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Agoda Reward status question/Exploit.


drift

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I havent really travelled since pre covid and now that my first trip back to Thailand is coming in november i realise that my Agoda vip status is reverted back to Bronze a. I still retained my gold status at Hotles.com.

But as i search better deals are mostly at Agoda o and the price on hotels are higher in general so it make sence to use one of the former.

Since it seems that Agoda counts bookings towards their reward program vs hotels that counts nights.

Then i started to wonder if its posible to excploit the Agoda reward program and speed it up.

Agoda has the silver vip deals with 12% Gold with 18% and Platinum 25% with added benifits such as free brekkie for platinum. And ther e is 2 bookings requiered for Silver 5 for gold and 10 for Platinum. 

From the Agoda vip rewards program

Sign in and complete 2 bookings in the last 2 years to unlock Silver, 5 bookings to unlock Gold, and 10 bookings to unlock Platinum. Your status automatically renews after 6 months if you make the required bookings within that time.

As i understand it it does not mather the value of the booking so a 30 night booking at Hilton for 6000$ or if i book 1 night at Jozef & Erika Apartment for 8$ a night. it will still count as 1 booking towards my Vip status.

So then my brain started thinking and wondered if i just found the cheapest non refundable rooms at Agoda. I found a hostel room in bangkok for 3$ a night. Could i just book 1 night  there for 10 seperate nights on 10 bookings for a grand total of 30$ to get to the platinum Vip level at Agoda. Obviosly im not going to show up and check in at the hostel but im guessing the hostel wont report back to Agoda that the booking was never used and they all allready are paid.

Has anyone tried this approach and is it a viable solution?

 

 

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- yes, it counts single bookings. you can also just book 7 nights as 7 separate bookings at the same hotel and then during check-in tell them that you have several bookings and that you want to stay in the same room the whole time. of course it's possible that you will get a worse price by doing this than when booking 7 nights in a row. 

- the hostel will most likely report back if you don't show up there and Agoda will cancel the booking (or keep it), depending on a few factors

- their VIP status isn't worth much. sometimes it's a little cheaper, sometimes you get some discount codes (but most of them are available for anyone), but they're generally not worth much and it's really not comparable to platinum status in a "real" loyalty program. i guess the exception might be if you're someone who picks a specific destination just for a good offer.
 

i just did a specific comparison for a week in pattaya in september: logged in (as vip) and logged out as random visitor: identical offer / prices. 
in general i'd focus more on exploiting better offers via affiliate links (=look at the price you get if you come via google maps hotel search // trivago hotel search) or by checking if you get better prices in the mobile app, it's normally more fruitful and can lead to quite solid discounts by just spending 1-2minutes more. 

Edited by petehoax
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TFMI.WTF : The home of the Thaifriendly Master Index – your invaluable guide if you use Thaifriendly in Pattaya.

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I actually find that Agoda at time is MORE cheap when you book seperate days that a few days in a row, doesn´t make sense but guess they think you dont calculate the price/day when booking seversal days together…..

I seen a 5-10% rise in price when booking several days in a row….as one booking!

Edited by SunnyRainbow
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I’ve found Agoda cheapest to book recently.  Last year Booking.com got my money

I seem to get Agoda cash applied to my account but don’t know what it’s for…I’ll worry about it When it becomes significant 

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5 hours ago, keepitfun said:

I’ve found Agoda cheapest to book recently.  Last year Booking.com got my money

I seem to get Agoda cash applied to my account but don’t know what it’s for…I’ll worry about it When it becomes significant 

Better be quick about it as the cash reward these days only lasts for a few months...pre covid it lasted for 1 year but now I think its only 3 months......

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20 hours ago, petehoax said:

- yes, it counts single bookings. you can also just book 7 nights as 7 separate bookings at the same hotel and then during check-in tell them that you have several bookings and that you want to stay in the same room the whole time. of course it's possible that you will get a worse price by doing this than when booking 7 nights in a row. 

- the hostel will most likely report back if you don't show up there and Agoda will cancel the booking (or keep it), depending on a few factors

- their VIP status isn't worth much. sometimes it's a little cheaper, sometimes you get some discount codes (but most of them are available for anyone), but they're generally not worth much and it's really not comparable to platinum status in a "real" loyalty program. i guess the exception might be if you're someone who picks a specific destination just for a good offer.
 

i just did a specific comparison for a week in pattaya in september: logged in (as vip) and logged out as random visitor: identical offer / prices. 
in general i'd focus more on exploiting better offers via affiliate links (=look at the price you get if you come via google maps hotel search // trivago hotel search) or by checking if you get better prices in the mobile app, it's normally more fruitful and can lead to quite solid discounts by just spending 1-2minutes more. 

Thamk you for a detailed breakdown.

I know the Vip status on Agoda is gennerally not that good of a deal, But sometimes hotels i used have shown up with a decent discount opposed to non Vip price. I only use Agoda in the cases their price is 8% or lower then hotels. Since you basicly get about 8% discount on hotels with the spend 10 nights get one "free" I cashed in 25 free nights at hotels the 3 years before covid, But my experience before was that hotels was the cheapest or atleast very closed to the cheapest offer you found at Trivago and other sites so was not much point of shopping around. But now it seems that booking/Agoda is often considarable cheaper the hotels.  

