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If you often travel and use Hotels.com to book your hotels, you may benefit from the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® credit card. The card has many benefits, including no annual fee, and you get rewarded for using the card.
Is it worth the hype, or are there better travel credit cards? Find out in my Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card review below.
Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card pays cardholders in ‘stamps’ versus points. Stamps are easier to keep track of and understand when you’re trying to redeem them, and they’re even easier to earn.
You earn one stamp per night that you stay at a hotel or rental you booked through Hotels.com. For example, if you stay 7 nights in a hotel, you earn 7 stamps. Each stamp you earn for your hotel stay is worth the value of one night at the hotel.
You can also earn a stamp for every $500 you charge on your Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card. Every $500 you spend is equal to one stamp or $110.
You can ‘double-dip’ by making your reservations on Hotels.com and paying for the stay with your Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card. You’ll get a stamp for every night you stay and a stamp for every $500 the stay costs.
You need 10 stamps to redeem for one night’s stay at a hotel. The value of the stamps is the average of all 10 stamps.
If all your stamps are earned through spending $500 at a time, each stamp is worth $110. But if you earn the stamps for stays at Hotels.com hotels, your stamps may be worth more or less than $110.
Here’s where it gets complicated.
Let’s say you have 10 stamps worth $110. Your average is $110. If you redeem them for a stay at a hotel that’s $110 a night, you’re even.
If it’s less than $110 a night, you lose the difference, but if it’s more, you owe the difference between the hotel stay and the $110.
Most rewards credit cards have an annual fee, but the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card doesn’t have one. You can earn your 2.2% back on your purchases but can only use them for hotel stays.
For one year, all members get Silver Membership which provides you with priority customer service, early deal access, and access to free upgrades from time to time.
If you book your trip with your Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card, you’ll have protection for you and your family members at $150,000 each if anything were to occur while traveling.
If you use your Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Card to pay your cellphone bill, you get $600 in protection if your phone is lost or stolen.
The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card is a good card for someone who travels infrequently. There’s no annual fee for the first year, but then it’s $99 after that. You get your first bag checked for free, along with priority boarding.
Cardholders earn 2 miles per dollar spent on Delta, dining, and at the grocery store. You can also earn 1 mile per dollar on everything else.
The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is a great rewards card for people with great credit. It has an annual fee of $95, but cardholders earn 5 miles per dollar spent on hotel and rental cars if you book them with your Capital One Travel. You also earn 2 miles for all other money spent on the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card.
The downside is redeeming the miles. You get the most money out of the miles if you redeem them for travel. If you choose cash back on your statement or any other reward, it comes out to less than one cent per mile.
If you don’t mind rotating rewards, the Chase Freedom Flex℠ is a solid option. There’s no annual fee, and you have access to a rotating set of bonus categories that make it easy to rake in the rewards.
The biggest perk is the 5% cashback on the first $1,500 you spend in each quarter’s bonus category. After the first $1,500, you’ll earn 1% cashback.
You can also earn 5% cashback on Chase Ultimate rewards travel purchases plus another 3% back on dining and drugstore purchases.
The Platinum Card® from American Express has a high $695 annual fee putting it in another league from any other reward credit card.
In exchange for the annual fee, you’ll get 5 membership reward points per dollar for air travel booked with American Express Travel or directly with the airlines.
You’ll also get 5 membership reward points per dollar for hotel stays paid for with your American Express card and 1 point per dollar on everything else. The card also provides exclusive access to airport lounges in over 500 airports.
Typically, applicants need a great credit score, averaging around 700, but some people get approved with a score as low as 670. The higher your credit score is, the greater your chances of approval become.
If you use Hotels.com often, the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® credit card can be worth it. Since there’s no annual fee, you don’t have anything to lose, so it might be worth a try! But you have to use the rewards for travel, which if you don’t travel often enough, it may not be worth it.
If you often travel and use Hotels.com, you can earn free nights at a hotel. If you don’t stay in hotels often, though, it could take a long time to earn any rewards. Even though there’s no annual fee, the point of rewards credit cards is to earn rewards. If you aren’t a frequent traveler, you may want to look elsewhere.
Kim Pinnelli is a Senior Writer, Editor, & Product Analyst with a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has been a professional financial writer for over 15 years, and has appeared in a myriad of industry leading financial media outlets. Leveraging her personal experience, Kim is committed to helping people take charge of their personal finances and make simple financial decisions.
