Capital One Venture Hotels.com 10% Benefit Has Now Ended

Update 2: Looks like this benefit has now ended with the webpage being updated to state that it’s no longer available.

Update 1: VFTW is reporting that Capital One has made no announcement that this benefit was ending and that the end date of January 31st, 2020 was only added because it’s within one year of the current expiration of the deal between Capital One & Hotels.com. Similarly that also means that they haven’t announced any extension to that contract, but the way it reads is that it will be extended at some stage. In reality it doesn’t really matter as buying Hotels.com gift cards at a deep discount is the better play.

In January of 2018 Capital One introduced a new benefit to the Venture credit card offering 10x miles (worth 10% back) when booking hotel stays on Hotel.com. They have now announced that this benefit will be ending in on January 31st, 2020. The promotion does stack with the Hotels.com rewards program for a free night after 10 stays, but it still wasn’t useful due to the fact you could buy Hotels.com gift cards at a bigger discount and also go through a portal if you weren’t using this benefit. For a full list of ways to stack discounts at Hotels.com read this post.

It will be interesting to see if this benefit is replaced by anything or not. Capital One has also partnered with Spotify and Uber before as well.

Hat tip to Award Wallet
    William Charles
  • On February 2, 2020, 01:20

View Comments (17)

  • I had them waive the annual fee so we will see if they do anything between now and the next renewal.

  • Apart from the signup bonus, the venture card is pretty worthless. $59-$95 AF gets you 2x miles on all purchases that can only be redeemed for travel (also their travel portal prices are inflated). Citi Double Cash gets you 2% back on everything with no AF.

    • about 40% of citi double cash card holders carry balances, which is what pays for the 2% cash back. that no AF ends up being subsidized by the balance bearing brethren.

  • Also oftentimes their system doesn't track the transactions well. I had to call to ask them to adjust points...

  • I product-changed to the $0AF Venture card specifically for this benefit. Used it a couple of times, but then became a big fan of Hilton thanks to Gold status. Wish to heck I could upgrade the card and get even half the "big Venture card" bonus. But Cap1 doesn't do stuff like that. Kinda stuck with some sort of card from them since it's 1 of my oldest accounts. Oh well. Credit card devaluations have become so common lately that it's almost EXPECTED.

    This link will let you see your product change options:
    https://verified.capitalone.com/sic-ui/#/esignin?Product=Card&Action=ProductUpgrade

  • I use this quite frequently and have found the rates and the bonus to be great. My family and I have been traveling Europe quite alot the last year and when booking hotels I always take advantage of this - booking about $3000 in the last 10 months. although I love a discount, I really don't want to charge 2-3k worth of gift cards just in case I want to use them for future travel.

    Additionally there are a lot of stories about gift cards being zeroed out for 'suspected' fraud or not refunded when there is an issue - no ability to dispute as there is with a credit card. Gift cards serve their purpose from time to time, but people shouldn't forget that there are terms of service and they can be cancelled leaving you little recourse for recovery.

    The hotels.com bonus has earned me a good bonus especially when adding the free nights I have earned.

    • Yup. People really put way too much trust in eGC for big items. They are not zero risk, and if its something where you need travel insurance, or the possibiity of return/exchange, then GC have real drawbacks. Sure Starbucks or something like is that is totally fine, but buying expensive week long stays in hotels would make me nervous.

  • I never found any value in this deal. I always found a better rate elsewhere, even with the so called 10% off. It's just overpriced sale mumbo jumbo.

  • Is there a source as to the announcement? I haven't been able to find an actual announcement from the company- all I'm seeing is that hotels.com is listing an end date of Jan 2020, which coincides with the original promotion term (2 years)- it's only March so I wouldn't expect that the original promotion would be extended until later in the year. Without seeing anything relating to an official announcement out there, it seems as maybe there was just a slow news day lol.

  • I have cap one wth $59 AF which I never use except for hotel.com. I used only for iceland and Belize hotels. I get better points from BoA premier for non bonus categories.
    Is it better to downgrade or close it?

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