Posted by Michael Donelly

Booking a Cheap Hotel Room

Read this if you spend a lot of money on hotels or if you just want to save money on your holiday.

Upside: Up to 20% off your hotel bill

Downside: 10 minutes of extra research before booking

As a travel insider I get to see some of the seedy underbelly of the industry so I thought I would share a few tips on how to avoid the pitfalls when booking your accommodation.

First off you’ll need to decide on the type of accommodation you wish to book. My company provides apartment rentals (www.apartmentsapart.com) so of course I am biased and I think that in most cases this should be the preferred choice at least for groups of people and for longer stays.

The reality is however that old habits die hard and the majority of people still opt for hotels, so here is a quick summary of how to make sure you get bottom dollar.

Best Deal Method 1

If you already know where you want to stay, usually the best deal can be had by calling the hotel directly, but armed with information about what the price of the hotel is online. The best price can be found using a comparison engine like http://www.hotelcalculator.com. It will search all the big online agents to get you the best price. Search first for city and dates and then if you wish add a hotel name to narrow further.

2) Next you will need to know the telephone number and the website for the hotel. These days it’s often enough just to type the hotel name and the city into Google and you can get the information directly. Occasionally more work is required, perhaps by searching the online white pages for the destination.

3) Check the hotel’s website to compare the price. If the price on their website is higher than it is on Hotelcalculator, check if they have a rate guarantee. Often they will offer a 10% discount off the price you find if it’s cheaper than it was on their own website. Call the hotel and ask for a discount regardless of whether they offer a best rate guarantee or not. Remember the hotel is paying between 15% and 30% to the agent so they can afford to lower the price a bit to sell directly to you. If you cannot get a discount, Hotelcalculator has already given you the best price, so go book it there.

Best Deal Method 2

1) If you don’t know where you want to stay you can try one of the big online agents like Booking.com. It’s important to know when you deal with these guys that they are going to try to pimp you the places that earn them the most, so never take the first results popping out of a date/city search.

2) Their “most popular” results are in fact the hotels that earn them the most, partly because these hotels pay the most commission, so avoid these. I usually search for the best rated and the scroll down until I find one in my price range. Even then it’s better to ignore any with under 15 or 20 reviews as those initial reviews are quite often manipulated by the hotels themselves.

3) Once you know the hotel name you want to stay at go back and repeat Best Deal Method 1 using Hotelcalculator.com to make sure you get a rock bottom price.

A few other tips

Priceline have a “name your own price” service where they circulate your offer to hotels and if you are lucky it may get accepted. You won’t know where you are going to stay however.

Perhaps a festival or conference is taking place on your first choice of dates and hotels are expensive at this time. If you are flexible try a few date searches. Often midweek travel can be cheaper than weekend travel but this depends on the destination. Try looking at both.

Travel with friends or family and stay in an apartment instead of a hotel. Your cost per person will be significantly lower. You will also save on food bills if you use the kitchen there.

Remember also that all hotels are not central. If you only want the best deal then you won’t worry too much about the location. But if you do need a central hotel don’t forget to check the map once you found a deal.

If you liked this post, check out our tips on cheap flights.