Expedia Rewards Less Rewarding When Booking Flights
I just got a really disappointing email from Expedia Rewards yesterday, that certain changes were going into effect immediately. Supposedly those changes to the program are going to help me earn more for my purchases via their site, but it looks like I’m going to earn alot less.
I prefer to book via 3rd party sites (not just because of problems like Delta’s recent cancellation of tickets) because you can often earn additional cash back or points through shopping portals. Travelocity offers 2 Ultimate Rewards points per $, but after their terrible handling of last year’s discount code disaster, I’ve never booked with them again.
Both Expedia and Orbitz offer 1 Ultimate Rewards points per $, but I went with Expedia Rewards because they also offered Expedia Rewards points for every booking. 1 point per $2 in spend isn’t terribly great, but kind of fun to triple dip — Ultimate Rewards points through the shopping portal, Expedia Rewards points for booking, and then the miles I earned for actually flying.
But now that it’s moved from 1 point per $2 to 1 per $5, I’m not really sure it’s worth it. I find Orbitz much easier to navigate, and they often have slightly cheaper multi-flight combos than Expedia. Or for single airline trips for $300 or less, I might just go back to booking through the airlines which is much simpler.
And unfortunately, since I value hotel status I won’t really get the opportunity to cash in on the 2 pts per $1 increase on hotel spend they’re offering.
Are you an Expedia Rewards customer? Do you earn enough points to still find it valuable?
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