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Amex just introduced a new Amex Offer: Spend $50 or more on a Hotels.com Gift card and get $10 back:
This offer can be added to your account through Twitter. Use hashtag #AmexHotelsdotcom.
This offer is not available through social media channels, which indicates it is targeted. I found the offer on every one of my and my wife’s cards. If you buy a $50 gift card with an enrolled card, this deal amounts to a 20% rebate. If you have multiple Amex cards, make sure to use the multi-browser trick to load the offer to all of your cards. Please see: Complete guide to Amex Offers.
Additionally, some cash back portals are currently offering up to 2% cash back when you buy gift cards from Hotels.com. I found 2% rates for gift cards at both TopCashBack and Giving Assistant. So, if you start your shopping at one of these portals, buy $50 Hotels.com gift cards, and pay with a different enrolled Amex card each time, you should get a total of 22% cash back (20% from Amex and 2% from the portal).
| Name / Link | Offer | Frequent Miler Notes: |
|---|---|---|
| Giving Assistant | You will earn $5 after your first eligible purchase. We'll earn $5 too. | Excellent cash back portal. Very fast payments. |
| TopCashBack | Bonus rates vary. | TopCashBack is one of our two favorite portals because it almost always offers the best cash back rates. Our other favorite is Rakuten. |
If you buy several gift cards, Hotels.com will let you combine their balances into one:
Is it a good deal?
This appears to be a great deal. If all goes well, you should be able to get 22% off up-front when buying gift cards, and then make use of additional Hotels.com promotions and discounts in the future when booking hotels. All of that is in addition to the Hotels.com Rewards program which offers a free nights for every 10 nights booked through Hotels.com.
Here’s one factor that reduces the wow factor of the deal. According to both Giving Assistant and TopCashBack, if you shop through a portal to Hotels.com in order to book a hotel, you will not earn cash back on the portion of the booking that is paid for with gift cards. Hotels.com is usually available through portals for 7% cash back. So, assuming that you would have shopped through a portal, your real savings with this deal are 22% – 7% = 15%.
I think that 15% off is still a very good deal. Keep in mind, though, that if you have or want to get hotel elite status, nights booked through OTA’s like Hotels.com don’t usually count for elite credits or benefits.
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[…] though, our cost was less than $66.61 per night. Last year, there was an Amex Offer which offered $10 back when buying a $50 Hotels.com gift card. Shae and I have multiple American […]
[…] giving you plenty of opportunities to stock up at the moment. Remember that Hotels.com gift cards can be combined very easily online, allowing you to stack gift cards for a consistent ~20% savings (remember that portals usually do […]
[…] is a nice way to save a few bucks. Hotels.com gift cards can be combined quickly and easily online, meaning that you could easily save 20% on a hotel stay. Keep in mind that stays booked through […]
Anyone have these track with TCB? None of mine have showed up.
Can this discount somehow be used for a discount of 22% when buying large sums of cards? Say like $10k for group travel? Or is it just $10 off a $50 and limited to one per card?
It is a single $10 statement credit on $50 or more spent. If you have the offer on ten Amex cards, you could use it one time on each card to get a total of $100 back, plus the $10 in 2% cash back. You’d need 200 Amex cards with this offer if you wanted to buy $10k in Hotels.com gift cards at the full discount 🙂
Hi, has anyone else experienced Brinker (Maggianos) gift card fraud? I used the NewEgg offer and purchased gift cards to Maggianos (among others). When I went to redeeem tonight, it had been used, in michigan. The date of activation coincided with my purchase date. Maggianos honored it very reluctantly but I don’t live anywhere near Michigan and haven’t been there in 20 years.
[…] you have upcoming travel, this Amex Offer for Hotels.com could help you save a nice chunk on your next hotel stay, provided you aren’t counting on […]
Anyone else having issues with 10+ orders or found a way to work around that? Parents are planning a trip to an expensive destination this summer so I’d like to help them soften the blow a little bit with hotel costs…
Ok I get it. However, I still think it’s a bit misleading, because your assumption is that, at the point in the future when you would use the gift cards to make a booking, the portal rebate will still exist and it will still be 7%. OTOH, the 22% savings of the GC are locked for good. Just my 2 cents.
There is no way to run a perfectly accurate analysis without knowing what future prices and portal rebates will be. One can only guesstimate based on what has occurred previously. In order to assume that 22% is locked in, you have to assume that hotels.com will continue to price competitively. What happens if they jack up prices, and you end up paying more using your gc’s on hotel.com than if you booked via another site? That could greatly reduce what you’re considering to be a locked in.
