If you’re determined to get the best hotel rates, then you need several techniques in your bag of trips. Accommodation rates are as wily as airfares, and you want to be sure you’re getting the best price possible when you travel. Here are some of the most tried-and-true techniques.
Booking over the internet beats booking by phone in most cases when the person booking the room called the national toll-free phone number. However, in many cases, those who called the actual hotel in question got better rates than what were available on the internet. One strategy is to find the best online rate, book it, and then call the specific hotel (not the chain’s toll-free number) to see if they can beat the rate. If you’re traveling the same day, and the hotel has plenty of free rooms they’d like to fill, they may be willing to come down below the best internet rate. It’s definitely worth asking.
For people who love road trips, an AAA membership can be a goldmine of savings. A basic membership costs $66, and gets you help with things like dead batteries and towing should your car break down. But you can also get discounts on lots of travel and even non-travel related costs. Should you decide to go by train, you can get Amtrak discounts too. Best Western, Hilton, and Marriott chains guarantee the lowest available rates for the day to AAA members. The $66 can pay for itself quickly for the frequent traveler.
Often, getting a corporate discount is a simple matter of presenting your business card when you check in, so it’s definitely worth a try. Once you have found what you believe to be the lowest rate, you can use a comparison engine, such as SideStep.com to gather and compare rates. Sometimes you’ll beat a rate you find on your own, and sometimes you won’t, but it only takes a minute to check.
Bidding on hotel rooms is another way to find cheap hotels for your trip. This is not for the indecisive, however. Using bidding sites like Priceline and Hotwire, you don’t specify the specific hotel, just dates, and the “star level” hotel you want. You then submit a per-night room bid. The site contacts hotels in the area you specify of the pertinent star level to see if anyone will accept your bid. If they do, your credit card is charged on the spot and you’re sent details about the hotel.
Checking for package deals is another way to keep accommodation costs under control. For example, you can often book airfare and hotel stays together, car rental and hotel stays together, or all three to get a package rate that beats what you could get booking everything separately. There’s no reason to accept the “rack rate” the hotel’s toll-free number quotes you. Just a few minutes’ research can save you big on hotel stays.