Hotel rates vary by class of hotel, location, season, and other factors. Overall, in 2006, domestic hotel room rates are expected to increase over 6% according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers. But there are still steps you can take to save when booking your room. Below are tips we've compiled to help you find the best deal for a hotel room.
Discounts:
First, shop major travel booking sites, especially Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline. You might also want to try the hotel discount site Quickbook.
To identify the best value, we recommend visiting a travel review site, such as Tripadvisor. A well-run two star hotel may be cleaner, more spacious and even offer more amenities than a three star hotel, at a much better price.
Before booking, call the hotel directly and try to bargain a price that's better than their best rate. According to Consumers' Union, when bargaining with the reservationists, people are successful at getting a discount or a free upgrade 44% of the time, even at high-end hotels like the New York Waldorf-Astoria Towers.
If booking directly on a hotel's website or reservations, ask about discounts or promotions such as AAA or AARP (if you are a member). Also, you can search the Internet for current promotional codes. For example, when we searched for "Marriott Chicago promotion code" on the Internet, we found several current special rates on rooms at the Marriott Chicago.
Finally, if you are flexible in terms of where you stay, you can use name your price discount sites such as Priceline and Hotwire. Priceline advertises that you can save up to 50% on a hotel room.
I recently used Priceline for the first time to bid for a hotel room, and I was thrilled with the results. I got the Delta Montreal in Montreal, Canada, for $53 a night when Expedia showed this hotel for the same days for $150 a night. I think I lucked out because this was a surprisingly nice hotel. I think Priceline works best if: it's a slow day and there's lots of unused inventory, if you're flexible with the kind of room you get (smoking/non, king/2 full beds), if you're flexible with the general area of the hotel, and if you don't have specific needs for the hotel (Internet, permit pets, fitness center, etc.) I also used biddingfortravel.com to get suggestions for how much I should bid. Betterbidding.com is another helpful site with bid suggestions.
I used www.discounthotelshawaii.com to book a room at the Aqua Bamboo on Oahu when my family and I went on vacation earlier this summer. This was after checking www.kayak.com and bidding a bit on priceline.
I felt that we ended up getting a reasonable deal and unless priceline comes up with a great deal next time, I'll use this company again to find a room in Oahu in the future.
One thing to note, though, is to definitely research the hotel before agreeing to book it. The Aqua Bamboo is a nice place, the staff is very friendly, the spa is great (at least according to my wife), but the rooms do show their age, even after a fresh coat of paint and a LCD TV -- just know what to expect and it should be a great trip -- after all, you're in HAWAII. Go to Leonard's and have a malasada...but that kind of belongs in another subject heading...