Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Cheaper motel rooms
If you'll be traveling to an area and/or during a time when motels are not overcrowded, don't make reservations ahead of time. Wait until you get there, then rent a room after dark. You'll get a better deal because motels want to fill their vacancies. Don't be too shy to dicker a little because most motel clerks have a lot of leeway in what they can charge you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I know for a fact this is true- even on up into the 5 star hotels (which is probably useless info for a truly frugal person.lol:) Jayne
I used to manage a small chain of motels and yes, it's true for all of them, even the ones the truly frugal wouldn't pay for. :)
My brother worked as a hotel desk clerk during college and was told to offer a room rate according to how affluent walk-in guests without resesrvations appeared to be.
On the other hand, a couple years ago when I needed a rental car I found a good price on a company's web page, then walked over to the rental outlet on my lunch hour, didn't mention the internet, and was offered a higher price for the same size car/number of days. After I mentioned what I had found on the company's web site, there was a wink (!), some justification about "oh, transmission died, special rate for that," and the price went down to the web page price.
Exactly. There are no set prices on motel rooms.
I've worked front desk in two hotels. At the first I had great freedom with the rate for the room, just as long as I charged over a certain amount. This amount was about $20 lower than the rack rate. We usually just gave anyone who asked for a discount the AAA 10 percent off. The second hotel would not budge from rack rate. They didn't seem to care that an empty room would make no money.
I don't know about hotels, only motels.
Post a Comment