Travel Tip #27

Hotel Tip #5 Compare Prices and Availability Between a Hotel’s Website and Online Travel Sites.

When planning a trip, saving money before you leave is important because those savings at home translate into extra spending money while you are gone. Spending some time now searching room rates will allow you to spend more money when you are actually staying in that room.
When you are searching for online reviews, Trip Advisor is a the go-to site. When you find a hotel you are interested in, the website will link you to online hotel aggregators such as hotels.com, expedia.com, and venere.com, but will not link to the hotel’s itself. When checking prices, it is best to look at the hotel’s actual site as well as online travel sites, because the prices and availability of rooms may vary. Sometimes a hotel will not show any rooms open for a given period, but a check of a different site (or even an email to the hotel itself) will allow you to make a reservation. Hotel aggregators may offer a discounted price for reservations that are more restrictive such as having you pay now and offering a shorter and cancellation period. These options are fine for those with a fairly strict itinerary involving plane tickets that are already purchased, but not so great for those using a rail pass without seat reservations. Hotels.com has an incentive program to increase repeat business that offers a free night after staying ten. The only way you are going to know who has the best deal is to check.

Know Before You Go

Using a combination of Trip Advisor, hotel aggregators, guidebooks and the hotel’s website should allow you to get a pretty good idea of the value of the hotel room.

Bottom Line

A little bit of room research before you leave can pay off big once you are there.