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Choosing a hotel booking site almost always comes down to one question: do you book directly with the chain, or go through a third-party site? The answer changes depending on whether you’re earning points, hold status, or are simply looking for the lowest price on an independent property.
We book hotel nights year-round, with points and with cash. Here’s how we weigh Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, Agoda, Airbnb, and the chain’s own site—and what each option really costs you.
If you earn points, the order of preference does not follow the order of prices. Here is our ranking, from most to least rewarding for a traveller playing the long game.
In industry jargon, these platforms are called OTAs, for online travel agency. They’re online travel agencies that resell services provided by third parties. There are hundreds of them, but a few groups control most of the market: Hotels.com, Expedia, and Vrbo belong to the Expedia Group, while Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, and Kayak are part of Booking Holdings.
In practical terms, that means rates are often very similar from one site to another within the same group. The real differences show up elsewhere: in the loyalty program, in cancellation flexibility, and in what happens when something goes wrong on property.
When you book on the chain’s website, your stay counts. You earn points, benefit from current promotions, and your nights move you toward the next status tier. A booking made through a third party, on the other hand, generally counts for neither points nor qualifying nights. The hotel keeps its benefits for guests who book direct, which also helps it avoid paying a commission to the platform.
In Canada, only one hotel program still offers co-branded credit cards: Marriott Bonvoy. The Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card and its business version, the Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card, each earn 5 points per dollar spent at participating Marriott Bonvoy properties.
This is where the price gap becomes secondary. With Marriott Bonvoy, a Platinum member gets free breakfast at most properties. On a family stay of a few nights, that benefit can add up to tens—sometimes hundreds—of dollars.
Add to that upgrades when availability allows, late checkout, and lounge access at certain brands. You’ll find the tier-by-tier details in our complete guide to Marriott Bonvoy.
One clarification belongs here, because you often read that award stays are easier to cancel. That is not quite accurate. With Marriott, the cancellation policy depends on the rate booked and on the individual property, exactly as it does for a cash booking. The deadline is the same.
What genuinely changes comes down to three things, and they matter more than the deadline:
Most major hotel groups apply a best rate guarantee policy. If you find the same room cheaper elsewhere within the required timeframe, the chain makes it right. With Marriott, the Look No Further guarantee gives you the lowest rate minus 25%, or 5,000 Marriott Bonvoy points—your choice. We break down each group’s policies in our article on the best rate guarantee.
A reader, Caroline, told us in the Facebook group how she takes advantage of it:
This is the costliest misunderstanding in hotel booking. Yes, Marriott, Hilton, or IHG often show a few dollars more than Booking.com or Hotels.com for the same room. No, that does not mean the third party is the right call. The gain from booking direct is not on the invoice, it is in what you accumulate.
Take a night listed at $250 with Marriott and $230 on a third-party site, 8% cheaper.
You saved $20 on one side. On the other, you gave up the points on the stay, 1,250 card points, a qualifying night, and breakfast. For two people, that breakfast alone almost always exceeds the $20 gap. And a qualifying night is priceless when you are three short of the next tier.
Better still: the best rate guarantee lets you claim that $230 rate with Marriott, minus 25%. You then pay less than on the third-party site while keeping the points and the status.
The reverse is just as true, and it matters just as much. In an independent hotel, or in a chain where you hold no status and have no intention of earning, there is nothing left to protect. The lowest price wins, and that is where Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Agoda take back the advantage.
It’s the best known—and the domain name has a lot to do with it. Hotels.com belongs to the Expedia Group, which also owns Expedia, Vrbo, and Trivago. Rates are therefore most of the time identical across these platforms.
What sets Hotels.com apart in Canada is Hotels.com Rewards: each night booked and stayed earns a stamp, and 10 stamps earn a reward night. The value of that night equals the average of the 10 nights you accumulated, with no date restrictions. That works out to about a 10% return on your nights.
