The Best Ways To Book Hotels, Part 2: Booking More Rooms For Less Money
Hotel Reservations Are A Hassle
Travel plans can change no matter how well you plan. Dealing with schedule revisions, expecting to pay more if you had a non-refundable room, and worrying about not being able to stay in the same hotel anymore are all stressful to think about. Changing hotel reservations will always be annoying but it doesn’t have to be as stressful as it sounds. Or as pricey. With a little know-how you can keep costs down even on more expensive days. Longer hotel stays can be made cheaper by booking the same room more than once! Yes, that sounds confusing and impossible, but it’s a travel truth! I want to share two of my favorite ways to save money on hotel reservations, but let’s first focus on the biggest headache for travel planners: weekends.
Reduce Travel Costs By Making MORE Hotel Reservations
A weekend hotel reservation is my least favorite things to plan as a long term traveler because they’re budget busters. However, travel for most working adults can’t happen without them. If you’re one of the millions of adults that travels using weekend days then pay attention because this is for you! My readers that have traveled to places like Chicago, Tokyo, Los Angeles, or London know that cities around that size require more than a weekend to explore. That means there will be three weekend nights (Fri, Sat, and Sun nights) plus a weekday night or more.
Making a specific kind of reservation might save you money on your travels - you can save money by booking a hotel room for three weekend nights, and then book adjacent weekday night(s) on a separate reservation in the same type of room.
In other words, that’s two different reservations for the exact same room on four or more consecutive nights to get a cheaper total cost. The most important thing is that the two (or more) reservations must be in the same type of room. I book hotels regularly using this technique, but why does this work?
A common travel assumption is that the total cost of a hotel reservation is the sum of each individual night. That’s mostly true. However, each reservation platform “thinks” differently. I take advantage of these differences in thoughts to save money on my hotel reservations. For example, Agoda tends to add up the cost of each night for your total. If night one costs $100 and night two costs $50, Agoda reports a nightly cost of $75 when you search for a room over those two nights. Expedia might not. If night one costs $100 and night two costs $50, Expedia may show you a nightly rate of $75, or maybe $80, or even $85! For some reason Expedia occasionally reports a total cost that’s not the same as if you had booked nights independently or, as I recommended in the last paragraph, in smaller groups.
Let’s look at a recent Expedia reservation of mine.
On the right is a hotel reservation for four nights that I found on Expedia. One of my four nights was a weeknight while the other three covered an entire peak weekend. I loved the hotel’s location but was not okay with that price. Based on the price you should incorrectly assume a nightly rate near $90 with the remainder being fees. However, because I knew how Expedia “thought”, I knew to look into splitting my single reservation into smaller pieces. It made the most sense to isolate weekend prices by checking costs for a single weeknight and a three night weekend reservation.
I duplicated my Expedia tab, split my reservation in two, and found a huge cost savings!
On the left side is a reservation for my first night and on the right side is one for my three weekend nights. The single night cost $72 while the three weekend nights totaled $232 after fees. Both new reservations are way less than the expected $90 per night based on what Expedia first reported. By making two separate reservations I took my four night total down from $391 to $304.
Be sure you book the same room type when you do this - in my case, a Business City Double. If it’s not the same you’ll have to change rooms within the hotel during your stay. Booking the same room type lets the hotel combine your reservations into one. Hotels will always let you stay in the same room if it’s the same type on all reservations no matter how many nights you’re visiting.
Pay Less When Booking An Extra Night
Knowing how to split your reservation into cheaper parts can save lots of money on new reservations. Now what if you want to add more time to an existing reservation?
Adding an extra travel day can be helpful for plenty of reasons. Flights might be cheaper the next day, or there may be an event in town you didn’t know about but now you don’t want to miss. The latter is the situation Chandni and I found ourselves in during our stay in Tokyo. Staying an extra night meant we could experience Tokyo’s weekend events that we’d miss if we left on Friday. I first tried what you probably should try: I tried adding a night to our existing reservation.
A screenshot of my confirmation page is on the left. My reservation was made on Agoda because they regularly have the cheapest hotel rates across East Asia. While they have great rates, they’re also the Ryanair of their industry because they find fun ways to get your money. Changing a reservation is one of them.
My original cost was just under $80 per night after fees, yet I was being charged $145 for a single new night! A gut reaction is to move hotels for that night, but a better first check is to look at booking a new reservation on the same room type at the same hotel.
Just like when booking a split reservation, I had to select the same type of room. If I didn’t then I’d be forced to change rooms during my stay.
A single extra night became $75 which is half the price of adding a night to my original stay. I cut my cost in half without needing to move hotels, move rooms within the hotel, or pay a higher rate than my existing cost per night.
Again, hotels always combine your reservations if you have consecutive reservations in the same type of room. You can also book a new night for the same hotel on a different reservation platform. That shouldn’t matter so long as you reserve the same kind of room. Use this to your advantage to piece together a reservation from cheaper nights instead of a single more lengthy stay.
These two techniques have saved us hundreds of dollars while long term traveling across four different continents.
Other Entries In The Best Ways To Book Hotels Series
Part 1: Refundable And Non-Refundable Rooms
