I covered Expedia’s new rewards program when it launched in beta at the end of January. And then I complained that they were sending out bonus offers without telling you how much the points you’d be earning were worth!

Now that Expedia has publicly launched the program, they’ve made public their award chart. Redemptions of points for flights is coming. But in the meantime you can redeem points for coupons good towards the payment of pre-tax cost of Expedia’s “Special Rate” hotels.

Here’s the reward chart and the dollar value of each redemption option:

Points		Hotel Coupon		Value Per Point
3,500		25		0.007
6,000		50		0.008
10,000		100		0.010
14,000		150		0.011
18,000		200		0.011
22,000		250		0.011
29,000		350		0.012
32,000		400		0.013
35,000		450		0.013
38,000		500		0.013
40,000		550		0.014
42,000		600		0.014
44,000		650		0.015
46,000		700		0.015
47,500		800		0.017
49,000		900		0.018
50,000		1,000		0.020

Since most standalone travel earns just one point per dollar it’ll take a long time / a lot of spend to earn rewards. But it’s still a 1% – 2% rebate on your travel spend with Expedia, which is better than other similar offerings at the moment. (It’s worth noting that packages earn 2 to 4 points per dollar, and thus 4% to 8% rebate.)

And thus it’s a reason to consider booking with Expedia over Orbitz or airline websites (be more careful especially booking hotels with Expedia, since not all hotels offer points earning or elite benefits on stays booked through sites like Expedia’s).

You can generally double and triple dip here, I use eBates usually to earn cash back on my Expedia bookings. And I’ll still earn miles on the airline tickets booked there. Airline sites rarely ever offer mileage bonuses for online bookings anyway, though some will offer cash back through the various shopping portals.

Good move for Expedia to offer this, even though it’ll take a long time for most folks to get much through the program and especially for the higher tiers. They give “VIP status” to members who spend $10,000 in airfare on the site in a year, but that’ll only give you $100 towards a hotel. A VIP qualifying through airfare spend would take 5 years to accumulate enough points for the top level reward. Still, since it’s more or less an add-on (the previous program, linked in with Citi’s Thank You Points, didn’t offer anything on airfare-only bookings) it’s a real plus.

I should note that it’s less valuable than Hotels.com’s program for rebates on hotel spend. But with Expedia you earn through hotel and airfare. Further, holders of the Travelocity Amex can get up to 10% cash back for their Travelocity spend. Though Expedia’s points are in addition to credit card rewards. Overall, I’m just glad to see the baby steps that the online booking services are making into the loyalty space!