotels.com with the rewards work out better or going the Airbnb route better, for sauntering through Europe? I’ve heard different opinions on this from different people.
For Europe I think we did better with Airbnb in most places. Airbnb also gets us a kitchen, which saves money on breakfast at least.
Really good stuff here. We have been on a points-for-hotels, money for AirBNB system for a while now, but this will be a good third leg to the stool, so to speak.
Perfect. It’s a nice way to spend less on those “other hotel nights.”
You don’t mention Airbnb. I’ve used Airbnb in both Europe and the US and I can generally find a nice apartment for about 40% to 60% of the price of even a modest hotel. The real plus is that my wife and I get to stay in a quiet neighborhood with locals instead of a noisy, impersonal tourist hotel. We shop in the local grocery and cook a few meals in the apartment. The Airbnb host almost always provides some free tour guide services.
I mention Airbnb here. We did well with Airbnb in Europe… less so in the US, and not well at all in SE Asia and Latin America.
I am thinking about using ebates or befrugal, have you used a gift card to cover your entire hotel reservation and still got the cashback applied? or did you do gift card+credit card?
Hi Chen
Befrugal is new to me, but the fine print on both Ebates and Befrugal seems to state that gift card bookings are not eligible for cash back on hotels.com. I don’t know if this is new/recent, as I am certain that I have done this as recently as 2015. I am going to verify on our next hotel booking.
If you try it, let us know how it worked out?
Thank you
Jeremy
Great tips. In all my travels this year (and in the past) – I really haven’t gotten into looking for bargains like this. I don’t know why. Maybe I wasn’t aware they existed, or maybe I just thought it would be too much extra effort for minimal gain. I think you make a good argument that without much pain, there actually can be good financial upside. Something I’ll definitely consider on the next trip….now where should that be?….