For many of us MilesTalkers, hotel status and points are a *big deal*. We crave the lounge access and late checkouts that an elite tier can bring, and the hotel loyalty program points that come with “direct bookings.”
But some of my readers aren’t hotel chain loyal and don’t bother to even book direct. Sure, you don’t get loyalty program benefits, but apparently many of you don’t care!
You may use Expedia.com or Booking.com or Hotels.com – and that’s where I’m headed here.
In this article
If you consolidate that hotel spend with hotels.com, you’ll earn twice:
1) Hotels.com has its own loyalty program where you’ll get a free night after every 10 eligible bookings. It won’t give you a night worth more than the average of your stays, so you can’t book 10 $100 nights and then redeem for a $1,000 room…. they thought of that 😉 It’s still a free night, though!
2) If you use the Capital One Venture card, you’ll earn 10x Capital One miles on the hotels.com purchase. Really. (Learn more)
This feature will be on the Capital One Venture card until at least January 2020. Maybe longer, maybe not (it hasn’t been announced).
Caveat: You do have to book at hotels.com/venture, so you can’t stack with any other portal bonuses. (At least I don’t *think* you can – if you have done so, please leave a comment below!) Generally those are only in the 2-5% range, however they do promos where the portal cash back can be higher – so it’s always worth checking.
How do you spend Capital One Miles?
You can either redeem them for statement credits off your bill (meaning each mile is a penny off your travel purchases… 1,000 miles is $10 in credit) or you can transfer to miles with airline partners.
Most are at a rate of 1.5 airline miles for 2 Capital One miles, as below. Note that the bottom 3 require two Capital One miles for one airline mile.
Aeromexico
Aeroplan (Air Canada’s program)
Alitalia
Avianca
Cathay Pacific
Etihad Airways
EVA Air
Finnair
Flying Blue (Air France / KLM)
Hainan Airlines
Qantas
Qatar Airways
(Above are all transferred at the rate of 2 Capital One miles for 1.5 Airline miles.)
Singapore Airlines (2:1 ratio)
Emirates (2:1 ratio)
JetBlue (2:1 ratio)
Since you are earning 10x miles per dollar spent at Hotels.com and then you can either redeem at a penny a point (which would be a 10% rebate on spend) or transfer to airlines (which would be, for all but Singapore, Emirates, and JetBlue, 7.5 miles per dollar spent at hotels.com). Again, if you currently book via a shopping portal, subtract that amount since you cannot stack this deal with portals.
I realize that most of those airlines may not look too familiar to you, but those miles will get you where you need to go thanks to the wonder of alliances. Flying Blue can book Skyteam flights, for example, which includes Delta. Avianca and Aeroplan are great for booking Star Alliance flights (United is part of that). And Cathay Pacific and Qantas can book Oneworld flights (like American Airlines).
And to be extra clear, only the Capital One Venture card earns this 10x, not the other credit cards that earn Capital One miles.
Long story short: This isn’t something I do myself, because I’m too addicted to hotel status and hotel points. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider it if you aren’t currently booking directly with hotel chains to earn their status and points – especially if you don’t stay enough for it to matter.
Do you use the Capital One Venture for hotels.com bookings?
Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards.
New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
