Stop Hotels.com free night expiry
With all the travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19 you might find you have no way to use your Hotels.com reward nights.
Hotels.com have announced that they will extend membership status for 1 year if you are due for renewal by 31st May.
At the time of writing, they haven’t announced an extension of reward nights.
If you have earned a free night or have collected credit towards a free night, they will all expire 12 months after the last time you collect or redeem nights.
If your Hotels.com free night expiry date is imminent, and you can’t wait for Hotels.com to announce an extension, there is a simple and reliable way to stop Hotels.com reward night expiration.
You may well be stuck with no option to redeem a night, given the ban on non-essential travel, and in any case using up a whole free night just for the sake of it would be disappointing.
Instead you need to collect a new night. This extends your expiry for another 12 months and you can do it for under £2.
How to stop Hotels.com reward night expiry
Here’s my upcoming expiry date at the beginning. I am due to lose 1 reward night and 8 nights that I have collected towards another free night.
I still have time in hand and could wait, but I wanted to prove to you that this technique works, in case you need it right now.
Fixing this is simple.
Search for a cheap, non-refundable one night stay on a date before your expiry date. A good place to look is cheap hostels in South-East Asia. For example, just search for Cambodia, and sort by price low to high:
Make sure you pick one that is non-refundable and that is marked as allowing you to collect Hotels.com rewards. Also avoid any that say pay at property.
Book and pay for your night. You must pay in full at the time of booking. If you choose pay at property this won’t work.
You may find that the actual price on these cheap rooms is even lower, because the search results page rounds up to whole pounds.
The day after your stay, check your account. You should find that you have earned one more night, and the expiration date has moved on by 1 year. Instead of 8 collected nights expiring in 2020 I now have 9 expiring in 2021, and the warning to use my reward night soon has gone.
Job done. I spent £1.30 to save a reward night worth £76 and 80% of the next reward night worth £60.
That’s not ideal, but it’s certainly not a bad deal. And Uncle’s House in Siem Reap, Cambodia, has earned a quid, so I’m happy with that.
Have fun, stay at home, wash your hands.
