If you’ve read some of my other blog posts, you’ve probably noticed that hotels.com is one of my favourite travel booking sites. Not only do I earn 6, 8 or even 12 Virgin Flying Club points per £1 spent on hotel stays, but hotels.com also have their own reward scheme – Hotels.com Rewards. Snappy name, right?

Hotels.com Rewards is dead simple. You book and stay 10 nights in a calendar year and you get 10% of your pre-tax spend back as a discount off a future booking. Now I tend not to have expensive tastes when it comes to accommodation. I do have a minimum standard and I always try and get the best quality hotel I can for my budget, but I’m very much driven by price and will always take the opportunity to grab a bargain. Nonetheless, after our Thailand trip, we hit the 10-night threshold and so got a voucher for £50.00 to use towards a future booking. Bonus!

Knowing that I had this credit to use, I started to look at flights. I’ve completely run out of annual leave for this year so was looking for flights in January. EasyJet’s website has this great little tool where you enter your departure airport, rough dates or season that you want to travel, how long you want to stay and a slider to specify your budget. I searched for weekend breaks in the Winter 17/18 season and whacked the slider down to a £50.00 budget. 2 options came up; Copenhagen and Venice. I’m really keen to go to Copenhagen, but the flight times weren’t amazing for a weekend break and hotel prices were quite high. So, I checked out the Venice option.

As it turns out, Venice is pretty cheap in January! A lovely little hotel, steps away from St Mark’s Basilica and Doge’s Palace was £50.00 per night including breakfast. As I had the Hotels.com Rewards credit, the 2 nights have only cost £50.00. Can’t argue with that! The paid night will also count towards my next Hotels.com Rewards voucher.

I managed to use one of my Travel Agent discounts to get a room and parking at one of the Manchester Airport Premier Inns for a smidge over £50.00 so with the flight, 1 night and parking at Manchester Airport and 2 nights in a central Venice hotel, it’s only cost £220.00. That’s for me and the other half so £110 each. How’s that for value?

I just need the weather to be nice to us now! I’m hoping for freezing cold but bright blue sky and no rain or snow.

Read about our trip here!

Date of trip: January 2018

Price paid: £110.00pp for pre-flight hotel and parking at Manchester Airport, EasyJet flights and 2 nights at the Hotel Paganelli in Venice.

Points earned: Only 440 by paying for everything on the Virgin Atlantic Black American Express card. You can’t earn Flying Club points on hotels.com if redeeming discount codes.