expedia rewards makes a surprise "enhancement", but it's pretty neutral for canadians.

expedia rewards is a program for the american-based site. i gave an extensive introduction here. unfortunately, the program does not reward for purchases made on any of its international sites, including expedia.ca, which vastly limits its utility for people north of the border. technically, i think the rules and conditions also state that it's only for people living in the united states.

they made one major surprise change to their award chart last year, making it slightly more expensive to redeem things and slightly harder to earn points. then suddenly, i get an e-mail in my inbox on august 19 announcing new changes to their program that they made on august 16. someone needs to tell expedia that changes should be announced ahead of time, not retroactively.

the new program

they've changed their earning rates. you now earn 2 points per dollar spent on hotel bookings (up from 1 point per dollar, although previously, they had frequent promotions that doubled your earnings). they've kept their 2 points per dollar spent on vacation packages that include hotels. of note, back in the glory days of the program, they would offer an additional point per dollar spent for each additional aspect of a vacation package booking. for example, hotel + car = 2 points per dollar spent, but hotel + car + airfare + activities (and there were many "free" activities to be had in hawaii, like their $0 breakfast orientations) = 4 points per dollar spent.

on the downside, airfares went down from 1 point per $2 to 1 point per $5 spent. and while they've made it easier to redeem points by lowering the threshold needed to redeem for the lowest reward value (3,500 points = $25 coupon), they've now made it such that every 7,000 points = $50. under the old redemption program, you could get up to $1,000 off with 50,000 points, or a 2 cent value per point. now, each point is worth a maximum of 0.67 cents per point. even if you double the number of points earned on hotels, the maximum benefit is 1.33% back per dollar spent as opposed to the up to 2% back per dollar spent.

the 2% argument, however, is a bit of a stretch. i would argue that 50,000 points for a $1,000 coupon is not realistic for most users. anyone who has 50,000 points just sitting in their account is just begging for trouble. as we see in the frequent flyer world, points only lose value over time. i would have assumed that most people would collect 20,000 points, and get $200 back. this is more reasonable, and would still give a 1% return on hotel spending under the old system. with the new system, we are in a position to get 1.33% back on our hotel spending, which isn't so bad.

but people angry about the airfare devaluations
gary from view from the wing was unimpressed with the changes. he cites mainly that earnings on airfare took a substantial hit, and they really have. if i were american, and if i did all of my transactions in american currency, then yes, this would have been a substantial hit. he argues that expedia rewards are only really good for the airline tickets that you can purchase. very few places incentivize the purchase of airline tickets -- you get no benefit from purchasing them directly from the airline website anymore. expedia was one of the few exceptions to that. and if you earned 1 point per $2 spent, and if each expedia point was worth up to 2c each, that would be like a 1% return. now at 1 point per 2$ spent, and each point being worth 0.67c each, your rate of return for airline tickets drops to 0.13%. yikes!

but the good news for canadians is that it doesn't really matter. airfare spendings never really mattered because they were always priced in american dollars; you were always better served by booking on the canadian version of expedia. even if there weren't currency conversion fees from your credit card, expedia always had strange currency conversion fees of its own.

an example: vancouver to calgary, one way, departing sept 21, 2013. direct flights only.

expedia.ca -- the actual price, as displayed on the next page, is $161.83 CAD

expedia.com -- the actual price, as displayed on the next page, is $160.58 USD

the nice thing about the expedia websites is that they match onto the actual airline prices almost precisely (even with air canada tango fares). as of today's writing, the canadian dollar sits at $0.9520 per american dollar. so if things worked out well, the expedia.com price should be $154.06, but in reality, it is $6.52 USD more than expected. at the old point earning rate and award rate, you would earn 80 points on this booking, which could have been worth up to $1.60. it was not worth it to book on the american website to begin with, so this devaluation was never really an issue for me.

but what about hotels?
it's rare that i book hotels from expedia. even at 1 point per dollar spent on hotels which could be redeemed at 2cents per point, this represented a 2% return. these bookings would not be eligible for hotel frequent stay credits or points (unlike points hound). and if you really wanted to book an independent hotel, you'd be better served by hotels.com. if you use the hotels.com website and select your currency as canadian, you get the same rates as expedia.ca, don't have to pay any odd foreign exchange rates, and still get 10% back in hotelrewards money. 10% return > 2% return.

the only time i book hotels now on expedia is to use their best rate guarantee. a $50 travel credit represents an enormous savings that sometimes can't be ignored.

what have i learned?

1. the devaluation isn't really that big of a deal for folks north of the border
2. never hold large sums of points in your account, because devaluations can come swiftly and without notice whatsoever.