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captain_slinkyOkay, so here's my secret for getting the absolute cheapest rate for your hotel room when you go to Disneyland - keep this just between you and me, okay? First, look up the price of the hotel on Booking.com (or expedia or travelocity or whatever website you feel gives you the absolute best deal on hotel rooms), then CALL THAT HOTEL DIRECTLY TO BOOK YOUR ROOM, making sure to mention that you see it on the internet for the amount you are seeing it for. Every time I have done this, they have given me the room for an average of $10 cheaper than the online price - even hotels that supposedly had no reservations available!
Why does this work?
Because hotels have to put room reservations into "blocks" for sale. EXAMPLE: Let's say that the hotel I am interested in has one hundred rooms and is a Good Neighbor Hotel, each room usually rents for $100 a night.
They put aside FORTY of those rooms for Travel Agencies - Costco, Magical Adventures, Magic Travel Unlimited, etc - at the discounted price of $80 per night so that they can be "bundled" with the other amenities of a Travel Agency Booking - park admission, flight, dining, other area attractions, luggage tags, photo ops, so on and so forth. These cost $80 instead of $100 because the travel agencies have guaranteed that they will fill these rooms with guests by paying in advance - full room or empty room, makes no difference to the hotel because it's already paid.
They put aside THIRTY-FIVE of those rooms for online booking through "partner" websites - Priceline, Tracvelocity, Expedia, Booking.com and the likes - for $85 per night so people can show off to their friends how frugal they were by getting a hotel room on-line, and didn't have to take all the extra stuff that came along with the travel agency package. These cost $85 instead of $100 because the discount travel websites have a percentage agreement in place, every unfilled room in this block will cost the travel website up to 10% in fees, which adds up quite nicely for the hotel when you consider that there are several dozen discount hotel websites out there!
That leaves them with TWENTY-FIVE rooms for the hotel to have on-hand for direct sales - walk-ins, people who call direct to book a room, emergency over-bookings from other hotels and last-minute room changes. This number also changes depending on how many rooms from each of the other blocks have sold. As you get closer and closer to the day of your stay, the cheaper these rooms become and the more desperate they are to fill them at any cost; an empty Direct Sales room is an empty Direct Sales room, and they make no money off it at all.
So even if Travelocity and Costco both say that The Best Western is full and booked solid, give them a call - all it means is that Costco has sold their 40 rooms and Travelocity has sold their 35 rooms, but Best Western itself may still have 25 rooms that they're very anxious to fill!
Why does this work?
Because hotels have to put room reservations into "blocks" for sale. EXAMPLE: Let's say that the hotel I am interested in has one hundred rooms and is a Good Neighbor Hotel, each room usually rents for $100 a night.
They put aside FORTY of those rooms for Travel Agencies - Costco, Magical Adventures, Magic Travel Unlimited, etc - at the discounted price of $80 per night so that they can be "bundled" with the other amenities of a Travel Agency Booking - park admission, flight, dining, other area attractions, luggage tags, photo ops, so on and so forth. These cost $80 instead of $100 because the travel agencies have guaranteed that they will fill these rooms with guests by paying in advance - full room or empty room, makes no difference to the hotel because it's already paid.
They put aside THIRTY-FIVE of those rooms for online booking through "partner" websites - Priceline, Tracvelocity, Expedia, Booking.com and the likes - for $85 per night so people can show off to their friends how frugal they were by getting a hotel room on-line, and didn't have to take all the extra stuff that came along with the travel agency package. These cost $85 instead of $100 because the discount travel websites have a percentage agreement in place, every unfilled room in this block will cost the travel website up to 10% in fees, which adds up quite nicely for the hotel when you consider that there are several dozen discount hotel websites out there!
That leaves them with TWENTY-FIVE rooms for the hotel to have on-hand for direct sales - walk-ins, people who call direct to book a room, emergency over-bookings from other hotels and last-minute room changes. This number also changes depending on how many rooms from each of the other blocks have sold. As you get closer and closer to the day of your stay, the cheaper these rooms become and the more desperate they are to fill them at any cost; an empty Direct Sales room is an empty Direct Sales room, and they make no money off it at all.
So even if Travelocity and Costco both say that The Best Western is full and booked solid, give them a call - all it means is that Costco has sold their 40 rooms and Travelocity has sold their 35 rooms, but Best Western itself may still have 25 rooms that they're very anxious to fill!
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Date: 2015-05-01 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 10:32 pm (UTC)