Aeroplan: Save Up to 20,000 Points on Hotels and Car Rentals

Most of the time, I’d tell you to save your Aeroplan points for flights, where the value is almost always better. But there’s a new promotion that makes redeeming them for hotels and car rentals worth a second look.

From August 21 to September 1, 2026, Aeroplan members can take 15,000 points off an eligible hotel stay with promo code HOTEL826, or 20,000 points off a car rental with promo code AUTO826. Hotels need a redemption of 75,000 points or more, and car rentals 60,000 points or more, before the code is applied.

There’s no branding attached this time, just two codes landing in inboxes. The car rental discount is the richest we’ve seen from this recurring promotion, and the hotel side pairs a bigger discount with a higher floor. Let’s crunch the numbers.

How the Promo Code Offers Work

Any Aeroplan member in good standing can use these codes at the checkout step on the Aeroplan travel portal. There’s no limit on how many times you can use a code during the offer period, though only one code applies to each booking.

Redemption	Promo code	Minimum	Points off
Hotel stay	HOTEL826	75,000	15,000
Car rental	AUTO826	60,000	20,000

The booking window runs from August 21, 2026 at 12:01am NT to September 1, 2026 at 11:59pm PT. Enter the code at checkout on the Aeroplan travel portal, and if your cart clears the minimum for your booking type, the reduction applies automatically before you confirm.

One warning on changes. If you cancel or modify a discounted booking after the window closes on September 1, the code is gone for good, so any rebooking needs to happen inside the window.

This is a discount taken at checkout rather than a rebate paid out afterward, so the only points total you’ll ever see is the reduced one.

You need enough points to cover the full total before the code is applied, so a 75,000-point hotel stay needs 75,000 points sitting in your account even though you’ll only hand over 60,000. Points + Cash bookings are eligible on both offers, and local taxes and fees, such as resort or destination fees, may still be collected directly by the property.

There’s one detail worth flagging. Both reductions are flat points amounts, so the discount shrinks the more you redeem.

At its 75,000-point floor, the hotel code works out to an effective 20% discount, while the car rental code reaches 33% at its 60,000-point floor. Push the hotel booking to 150,000 points and the 15,000 off is only 10%.

Since there’s no limit on how many times you can use a code, the move on a longer trip is to break it into separate four-night bookings at the same property. Each block earns its own free night and takes its own 15,000 points off, as long as each one still clears 75,000 points after the free night is applied. Aeroplan’s own email even suggests combining stays across dates or properties to reach the threshold.

The hotel offer also stacks with Aeroplan’s Fourth Night Free benefit, which on a longer stay is where most of the savings actually come from. That benefit is tied to holding an eligible Aeroplan co-branded credit card, so it isn’t automatic for every member. If you hold one, any four consecutive nights at the same property come with one night free in points.

The free night is priced at the average nightly cost of the stay rather than the cheapest night. If two nights price at 20,000 points and two at 30,000, the stay totals 100,000 points and you’re charged 75,000, which is the 25,000-point average across three nights.

Order matters when the two stack. The free night comes off first, and the promo code is applied to whatever is left, which is also the figure the 75,000-point minimum is measured against. A stay pricing at 90,000 points drops to 67,500 once the free night lands, and no longer qualifies for the code at all.

Is Booking Hotels with Aeroplan Points a Good Deal?

Generally speaking, you’ll get the best value by using your Aeroplan points for flights, especially in premium cabins.

But a hotel redemption can still be useful in the right situation. If you’ve got another program covering the flight portion of a trip, and a stay booked through HotelSavers lines up well, putting your Aeroplan points toward a hotel can make sense.

The complication is that you have to do the valuation yourself. Hotel redemptions tend to return around 1.7 to 1.8 cents per point (CAD), below our valuation of Aeroplan points at 2.0 cents per point, and the real number swings a lot by property.

Take a four-night stay at the Sofitel Bali Nusa Dua Beach Resort this November, in a Luxury Room. The four nights price at 111,600 points. Fourth Night Free removes 27,900, exactly a quarter of the total, leaving 83,700. That still clears the 75,000-point minimum, so HOTEL826 comes off next for another 15,000, landing the stay at 68,700 points.

