How to Sell Travel Vouchers, Gift Cards and Airline Credits

Travel vouchers come in many shapes; transferability varies sharply by type. Quick taxonomy of what works on a P2P marketplace and what doesn't.

Hotels.com gift cards: check the current terms, region, balance, expiry, and redemption restrictions before listing. Do not list account-bound credits as transferable gift cards.

Expedia gift cards / Global Hotel Card: same model, transferable by code. Expedia gift cards apply to hotel bookings, not flights — verify on the Expedia gift card help page (their official article 'Can I book flights using Expedia gift cards?' answers this directly). Sold on Target, Newegg, Hotelgift, and the secondary market.

Booking.com gift cards / credits: gift cards are transferable; account-bound 'credits' from refunds are not. The difference is the redemption mechanism — gift cards have a code, credits sit in your account. Sell only the gift cards.

German hotel and experience vouchers: Animod states in its own FAQ that its vouchers are issued without a name and are 'in der Regel frei übertragbar' — generally freely transferable — with redemption running through the Animod reservation service using the voucher code (GA-/FG-/MG- prefix). Mydays likewise states its gift vouchers may be transferred and redeemed by any person, with the standard 3-year German validity (both checked July 2026). Both are code-based, so they transfer cleanly — but an Animod Multigutschein must first be converted into a specific hotel voucher on Animod's site, and a made reservation is no longer just a code, so list unredeemed codes only.

Vrbo gift certificates: check the current issuer terms, region, account restrictions, expiry, and redemption route before treating one as transferable.

Airline COVID vouchers / future travel credits: case by case. Most are tied to the original ticketed name and not transferable. Read the issuance email — it usually says 'valid for travel by [name]' or 'valid for any traveller booked by the original recipient'. The latter is sometimes resellable via companion-booking workarounds; the former is not.

Airline gift cards / e-vouchers: transferability varies by issuer, region, and product. Confirm the current official terms and do not list a code that is tied to a named account or traveller.

Airline miles and points: do not list. Selling miles violates virtually every loyalty programme's T&Cs (Avios, SkyMiles, Miles & More, AAdvantage, MileagePlus) and can cost you the account. SpareHolidays does not facilitate miles transfers.

OTA account credits (Airbnb credits, Booking.com Genius credits): tied to the account, not the booking. Not transferable. Do not list.

There are four real venues for selling unused travel vouchers in 2026, plus one option people forget. Honest pros and cons of each — written by the marketplace, not by a commission-paid round-up.

SpareHolidays: travel-specific marketplace with identity checks, a recorded transfer flow, booking-specific dispute rules, and a tiered buyer commission of 5-10% (free to list). Pro: built for travel resale. Con: smaller audience than the big general gift-card sites.

Raise (US): a general gift-card resale marketplace. Check its current accepted brands, fees, seller payout, timing, and dispute terms directly before comparing it with a travel-specific listing.

CardCash: a gift-card resale service with its own quote and payout terms. Check the current offer, restrictions, payment timing, and support terms directly.

Informal social-media trades use the rules and payment method agreed by the participants. They may not provide the recorded transaction, identity signals, evidence route, or dispute process available on a marketplace.

The forgotten option: stack and use yourself. Hotels.com cards can sometimes be combined; Expedia codes can stack with bookings; Booking.com credits sit in your account waiting for the right trip. Before listing on any marketplace, check if you can apply the credit to a booking you'd actually make in the next 6 months. Most people throw vouchers away because they assume they're worth less than the effort — they're often worth using directly.

There is no standard resale percentage for a travel voucher. Compare the issuer, expiry, restrictions, face value, current alternatives, and active buyer demand before setting an asking price.

Vouchers for popular brands move fastest. Hotels.com, Expedia, Booking.com, Southwest, Delta — all liquid. Vouchers for airlines that have ceased operations or restricted routes (formerly Wow Air, Norwegian's transatlantic service, etc.) are dead — don't list them.

A short expiry can reduce buyer interest. State the exact expiry and compare your asking price with the voucher's current cash alternatives. Vouchers that expire while listed are deactivated.

SpareHolidays is an early marketplace, so voucher supply and buyer demand can vary. Compare the current cash alternatives and restrictions for the specific voucher rather than relying on a standard resale range.

Select 'Voucher' as the listing category and enter the issuer, face value, currency, expiry date, and every redemption or transfer restriction.

Prepare evidence showing the voucher issuer, value, expiry, and restrictions, but redact the actual code. Share the code through the SpareHolidays transaction flow only after the buyer's payment is recorded.

Voucher transfer happens by sharing the code (for code-based vouchers) or by walking the buyer through redemption if there's any platform-specific quirk (the Hotels.com balance-merge flow, for instance, has its own card and value limits — check the current rules before advising a buyer who's stacking multiple cards).

Never share account passwords. If a voucher is account-bound and can only be redeemed by the account holder, it's not transferable — don't list it. Code-redeemable vouchers transfer cleanly; account-bound credits do not.

Voucher handovers can fail if a code is invalid, expired, restricted, or redeemed. The buyer pays before handover and can use the booking-specific dispute route shown in the transaction.

After the buyer pays, the seller shares the voucher through the in-app transaction flow. The buyer confirms the result or raises a dispute, and the transaction shows the confirmation, dispute, and payout timing for a booking without travel dates. Any refund or payout follows the applicable terms and evidence review.

Buyer practical advice: don't just check the balance — actually apply the voucher to a real booking search. A code can show a balance and still fail at checkout for restrictions you didn't notice. Test against a booking you'd realistically make.

Seller practical advice: share the voucher code only through the on-platform transaction flow so the handover is recorded and the available dispute route can use that history.