Beyond the program, Hotels.com also offers prices reserved for logged-in members, usually a few dollars below the public rate. Michel, another reader, summed up the appeal well:
Booking.com remains the platform with the broadest catalogue. From palaces to B, hostels, and private rentals, the selection also covers remote regions very well—where other sites tend to fall off.
Contrary to what you often read, Booking.com does have a loyalty program: Genius, free and structured in three tiers that are lifetime once unlocked.
These discounts apply before taxes and fees, and only at participating properties. What really did disappear is Booking.com’s referral program, which ended on October 15, 2019. The two are often confused.
Another strength of the platform is its payment terms. Julie pointed it out in the Facebook group:
Expedia stands out mainly for what you can plug into it. Several Canadian bank booking portals, including BMO Rewards, rely on its inventory. You can then apply your points directly to the payment, at the same price shown elsewhere. It’s also the most convenient platform for a flight + hotel package.
That said, don’t go bargain-hunting: rates remain very close to Hotels.com and Booking.com for the same property.
Two Canadian bank portals run on this inventory, and each has its own redemption rules. We break them down here.
Agoda is part of the same group as Booking.com, but primarily targets travellers heading to Asia and Oceania. Its negotiating power with local hotels—especially in Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia—often translates into lower prices than Booking.com or Expedia for the same property.
Agoda runs three loyalty mechanics in parallel, and the first is the one most likely to interest you: PointsMAX. Instead of earning in-house credits, you pick one of its 46 partner loyalty programs, airline or hotel, and your stay credits points straight into that program. Agoda advertises more than 500,000 eligible hotels and up to 6,000 points per completed stay.
The partner list leans heavily toward Asia. It includes Korean Air SKYPASS, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Air China, Citi Miles, and UOB Prvi Miles, among others. So check that your program is on it before building a strategy around PointsMAX.
AgodaVIP is the platform’s status program. Enrolment is automatic once you meet the requirements. Status lasts 6 months and renews on its own if you complete the number of bookings needed to keep it during that window.
At participating properties, Agoda pays out real money to the credit or debit card of your choice. Don’t confuse it with Agoda Coupons, which are redeemed on the site to cut your next booking: Cashback Rewards leave the platform entirely.
The timeline is tight, and that’s where the value gets lost. The reward becomes collectable within a maximum of 60 days after your checkout date, then it expires 120 days after becoming available. Past that window, it’s gone. Agoda also states it has no legal obligation to make the payment, so don’t build a travel budget on it.
When points aren’t an option for a hotel, Airbnb often takes over. With kids, an entire place brings home-like comfort: separate bedrooms, a kitchen, and laundry. On a week-long stay, the price gap versus two hotel rooms quickly becomes meaningful.
Renting an apartment doesn’t mean stepping outside rewards programs. Several credit cards let you apply points to travel purchases, including Airbnb. We’ve gathered the options on our page for the best credit cards for Airbnb and other accommodations.
To give you a benchmark: with American Express Membership Rewards points applied to a travel purchase, 1,000 points are worth $10. An Airbnb bill of $450 therefore requires 45,000 points. It’s up to you to decide whether those points might be worth more as a transfer to an airline partner.
We also compare both options in detail in our article Book with Airbnb or a hotel?
Vrbo belongs to the Expedia Group and rents entire homes only, never a room in someone’s home. That is more reassuring with family, but its urban inventory stays thinner than Airbnb’s. We break down how it works in our overview of Vrbo.
The most interesting option for a points traveller is Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy. These are home rentals, but booked inside the Marriott ecosystem: the stay earns Bonvoy points, and the program regularly attaches promotions reserved for Elite members. It is the only way to rent a whole home without stepping outside a hotel program. The catalogue does remain far smaller than Airbnb or Vrbo.
Hopper is a Montreal company founded in 2007, whose app has passed 100 million downloads. Its specialty is not the catalogue, it is forecasting: its algorithms predict whether a flight or hotel rate will rise or fall, and offer to freeze a price for a fee.
