There is a new Hotels.com Amex Offer that appeared this week, which gives 8% back on prepaid hotel bookings.
In the past, folks haven’t had success stacking a shopping portal when using a similar Expedia Amex Offer. Hotels.com is owned by Expedia, and so this will likely be a similar situation.
The Deal
- Get 8% back as a statement credit when booking prepaid hotel stays at hotels.com/amex
- Expires 10/14/25.
- Limit of $90 back in total statement credits.
Terms and Conditions
- Offer valid for pre-paid hotel purchases made online through the hotels.com/amex link using the pre-paid option at checkout (“pay now”) only.
- Excludes “pay at property” purchases and purchases made over the phone.
- Excludes all other purchases not made at hotels.com/amex link using the pre-paid option at checkout.
- Use of third-party cashback offers, promotion codes, coupons, or browser extensions will invalidate this offer.
- Excludes gift cards, groups & meetings, vacation rentals/packages, and car rentals.
- American Express identifies qualifying transactions based on information provided by the participating merchant.
- Offer valid only on purchases made in US dollars.
Quick Thoughts
Back in the day, we used to see Amex Offers for Hotels.com that gave 20% back when buying their gift cards, plus there were sometimes sales elsewhere giving 10%-20% off their gift cards. Those deals are few and far between nowadays, plus earnings on stays were slashed from 10% to a miserly 2% a few years ago.
Saving 8% at Hotels.com is therefore a fairly good promotion if that’s your hotel booking site of choice, especially seeing as this Amex Offer is valid on up to $1,125 of spend.
A downside of this offer is that it states you have to book at hotels.com/amex:
Excludes all other purchases not made at hotels.com/amex link using the pre-paid option at checkout.
It could be better to focus on the shopping portal regardless. For example, Rakuten was recently offering 10x on hotels.com purchases. Earning 10x Membership Rewards or 10% cashback is preferable to earning only 8% back from the Amex Offer by booking directly from hotels.com/amex.
If a high portal rate is available when you book, you could click through from a shopping portal, book a prepaid hotel, and pay with your Amex card (with the Amex Offer loaded to it) without visiting the hotels.com/amex site at all. The best-case scenario is that you earn both the portal rewards and get 8% back on the Amex Offer; the worst-case scenario you earn the higher portal rewards rather than only 8%.
However, it is important to book a prepaid rate no matter what. If you select to pay at the hotel, the Amex Offer statement credit definitely won’t track because the payment won’t have been taken by Hotels.com. Bear in mind that prepaid doesn’t necessarily mean non-refundable. There might be prepaid rates that’ll trigger the Amex Offer, but which can be cancelled for a full refund.
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