To recap: I find lodging secondary to flight & destination. And so I tend to book lodging until after I've chosen my flights. Usually, the flight will be the largest expense line item on your trip, so you have to be extra careful when shopping. With hotels, you have more to choose from, and more options, so you can often wait until much further down the road and still get a good deal.
Often, but not nearly always, I'm afraid, and I'll get into those situations where you *must* look well in advance. First, a few general thoughts. With lodging, you have many more choices than airlines. Airlines will try to differentiate between each other on service, but for the most part, a seat on Delta is the same as a seat on Lufthansa. And within the airplane itself, there's virtually no difference in coach seating outside of aisle/window preference. Customers know this, so airlines are forced to play their very competitive pricing games.
Hotels have some of these features, and when possible, it's best to take advantage of them. Chains impose standards of style and quality that often make a room at a Sheraton indistinguishable from a room at a Hilton. If you are traveling to a location that has one or several chains in the target area, use the tools of the internet to get you your best price.
There are dozens of tools; the ones I tend to use are Trivago, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Hotwire.com, and Priceline.com. Let's talk about the first three -- the aggregators, which includes Travelocity and Expedia, and others. It's pretty simple, they buy bulk rooms and resell to you at a discount. Chains especially use these to fill huge quantity, and it works out for them. Indeed, there's a perception that if you book through an aggregator, you'll get the worst room in the place, but that's not true. If you don't like your room you booked through Travelocity, tell the hotel staff you're going to call Travelocity right away: Travelocity has more pull than you do in this matter. So, don't fight it, use the aggregators: but, beware, if you're traveling with kids, you'll face special issues.
That is: You have to make sure you book the right room. I need a room for two adults and two kids. Usually I can get by with booking a plain double and being a bit cramped, especially if it's just a couple of days -- I don't really need the junior suite. So my searches will often just be for a double. If you search for two adults and two kids, you'll be limited to the aforementioned suites, and that will cost you.
Now, in the US, it's almost never a problem to show up with a reservation for a double, and ask for an extra kid's bed; many US rooms come with fold out sofas anyway. US hotels don't much care, they're renting out a room, and the price is attached to the room, not the occupants.
This is *not* the same in Europe. There, it's fairly common to charge per person, not per room. A room with a double bed may be rented out for 100 Euros single occupancy, 150 Euros double occupancy: same room, different price. Thus: if you book a plain double room, and show up with two kids...well, you're out of contract. They can cancel the reservation or upcharge you a bunch, and you'll have a lot less pull with the aggregator since you were trying to game the system. Worst case is that they can refuse the room stay, and you're out on your ear. It happens.
That doesn't mean you can't use the aggregators, but just be careful. If you book the double, and have to add kids, call the aggregator before you arrive, hopefully well before. See if they can make the arrangements: better to have it completed than have to worry about it on the spot.
Now, I find dealing with aggregators in this fashion to be annoying -- you're having to shuttle your specific request through them to the hotel, and you don't really know what's going on there. Therefore I prefer to use the aggregators as a pricing check, to see what a reasonable rate is. Then I go directly to the hotel and ask for a rate.
OK, so perhaps you don't like bargaining. I hear you: one of the wonderful things about being a Westerner is that we've largely cut haggling out of our day-to-day lives. We pay the marked price ad move on. Imagine the annoyance if we had to strike a deal every time we went to the grocery store: yet much of the world lives like this. No, price bargaining is conflict, and plus, we worry that we look cheap. It's become unnatural for Westerners in daily life.
But there are real dollars at stake here, and that hotel has plenty of margin: they're going to make a profit, don't worry. This is how I like to go about my hotel negotiation:
Obviously, I get the internet rate first. Then I prefer to email the hotel asking for availability for a short stay -- one or two nights. They'll check, and at that point -- now that I've shown real booking interest, I'll enquire if they can match internet pricing. Simple, right? It almost always works. And emailing takes the stress out of it, though if you want to call them, go right ahead.
When it doesn't work right away: note that I asked for a 1-2 night figure. If they stay firm on rack rate, I'll tell them I'm still interested. I'll wait a couple of days, and then come back with a revised offer: how about 6 nights at the heavily discounted rate? Now I'm offering them an exchange: more nights, that should equate to a lower rate, and it gives them the opportunity to say yes. In these cases, you want the hotel to feel like they got something out of the negotiation, instead of just saying yes to a lower price. It assumes I can stay there for 6 nights, of course, that should be an option for you (if the price is right).
Now, the aggregators get pretty good rates, but you can do better with the two auction-style outfits, Hotwire and Priceline. They work slightly differently, if you've never used them before, but the outcome is the same. You can choose a location (a neighborhood in most cities), a hotel class, and a price range (or fixed amount bid). Then you book, and they tell you which hotel you've chosen. No backing out: you're stuck with the selection.
If I'm going to a city I know well -- Chicago, Manhattan, DC -- I'll be more likely to take this gamble, especially if I'm by myself. But if I'm picking out a neighborhood in a city I don't know...I'll pass on this strategy. It's perfectly reasonable to say, "a room is a room, as long as it's comfortable -- all I'm doing is sleeping there." I get that. But a lot can go wrong past that. The location could be noisy, or even dangerous. Ask yourself: why is this hotel having to discount their rooms so much? Hotwire & Priceline will tell you it's volume, or maybe last-minute deals. Personally, I've found these hotels often have a serious flaw, and are forced to discount. I would proceed with caution -- you get what you pay for, and sometimes not even that.
So much for the basics. But these help you only so much: eventually you'll need a place that doesn't use the aggregators. Next post.
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