But on the hotel i been looking at Agoda has been about 25% lower in price and Agoda has been lowest on google search too, Agoda offers free breakfast as a added perk on platinum level. And with a diffrence of 10$ per night for the room with and without breakfast over a 30 night stay i figured the value i get from that perk is alone 300$ and 10 hostel nights in Bkk would cost me 30$ to get to Platinum. So a gross value of 270$ even if the room price would be the same. 

Net value would ofcourse depends on if i actually make it to that breakfast or sleep through it as normal.

I have started to see if the exploit is viable so i booked a 3$ room with check inn today so will se if it get added as a booking when the booking is "completed"

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Just for fun i made the same serch on Firefox logged into my Vip account and on Chrome wthout beeing logged in. 6$ cheaper pr night on chrome browser.

Pattatya chrome.png

Pattatya firefox.png

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Updadeted the search and 8 min later both sites are at 51$ pr night so a booking at Agoda 10 min ago would have ben 16$ higher pr night.

Pattatya firefox 2.png

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1 hour ago, drift said:

Agoda offers free breakfast as a added perk on platinum level.

that's not true in general. again: there might be free breakfast on a specific deal in very specific circumstances. but generally, it's not the case. 

at the comparison above: more likely that it has to do with 
either: 
- settings are different in the browsers (one with, one without taxes for example)
- you have different referal links active (for example cause you visited it last time you logged in via google maps and so on). 


as you said: 10min later it was a completely different offer. 
very often Agoda offers you a 5% coupon off on (most) bookings when you open it (with code "travel2022"), i assume this is their way of clearing out any old affiliate "links" that you've used. so that way, they can "clear" it and will get 100% of the comission themselves. 

but general remark: you know how it works, just compare and book whatever seems best to you at the moment. there's no try and trued "best site", just book whatever is cheapest. if you find a good opportunity to split up a booking into several separate bookings to achieve Agoda platinum: sure, go for it. but i don't see how it would be worth it to book (and non-show) a hotel just to get the status... and most likely they will not credit you the nights anyway if you non-show. 

Edited by petehoax

TFMI.WTF : The home of the Thaifriendly Master Index – your invaluable guide if you use Thaifriendly in Pattaya.

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On 17/08/2022 at 13:44, petehoax said:

- yes, it counts single bookings. you can also just book 7 nights as 7 separate bookings at the same hotel and then during check-in tell them that you have several bookings and that you want to stay in the same room the whole time. of course it's possible that you will get a worse price by doing this than when booking 7 nights in a row. 

- the hostel will most likely report back if you don't show up there and Agoda will cancel the booking (or keep it), depending on a few factors

- their VIP status isn't worth much. sometimes it's a little cheaper, sometimes you get some discount codes (but most of them are available for anyone), but they're generally not worth much and it's really not comparable to platinum status in a "real" loyalty program. i guess the exception might be if you're someone who picks a specific destination just for a good offer.
 

i just did a specific comparison for a week in pattaya in september: logged in (as vip) and logged out as random visitor: identical offer / prices. 
in general i'd focus more on exploiting better offers via affiliate links (=look at the price you get if you come via google maps hotel search // trivago hotel search) or by checking if you get better prices in the mobile app, it's normally more fruitful and can lead to quite solid discounts by just spending 1-2minutes more. 

This.  I think I mentioned in an earlier thread, when I was booking the hard rock hotel, the price I got from Agoda directly is the most expensive, followed by going from google hotel ads to Agoda, followed by going from TripAdvisor to Agoda, same exact dates.  Also it’s strange how Agoda’s multi day pricing works as someone said, booking the same 2 weeks in 2, 3, 4 bookings result in different prices 

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On Agoda I am VIP Platinum.  I get emails for 5% off my next booking and other discount codes when I open up Agoda.com.  For reference, I generally stay at $40-60 per night hotels in SE Asia.  This may well vary if you are staying at 5 Star hotels/resorts.

But I did some random price checking over the past few months comparing my VIP price and checked prices without logging in to my Agoda account.  Sometimes it was the exact same price, sometimes a little lower.  Honestly I felt that it was not much of a saving, if any.

I also tried different approaches:
1. TripAdvisor - using this to check out the deals.  It was not uncommon for the Agoda price on here to be cheaper than my Agoda VIP price by a couple of dollars a night.

2. Google Maps - this was very interesting.  Several times I saved significant amounts 10%-20% on looking up the hotel on Google Maps and checking the availability through there and finding that the Agoda link through there would be noticeably cheaper. A significantly begger difference than using TripAdvisor.  This was not always the case, but it happened several times. (I got this tip from another post on Pattaya Addicts).

Overall, I would never just book the VIP Agoda price without first checking a few other sites and the links back in to Agoda.

Generally, I found Agoda had the cheapest price compared to Booking.com and hotels.com and used them with at least 80% of my bookings.

Using TripAdvisor and Google Maps, a few times I used non-Agoda sites to get prices significantly cheaper, which I am guessing were some sort of special discount.  These were Trip.com and hotels.com.  Plus a couple of times the actual hotels own website was 20% cheaper than any other site.  It pays to look around and be flexible.

Edited by MidniteM
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