You'll Soon Be Able to Earn Loyalty Points on Vrbo Bookings

Do you love booking vacation rentals but hate missing out on valuable hotel points? Always on the hunt for the cheapest airfare—on any airline?

Announced on Wednesday, Expedia’s forthcoming loyalty program, One Key, just might be the ticket for you, literally. The program, set to launch in 2023, means that travelers aren’t solely limited to earning points on particular airlines or hotel brands—members will be able to earn and redeem points across Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo (a first in the vacation rental market), and other brands in Expedia's portfolio. The broad scope of the new program means points can be redeemed on hotel stays, flights, cruises, experiences, and more, regardless of how they were earned.

"This isn’t the program for the road warriors,” Jon Gieselman, the president of Expedia Brands, said at the company’s annual EXPLORE conference, explaining that top-tier elites at airlines and hotels will always remain loyal to their preferred brands. “I think of it as more of an unloyalty program. We’re going to make it easy for [customers] to enjoy and earn rewards.”

With more than 154 million current loyalty members spread across Expedia’s existing programs—Expedia Rewards, Hotels.com Rewards, Orbitz Rewards, and CheapTickets’ CheapCash—the company will eventually merge all members under One Key. “We’re going to migrate people in a way where it creates additional value for them,” said Gieselman.

The loyalty program is part of a series of improvements and innovations that the Expedia Group announced today in Las Vegas.

One new feature includes Price Match Promise for flights booked on Expedia. Currently available on U.S. flights, travelers will automatically be refunded the price difference if the fare drops before their travel date.

The new Price Match Promise works in tandem with a new price-tracking and prediction service, available now on Expedia’s iOS app. Price tracking shows travelers past airfare trends and future predictions, utilizing the company’s vast data for more than 100 million searches per day and eight years of data. The price tracking service will extend to hotel searches later this year.

Additional improvements include a large-scale rollout of trip boards, a popular collaborative trip-planning feature first implemented on Vrbo, smart shopping views that better show travelers what’s included in their airfare and hotel bookings, and improved self-service for cruise and flight changes.