One Key is Hotels.com, Expedia and Vrbo’s new rewards programme
Hotels. com, Expedia and Vrbo have launched a brand new loyalty scheme. So what do you get from it and what happens to the rewards you already had?
We’ll take you through everything you need to know about One Key.
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What is One Key?
Expedia Group’s new rewards programme, One Key, will replace Hotels. com Rewards and Expedia Rewards. It will also allow you to earn and redeem rewards on Vrbo.
Your accounts on Hotels. com, Expedia and Vrbo should have switched over to One Key this summer, sometime between 8 July and 16 September.
So far it’s not gone as Expedia would have hoped, and the roll out has been paused around the world – except in the UK and the USA where sadly it’s well underway.
What are the benefits of joining One Key?
In theory, if you use Experia or Vrbo you should be better off with the three booking sites joining together under one rewards scheme.
But for Hotels. com users, the existing reward nights were a great perk worth 10% per stay. Unfortunately, the amount earned through the new programme will be far less.
Under the new scheme, you will receive 2% of your spending at Hotels. com and on holiday rentals, activities, packages, car rentals and cruises booked via Expedia and Vrbo. Flight bookings via Expedia will earn 0.2% – that’s just £1 for every £500 spent.
Unlike the current Hotels. com Rewards, you no longer need to wait until you’ve stayed for 10 nights at hotels to redeem your rewards. One Key allows you to use your rewards as you receive them and for a variety of travel options such as flights and car hire as well as accommodation.
You’ll also get access to Member Prices and enjoy extra perks that get better as you move up tiers.
How do I earn rewards with One Key?
Once you are signed into your One Key account, you’ll automatically earn 2% in OneKeyCash per pound spent on eligible hotels, holiday rentals, activities, packages and car hire and 0.2% in OneKeyCash per pound spent on eligible flights.
You can earn more on bookings at eligible VIP Access Properties as you move up the tiers. More about the tiers in a moment.
Your OneKeyCash is earned on top of most airline miles and credit card rewards as well as cashback from sites like Quidco and TopCashback.
Another feature of One Key is that the account holder who makes the booking earns the OneKeyCash, no matter which travellers are named in the booking, so there’s no need to set up separate accounts for your family members or children.
Receiving your OneKeyCash
How you receive your One Key Rewards depends on the type of booking. When you ‘Pay Now’ for your booking, your OneKeyCash will arrive in your account three days after you complete your trip.
For ‘Pay Later’ and Vrbo bookings, your OneKeyCash will usually be confirmed 45 days after you complete your trip, but it may take up to 90 days.
OneKeyCash in your account will not expire as long as you have made an eligible booking or redeemed a reward in your account at least once every eighteen months.
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Climbing the tiers with One Key
One Key Rewards has four tiers. The blue tier is the level you join at and you’ll advance through the tiers as you book trip elements, as they are referred to. For example, one trip element may be one hotel room night (each night counts as an element), or one day’s car hire, or one flight.
Here’s the amount of trip elements you have to book to move up the tiers.
| Blue | Sign up |
| Silver | 5 trip elements a year |
| Gold | 15 trip elements a year |
| Platinum | 30 trip elements a year |
Just to note, existing Hotels. com and Expedia Rewards members will have their eligible activity counted towards their One Key tier status.
Comparison of the tier benefits
The table below shows just what you’ll get depending on what tier you are on.
| Blue | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
| Earn and use OneKeyCash on eligible bookings on Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo | All the benefits of Blue tier | All the benefits of Silver tier | All the benefits of Gold tier |
| Save at least 10% with member prices on select hotels | Save 15% or more with Silver Member Prices on select hotels | Save 20% or more with Gold Member Prices on select hotels | Earn 6% in OneKeyCash on stays at VIP Access properties on Expedia and Hotels.com |
| Earn 3% in OneKeyCash on stays at VIP Access properties on Expedia and Hotels.com | Earn 4% in OneKeyCash on stays at VIP Access properties on Expedia and Hotels.com | Receive Platinum VIP Support | |
| Receive an extra perk, such as a food and beverage discount at selected VIP Access hotels | Get late checkout, early check-in and room upgrades when available at selected VIP Access hotels | ||
| Price Drop Protection at no extra cost on selected flight bookings made on the Expedia app |
Spending your OneKeyCash
As this is a new rewards scheme, we can’t speak from experience but can tell you that OneKeyCash can be used on eligible ‘Pay Now’ bookings and participating holiday rentals. It can also be used on eligible flights and you’ll need enough OneKeyCash to cover the entire cost including taxes and fees.
