Hotels.com Card: Discontinued; Customers Moving to One Key
The Bottom Line
2.8
Rates, fees and offers
Annual fee
$0
Rewards rate
1 Stamp per $500
Bonus offer
Get 2 reward nights worth $250 total (max $125 per night)*, when you spend $1,000 in purchases in the first 3 months. *Excludes taxes and fees. If a night costs less than $125, you won’t get the difference.
Intro APR
N/A
Ongoing APR
APR: 17.99%-25.99% Variable APR
Cash Advance APR: Refer to Important Credit Terms
Balance transfer fee
Up to 5%; min: $5
Foreign transaction fee
0%
More details from Wells Fargo
- Get 2 reward nights worth $250 total (max $125 per night)*, when you spend $1,000 in purchases in the first 3 months. *Excludes taxes and fees. If a night costs less than $125, you won’t get the difference.
- Collect 1 stamp each time you spend $500 on purchases with your card and collect 1 stamp for every night you stay at any eligible property booked on Hotels.com. When you collect 10 stamps, you'll get 1 reward night to redeem on future bookings through Hotels.com.
- Choose from over 500,000 properties in 200+ countries around the world.
- $0 Annual Fee.
- Enjoy Silver membership exclusives such as free breakfast, airport transfers, free WiFi, and more at selected properties for as long as your card is open.
- Pay your monthly cell phone bill with your card and get up to $600 protection against damage or theft (subject to a $25 deductible).
- No foreign currency conversion fee.
- Offers reimbursement for non-refundable passenger fare if your trip is interrupted or cancelled for a covered reason, when your passenger fare is booked with your card.
Pros and Cons
Pros
No annual fee
High rewards rate
Automatic elite status
Premium travel protections
Cons
Rewards have limited flexibility
Complicated rewards
Complicated redemptions
No free anniversary night
No bonus categories
Detailed Review
» This card is no longer available
As of April 2023, Wells Fargo paused applications for the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card. In July 2023, a new loyalty program called One Key launched, which allows members to earn and redeem rewards at Hotels.com, Expedia and Vrbo. And in July 2024, new One Key credit cards were launched, issued by Wells Fargo. Existing holders of the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card will receive a One Key card in September 2024, but can continue using their existing cards until then. The review below is based on what the card once offered.
• • •
The Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card offers decent rewards value for your spending, coupled with an annual fee of $0 and the flexibility of not being tied to one hotel chain.
Overall, it could be a good fit for those already using the Hotels.com loyalty program.
But what about aspirations of using rewards to book some plush room in a distant location?
Let’s just say that if this card's rewards program were a hotel, it'd be less like a beachfront luxury resort and more like a suburban office-park hotel right off the highway. And that's if you're willing to wade through the convoluted rewards program, which awkwardly marries credit card spending rewards with a "buy 10, get one free” system you’d find at a sandwich shop.
If you think you can pick a hotel group and stick with it, a co-branded hotel credit card would be a better fit, even if you had to pay an annual fee. Or a general travel credit card would offer versatility.
Key benefits of the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card
Card type: Hotel.
Annual fee: $0.
Sign-up bonus: Get 2 reward nights worth $250 total (max $125 per night)*, when you spend $1,000 in purchases in the first 3 months. *Excludes taxes and fees. If a night costs less than $125, you won’t get the difference.
Ongoing rewards: Earn one stamp for every night you stay at any eligible property booked on Hotels.com, plus one stamp for every $500 spent on purchases on the credit card.
Redemption options: Accumulate 10 stamps for a “reward night” booking at Hotels.com. (Value varies; see details below.)
Foreign transaction fees: None.
Compare to Other Cards
Benefits and Perks
Decent rewards rate
This card has a confusing rewards system (more on this below), but essentially you earn rewards equivalent to 2.2% of your spending, according to NerdWallet calculations:
You’ll need to spend $5,000 to earn 10 “stamps” that can be redeemed for a "reward night."
When earned with the credit card, 10 stamps have a value of $110.
$110 worth of rewards divided by $5,000 in spending comes out to 0.022 or 2.2%.
That is a competitive rewards rate compared with some hotel cards. But, nowadays you can find credit cards that pay 2% in cash back with less complicated rewards systems. With the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card, you get only an extra 0.2 percentage points to earn rewards that are far more restrictive than cash.
Automatic elite status
You get automatic Silver status with Hotels.com. Silver status entitles you to free breakfast, spa vouchers, airport transfers, VIP access lines and more at eligible properties.
Note, however, if you already have status with a branded hotel chain like Marriott or Hyatt, you forgo your status benefits and elite night credits with that hotel chain if you book through a third party like Hotels.com.
Perks and travel protections
No foreign transaction fee: The Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card is a great travel partner, since you won't have to pay a foreign transaction fee when you make purchases abroad.
Cell phone protection: Pay your phone bill with this card and you’ll be covered in the event of damage to or theft of your phone, for up to $1,200 per year ($600 per claim), after a $25 deductible.
Travel perks: The Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card comes with some travel protections, such as trip cancellation and interruption insurance, and rental car insurance, which is secondary, meaning your own car insurance applies first.
