Last Day to Redeem Expedia Rewards Points at Old Rates

A week ago, I wrote about the changes coming to the Expedia Rewards. At that time it was still unclear how much the Expedia Rewards points would be worth after Expedia launches their new conversion rates. The info that the points would be worth less was buried in the announcement:

Our reward chart will also be changing effective November 22, 2011. To redeem your accumulated Expedia Points at the current conversion rates, please be sure to do so before this date.

Just got a reply back from Expedia what the new conversion rates would be. The old ones were very straight forward. One Expedia Rewards point was worth exactly one cent.

For redemptions before November 22, 2011, we will base the flight redeem rate approximately 100 points per dollar while for redemptions starting November 22, 2011, flight redeem rate will no longer be for a dollar for dollar ratio. We will base the flight costs upon the price of the flight at the time of booking. For every USD1.00 in flight cost, customers will need approximately 125 points.

Hotel redeem rate is variable and we base the rate on coupon values that start at 7,000 points for a USD50.00 hotel coupon. Your rewards points will not expire as long as you book and complete qualifying travel on Expedia.com or redeem points for a travel reward at least once every 18 months.

So essentially, the new value of Expedia Rewards points is .8 cents when used for airline bookings, and .71 cents when used for a hotel coupon. This is a bit strange considering that Expedia has far better margins on hotel bookings compared to airline ones. One would have thought that they had wanted more of the redemptions to go towards hotel bookings.