Does Capital One’s Travel Portal Have a Pricing Problem?

When Capital One first unveiled its new and improved travel portal, we were impressed. With unique features like “price freeze” and automatic refunds when a price drops, it was clear Capital One’s portal was a cut above its competitors.

Now, more than two years later, it’s not quite the darling it once was. Some of the portal’s most valuable features have been eroded and even more importantly, travelers are finding that prices charged by Capital One are often higher than other booking sites, especially for hotels. 

This isn’t exclusive to Capital One: With all the different booking engines and travel portals out there, these pricing discrepancies are the name of the game. But after running hundreds of searches, it’s clear these differences are regularly cutting against Capital One … and its cardholders. While the portal allows travelers to book flights and rental cars, the prices you’ll see when booking hotels seem to be the problem child.

With the bank incentivizing cardholders to use the portal by offering bonus miles on travel bookings and giving those with the popular *venture x* an annual $300 travel credit, these pricing discrepancies are even more glaring. More often than not, cardholders are paying more to use those benefits.

Let’s take a closer look at the Capital One Travel portal and some of the pricing issues we’ve uncovered.

Is Capital One Travel Really More Expensive?

Since its debut, we’ve lauded the *venture x* as one of the best travel rewards cards on the market – and most would agree. The one knock? The card’s annual $300 travel credit isn’t really worth $300 because Capital One often charges more than other booking engines. When compared to the $300 credit that comes with the *chase sapphire reserve*, there’s really no comparison.

To be clear: This gripe wasn’t coming from the team at Thrifty Traveler. No, we heard it time and time again from readers and others online. So we decided to look into it.

We started by searching for 60 random hotels, flights, and rental car bookings all over the world. We then compared the price when booking through Capital One Travel with other online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Priceline, the Chase Travel portal, and Hopper (which actually powers the Capital One Travel portal) as well as booking directly with a hotel, airline, or rental car agency. What we found was that prices deviated ever so slightly when it came to airfare and rental car bookings – certainly not enough to make us definitively say other options were cheaper than Capital One. But hotels were a different story.

So we kept digging. We expanded our sample size to 110 hotels, comparing prices on these platforms at properties in every corner of the globe – from high-end luxury resorts to boutique hotels and well-known chains. It was clear after running all these searches that more often than not, Capital One Travel was the most expensive hotel booking option.

When comparing just the cost of booking a hotel through Capital One Travel to booking directly with the hotel, Capital One Travel was the more expensive option nearly 62% of the time. 

Here’s a look at what we found with our analysis.

Read more: How to Book Flights & More Through the Capital One Travel Portal

Hotels Often Cost More Booked Through Capital One

To do a true apples-to-apples price comparison, we ensured that room types, dates, and cancellation policies all matched across the different booking platforms. When booking direct, we didn’t consider any special rates only available to elite members – or those with a corporate discount or AAA membership. Simply put: If it wasn’t a publicly available rate, it didn’t count.

Of the more than 100 hotels we analyzed, Capital One Travel returned the most expensive booking option 44% of the time. And if you exclude Hopper from the search results, the booking engine that powers Capital One Travel, Capital One was the most expensive option more than half of the time at 53%.

Again, it’s common to find pricing discrepancies across different booking channels. But given that we were looking at results from four different search engines, you’d expect each to be the most expensive choice approximately 25% of the time. Our data found Capital One was the most expensive option nearly twice as often as other competitors. When you compare that to the prices found in Chase’s travel portal, it’s even more startling. In our searches, Chase was the most expensive option only 19% of the time. So it certainly doesn’t appear to be an issue with bank travel portals charging more than booking directly through the hotel or other third-party sites.

It’s not all doom and gloom for hotel bookings through Capital One Travel, though. There were many instances where Capital One was in line with the other platforms or even cheaper. From our search results, Capital One was the cheapest option 19% of the time. It’s not that you can’t get a good deal when booking a hotel through Capital One, you just need to do some price shopping to know for sure.

Capital One declined to address specific questions about our analysis, saying: “Travel pricing is incredibly complex, especially as it relates to hotels. Given this landscape, there can be variability in pricing across different sources.” But that variability frequently results in Capital One cardholders overpaying for hotels – far more often than travelers with cards from competing banks like Chase and American Express experience.