That is an inherent risk of ANY GC, you lock your currency to the GC exchange rate, for better or worse. But you will always save the extra 22% off future prices. The 7% savings via a portal is not guaranteed in the future.
What kind of Mickey Mouse math is this? You don’t subtract coupons that you can’t stack from the actual savings. It’s 22% off, not 15%. Please stop and think about this for a minute.
Yes it is 22% off the gift card price, but I think it is important to compare to the price one would actually pay to see what the real savings are. I am making a big assumption here that shopping through a portal for 7% back is the “usual way” to book.
Let’s say you want a $100 room. Normally you would book through a portal, get 7% back, and therefore pay a total of $93. With this promotion, you would pay $78. Your true savings, therefore = $93 – $78 = $15.
You are right, though, that I shouldn’t have subtracted one percentage from another. In my comparison, the $93 amount should be the denominator. So, the savings as a percentage (compared to the “usual way” to book a room) is: $15 / $93 = 16%
Hmm looks like there’s a certain cashback portal that doesn’t have the same restriction on purchases that use gift cards as payment, though…
what cashback portal is this that you speak of???
I ordered some of these yesterday and had most of my orders canceled by Hotels.com. I called this morning and was told there is a 10 gift card limit for the American Express promotion. Didn’t see that in the terms and conditions?
Interesting. Is it 10 per person? So like if my wife has the offer, I should use a different email to order them?
That said, I’m not sure yet how many of these I want. For me, the value will mostly be where I can’t use my points at chain hotels (either because there are no chain hotels at the destination, or the number of points needed is ridiculous). Right now, I’m planning a trip to France and am not finding many good options in smaller cities/towns on hotels.com. The best option seems to be airbnb; I bought lots of airbnb cards from amazon in December when they were “double discounted.”
10 total, not per person. I tried to use my wife’s card and was denied. I had the agent check the order and she said it was “related” to my cancelations. Probably matching IP or billing addresses. I’ve never encountered Amex offers that were limited other than one per card.
Hi Greg,
Talking about hotels, I wanted to ask if getting a Marriott credit card with 80,000 bonus miles would be worth it. I have found when I try to use points for rooms it takes so many that it is not worth it. What is your opinion and advice. Thank you and great work!
[…] 22% off Hotels.com gift cards with Amex Offer and portal rebate, but is it a good deal? Thanks to a new Amex Offer, it should be possible to get Hotels.com gift cards for 22% off. In my analysis, this really amounts to only 15% savings. That’s still pretty good, though! […]
I’m curious about the poster saying she was able to combine a gift card with another hotels.com discount code (SAVE8FEB17). My previous experience with hotels.com was, if you had a gift card, it was NOT combinable with discount codes. Frankly, I thought this was the gimmick with these gift cards since other online agencies also owned by Expedia (like Cheaptickets) often provide discount codes in 16 to 18% range. Obviously, if you can get almost as good a rate NOT prepaying — and possibly using cashback with those sites — these gift cards aren’t a great deal. If they CAN be combined with other codes, they would be a good deal. So what’s really the deal?
iahphx,
Hotels.com gift cards are simply a form of payment, and do not carry promotional restrictions. You can indeed use coupons, promotions and the like in conjunction with the use of your Hotels.com gift card.
Todd
Head of Gift Cards
Hotels.com
giftcards@hotels.com
Thank you. My recollection from a few months ago when I attempted to use a Hotels.com gift card was that I had to put the number into the Promo Code box — NOT in the payment box. If, indeed, you can enter both, these cards offer much more value, as they would operate as a true “gift card” — not as an alternative discount code.
I did just do a “test booking” which indicates that hotels.com DOES have both a promo box AND “gift cards” listed as a form of payment. So it seems like both with work — at least on some bookings. BTW, Todd, do you know if this is a recent change — because late last year I’m pretty certain I remember it didn’t work that way?
The next question is whether gift cards work on ALL hotels.com bookings — including the ones that promo codes don’t work on. Like at chain hotels. If they do, it would seem like these gift card purchases would be quite valuable to most frequent travelers.
iahphx,
There has not been any changes to the way Hotels.com gift cards are redeemed. Since inception they have been treated as a form of payment toward any hotel that allows for advance payment. Promo codes are not considered a form of payment, and appear on hotels eligible for promo code / coupon code bookings.
Hotels.com gift cards are good on bookings at http://www.hotels.com/gc, or when you use the “Pay Now” option on eligible hotels. This includes over 150,000 places to stay worldwide, inclusive of the major hotel brands.