Notice what the flat reduction does here. Because the stay still costs 83,700 points once the free night lands, the 15,000 off is worth about 18%, not the full 20% you’d get booking right at the 75,000-point floor.

Before redeeming, though, check the cash price. The same room and dates booked directly with Accor come to $1,225.53 (CAD) at the member rate, taxes and fees included.

That works out to about 1.8 cents per point (CAD), right in line with what Aeroplan hotel redemptions typically return, and it’s the promo code that gets it there. Our 2.0-cent valuation is a best-case benchmark drawn from well-chosen flight redemptions, not a pass mark every booking has to clear.

So this is a perfectly reasonable use of points. If yours would otherwise sit idle, or the cash outlay on a trip is the thing you’re trying to manage, taking $1,225 off the cost of a Bali stay is a real result. The argument for holding back applies mainly if you’re actively saving toward a premium cabin redemption, where the same points work harder.

A pricier hotel flips the math. During a previous promotion, a four-night stay at the Muu Bangkok Hotel, a Small Luxury Hotels property, priced at 60,750 points after the Fourth Night Free discount, against a cash rate near $1,138 (CAD).

That promotion took 15,000 points off against a lower 50,000-point minimum, dropping the stay to 45,750 points, which works out to around 2.5 cents per point. This run offers the same 15,000-point reduction, but its 75,000-point floor would leave this 60,750-point stay out entirely.

That’s the trade this time around. The discounts are bigger, but they sit behind higher minimums, so combining stays across dates or properties is the way to pull a smaller booking over the line. The gap between the two examples still holds the useful lesson, since pricier properties make the same points go further.

What to Check Before Redeeming on a Car Rental

The car rental code is the more generous of the two, taking 20,000 points off a lower 60,000-point minimum. That’s a 33% discount at the floor, against 20% on the hotel side, and the richest car rental reduction Aeroplan has offered in this series.

A three-week rental in Vancouver shows how it works. Twenty-one days with Thrifty out of Vancouver International Airport, in an intermediate car with unlimited kilometres, prices at 60,250 points, landing right at the floor. AUTO826 brings it down to 40,250 points.

Because the booking sits right at the minimum, the 20,000 off is worth the full 33%. That’s exactly where you want a flat discount to land, and it’s the argument for sizing a rental to the floor rather than well past it.

From there, run the arithmetic backwards. For those 40,250 points to hit our 2.0-cent valuation, the rental would need to cost roughly $805 (CAD). Price the same booking in cash directly with the rental company and compare. Landing under that number doesn’t make the redemption a mistake, it just tells you how hard your points are working, which is worth knowing before you commit them. Rental pricing swings a lot by destination and season, so this is a check worth repeating rather than a rule you can memorize.

There’s a second cost to redeeming here that never shows up in the points math. Most premium Canadian credit cards provide collision damage waiver coverage only when the full rental is charged to the card, and a points redemption doesn’t meet that condition. Award flights have a carve-out, where the Aeroplan co-branded cards extend coverage once taxes and fees hit the card. Nothing equivalent exists on the rental side.

That leaves you buying the rental company’s own waiver at $30 to $40 (CAD) a day, or leaning on another policy. On a three-week rental like the one above, the waiver alone would run $630 to $840, which could wipe out the entire 20,000-point discount and then some. Read your card’s certificate before assuming you’re covered.

The smaller perks go the same way. Card-linked rental discounts, your status with the rental company, and any corporate or association rate codes generally only apply when you book direct, and you won’t be earning on the rental either. None of that is a reason to avoid the redemption, but it belongs in the comparison against the cash rate.

Worth noting that the terms pair only the hotel offer with Fourth Night Free. There’s no equivalent benefit to stack on the car rental side, and neither code combines with any other promotion.

If you don’t hold one yet, the Aeroplan co-branded credit cards below are worth comparing.

Conclusion

Both discounts are larger this run, with the car code reaching a 33% reduction at its 60,000-point floor and the hotel code pairing 15,000 points off with a higher 75,000-point threshold. Booking near each code’s floor is where it does the most work.

If you were already planning a redemption, the discount is simply worth taking. Where it gets more interesting is on a stay you were going to pay cash for anyway, because the codes narrow the gap between the two enough to be worth re-running the numbers.

The booking window closes September 1, 2026, so run the numbers on your booking first and make sure the value lands where you want it.