Hotel Bargains - book direct or use a travel platform?
Discussion
I am in the unusual situation (for me at least) of needing to book a 1 night hotel stay but not really caring that much about the hotel or even the specific location - it just needs to be in Miami. Well, I care about the location a little bit, but we can take an Uber to go out for dinner.
Currently prices are very high, even with the much touted "Black Friday Discount".
I am thinking of leaving it until much nearer to the time. Normally, I book direct with the hotel, but the only place where I've seen the hotel websites show really cheap room prices is Las Vegas. In other locations they seem to just display the "rack rate", even for bookings for the next day. Should I be using Booking.com or Trivago or similar, or is direct still the best way to go?
Currently prices are very high, even with the much touted "Black Friday Discount".
I am thinking of leaving it until much nearer to the time. Normally, I book direct with the hotel, but the only place where I've seen the hotel websites show really cheap room prices is Las Vegas. In other locations they seem to just display the "rack rate", even for bookings for the next day. Should I be using Booking.com or Trivago or similar, or is direct still the best way to go?
Miami has got very expensive since Covid and wasn't cheap before that. Miami Beach is even more expensive especially if you want anything fronting the beach or boardwalk. You can get some deals but in my experience you need to book early as the prices seem to go up the closer you get to the dates you want.
One trick I use is to book something you can cancel without penalty with a chain through their website at a price/location I can live with as a banker and then regularly check around other websites for other possibilities. Sometimes a hotel might get a cancelled event and put those rooms on sale so it can happen. If you don't get anything else at least you've got the banker to fall back on.
One trick I use is to book something you can cancel without penalty with a chain through their website at a price/location I can live with as a banker and then regularly check around other websites for other possibilities. Sometimes a hotel might get a cancelled event and put those rooms on sale so it can happen. If you don't get anything else at least you've got the banker to fall back on.
DeejRC said:
By and large I use booking.com as a baseline for all my hotels bookings. Then you can look at other sites or the specific hotels themselves.
This is how I do it too.Main thing with booking direct is if the hotel is making more money by not seeing a middleman take a slice; often hotels just farm out bookings to a different 3rd party so it makes no difference to them.
Occasionally doing a direct booking for the same money as booking.com will result in a preferable room. I found this in Germany and Japan.
In Germany (Nuremberg) that resulted in an upgrade to a suite with this view:
It can depend on the sort of holiday. For single nights, I use booking.com, so often that I (apparently) receive a discount. Mrs L and I had a driving holiday that we put together ourselves, so used booking.com for all the hotels.
There's a hotel in Cyprus that we are returning to; I compared the cost of the Easyjet package with direct booking and sorting flights ourselves. There wasn't much in it and though a discount might have been arranged with the hotel, the availability of an Easyjet rep to refer problems to, won out in the end.
Easyjet had obviously block-booked loads of rooms, so late booking with the hotel could mean being stuck with land-facing rooms near the lifts, or (still) expensive suites.
There's a hotel in Cyprus that we are returning to; I compared the cost of the Easyjet package with direct booking and sorting flights ourselves. There wasn't much in it and though a discount might have been arranged with the hotel, the availability of an Easyjet rep to refer problems to, won out in the end.
Easyjet had obviously block-booked loads of rooms, so late booking with the hotel could mean being stuck with land-facing rooms near the lifts, or (still) expensive suites.
Lotusgone said:
It can depend on the sort of holiday. For single nights, I use booking.com, so often that I (apparently) receive a discount. Mrs L and I had a driving holiday that we put together ourselves, so used booking.com for all the hotels.
There's a hotel in Cyprus that we are returning to; I compared the cost of the Easyjet package with direct booking and sorting flights ourselves. There wasn't much in it and though a discount might have been arranged with the hotel, the availability of an Easyjet rep to refer problems to, won out in the end.
Easyjet had obviously block-booked loads of rooms, so late booking with the hotel could mean being stuck with land-facing rooms near the lifts, or (still) expensive suites.
Couldn't you just email the hotel and ask what rooms were available? Also upgrades are generally far cheaper through the hotel than a third party site.There's a hotel in Cyprus that we are returning to; I compared the cost of the Easyjet package with direct booking and sorting flights ourselves. There wasn't much in it and though a discount might have been arranged with the hotel, the availability of an Easyjet rep to refer problems to, won out in the end.
Easyjet had obviously block-booked loads of rooms, so late booking with the hotel could mean being stuck with land-facing rooms near the lifts, or (still) expensive suites.
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