By Jordon Cox, Britain's Coupon Kid.

If you’re like me, you'll find nothing more exciting than booking and going on your next holiday… the only issue is the cost. Trips can easily cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds. But if you got up to 21% back on your hotels, would it change your mind?

Roses and chocolates are great gifts on Valentine’s Day, but can you imagine the look on your loved ones face if you say you got them a trip away?

Whenever booking a hotel or holiday, you should always try to get at least some Quidco cashback on it. But what people might not know… is that you are able to stack cashback with loyalty schemes - saving you even more.

Now, it’s worth noting that you won’t get this money back straight away, it’ll be split into cashback and loyalty points towards free hotel stays. It can be very lucrative though, so if you’re able to hold out, then the rewards will speak for themselves when you finally get them.

If you’re ready to get stacking, here are the options you have…

All cashback rates were true at the time of publishing: 13/02/2020

Up to 11% in cashback & 10% in rewards with Hotels.com

The way to get the highest return on your hotel booking is with Hotels.com. The handy thing about this, is that you’re spoilt for choice of hotels to book. You won’t be restricted to just a certain chain like other schemes do.

You can only get the maximum of 21% on your first booking - so use it wisely. After that it drops to 12% per booking, but either way, it’s sure to make your wallet and your spouse very happy.

Up to 11% cashback on Quidco

Cashback is your first step to saving. If you head over to the Quidco's Hotels.com page, you’ll be able to click through a link and get your purchase tracked.

You’ll see two options on the page, either 2% cashback for existing customers, or a whopping 11% for new customers.

Of course, you’ll be wanting to get the maximum amount of cashback, but you’ll need to be a new customer to Hotels.com (this is determined by email addresses).

There is no maximum amount of cashback too — so if you were going to spend thousands on a longer hotel stay, you could get £100s worth of cashback.

Stay 10 nights - get one free

The Hotels.com loyalty scheme is one of the best programs out there. Once you have completed a stay at a hotel booked through the website, you’ll earn nights that you can put towards a free stay.

You’ll have to build up 10 nights with them in order to get one free. If you happen to be going somewhere for a long stay, you can build up these 10 nights just in one booking, or you can take it one night at a time.

You can claim the free night at any time, although it’s not totally free as you’ll still have to pay room taxes (but these are usually small). The free reward night that you earn is valued at the average of your 10 night stays.

As you’ve paid for 10 nights and you get one free, this is basically a 10% return on your spending.  Of course, you won’t get this back in cash, and you’ll have to spend it on your next hotel stay, but it’s still a valuable reward. Some hotels are restricted when earning and claiming rewards, so be sure to check.

You’d get this 10% value in rewards every time you stay, but you can only get the maximum cashback of 11% once (2% thereafter), so make your first booking count. Book a longer stay if possible to build up the nights.

Combine the two together, and you’ve got 21% return on your initial spend - which for hotels that can be on the pricier side, is a massive bonus. You’ll need to get up to 10 nights on the reward scheme to properly cash out, but after collected, you can use it at any time.

Up to 8% cashback & up to 1.4% in rewards at Expedia

If you perhaps don’t want to use Hotels.com or aren’t a new customer, a great alternative is Expedia. You can also get cashback on flights and package bookings with Expedia — potentially saving you more. Here’s how to stack with them:

Cashback options

Because Expedia covers more than just hotels, you have more choice of how to claim your cashback. All of the rates can be found on Quidco's Expedia page, but here’s a lowdown:

One night hotel stay - 6%
Two or more night hotel stay - 8%
Packages (including flight and hotel) - 4%
Flights - 1%

If you were going to book your flights and hotel separately, it’s worth checking here as part of a package, as Expedia offers 4% cashback for them, which is a nice bonus.

Expedia+ Rewards

Expedia’s rewards scheme isn’t as lucrative as Hotels.com, however it’s still one to know about due to the range of things you can book.

Instead of giving you rewards based on nights, Expedia gives you 2 points for every £1 you spend on hotels and packages (1 point per £5 on flights). 140 points will get you £1 off to spend in most places on it’s website (which is a £70 spend).

Not as great, I know, but if you’re booking your whole holiday through Expedia and spend £1,000, you’ll earn around £7.

This can be doubled up to £14 in rewards, as Expedia doubles the points if you spend them at a ‘VIP Access’ hotel (which are hotels that Expedia offer extra benefits on). So using them wisely can double the value.

Although Expedia+ Rewards only give you a rate of 0.7% back, it’s still worth knowing about, as the package offer might save you money bundling things together, and then you can earn on top.

Stacking the cashback and rewards program gets you a rate of 4.7% back for packages or 8.7% back for hotel stays over two nights… don’t think that deserves a critical reception at all.

Remember: Always do a price comparison

It’s worth mentioning, that before booking any hotels, it’s worth looking at a hotel price comparison website first. These are websites such as Trivago and HotelsCombined, which show you which hotel website would be cheapest to book on.

The last thing you’d want to do is place a booking on Hotels.com for example, and then find out it was £30 cheaper to book the same room on Expedia.

Do a quick check before you book to make sure you’re getting the best price. Factor these cashback rates and loyalty scheme rewards in too, to work out what is the best value.

Important: If you do use a hotel price comparison website, make sure you remember to return to Quidco and click through the link so your cashback tracks. Don’t let your hard work  go to waste.