Easy Hacks to Save on Your Next Hotel

Among all vacation-related expenses, hotels account for a significant portion of the total bill. Even for individual travelers, a decent room in a major tourist city can easily exceed $100 per night. This expense adds up quickly for a two-week vacation, to say nothing of food, activities, and travel expenses. While hotels offer many perks and comforts by themselves, they don’t need to be the budget busters they too often wind up being.

Fortunately, there are ways that you can reduce your expenses and ensure that your next hotel winds up costing you less, leaving more in your budget to make the most of your vacation. Use these seven simple hacks to keep your costs low.

1. Make It Personal. Online shopping offers many conveniences, such as the liberty to make your booking from across the world at any time of day or night. However, there are often significant discounts and promotions available that aren’t listed online. Speaking to a person — whether a travel agent or an agent at the hotel — can unlock these discounts and get you significantly better prices. The longer your stay, the more sway you’ll have to negotiate a better price and the more impact these savings will have, as they’re multiplied per night.
2. Stay in One Place. Related to the above, hotels give better rates for guests staying more than one night. Extended stays can lower the rates dramatically because it means the hotel will not need to do as much room maintenance and have far more security that the room is booked every night for a more extended period rather than depending on passing travelers to fill the void, which often leaves rooms vacant for nights or even weeks at a time. In fact, you may want to book the hotel including a night or two that you know you’ll be staying elsewhere for a day trip at your destination, as the longer extended package including the night(s) you won’t be there could cost less than multiple shorter stays.
3. Pick and Choose Your Hotels. Conversely, depending on when and where you’re traveling, those package rates may include nights with premium fees for local holidays and events. Other, less popular hotels may be significantly cheaper on select nights, so it’s worth doing the math to see if you can save by building your own package, even if it means moving between hotels a few times.
4. Travel Off-Season. No matter where you’re going or what you’re doing on your vacation, you can save a ton of money by traveling during the less common seasons. Popular tourist destinations will be less crowded, vendors and restaurants may have lower prices, and travel and lodging expenses will be drastically reduced. Even during the hot summer and cold winter, hotels must keep their rooms filled to avoid losing money, so they’ll happily entice visitors by lowering their rates.
5. Do Your Research. The odds are that you can find a better rate for your room than what you’ll pay if you book the first place you search. Take the time to browse hotel aggregator sites such as hotels.com and the hotel’s website. If you find a better rate from a third party, call the hotel and see if you can get a refund for the difference, as they will often honor those prices even if they didn’t create the initial discount.
6. Maximize Your Points. Big hotel brands such as Mariott have rewards programs if you book your stay with them directly. You can combine those points with other programs by using rewards credit cards. Sometimes, you can double or triple the points you get by using the right card, such as a Mariott partner credit card to book your stay there. Later, you can turn those points into free stays and save money on future vacations.
7. Try the Hot Deals. Sites like Priceline often have significant discounts available if you book blind, as these are one-off promotions to fill rooms that are otherwise not getting filled. As a result, you won’t get to choose the hotel but will save money for your stay. Additionally, you can select pre-paid rates at hotels that will reduce your cost in exchange for eliminating the possibility of getting a refund if your plans change.

With these tips, your next vacation may cost significantly less. The effort you put in now before you even fly to your destination can ultimately save you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Put that money towards a future vacation or enjoy the sites and bites at your destination this time.