Drawbacks and Considerations
Baffling rewards
You can definitely figure out this card's rewards program. You can. But after this description, you might not want to try.
1. Earning:
Even without the credit card, the Hotels.com loyalty program lets you earn a “stamp” for every night you stay at any eligible property booked on that site. That’s a stamp like you might get on a loyalty wallet-card at a sandwich or coffee shop.
With the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card, you earn a stamp for every $500 spent on purchases with the card. All spending counts the same. No bonus rewards for spending on restaurants or gas stations, for example — not even for booking at Hotels.com.
But what are the rewards stamps worth? You’ll have to remember the number $110. Here’s why.
2. Redeeming:
You need to accumulate 10 stamps for a “reward night.” No partial redemptions for, say, seven stamps.
So 10 stamps, and you can book any hotel room on Hotels.com? Uh, no. Not all stamps are created equal:
Stamps you earn by racking up $500 in spending on the credit card are assigned a value of $110.
But stamps you earn by booking through Hotels.com are worth whatever you paid for the room.
The value of your 10-stamp “reward night” is the average of your 10 stamps — again, with credit card-earned stamps worth $110. So, if you didn’t book any rooms through Hotels.com and earned your 10 stamps only with the credit card, then your reward is worth $110. But if you have a mix of bookings and credit card stamps, your reward could be more or less than $110, depending on how expensive your bookings were, which affects the average of the 10 stamps.
Whew.
For rewards earned with the credit card alone, don't get your hopes up for booking a luxurious 5-star hotel, where rooms cost far more than $110. You can book a more expensive hotel and still use the reward, but you’ll have to pay the difference.
Want a simpler credit card that earns rewards you can use for hotel bookings? Try a general travel card that earns a flat rate back on all spending and lets you use your rewards for multiple forms of travel, including hotels. For example, the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card earns 2 miles per $1 spent, and you can redeem rewards for any hotel or flight.
Weak sign-up bonus
With an annual fee of $0, you don’t expect a massive sign-up bonus. But even still, some might be a little disappointed with this one.
The current bonus: Get 2 reward nights worth $250 total (max $125 per night)*, when you spend $1,000 in purchases in the first 3 months. *Excludes taxes and fees. If a night costs less than $125, you won’t get the difference. (The reward night excludes taxes and fees, which you'll have to pay.)
To maximize this bonus, you'd need to find a room that costs exactly $125 a night. If it costs more, you'll owe the difference. If it costs less, you don't get back the difference. That’s less than you get with most other major hotel credit cards, even ones with no annual fee.
A running theme here: The card's bonus, like its rewards, is not so much a "free night," but more like a dollar credit to use at Hotels.com.
Poor flexibility
Granted, you're able to book properties around the world with multiple different brands. So if you’re not chasing elite status with a particular brand, the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card could help get you free or discounted reward nights across a wide variety of properties.
But unlike cards offering flexible rewards, the stamps you earn using this credit card are redeemable only for Hotels.com bookings. Plus, you can’t redeem the rewards you’ve earned until you earn 10 stamps.
Also, it has no travel partners to transfer rewards to.
For more flexibility, consider the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. It offers bonus rewards in several popular categories, including travel and dining. Those points can be transferred at a 1:1 ratio to several desirable hotel loyalty programs: Marriott, Hyatt and InterContinental Hotels Group (Holiday Inn, Staybridge, Crowne Plaza, among others).
It also comes with a great sign-up bonus: Get up to $1,050 in Chase Travel℠ value. Earn 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. That’s worth $750 when redeemed through Chase Travel. Plus, get up to $300 in statement credits on Chase Travel purchases within your first year. The annual fee is $95.
No anniversary reward
Many co-branded hotel cards come with a free anniversary night. While those cards typically come with an annual fee in the $100 range, using the free night can easily make up for the fee.
An example: The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card. With an annual fee of $95, it offers a Free Night Award (valued up to 35,000 points) every year after your account anniversary.
No bonus categories
The rewards rate might be decent overall, but there’s no way to earn extra points, not even for Hotels.com bookings. Hotel cards typically offer bonus rewards for hotel bookings and often other spending, such as restaurant dining.
Rewards expire
Rewards expire after 12 months of inactivity, meaning you didn’t earn a stamp or redeem a reward during that time. So make sure you spend at least $500 a year on the card to earn a stamp and reset the expiration date.
How To Decide If It's Right For You
In the end, the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card is a way to earn credit for booking rooms on Hotels.com. Its rewards value for spending on the card is decent and would be a good addition for those already immersed in the Hotels.com loyalty program. But for most people, a co-branded card with a name like Marriott, Hilton or Hyatt might serve them better if they can commit to one hotel chain.
All information about the Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card has been collected independently by NerdWallet. The Hotels.com® Rewards Visa® Credit Card is no longer available through NerdWallet.
For an annual fee, this card gives you a high rewards rate on everything. It has a sign-up bonus, and miles are redeemable for statement credit against any travel expense, including hotel bookings.
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