If you stay in hotels often enough you may never need to pay for Uber again

By Bruce Brown Published July 9, 2016

Everyone likes bargains and perks, especially when traveling. A new travel perk partnership with the Kaligo hotel booking service gives you Uber ride vouchers each time you reserve a room with the service and complete a hotel stay. The Starwood, Hilton, and IHG hotel chains already have partnerships with Uber, but the Kaligo program works with any U.S. hotel among the 425,000 hotels worldwide that can be booked via Kaligo.com.

Kaligo is a loyalty-based booking service. It attracts and retains customers by linking hotel stays to users’ favorite loyalty programs. When you make a reservation with Kaligo, the first step is to choose which one of its loyalty program partners you want to earn rewards with. If you’d rather rack up miles with American Airlines AAdvantage or United’s MileagePlus, for example, you can’t choose Uber for earning rewards. But if you do choose Uber, you’ll earn at least a $5 ride voucher for each completed hotel stay.

Recommended Videos

According to Kaligo, a $500 hotel stay in the U.S. booked through Kaligo.com will earn from $25-$100 in free Uber rides. You don’t get ride vouchers immediately. After you complete your hotel stay you’ll be contacted via email by a Kaligo concierge for your preference of individual ride vouchers in $5, $10, or $25 denominations. After receiving your response the booking company will email you promo codes that U.S. residents can use for Uber rides in the U.S.

To attract people to the Kaligo-Uber partnership, people who book their first U.S. hotel stay through Kaligo will receive $20 in free Uber rides, regardless of the length or cost of the stay. There’s also a launch promotion that runs through August 31, 2016 — one winner will get $200 worth of Uber rides each month for a year.

Uber promo codes from Kaligo.com have to be used within 30 days of being issued. If you stay in hotel rooms frequently and only use Uber occasionally, you can score some free rides and still get frequent flyer miles, just by choosing different loyalty programs when you make the reservations with Kaligo.com.

Former Contributing Editor

Bruce Brown Contributing Editor As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…

Topics

Cars

Your next car’s software update could become its biggest security risk

Your next car could receive updates like your smartphone. That's also becoming a cybersecurity nightmare.

OTA technology allows manufacturers to remotely deliver software updates.

Modern cars are no longer machines that stay the same after they leave the showroom. Increasingly, they're becoming software-defined vehicles that receive new features, bug fixes, and security patches wirelessly, much like smartphones. But while over-the-air (OTA) updates have made vehicle maintenance easier and cheaper, cybersecurity experts are warning that the same technology could also become one of the automotive industry's biggest security challenges.

Researchers and policymakers are now calling for stronger oversight as connected vehicles become increasingly dependent on remote software updates. Their concern isn't just about hackers stealing personal data. It's about someone potentially interfering with the operation of a moving vehicle.

Cars

This sleek Chinese EV pairs supercar styling with three AI brains

The Xpeng L03 is an AI supercomputer disguised as a stylish family SUV

Xpeng L03

Xpeng’s latest electric vehicle carries enough processing power to make the term "smart car" actually sound more realistic than it actually is. The new Xpeng L03 debuted simultaneously in Europe and China on July 16, with the company presenting it across 65 markets. Available as a fully electric vehicle and an L03 Power X range-extender, the coupe-SUV is Xpeng’s most internationally focused model so far. Market-specific prices and sales dates remain unannounced.

Three AI chips and Google Maps built right in

Cars

A new sodium battery posts wild four-minute charging numbers, but don’t expect it in an EV yet

The breakthrough could improve fast charging and battery life, but the study hasn’t demonstrated those results in a production-sized pack

EV Charger

A new sodium-metal battery has posted a charging number that makes today’s EVs look painfully slow. In laboratory testing, the cell operated at a 15C rate, equivalent to completing a charge or discharge in roughly four minutes.

That doesn’t mean researchers plugged in an electric car and watched it fill up before the driver finished buying coffee. The result came from a small experimental cell using a new quasi-solid electrolyte, while the larger pouch-cell prototype delivered far less dramatic performance.