Online travel agency Hotels.com is launching a new feature, which claims to give travelers more flexibility. However, the intention with this seems pretty clear, as flagged by Head for Points.
One Key is the free loyalty and membership program of Expedia Group, including Hotels.com. Just for joining the program, you can receive access to “members only” rates at 100,000+ hotels worldwide. This is presumably intended to match how the major hotel groups also offer special pricing for members.
Hotels.com is now trialing a suspicious concept in the UK, with the plan to potentially expand it worldwide. It’s called “Save Your Way,” and the idea is that instead of getting the discount of that members only pricing immediately, you can instead pay the full rate, and bank the difference between the standard rate and members only rate as One Key Cash, to use toward future purchases.
In other words, a hotel might have a standard rate of £200 or a members rate of £180, so instead of paying £180, you could elect to pay the £200 amount, and then bank £20 in One Key Cash.
Let me be perfectly clear here — you’re turning down cash in your pocket now, which you could spend toward anything (or save for the future), for credits that can only be used on select travel purchases, and which expire after 18 months of inactivity.
Hotels.com explains that members may want to take advantage of this for the following reasons:
- Celebrate big later — bank your rewards for memorable milestones
- Earn now, rest later — build rewards through regular travel and use for leisure
- Share the joy — build rewards faster to book dream stays for loved ones
I don’t understand how any of those three points couldn’t similarly apply if you choose to get your savings now and just hold onto the cash, but…
This is literally designed to take advantage of others
Hotels.com isn’t even being secretive about the purpose of the new program. In the FAQs, the question is posed of “how can Save Your Way benefit my trips?” And the answer is as follows:
With Save Your Way, you’ll seamlessly collect more rewards on all your stays (work trips, friend trips) and spend them on any type of getaway, whenever it suits you.
Yeah, as you can see, Hotels.com explicitly calls out work trips and friend trips as being the cases where you might want to use Save Your Way. In other words, you can pass off the higher rate to your employer or to friends on a group trip, so that you can pocket all the rewards.
Save Your Way seems stupid at best (for people who prefer to have One Key Cash over cold hard cash), and highly unethical at worst (for people who want to screw over their employer and friends).
Look, admittedly there are already some schemes in the travel industry that may encourage travelers to not act that ethically. For example, you might see hotels have inflated rates that include a certain number of bonus points, or something. However, that’s still easier to make sense of, because there are some people who may wish to pick up those bonus points.
But to simply say “hey, we’ll let you defer your savings and make them less flexible” seems a step too far, in my opinion.
Bottom line
Hotels.com is trialing a new Save Your Way feature. The company offers special members only pricing for those who are part of the free One Key program. Rather than just giving those members the discounted rate upfront, you can now instead choose to bank those savings as One Key Cash, and it’s described as being great for work trips and friend trips.
If you ask me, anyone who uses the Save Your Way feature on a work or friends trip is neither a good employee, nor a good friend. 😉
What do you make of this Save Your Way feature?