Let’s take a closer look at some examples to see how Capital One Travel compares to the competition.

Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden (Berchtesgaden, Germany)

Berchtesgaden is a quaint, quiet pocket of southeastern Germany, right on the Austrian border. With beautiful mountains, lakes, picturesque nearby towns, and beer gardens, what’s not to love?

While you’re there, you’ll have a tough time finding nicer lodging than at the Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden. If you’re unfamiliar with Kempinski Hotels, the Swiss-based company operates a small chain of luxury hotels around the world known for their signature European style. As such, you can typically expect to pay a pretty penny any time you’re staying at a Kempinski property … and the one in Berchtesgaden is no exception.

Reserving a two-night stay in a mountain view room at the Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden will set you back $1,075 when booking through Capital One.

The far better choice is to book directly with Kempinski. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can easily join the Kempinski Discovery loyalty program and reserve the exact same room for 792 EUR, or approximately $857, at the time of publication. What’s more, this direct booking also includes breakfast … something you won’t get when booking with Capital One. So not only are you saving over $200 on your booking, but you’re also getting a free meal for two each day of your stay. Not bad!
 

If you wanted to book with Chase instead, it would cost you $952 for the same mountain view room – and that rate also comes with breakfast. If you were deciding between booking with Capital One and Chase, this would be the far better option but it’s still nowhere as good as booking direct.

Hopper is the cheapest of all the third-party booking options – charging $897 for the same two-night stay … and that rate includes breakfast, too.

At this property, not only was Capital One Travel the most expensive booking option but it was also the only rate to not include breakfast. In this case, you’d be paying more and getting less if you only went to Capital One and didn’t do a price comparison. Ouch!

The Liberty Hotel (Boston, MA)

The Liberty Hotel in Boston is a Marriott Luxury Collection property with tons of history. The nearly 200-year-old building sits at the foot of Beacon Hill and was once the Charles Street Jail. Oh, “if these walls could talk” … or something like that. Today, the hotel features 289 guest rooms and five different food and beverage outlets making it the perfect choice for an upscale weekend in Beantown.

If you’re planning a stay here on the weekend before the Boston Marathon, it’ll cost you. A two-night stay in a Deluxe King room booked through Capital One is about as much as some family’s mortgage payment, ringing in at $1,792.

In this case, you’re not saving a ton by going direct with Marriott as the same two-night stay here will cost you $1,772. Still, coming out $20 ahead is better than nothing. And booking direct is a necessity if you’re on the hunt for Marriott elite status – or if you’ve already got it and want to take advantage of your elite perks like free breakfast, a potential room upgrade, and early check-in or late checkout.

If you book through Capital One or any other third-party site, you won’t be eligible for any status-related benefits.

If you don’t care about elite status, opting to book through Chase’s Travel portal will be your best bet as the same two-night stay only costs $1,631. That’s a savings of over $160 when compared to the price Capital One is charging.

Hopper is sometimes a great choice for these kinds of bookings but in this case, it was the most expensive option of all – charging $1,864 for the exact same two-night stay. So while Capital One Travel isn’t the absolute most expensive choice … it’s still more expensive than most.

Hyatt Place Madison Downtown (Madison, WI)

Heading to Madtown for a Badger football game this fall? You could book a two-night stay at the Hyatt Place in downtown Madison through Capital One Travel for just over $750.

This refundable rate includes a room with a king-size bed and sleeper sofa. That’s kind of pricey for your average Hyatt Place but you can’t beat the location, just blocks from not one, but two lakes … and within walking distance of campus and several great bars and restaurants.

Booking directly with Hyatt will cost you $714, a savings of nearly $40 when compared to Capital One. And you’ll find a nearly identical price if you go through Chase instead. While saving $40 with either Hyatt or Chase isn’t life-changing, Capital One is yet again the most expensive booking option.

In this case, Hopper is the cheapest option of all – charging $685 for two nights in a “1 King Bed” room at the Hyatt Place Madison Downtown.  That’s a $30 savings over booking direct or going through Chase – and nearly $70 (or 10%) cheaper than booking with Capital One.

