Using your free night on Hotels.com

The most expensive items whenever you travel are your plane tickets and your hotel. Hands down. So, whenever I plan a trip, the first thing I do is secure FREE plane tickets with points whether those are airline points or credit card points. Then I move on to the accommodations. You have so many options now with hotels, airbnb.com, vrbo.com even couch surfing if that's your thing. 

Let's assume here that you have searched awardmapper.com and you can't find any hotels that work for you either because you don't have enough points or they don't offer the right amenities like FREE breakfast or airport shuttle. Those are always my toppers! 

Other options to try include booking.com and hotels.com. I prefer Hotels.com because I also have the Capital One Venture card and through January 2020, Capital One is offering 10x points if you book a hotel on Hotels.com. That's in addition to the Hotels.com loyalty program. 

Even if you don't have the Capital One Venture credit card, with the loyalty program, for every 10 stays, you get 1 FREE for the average value of the 10 stays. 

So you can really optimize your bonus here. 

Here's how it works:

1. Use the Capital One/Hotels.com link  if you have the credit card, if not use the regular hotels.com website

2. Be sure you are signed into your Hotels.com account or create one if you don't have one yet

3. Search for your hotel with dates, guests etc. 

4. Book your hotel and pay with your Capital One Venture credit card if you are using the 10x link, pay with any credit card (hopefully the one that earns you the most points for travel) if you are using the regular hotels.com website

5. Capital One will credit you 10x miles which you can use to offset any travel including this hotel booking

6. Hotels.com will count the booking in its loyalty program

Once you book 10 stays and a stay is each night that you sleep in a hotel, you are awarded a free night with a value of the average of your past 10 stays. 

After a college trip and a few other one-night hotel stays, I received this email. You can see the value of my FREE night is $110.93. No judgments. I freely admit that I tend to stay in the budget friendly hotels that offer FREE breakfast. It works for my family. 

When you go to redeem your FREE night, you just book your hotel like you normally would and then at the end of the booking process, click use free night. It will credit the amount of your FREE night. If you cancel, your FREE night credit will return to your account. 

Pretty simple. And by combining this with the Capital One 10x promotion, (average nightly hotel $110 at 10x points = 1100 points per stay x 10 stays is more than 10,000 points which equals more than $100), I actually earned two free nights on my 10 stays. Pretty sweet!