We’re in holiday mode here at Grown-up Travel Guide – as you read this post we’re exploring Sardinia in Italy with limited access to the internet to update the site. Still, rather than close up shop we delved into the archives and have dusted off some of the earliest articles published back when we were lucky to get 50 readers a day. So you may well have missed these, yet we consider them just as relevant and useful now so hopefully you’ll have something to tide you over before we return. Of course we’re still putting out daily photos and some new articles too – we’ve actually been abroad since last Thursday but scheduled the new stuff to automatically publish in our absence. See you in a couple of weeks!
Travel tip #7: More hotel booking tips
Image (c) supergriya.com
Here are a few tricks and tips learned over the years about booking hotels. You may also be interested in the previous tips on this subject concerning soft openings and timing your check-in.
You have more? Bring it on…
First of all people are often asking whether the consolidator sites like hotels.com and lastminute.com (and legions of other ones) are the best bet for getting a hotel room with coupons from here. The answer here is ‘maybe’. If getting the cheapest hotel room is the most important factor
– then you´ve come to the wrong website…
That’s true, but we do still like to save money on good experiences. The best tactic is to try these sites first and make a note of the rate and conditions, then call the hotel and see if they will match it. Which leads rather neatly on to the next tip – call the hotel directly and not the central reservations hotline/toll-free number for the group. Ask to speak to the sales department or the manager. Don´t mention reservations yet as they may put you back to the hotline…explain the online deal and mention that you would prefer to book direct. This works most times, and another upshot is that you often don’t have to pay in advance either. If you’ve stayed before mention this too. Even if you haven’t, you could bluff as it’s extremely unlikely they´ll call you on it and they are keen on returning guests.
When it´s time to pick up your key
– key? When was the last time you had a key?
Okay enough now. It’s a figure of speech, alright? So when you´re checking in you want to get the best room you can, right? If you’re inclined to worry about fire safety get a room on the first 8 floors. Peter Greenberg aka The Travel Detective (who is also a volunteer fireman so knows his stuff) says that no fire brigade in the world can deal effectively with a fire on the 9th floor or higher. But we love a good view, so you pays your money and takes your choice.
The final tip in this article is to join the hotel loyalty scheme if they have one. We will return to this in greater detail but you have nothing to lose as it should be free.
Have you tried these methods? Do you have any hotel-related tips? Whatever, we want to hear from you. But we’ll still block any offensive stuff of course. Or spam…
[…] match and beat any rates but as with most of these guarantees there is a lot of small print. But read our tips page and try calling the hotel directly. So it was the combination of a reasonable rate along with […]