Hotels.com now lets you 'bank' your savings for future trips
Hotels.com wants you to have choices. That's why the popular hotel booking site is launching a creative new tool, exclusive to Hotels.com, that lets members decide how and when they earn and use valuable rewards.
Called Save Your Way, the new feature allows members to take immediate advantage of discounts when booking a hotel or save those discounts (or "bank" them) to use at a later date.
Here's how it works: Anyone with a free Hotels.com account automatically earns exclusive discounts of up to 20% off hotels. Previously, those discounts were applied automatically when reserving and paying for that stay. But now, with Save Your Way, members can decide to use that discount immediately or pay full price for the stay and put those savings away (in the form of OneKeyCash) to use at a different time.
Let's look at it in action: Say you have the 20% Member Price discount on a room that's regularly $200. Members can now decide to use the 20% discount of $40 at checkout and pay $160, or, using Save Your Way, pay the full $200 now and bank that $40 reward, in the form of OneKeyCash, in their Hotels.com account and use it down the road.
"Travelers want flexibility and to maximize the value they get out of every trip, whether they're booking for business or a vacation," said Hari Nair, general manager of Hotels.com. He added that this new, creative approach to rewards bucks the "one-size-fits-all approach" to loyalty programs and gives members choices.
Now, as for who will benefit the most from the Save Your Way program, Hotels.com has plenty of ideas, including:
- Business travelers who may not need to save on every trip but want to build up rewards
- Leisure travelers who want to bank rewards to use on a future trip
- Loyalty-savvy travelers who appreciate having ultimate flexibility in how they use their loyalty benefits
All in all, it means you can spend what you want, when you want. At TPG, we're all about having options, so it might make more sense for some people to take the immediate cash savings for a quick way to save. Or, maybe you want to make a "deposit" on a future trip in the form of banking that discount and know you have a little bit of a travel fund on Hotels.com waiting for your next big adventure.
Beyond this smart tool, Hotels.com is part of a unified loyalty program, alongside Expedia and Vrbo, called One Key, allowing for an easier way to earn rewards across all three booking sites. The program allows members to work their way up elite status tiers to earn bonus OneKeyCash, perks like potential room upgrades and food-and-beverage credits, and more.
Bottom line
Hotels.com's new Save Your Way feature allows members to decide when and how to use their discounts. It's a creative way for people to take advantage of immediate savings or stash the monetary value of the savings away to use later. Options are always good, and it's nice to have a totally new option at Hotels.com.
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