We’ll be sure to add more here once the scheme is up and running and we’ve tried and tested it.
Will this affect my Hotels.com and Expedia Rewards?
Any existing Expedia and Hotels. com Rewards will be converted into OneKeyCash at their existing value and the expiry date will remain the same. So if you have a Hotels. com reward night worth £100, this will be converted to £100 in OneKeyCash under the new scheme.
If you haven’t earned a reward night, the stamps you have collected towards it will be turned into OneKeyCash based on their existing value, i.e. 10% of the cost of that particular night excluding VAT and fees.
You can read about the changes to your Hotels .com awards in more detail in our news article.
Do I need to do anything to my Hotels.com, Expedia or Vrbo accounts?
When One Key launches, existing Expedia and Hotels. com Rewards members will be automatically moved to the new programme. New members will be asked to set up an account or log in to your existing account and to accept terms and conditions.
One Key will be in touch with current account holders on Hotels. com, Expedia and Vrbo in the coming weeks and in the meantime, members can keep earning and redeeming rewards with the current schemes in place.
One Key vs previous schemes
Here’s how One Key compares to the schemes it replaces.
| Reward scheme | Earning rewards | Spending rewards |
| Hotels. com | 1 night free for every 10 booked (worth 10% of spending before taxes and fees) | Have to stay 10 nights before you can exchange for a free night stay |
| Expedia | 1% cashback for bookings (0.2% for flights) | Spend rewards on all aspects of booking |
| Vrbo | None | None |
| One Key | Earn 2% back on bookings at Hotels. com, Expedia & Vrbo(0.2% on flights) | Spend rewards as you earn them on all aspects of travel at Hotels. com, Expedia & Vrbo |
One Key Rewards: our opinion
The One Key Rewards programme may be less rewarding than the old Hotels. com Rewards, and that’s a real shame.
But it does give travellers more ways to earn when booking with Expedia, Hotels. com and Vrbo. It’s the first time that Vrbo has had a loyalty scheme which is a welcome addition and it sounds like spending your OneKeyCash will be easy to apply.
Climbing the tiers appears to be more achievable than most reward schemes, since individual elements of your trip each count towards a reward. So if you book your entire holiday, including flights, hotels and car hire through Hotels. com, Expedia or Vrbo, you’ll be climbing the tier ladder in no time at all and earning the extra benefits that come with it.
Like many of the other commenters, it’s disappointing to see the Hotrels.com reward scheme get devalued so much. The 1 night free for every 10 really drove a sense of loyalty, but the new scheme is a terrible replacement that no longer rewards loyalty. Time to look for a new way to book my 30+ rooms a year.
I had a significant amount of rewards – as I’d just not had the opportunity to use them. Once transferred to OneKey I thought I’d treat my Dad and I to a holiday, we’d been gifted a free use of a villa from a friend so only needed to purchase flights. I had enough OneKey cash to cover the flights and taxes. However, I was unable to purchase them using rewards as when I arrived at checkout it wanted credit card details. Apparently, and in Expedia’s words, it doesn’t meet the eligibility criteria because “we need the Payment to be with us so we can apply the rewards since it’s our rewards program, but if the airline charges we can’t apply the rewards as our rewards program will not apply from their end”.
They searched and not one single flight was eligible. I made mention that it seemed pointless me having these rewards if I am unable to use them for flights. The response was really quite brilliant: “You can use them on hotels cars and activities, Pay Now cars and hotels are easy to find and available all the time”. Not super helpful if I can’t get to the destination, I can hardly drive to Barbados from London!
Looks like we’re not going on holiday after all 🙁
I’ve been using hotels.com for many years for business and personal trips all over the world and been a Gold user for the entire time.
I’ve redeemed over 40+ free nights and just had my reward nights converted into over £700 one key cash.