What makes it relevant to a Canadian points audience is its B2B arm. It already powers Capital One Travel in the United States, and RBC has announced an Avion portal built on that technology. Members would be able to pay for bookings with Avion points.
Trivago and TripAdvisor sell nothing. They are metasearch engines: they query several sites at once and show the lowest rate found for the same hotel. Trivago also belongs to the Expedia Group, which explains why its results often lean toward that group’s platforms.
Their correct use is specific, and many travellers get it wrong. Treat them as radar, at step 2 of the method below, to spot the market floor price. Then go claim that price with the chain under its best rate guarantee. Booking straight from the metasearch engine costs you both the points and your recourse if something goes wrong.
TripAdvisor keeps a second use: its reviews remain the deepest database for checking the real condition of a property, something an OTA’s photos never show.
Hotwire works blind: you see the neighbourhood, the star category, and the price, but not the hotel name until you have paid. Discounts can reach several tens of percent on last-minute unsold rooms.
The price of that saving is steep: no cancellation, no points, no status, and no recourse if the property does not suit you. We detail the mechanics in our article on Hotwire. Keep it for one-night stays where only the price matters, never for a trip you care about.
It’s the criterion people forget when comparing prices—and the one that costs the most when things go sideways. Booking through a third-party site adds a middleman between you and the hotel. In cases of overbooking, a room that doesn’t match what you booked, or a last-minute cancellation, the front desk will often send you back to the platform, which then has to contact the property.
When you book direct, you have a single point of contact—and loyalty program members also get access to a dedicated service line. Sylvain put it well in the Facebook group:
Status also changes how you get treated, and that appears in no brochure. A member the system recognizes is not an anonymous file: the front desk sees your history, your tier, and the fact that you will be back. That translates into a more favourable room assignment, a dedicated service line at higher tiers, and above all far more goodwill when something goes wrong. A gesture of compensation comes much more easily when the hotel has an interest in keeping you.
It is an argument that carries real weight on a long trip, and it explains why chasing status often beats chasing the lowest rate. Our guides on the subject cover how to get there without spending a hundred nights on the road.
Three habits help limit the risk, no matter where you book:
Rather than a price table that’s outdated in a few weeks, here’s the method we use for every booking. It takes four minutes.
A useful benchmark: Hotels.com Rewards returns about 10% as a reward night, and Genius level 1 gives a 10% discount. In other words, a gap of under 10% in favour of the third-party site is often wiped out by points, breakfast, and an upgrade from a direct booking. Beyond 10%, the third party becomes hard to ignore.
Some bank programs let you apply your points to a booking made on any of these sites. That’s the case with Scene+ and American Express Membership Rewards, just like an Airbnb purchase. It’s therefore a roundabout way to use points even when you’re not booking an award night.
Other programs, like BMO Rewards, go through their own booking portal, powered by the major players in the market. The displayed price will therefore be the same as elsewhere, and your points apply directly to the payment. The BMO Ascend World Elite Mastercard remains the most common entry point to this portal.
On the Scotiabank side, the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite +* Card earns Scene+ points, which you can use toward travel purchases. Note that the program used to be called Scotia Rewards: both names refer to the same mechanics, before and after the change.
Booking on Booking.com, Hotels.com, Agoda, or Airbnb comes with a hidden cost: you often lose the cancellation flexibility that hotel status would give you when booking direct. That’s where trip cancellation and interruption insurance included with a credit card really comes into its own.
The Scotiabank Gold American Express® Card covers trip cancellation and trip interruption. If you’re looking for a no-annual-fee option, the Rogers Red World Elite Mastercard offers more modest coverage, but it’s free.
Prices look similar from one site to another because a few groups share the market. So your decision comes down to four criteria:
Hyacinthe, a reader from the Facebook group, sums up the right reflex well:
These four cards cover the three use cases discussed in this article: earning with a chain, applying points to a third-party booking, and protecting the stay. You’ll find the full market overview on our best credit cards page.
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