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Last month, Expedia devalued Expedia points significantly when points stopped being worth double at VIP hotel properties. As if that weren’t an ugly enough development to institute in the middle of a pandemic when most members aren’t able to travel, Expedia has now made a no-notice and unannounced change: According to Doctor of Credit and a screen shot from customer service, Expedia points can no longer be used toward flights. That stinks.
This might affect those readers who signed up for one of the Expedia credit cards when they were offering up to 70,000 points in late 2019. These changes are awful for people who opened accounts for that bonus: they would have presumably met the spending requirement and received their points around January 2020 — right before the world fell apart. It is certainly conceivable that such a cardholder may not have had a good chance to use the points yet — and now they are already worth far less.
That said, Expedia points do still have some value – but you’ll only get 0.7c per point and perhaps only toward hotels. This is a disappointing no-notice change from Expedia. I wasn’t particularly interested in their points to begin with and this kills whatever curiosity I may have been able to conjure.
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I ditched them when the airline cancelled my flight due to covid and were providing refunds but Expedia only wanted to give me a voucher instead. I commenced a charge back and got my money back from my credit card. NEVER AGAIN Expedia!
Agree with your assessment 100%, Nick. I haven’t found any use desire to book through them in the past two years. The program is no longer that valuable to pursue without the VIP+ rewards. For several years I would book hotel stays for other people in my organization, and I would still be awarded the Expedia points on my account, even though I was not the guest. On the redemption side, I found a number of great boutique VIP+ hotel located in some major cities, such as NYC & LA. These points were an awesome alternative for being right in the neighborhood I wanted to stay, like SoHo or WeHo, where my brand loyalty options for Hilton and Hyatt were extremely limited or non-existent. Sad to see the VIP+ disappear, so I am glad I used my last VIP+ points for a booking this past January.
They’re not dead to me yet, just a bit more limited.
Using the value of them on flights was never good to begin with. It was only really best value for VIP redemption.
New strategy seems to be stay at VIP hotels (they increased earning rate when they announced the VIP redemption devaluation) and pay with Expedia card (still a good multiplier on points earn) to rack up points, then redeem points like a discount on any hotel any time. No longer feel tethered to have to redeem them at a VIP property.
Also, Expedia is still good potential earning with Rakuten.
Thoughts?
For me the real hit was when they halved the value of points at the VIP properties. While not allowing points to be used on flights is not a good thing, I probably wasn’t going to so it is not a big devaluation to me. And while they tripled the earning at VIP properties, the points are worth half as much. So from Expedia I used to earn 2.8 cents per $ spent at VIP properties, now I earn 2.1 cents.
Regarding your strategy–depending upon what cards you have, I would consider using a different card. The Expedia Voyager card earns 4x on Expedia purchases, and each point is worth 0.7 cents (at most), so you are getting 2.8 cents back on a hotel booking (plus the 2.1 cents from Expedia). If you used the Sapphire Reserve, you would get 3x, or 4.5 cents (minimum) per $, plus the 2.1 cents from Expedia. Citi Prestige also gets 5x on OTA, and I would take 5 TYP over 4 Expedia points (though CSR gives you travel protections, and I don’t currently have the Prestige).
I used to use Expedia quite a bit to book package deals, and as a result earned & burned their points. The flight + hotel deals often came with bulk airline fares, which for Delta often meant a much higher MQDs earned and miles earned (since it was based on miles flown instead of cost). I could add on a single VIP hotel night (to earn 2x Expedia points on the entire package), and go through Rakuten (which sometimes earned 4-5x Amex points per $). In non-pandemic times it was great.
Hotels.com offers a much better earning and burning proposition with their buy 10 nights, get 1 free. You’re basically getting a 10% return on your stays, versus a maximum 2.1% return even with the triple points you get by booking Expedia VIP hotels.
In practicality that’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of years. I should have said that’s what Expedia is trying to sell you on doing, though I wasn’t seeing the value any longer but wondered if anyone else had been running the math.
I used the last of my Expedia points on a VIP hotel in Playa Del Carmen for next month, booked just before the devaluation kicked in – even though I saw some phenomenally cheap and great Airbnb’s it was use them or lose them I figured.
I’m holding onto the Voyager+ card just for the automatic gold status (I’ve gotten some pretty nice upgrades on the VIP hotels in the past) and the AF pays for itself with the airline credit that still works on some GC’s. I’ve been using CSR to pay for anything on Expedia for the last 2 years.
I’d say I’ve really done more bookings on Airbnb (pay with CSR and use Brit Airways link) or Booking.com (pay with CSR with some really great elevated Rakuten rates).
@NK3 – I did get some phenomenal package deals on Expedia in the past, using a short Norwegian intra-Europe leg to get some huge discounts when you’d bundle in the hotel. RIP to those, as I haven’t seen anything that good in a long while.
@Greg – I’m definitely going to look more into the Hotels.com deal there more often now, but honestly a lot of times I’ve looked their prices to begin haven’t been as good so it didn’t feel like the value would be coming back on the other end; just used them a few times on a case by case.
I just realized a blunder in my above comment. With Expedia rewards, you earn 2 points per $ spent on hotels. VIP hotels earn triple points, and gold members would earn 30% extra. So a gold member booking a VIP hotel would earn about 7.8 Expedia points per $. If those are worth 0.7 cents/point, that would be about 5.5% return, still less than Hotels.com, but closer.
The real difference between the two, though, is that with Expedia you can earn points on hotels, flights, car rentals, and package deals. For example, before the pandemic, I was buying a couple business class tickets to AMS that were $1800 each. I made it a package deal and added a VIP hotel for one night for about $100. I earned double points on the whole package then (normally you earn a lot less on flights), plus the gold member bonus. That was almost 10K points (now worth $70, previously $140).