Stacking the Capital One and Hotels.com Promo
A few weeks ago the news broke that Capital One cards (Venture & Venture One) would start earning 10x on Hotels.com bookings. Capital One did a similar promo with Uber and the Quicksilver card a few years ago.
Well after looking at the promo a in more detail I realized you can stack discounts to get a 24% discount on most paid hotel stays.
Details of the Hotels.com Promo
You can read DDG’s post on the deal for the full details but I will give you the important bits.
- From January 30, 2018 to January 31, 2020 the Capital One Venture and Venture one cards will earn 10x points (worth a penny each) on Hotels.com reservations.
- The reservation has to be paid in full at the time of booking.
- And you need to pay directly through the website hotels.com/venture.
- Paying with Paypal, Apple Pay etc. will disqualify you from the promo.
- You also have to book it directly through the website…bookings via the app or made over the phone will not count.
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Stacking the Deal
Ok now that we know the ground rules less get to stacking! Hotels.com has a great rewards program where you get every 11th night free! They average the totals of the previous 10 nights and give you the average as a credit for your 11th night. That is a 9% rebate. Add that to 10% back from the Capital One Venture or Venture one card 10x earning rate and we are saving 19%. But, we can do even better.
Hotels.com is a partner on most cashback portals. I checked cashbackmonitor and Top Cashback had the best offer at up to 11%. For most hotels the offer was 5% though. Add that to the 19% we have already saved and you are sitting on a 24% discount on most hotel stays!
Downfalls of this System
As we know, nothing is perfect. This system has a few downfalls.
Hotel Loyalty Programs
By going this route you forgo earning points at chain hotels and gaining loyalty status. Earning points is a rebate of it’s own which is probably worth around 10% on average for most hotel chains. For non chain hotels I wouldn’t take this into account.
Booking Directly with the Hotel
The price on Hotels.com will not always be the same as the price on the hotel’s website. I did a few quick checks and the Hotels.com price was usually within a few dollars of the hotels own site. But there will be times when there is a big difference so make sure you always check first.
You Need the Card to Play
Lastly, you need a Captial One Venture or Venture One card to be able to participate in the promo. The Capital One Venture card does come with an awesome 50,000 point sign up bonus worth $500. And the redemption rates are far superior to the Barclay Arrival+ where you need to have at least $100 in points to use them.
The Capital One Venture is a card worth applying for if you don’t already have it, I know I have been trying to get it again for a while now! But, Capital One does like to pull from 3 credit bureaus which is a turn off for some. It doesn’t bother me that much since 2 of my 3 bureaus rarely get pulled anyways.
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My Reccomendation
The nice thing about the Capital One Venture card, outside of the valuable sign up bonus, is that the annual fee is waived the first year. So you could get the card, the $500 sign up bonus, and take advantage of the Hotels.com promo for no out of pocket cost for the first 12 months. Then when the 12 months is up you can downgrade it to the Venture One card if you don’t find the perks worth the annual fee. By doing this you would still get to take advantage of the promo with a fee free card.
I think this system is good for someone who has a lot of cash stays at non chain hotels. Even if you only have a handful of stays per year that fall into this category it could be worth pursuing. Since you can us the system for 2 years without paying an annual fee.
Also anyone who doesn’t want to be tied down to one hotel chain and likes to hop around, thus not really collecting points in any one chain, may find this an easier, more rewarding system. This would allow them to stay where they want and still get a discount that is better than a traditional hotel program.
Conclusion
What I like about this promo is that it gives us options. While not everyone will find this system valuable it will be useful to some.
If you don’t value traditional loyalty programs and you like to stay where you want when you want then this could work for you. 24% off of anything is a pretty good deal!
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This is a great one. I don’t like sticking to just one hotel because it takes the freedom of the destination choice, although I do enjoy discounts;)
While this is good. I think its best is to get gift cards when they are on sale for 20% off. Also, you should add the rebates during checkout for a little extra discount.
https://www.hotels.com/page/rebate/
Good point. I don’t seem to see as many 20% off offers for their cards anymore…more of the 10% off variety. The nice thing about using the Venture card is you only pay when you are using it and don’t have to have money tied up in gift cards. But when there are 15 or 20% off gift card sales that would be the way to go for sure!
[…] How to Save 24% on Paid Hotel Stays! Stacking the Hotels.com Promo by Miles to Memories – Greta savings by stacking Capital One cards (Venture & Venture One) 10x on Hotels.com bookings and Hotels.com Promo […]
Caution: always check the rates going through a cash back portal and not going through a cash back portal. I have found on several occasions, the hotel rate going through TopCashback is HIGHER than without going through TopCashback. Negates the benefit of going through TopCashback back. Haven’t tried it with other cashback portals or with all types of reservations, but I have seen it on several of my recent reservations.
Good tip! That is one thing I like about Ebates, that you can activate the cashback after everything is already loaded and priced out.
Do you think the portal will track if you have to go to hotels.com/venture and not just hotels.com?
Great point AJS. I think it will work as long as you use a portal with a quick button or chrome add on like Ebates. Once I click through the hotels.com/venture and search for the hotel the ebates 6% off button pops up for me after the search results are populated.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that you can stack the Venture deal with a cashback portal. I tried both ways, and when I just did hotels.com/venture, I got a message saying that the pay-later option did not qualify for the Venture 10x points. When I clicked on the Ebates button, the message about the Venture points did not appear, which makes me think that you will not get the 10x Venture points.
Interesting – I think it still might work out. I guess we will have to wait and see once reports start coming in over the next few weeks.