From earning essentially 10% down to 2%, it’s really a kick in the gahoolies.
Their previous reward program created a sense of loyalty, I didn’t use any other booking website.
Now, there is no real incentive to use hotels.com. I am now starting to use IHG/Hilton/Marriott schemes instead.
Such a shame, and I suspect they have lost lots of customers like myself.
I hope they take note of all these comments circulating online and revert back to their original scheme. If they do, I will come back, I suspect lots of other customers will also.
Goodbye hotels.com
As a loyal gold customer for several years, I’ve always appreciated the value and benefits of hotels.com loyalty program. Unfortunately, the recent changes to the loyalty scheme fall short of what we’ve come to expect. This has led me to explore other options for my travel needs.
Thank you for the years of great service, but sadly, it’s time to say goodbye.
The new scheme is just not worth using, it is not a loyalty scheme anymore and it certainly will not create brand loyalty. I go out of my way to book through Hotels.com for business trips all over the world, now I will just use Google, Booking.com or book direct with individual hotels as well as Hotels.com but not exclusively as I used to do. if The team at Hotels.com must have known this would happen, they are not stupid, so I guess it was just too expensive. I hope what they have saved in free rooms earned via the scheme isn’t lost in hotel booking revenues that now go through other sites.
I have been a gold member with Hotels.com for over 5 years and loved their loyalty benefits. This new scheme is horrific in comparison and I will certainly be looking to book through other methods going forward. Goodbye Hotels.com seems you have lost another loyal customer.
Much less attractive and will undoubtedly mean we use hotels.com a lot less.
Recently booked with Hotels.com at £66 when booking with hotel directly as a regular is £50 now I learn the worth of paying £16 more is just over a pound!
I will be cancel all my future bookings & never use onekey sH1t
Agree, a really disappointing devaluation of the Hotels.com reward program.
I have a decent amount of one cash now as I had a few free nights. I assume I can use that like you would with a gift card. E.g. if I have £150 One Key credit and book a hotel for £50, than I have £100 left for another booking. I couldn’t actually see that written anywhere and when I try to do a test booking it nowhere says if/how much is left.
I used to book all of my hotels through hotels.com for many many years, but not anymore. One key cash is a joke, i was looking to book a hotel in Wakefield priced at £120.00, all I would have got in one key cash was £1.20!! I downloaded the IHG & Hilton app’s and that’s what I’ll be using from now on. Goodbye hotels.com, it was good while it lasted….
Ive been a loyal hotels.com user for many years , but now I’m just confused , I don’t use any of the other companies that are now attached , Expedia and Vrbo ,I never have , so I guess now I’ll not be using Hotels.com , I liked that it had its own rewards scheme that was exclusive to Hotels.com but linking it just reduces benefits for its core customer
What a joke – no point to hotels.com anymore
I used to preferentially use Hotels.com, even if the price was a bit more than Booking.com, because of the free stay after 10. Now 2% and a bamboozling programme? Goodbye!
I agree, Andrew – I used to do the same. Always looked on Booking.com as I prefer their layout and pictures, but then used Hotels.com to book. I do the travel bookings for a small company and Reward Nights have saved us money over the years. I have just booked 62 hotel nights for a one-off company event and was hoping to get at least 5 Reward Nights out of that. Unfortunately this new scheme kicked in at the same time and I will just be getting £96 from a nearly £5000 spend. Disappointing!
agent 2 agent, there is a trick to it 🙂
Yep, won’t be using hotels.com anymore. The free stay for every 10 booked was simple and rewarding. Getting 4or5% cash back towards booking on the new scheme is no where near as attractive. Terrible idea.
Yeah this is now a rubbish perk and it won’t be worth booking with them any longer
Do you know what will happen to the 8 stamps I have already collected with Hotels.com? I understand the value of a night (after 10 stamps) will be redeemed in equivalent OneKeyCash, but what about my stamps?
Stamps are converted at 10% of their current value. Reward nights are converted at the exact same value
One Key is a total rip off and a joke. It is downright insulting to loyal users of hotels.com.
There is absolutely no benefit to using expedia or hotels.com anymore.