Why does that 10% difference seem significant? Capital One Venture X cardholders earn 10x miles on hotels when booking through the Capital One Travel portal. More on that later.

St. Regis Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Just to prove that Capital One Travel isn’t always a bad choice, here’s a hotel where you’re getting a far better deal by booking through the bank’s travel portal rather than going direct or booking with Chase or Hopper.

The St. Regis in Toronto is a five-star hotel that would surely make for a great place to stay if your travels bring you north of the border. For two nights at the St. Regis in March, Capital One is charging $1,165.

After converting loonies to U.S. dollars, you can expect to pay $1,291 for the same dates, room type, and cancellation policy when booking the St. Regis Toronto directly on Marriott’s site.  In this situation, you save over $100 by booking through Capital One Travel.

Again, it’s worth noting that if you have Marriott elite status (or are trying to earn it), you’ll need to book directly with Marriott to get perks like free breakfast, a possible room upgrade, and late check-out.

Alternatively, you can book this property through Chase Travel and pay the same price as you would when booking with Marriott. Booking through Chase means you’re again sacrificing Marriott elite night-earning and any status-related benefits.

Hopper is a little cheaper than Chase and Marriott at $1,231 for the same two-night stay – but in this case, reserving your room through Capital One Travel is still the clear winner.

Again: The key is to ensure you’re doing your homework before making a reservation. If you went straight to the Chase or Marriott to make a booking, it would you more than by reserving through Hopper … and significantly more than booking with Capital One.

Shouldn’t Hopper and Capital One Prices be the Same?

It was big news when Capital One and Hopper announced they were partnering to redesign the bank’s travel portal. Hopper’s AI-driven price prediction and alert technology, combined with Capital One’s customer-first, digital approach promised a new and innovative way to book travel. We’d agree that the two of them mostly delivered on this.

While we typically recommend steering clear of online travel agencies (OTAs), Capital One’s new travel portal turned that logic on its head by addressing many of the biggest drawbacks to booking with a third-party site. By putting an emphasis on customer service and adding travel protections that customers came to expect following the COVID-19 pandemic, Capital One’s travel portal was different … in a good way.

Since Hopper is powering the Capital One Travel portal, wouldn’t it make sense for their prices to be the same … or at least comparable? We thought so. But after hundreds of searches, there seems to be little correlation between the two with Hopper routinely pricing out lower than what you’ll find when searching through Capital One Travel.

One possible explanation? Capital One incentivizes Venture X cardholders to book through its travel portal by offering 10x miles per dollar spent on hotel and rental car bookings and 5x miles per dollar spent on flights. If you’ve got the lower-priced *capital one venture card*, you’ll earn 5x miles per dollar spent on hotels and rental cars booked through the portal. It wouldn’t be totally out of the question for the bank to price travel 5% to 10% higher in its own portal to account for the bonus points it’s awarding cardholders.

What About Capital One’s Price Match Guarantee?

So what if Capital One Travel charges a higher price? They offer a “price match guarantee” so you don’t actually have to pay it. You’re right! Capital One does offer a price match guarantee but it’s a bit of a double whammy.

With Capital One’s price match guarantee, you’ll get a refund if you find a better price for a flight, hotel, or rental car on another site within 24 hours of booking. But because you can only get a price match after booking, and they now issue the difference as a Capital One Travel credit rather than a refund to your card like they previously did, you’re paying more upfront and pocketing a less useful travel credit in return.

When the portal is routinely pricing hotels higher than other sites, going through the hassle of calling in to get a Capital One Travel credit each and every time you find a better rate makes booking the lower rate upfront from somewhere else seem like a better deal.

Bottom Line

Capital One’s Travel Portal is an impressive travel booking platform with unique features not found at competing banks like Chase and Amex. But all that’s for naught if using it actually costs you more. 

Time and time again, we’ve heard travelers complain about finding higher prices when booking with Capital One Travel rather than going direct or booking with other third-party sites. So we looked into it, and what we found was that when it comes to booking hotels in particular, Capital One Travel is consistently higher priced than its competitors.

While not always the case, if you’re beginning and ending your search with Capital One Travel, you’re much more likely to be overpaying for your stay.