Hotel Voucher Schemes

KM83

Hi everyone, just wanted to share my experience regarding HotelVoucherShop Gift Cards.

I was given some of these for Christmas and think they're a nice idea in theory, but I can't recommend these over just giving your loved ones the hard cash! You can only redeem the cards on the HotelVoucherShop website, where I've found that the rooms are (more often than not) more expensive than going direct to the hotel themselves! I'm sure they can claim that I'm comparing a premium room offered by HVS to something more basic on the hotel's own website, but it doesn't make the gift cards a great investment to be honest.


These guys aren't doing anything ostensibly wrong, but just make sure that you're happy with the hotel prices offered before investing in a gift card for a loved one...

redmike123

I agree, I am very very dubious about vouchers of any description.

They have your money, which means that they are in control, not you.

missprice

Ah these vouchers sometimes are a pita.

I won some holiday vouchers worth £1000, and managed to get 3 UK holidays out of that amount, (few years ago now)

Then more recently (about 2 years ago) I won Thomas cook iirc vouchers and when I went to redeem them for a holiday I had already been in to price up, the holiday price went up as a result. As in when I said I would like that hol and here's some vouchers towards the cost, teeth were sucked etc and the price was magically altered by the exact same amount of the vouchers I had in my grubby little mitts.:D

So to me they were useless, as they saved me no money at all.

Beware these vouchers are not always what they seem.

paddyrg

I'm not fond of these voucher schemes either. With some (all?) you can't get a refund on any unused parts of the voucher, so on top of paying a premium for the rooms in order to use the voucher, you also donate 5-10% straight to the voucher company.

Also, as the hotels also pay a commission to the voucher company, you will not get the same deals as are available as booking direct. Call the hotel itself and say as you're booking direct and they're avoiding the agency commission if you can be upgraded/get a free breakfast/whatever - many will bite your hand off.