How to get £10 of free Booking.com hotel credit

Booking.com seems to be giving away £10 of free credit towards a future hotel stay to anyone who uses its app.

I’m not sure where this offer originated or where it was originally promoted, but a reader forwarded it to me this morning and it does work OK.  (Thanks Claire!)

This is how you get your £10 of Booking.com credit.

Step 1:  Download the Booking.com app and log in, or create an account if you don’t have one

You need the app to do this.  It doesn’t work via the desktop site.

Step 2:  Search for hotels in a random city on a random future date

Step 3:  On the results page, ‘like’ THREE hotels by clicking the heart in the top right corner

IMPORTANT:  The currency of the voucher is linked to the hotels you like.  Pick 3 UK hotels and you get £10.  Pick 3 European hotels and you will get €10 which converts to £9.  It is best to pick UK properties.

You can see the heart you need to click here:

Step 4:  A message will pop up to say that you have earned a £10 credit

Step 5:  After a few minutes, go to your Booking.com wallet and you will see the £10 there:

The expiry date is 18th August 2021 (note 2021, not 2020!).

How do you use your £10 Booking.com credit?

It is very straightforward.

You can redeem your £10 credit via the Booking.com website if you wish – it isn’t necessary to use app if you find it too fiddly.

Once you have credit in your ‘wallet’, participating hotels show up as ‘Pay with Wallet’:

If you make a booking, the £10 is deducted at the final payment screen:

There’s one thing to remember though.

Any hotel rooms booked via Booking.com are treated as ‘third party bookings’. You won’t earn any loyalty points from the hotel and you won’t get any status benefits such as upgrades or free breakfast.  Your £10 credit is therefore best used at independent hotels.  It is also best used on cheap bookings where the £10 gets you a larger percentage saving.

For anything noticeably above £100 you’d be better off using Hotels.com Rewards, reviewed here, which gives you back 10% of what you spend in credit.

Hotel offers update – December 2021:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points? There is currently a special offer running with IHG Rewards (80% bonus to 4th January 2022) and World of Hyatt (30% discount, equivalent to a 43% bonus, to 30th December 2021).