Robinhood Platinum cardholders now earn 10% back on hotels and car rentals, part of a partnership with London travel-technology firm Duffel announced last week that puts the brokerage app directly into hotel distribution.

Duffel powers flights, hotels and car rentals inside Robinhood's app for holders of its $695 Platinum and Gold credit cards. The reward tiers stack up simply:

• Platinum: 10% back on hotels and car rentals, 5% on flights
• Gold: 3% back across bookings
• The card itself carries a $695 annual fee

Robinhood is not alone. Uber pays 10% back on hotel bookings in ride credits. Airbnb pays up to 15% on hotels it features on its platform. None of these companies is a hotel company, and most of them earn their money somewhere other than hotels.

Who pays for 10% back?

The offer marks a shift in who can afford to fund travel rewards. A decade ago, 10% back on a hotel was a travel company's proposition. Hotels.com gave customers a free night after every ten paid nights, which worked out to roughly 10% of their spend — funded by the booking commission.

Expedia Group retired that program. In July 2023 it replaced Hotels.com rewards in the U.S. with OneKey, its cross-brand loyalty scheme. The free Blue tier now pays members 1% back on hotels.

The replacement of a 10%-value program with a 1% cash-back floor at the largest U.S. online travel agency opened a gap. Financial services firms and ride-hailing platforms, which monetize customers through card fees, trading activity and trip volume rather than hotel commissions, can fund that gap from their core businesses.

What does this change for hotel distribution?

For hoteliers, the pattern changes where bookings originate and who owns the customer relationship. When a brokerage app or a ride-hailing platform books the room, the hotel still supplies the inventory, but the loyalty accrual — the 10%, the ride credits, the trading-linked rewards — happens outside the brand's own program.

It also puts pricing pressure on distribution economics. A platform paying 10% back on a hotel stay is effectively spending several times what a traditional loyalty program pays at the 1% level Expedia's free tier now offers. Sustaining that spread requires the payer to profit elsewhere, as Robinhood does from its credit card fees and Uber does from ride frequency.

For travelers holding a $695 Platinum card, the arithmetic is straightforward: heavy hotel spend converts to a return that legacy OTA programs no longer match at the entry tier.

The pattern suggests more non-travel companies will enter hotel distribution as long as hotel bookings remain a cheap way to reward their own customers — and Expedia's decision to hold its free tier at 1% keeps that opening wide.