Hotels.com Rewards and One Key: Hotels.comCash on Hotels.com, Expedia and Vrbo

On Hotels.com you collect a night for every room, every night you stay at an eligible hotel or holiday rental. A booking’s nights count only if its average cost is £75 a night or more, including taxes and fees and after any discounts. Nights paid wholly or partly with Hotels.comCash, a gift card or a coupon don’t count, and nor do car hire, gift cards, insurance or Groups & Meetings bookings. At 10 nights you get £100 in Hotels.comCash: up to 3 days after the 10th night if every night was Pay Now, or up to 35 days if any was Pay Later or a holiday rental. The count then starts again from 0, or from the nights over 10.

One answer in Hotels.com’s FAQ says the £75 average excludes taxes and fees. The terms, and the same page’s own footnote, say it includes them, so we give the terms’ reading.

What the £100 is worth depends on the price of your nights. At the £75 minimum, 10 nights cost £750 and the £100 is 13.3% back; at £150 a night they cost £1,500 and it is 6.7%. A booking that averages under £75 a night adds nothing towards the £100.

On Expedia, One Key pays 2% back in OneKeyCash for every £1 spent, excluding taxes and fees, on hotels, holiday rentals, activities, packages and car hire, and 0.2% on flights: £20 on a £1,000 hotel stay, £1 on a £500 flight. Flights booked on an airline’s own site, third-party package holidays, insurance and Groups & Meetings bookings earn nothing. At VIP Access properties, Silver, Gold and Platinum members get more (in the table below). Those rates include the 2%, rather than adding to it.

On Vrbo, what you earn on holiday rentals and hotels, excluding taxes and fees, goes by your tier (in the table below). Vrbo’s own page still says Hotels.com pays 2%, but since 8 April 2026 the terms give Hotels.com only the £100-per-10-nights reward.

Tiers are shared across the three brands and counted in nights or trip elements in a calendar year. A trip element is a hotel or holiday rental night, a flight ticket, a car hire day, a transfer or an activity ticket; on Expedia and Vrbo each must be worth £20 or more, excluding taxes and fees, while Hotels.com nights count whatever they cost. A tier lasts the rest of that year, all of the next, and until 28 February after that.

Hotels.com may also add extra Hotels.comCash to a booking through an offer or promotion. Hotels.com says this extra won’t appear while you shop or at checkout: it is added as pending after the booking if you meet the offer’s conditions, and it may expire sooner than other Hotels.comCash. We found no such offer on the public pages we read, so there is none to list here.

We list each brand’s standing earn rate, checked in the terms. Member Prices, VIP Access perks and Price Drop Protection are discounts, perks or refunds, not credit you earn. Save Your Way lets you take a Member Price saving as Hotels.comCash instead of off the price, at no fixed rate, so it isn’t listed either.

Once your credit is available, choose how much to use at checkout on a Pay Now hotel or a participating holiday rental on Hotels.com, Expedia or Vrbo, or on Pay Now car hire and activities on Expedia. It can cover taxes and fees paid at booking, there are no blackout dates, and anything left stays in your account. If it covers only part of the price, the rest must be paid by credit or debit card.

On Expedia you can spend OneKeyCash on selected flights, but only if you have enough to cover the whole fare, taxes and fees included. It can’t pay for bags, seat choice or flight changes; you can buy extras after booking.

It cannot be spent on Pay Later bookings, buy now pay later payments, packages, bookings already paid, insurance or car hire on Hotels.com, cancellation or change fees, or anything paid to the hotel at check-in or check-out. It can’t be exchanged for cash or moved to another member, but you can use it on a booking in someone else’s name. Hotels.com’s FAQ says it can be combined with a voucher on the remaining balance, while the terms say it can’t be combined with coupons “unless stated otherwise”.

The £100-per-10-nights reward is only available in the UK. Credit earned in another country may sit on that country’s Hotels.com site.