How to Save Money On Hotels - Mr. Thrifty Canada

As part of our series about how to save money on travel we want to share our experience on how to save money on hotels. Unlike booking air travel, where a meta-search engine will often uncover the best price, hotel booking remains somewhat like the wild west. The price for the same room, booked at the same time and for the same day can vary significantly depending on how you make the booking.

For the smart consumer, that means you can save a significant amount of money if you use the right strategies.

Here are our Top Tips to save money on hotels:

1. Use the Right Credit Card

Check Your Credit Card Offers

This might seem like an obvious first step but many people overlook special offers available to them on their current credit cards. Mr. Thrifty can point to a few real-life examples where he or his friends saved a lot of money on hotels.

The HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard offers 10% off certain hotels when booked through Expedia or Agoda. The discount doesn’t apply to major hotel chains, like Marriott or Hilton, but Mr. Thrifty booked terrific boutique hotels in Madrid and La Jolla using this feature and saved 10% over and above Expedia’s lowest price ! (Additional savings tip: Mr. Thrifty scored the deals by using his HSBC card to register for the offer, and then saved even more money by booking the hotel on a card with better cash back rewards. But let’s keep that between us for now.)

Amex Offers. Log into your Amex account and look for special offers. Amex has offered merchant-sponsored discounts to its U.S. card holders for many years and this feature recently was recently added by Amex Canada. U.S. cardholders regularly receive money-saving offers for hotels and other items simply by registering for specific offers and charging the purchase to their Amex card. One of Mr. Thrifty’s friends saved over a hundred dollars at the Waldorf in Las Vegas, just by using an offer on her Amex card.

Consider a Hotel-Branded Card or Other Travel Rewards Card

Hotel-branded credit cards often come with introductory bonuses that are sufficient to give you one or more free nights in a hotel and are worth considering if you travel frequently and are loyal to a particular brand.

Two cards worth mentioning are (1) the Best Western Rewards Mastercard, a no annual fee card with an introductory bonus sufficient for a free night’s stay and (2) the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card, which has an annual fee of $120 and comes with an introductory bonus sufficient for 3 free nights as well as Free Night Award on each card anniversary.

A general credit card with rewards that can be used for free hotel accommodation is also worth considering. We will be publishing a featured article on the best travel rewards cards in the near future. In the interim, a good source of unbiased information is the credit cards forum on redflagdeals.

2. Sign up for Loyalty Programs and Deal Alerts

Signing up for a hotel loyalty program is free of charge and often leads to special discounts, advance notice of flash sales and money-saving perks, such as free wifi.

Let travel sites such as Expedia and Travelzoo do the shopping for you and deliver weekly money-saving hotel deals right to your inbox.

3. Use More than One Search Engine

(Thanks, Captain Obvious.)

There are too many search engines to list here and many of them are quite good. However, it’s easy to spend hours scouring the internet for deals and who has the time for that ?

We’ve had our best results recently with Expedia, Priceline and Tripadvisor (which will automatically aggregate search results from other sites). Agoda is particularly good for saving money on hotels in Asia.

Note that when you book through a hotel booking site you will not receive loyalty points from the hotel. However, many travel sites are compensating for this by offering their own loyalty rewards. Installing and making a reservation through a travel site’s mobile app will often lead to special money-saving offers and/or increased loyalty rewards.

4. Always Check the Hotel’s Own Website

Many hotels claim that the best rates are available to those customers who book directly. So, if you do find a good rate by using a search engine, make sure that you check the hotel’s website. If the rate on the hotel’s website is higher, the hotel will often match the rate you find elsewhere (and not only will you save money on your hotel but you will also receive hotel loyalty points and perks).

5. Call for a Better Deal

Calling a hotel directly may yield more savings than you can find online. This strategy will generally only work with a smaller, boutique hotel. The phone operator at the Hilton, for example, just isn’t empowered to offer you a deal.

6. Consider an Opaque Travel Site

If you have some flexibility and are not a hotel snob consider using an opaque travel site — it can lead to substantial savings. In our experience, these sites are best used to save money on hotels booked on short notice or for a short stay. And, for quality control, we recommend only booking a hotel with a star rating higher than 2 stars.

Pricing Strategies

Mr. Thrifty will generally make a refundable booking using a conventional site and then see if he can beat the price by a substantial margin on a hotel of comparably rated quality using an opaque travel site.

Pros and Cons

There are some drawbacks to keep in mind. In addition to not knowing the name or the precise location of the hotel, your booking will be non-refundable and you will not receive loyalty points for your stay. However, in our experience, the downside is typically more than offset by the savings.

Our Favourite Opaque Sites to Save Money on Hotels

Hotwire and Priceline’s Express and Name Your Own Price features are the most well-known sites and, in our experience, consistently offer the best deals. Priceline Express regularly emails out 10% discount coupons to its customers. Registering for free with Hotwire will give you lower, member-only pricing.

Priceline Bidding Strategies

If you choose to Name Your Own Price on Priceline do some homework beforehand to make sure you get a good deal and break through the opacity: use Hotwire’s pricing to determine the outer limit for your bid and use sites such as Bidding for Travel, where fellow travellers share information on winning bids, hotel names and locations and where you can learn how to “re-bid for free” to give yourself an advantage against Priceline’s algorithm. A quick search of the hotels available through the conventional booking section of Priceline’s website can also help you to narrow down the name of the hotel.

There is more overhead when using Priceline’s Name Your Own Price feature, as there is some back and forth between submitting your bid, learning the results, and re-submitting if not accepted. It can take several rounds, and the system prohibits re-bidding right away after you’ve exhausted your options without an accepted bid. Some people may be turned off by the process, but you can save a substantial amount of money on hotels.

Little-Known Specialty Sites

Other specialty sites to keep in the savings arsenal:

HotelTonight – specializes in last-minute hotels, including (as the name suggests) same evening bookings
Roomer – a travel marketplace where people can list their non-refundable hotel reservations for sale and offer them to buyers at a discounted price. (Of course, if you are stuck with a non-refundable booking of your own you may want to be a seller on Roomer).

Our experience with HotelTonight and Roomer has not yielded deals as consistently as Hotwire and Priceline but they are good tools to keep in mind.

7. Save Money on Specific Days of the Week

Just as prices for air travel will vary by day of the week to reflect supply and demand, so too will hotel prices. According to Kayak, Sunday night is generally the cheapest night of the week. And, also note: downtown, business-friendly hotels will often have lower prices on Fridays and weekend nights.