Is anyone familiar with the Hotels.com program? It's a refreshingly simple hotel frequent stay program: spend 10 nights in any partner hotel and receive credit for one free night regardless of cost (up to $400 that is). Pretty nice deal. Spend 10 nights at cheaper hotels and receive a free 5* room in downtown NYC or Paris or wherever.
That's not a bad deal by itself, but what really makes this a great program, if true of course, is that I'm told that you can receive credit in your other loyalty program (Hilton, Starwood, etc.) at the same time you are crediting stays with the hotels.com deal if the hotel is in that particular program too. The only problem is, I can't seem to figure out how to do this. Doesn't each program require you to book through their own system? So how can they say you can still receive credit with, say Hilton Honors and also hotels.com? You can't very well book the same room through two different programs can you?
If anyone knows how to go about this, please let me know. If this is actually possible, it's a deal and a half!

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=871055

Thanks very much for the link. That answered all the questions I had about Hotels.com.

So I've started using the Hotels.com program instead of Hilton recently, mostly because I calculated that I'll be earning free nights faster this way.

One issue I have with Hotels.com is that they charge my credit card as soon as I make the reservation, compared to when I book hotels directly and they charge me upon checkout.

I have 2 issues with this:

1) If I book my hotels when I book my air tickets (often in advance) I am out that money until I complete my stay and am able to expense it. I also don't get receipts from the hotel so I have to remember to keep my email confirmations and print those out.

2) If you change your hotel reservations a lot, which I do, you end up with a laundry list on your credit card bill of charges and credits from hotels.com and (at least on my card) there is no indication of the date of the stay or location of the stay. It took me forever to verify the charges and make sure I wasn't being double billed.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone reading this thread.

The link in the above thread is not working for me. Is there another thread that discusses this program?

Just to clear up, the free night is worth up to $400.

You aint gettin a 5-star hotel in New York or Paris for $400 or less.

Its going to be more of a nice 4-star hotel.

The program has changed!!!

Here are the new features (read downgrade)

upcoming welcomerewards� features:
You can now earn unlimited free nights every year.
We've removed limits on minimum room rates to count towards your 10 nights.
We've extended the expiration of welcome rewards credits to 36 months from the date they are earned.
Take advantage of program flexibility - use your reward night value towards a higher room rate and just pay the difference.
Your free night will be valued at the average daily rate of the 10 nights you stayed to earn it.*

Sent them an email saying I was moving on to other programs given their devaluation. Been a member for about a year and got one free $207 room at FCO airport this past weekend. Good deal. Now they change.

i rarely book through hotels.com, but as i was watching their new commercial, i kept thinking how they had improved the program... UNTIL they got to that last line of giving you the average rate. hell, that was the one thing that made this program good.