Can You Spend Nectar Points On Hotels?

If you’ve been searching for another ‘travel’ way to use your Nectar points you’re in luck! You can now spend Nectar Points on Hotels through Nectar Hotels. Previously you could only earn through Nectar Hotels so it’s a welcome development! Let’s take a look at what value you get when you redeem your Nectar points on hotels and when it might make sense to redeem…

Nectar Hotels

As you might notice by the ‘powered by rocketmiles’ logo at the bottom the site is basically just a Nectar themed version of Rocket Miles! Earning wise the scheme isn’t particularly generous, with between 1,000 & 2,000 Nectar points offered PER NIGHT depending on the hotel. We saw hotels for £60 and hotels for over £200 offering 1,000 (£5) Nectar points a night, £5 off £60 is almost 10% ‘back’, £5 off £200 is only 2.5% ‘back.’ With that in mind, you may find it useful for cheaper stays & ones away from chains, as you won’t get any of your loyalty benefits as you are booking through a 3rd party.

Don’t forget you can convert your Nectar points into Avios. 1,000 Nectar Points = 625 Avios. 2,000 Nectar Points = 1250 Avios.

You can read more about Nectar Hotels on the Nectar website here – https://www.nectar.com/brands/hotels-nectar – you can also browse the Nectar Hotels site here – https://hotels.nectar.com/

What value will I get spending my Nectar points on Hotels?

You receive the standard 0.5p a Nectar point when redeeming with Nectar Hotels. You can also choose to pay 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10% of the hotels rate with your Nectar points. In addition to this at some hotels you can use Nectar points to pay for additional services e.g. breakfast.

Is it worth booking with Nectar Hotels?

Unfortunately, as we mentioned earlier bookings with Nectar Hotels count as third-party bookings and don’t qualify for any elite nights or status benefits. With that in mind, the fixed points regardless of how expensive your hotel is and the fact Hotels.com in effect give you 10% back after 10 nights in the form of a free night, I would say booking with Nectar Hotels is only useful on cheap stays where you wouldn’t otherwise make 10 nights in a program like Hotels.com.

If you are paying with your Nectar points it’s no better or worse than any other redemption as 99% of Nectar partners have the same value of 500 points getting you £2.50 discount.

A better way if you want to spend your Avios on hotels…

If you want to spend your Avios points on hotels you now have a better option! You can transfer Avios into Nectar at a rate of 250:400. With Nectar points being worth 0.5p this means you are getting 0.8p value per Avios point (200p (the value of the Nectar points / by 250 (the amount of Avios you converted = 0.8p) How does that work in practise? Here is an example…

A one night stay at the Kimpton Fitzroy London on the 11th September 2021

Booking a stay with Nectar Hotels will cost £234, alternatively, you can use 46,800 Nectar Points to pay for your room.
If you convert Avios into Nectar it would cost you 29,250 Avios.

Booking the same hotel/dates with BA Hotels would set you back a HUGE 43,950 Avios. Almost 15,000 more Avios for exactly the same room! Which means you’d be getting just over 0.53p a point… well below the 0.8p a point going the Nectar route!

An even better way still would be to use your Nectar points on shopping and then use the money you save on your hotel as you will then collect status benefits and elite nights etc.

Conclusion

Being able to redeem Nectar points on hotels is great with Avios rich individuals who want to ‘cash out’ on hotel stays. Receiving 0.8p per Avios over the 0.55p from BA Hotels is a huge increase and not far off our 1p valuation! However, the fixed low earning rate regardless of hotel cost means I can’t see an awful lot of people booking with Nectar Hotels. Have you booked with Nectar Hotels?