This week we’re touring northern Thailand by car, it’s amazing, fascinating and fun with the added bonus of being incredibly cheap. This part of the world is pretty affordable anyway and for a family of 4, hiring a car beats bus prices hands down, but what’s made our holiday within a holiday super cheap is that all of our accommodation has been free. I know, it surprised me too! Much of our Christmas travel in Singapore will be free too, from another source. Let me share the joy of Agoda Cash or the Agoda Gift Card
How To Use Agoda Cash or Gift Cards
We collect Agoda cash credits or gift cards. Because we are full-time travellers these add up fast. This post relates to a week of free stays in Thailand because of our Agoda credits.
Free Hotel Stays from Online Booking Engines
The best hotel booking engines for scoring free stays, for us, has been Agoda. If hotels.com comes up as the best deal we use them in preference to some of the others, because we’ve been collecting those valuable stays and points. Just make sure you log in to your Agoda or Hotels.com account each time you use them to collect full benefits.
Last Week We Got an Email From Agoda
Agoda have been our long-time favourite booking engine. I don’t need to push Agoda above any of the others because we’re affiliates for all of them. We just like Agoda, they’re the booking engine we generally prefer and we’re very comfortable and happy using them.
They’re Asia specialists because they’re based in Asia, but we’ve been known to use them in London, the US, Romania, just about anywhere and their customer service has always been great. You can use them for hotels, hostels, resorts and guest houses from budget to luxury.
The Last Time We Got a Free Stay From Agoda
India, Madras, 2015. That was the last time we had a free stay from Agoda. They had a system whereby each booking you made with them gave you points, when you collected enough points you could redeem them for a free stay.
We gladly collected our reward at a fairly expensive hotel in Madras but since then, nothing, no points, no credits (that we noticed), so we presumed Agoda had stopped offering this service.
We continued to use Agoda, not every time, but often, purely for their wide range of hotels, easy booking and good prices.
Then a few days ago we received the email. Would we like to redeem our Agoda points and convert them into an Agoda Gift Card? Well sure, why not! (Particularly as we didn’t even know we had points to redeem). We hit the big red button and there it was, almost $400 of ‘free’ Agoda cash to fund our trip to Northern Thailand.
It’s a sweet deal, we used our gift card to book some slightly more expensive hotels than we’d normally choose and we’re loving the experience.
Admittedly, accommodation is hard to find up here and we probably would have spent that little bit more anyway, but getting it for free makes it that much sweeter. Have you checked your Agoda account lately? Maybe you should. Do it here.
Other Booking Engines Give You Free Hotel Stays Too
Over Christmas we’ll be redeeming some big money stays through Hotels.com. With this booking engine we get every 11th night free (according to average price of the previous 10). We normally only use Hotels.com if they come up as best choice on Hotels Combined (Hotels Combined compare multiple hotel booking engines at once), but it happens regularly enough that we’ll be cashing in a couple of hundred dollars over Christmas.
So What Are You Waiting For?
Go on, go log into your Agoda account here. You will need to log in, remember your password and so on, but do it. We converted our points and had almost $400 to play with. Take a look. The new gift cards can be transferred to other people in future, I believe, so you could gift them for Christmas. If you’re not planning on travelling soon, don’t switch, just keep your Agoda rewards, the gift cards are time sensitive but you’ll need to check, Agoda are doing away with the points system. Off you go, take a look at Agoda ,and be as pleased as us. Happy, and cheap, travels!
If you’re interested in free travel, we have a post on how to travel for free right here.
Related Posts:
If you'd like to hire a car during your stay, use this car rental comparison tool to find the best deal!
We also suggest you take a look at this company to get a quote for all kinds of the more tricky adventure or extended travel insurance.
Try Stayz / VRBO for an alternative way to find rentals on homes/apartments/condos in any country!
Hi, i am unable to use the agoda cash as it still requires me to put in my card details. May i know whether is it usable on certain hotels? and how do i know which hotels accept agoda cash? Thanks
Yes, it’s only certain hotels. We found that some countries have loads, others none. But I thought I’d read that they’d stopped doing this. I haven’t booked through them in a while and haven’t looked. I’ll go look now.
Thanks for your reply.. ya i really could not find any hotels in malaysia that accept agoda cash. I really hope that this isn’t a scam as i have quite a lot of agoda cash.
It’s not a scam, you just have to be in the right hotels, there were plenty in Thailand.
Hi!
Just wondering how you found hotels that accept Agoda Cash as I’m struggling to work it out.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! : )
Thanks,
Leonie
They’re indicated when you search for hotels to book Leonie. In some countries they’re few and far between but we found loads in northern Thailand. Romania…total fail, they all like you to pay cash there not online. But I believe these Amazon rewards are being phased out at the end of 2018. I know associates will no longer receive rewards but not sure if it applies to regular customers too. Best of luck!
Hi,
My husband and I are visiting Thailand with our children (4 & 6) in October 2018.
Thank you for your blog – it’s provided some great itinerary ideas for travelling as a family. We have visited Thailand before (without kids) a couple of times for months at a time but never in October (and never Haad Salad).
We are strongly considering visiting Haad Salad for a couple of weeks as part of our trip – were you there in October or neighbouring months? We’ve heard that the beach can be very shallow and not great for swimming between May and September but here is not much mention of October. Any information you could provide regarding Haad Salad beach, swimming etc or any alternative recommendations for beaches in the gulf coast area in October would be hugely appreciated.
Thank you
I think, from memory, that in October the rains started, the sea suddenly got a lot deeper. The shallow was much better, it’s like a lagoon, some sand, some rocks and coral ( wear shoes, coral fragments). If you look at our photos of Haad Salad they were all taken pre wet season. It was lovely. There is a sharp drop off at the edge of the bay, what used to be a fringing reef. Obviously it depends on the tide too. I think we left just after the rains started, it wasn’t nearly as nice.
Thank you!
In what hotels did you stay in thailand? Hotels in thailand that accept agoda gift card?
They are all in our post on Northern Thailand. Any hotel featured on Agoda ( most are) will be free with your Agoda credits while booking through Agoda.
Thanks for all the great info you are providing to all us works travelers, we really appreciate it.
Well done! I’m using Agoda to book my family for four days in Bangkok before our house/pet starts. See you online! Safe travels!
Congrats on the free gift card. Looks like you put it to excellent use 😉