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I'd think it would depend on how busy they were that night.  If the place is nearly full, they have no incentive to give you a lower rate.  If they are nearly empty, some money is better than an empty room.  My boss has negotiated lower rates by having them match the price on a room at a cheaper hotel and threatening to go to that hotel if they didn't match it.  It seems to work for him. 

In my experience with bookings (plains, and trains mainly) the closer to the date of the booking, the more expensive things get, as the seats / rooms fill up, there are fewer left, so competition for the remainder drives the price up. Then again - many hotels have fixed rates anyway so I'm not certain how well this translates to reservations rather than tickets.

Last edited by smilr (2008-03-22 10:09 pm)

smilr wrote:

In my experience with bookings (plains, and trains mainly) the closer to the date of the booking, the more expensive things get, as the seats / rooms fill up, there are fewer left, so competition for the remainder drives the price up. Then again - many hotels have fixed rates anyway so I'm not certain how well this translates to reservations rather than tickets.

One time a mistake worked out to my advantage. I thought I had made a reservation at a hotel in Las Vegas but when I got there it couldn't be found. Fortunately for me it was a slow week in Vegas and I got my room at the same hotel for the weekday rate over the weekend saving me about $100 altogether.

On the other hand, I went in to another hotel on another occasion and found that some largish convention(s) had booked much of that hotel for the week going into the weekend. They were charging the weekend rate which was $130 per night over the weekday rate even though it was a Thursday.

Perhaps Vegas is a bad example since it does have such widely fluctuating rates trying to attract bigger weekday business from Southern California and Arizona. Most hotels in touristy locations set their rates seasonally, so if you are going to some place during its high tourist season you aren't likely to find much leeway in rates. If you are willing to gamble, you might check out Priceline.com--personally I've been leary of their business model, but apparently some people have gotten good bargains with them.

Where are you thinking to go and when?

Captain Kirk can help you negotiate.

I've used the coupon books you pick up at rest stops to great advantage.
you can't use them for reservations, tho. strictly walk-ins.

last time i went out of town I used C'ptn Kirk, and I got a really nice room for $50!
(the rest of the story) The hotel was booked by the "visiting" team (unknown to me) and although I couldn't hear any college style partying and slept well, at about 6:30am, while I was in the shower, the fire alarm went off! Pierceing sound combined with a voice repeating, "An emergency has been declared in this building! Everyone must evacuate immediately!"
So, what was the first thing I thought?
Of course.
TERRORIST!

some smurf fratboy had pulled the alarm.[sarcasm] ha-ha [/sarcasm]

DukeofNuke wrote:

I've used the coupon books you pick up at rest stops to great advantage.

So have I - the restrooms there are often out of TP.

I've been a desk clerk or bartender at more hotels than I care to recall, and more recently worked for an online travel company, so I know a little somethin' about this. In my experience, unless you're one of those travel mavens who's willing to spend all their time scouring the Web and exchanging info in chat rooms and message boards devoted to travel fanatics, your best bet is Hotwire.

I've seen friends of mine use it and get outrageous, screaming deals, like $25 to $35 per night at decent hotels and motels in the SF Bay Area. Personally, I've never scored a nightly rate that low, but Hotwire has routinely hooked me up with rooms that cost me roughly half the going rate, if not less. It's pretty sweet to find yourself in a luxury hotel or extended stay corporate suites for under fifty bucks per night when you know almost every other room in the place went for over $100, sometimes way more.

As to this idea of negotiating a great deal at the last possible moment: You can try, but the likelihood of success isn't high enough to justify the hassle. I know from having been that desk clerk at 10:30PM, dealing with some yokel who thinks he's got me behind the eight ball because it's a slow night and everybody in town's got nothing but vacancies. Sure, if I were the General Manager, I'd feel motivated to wheel and deal and give the guy a huge discount in order to avoid having that room just sit there vacant, but I wasn't.

I was the guy who got paid the same exact wage regardless of whether that room was rented or vacant. Just like the housekeepers in the morning who'd get the same wage regardless of whether we'd rented 10 rooms or 30. So the wheeler and dealer, in my view, was just some jack-ass lookin' to make extra work for me, and generally speaking, regardless of which service or sales industry you happen to be in, it seems to be a universal rule that the customers who are paying the least --especially the ones who've fought tooth and nail for the privilege of paying the least-- are the ones who will make the most extra work for you with various special requests, complaints, demands, etc...

Sorry, I'm getting a little verbose there, as I often do. Just giving you an insider's perspective or something...

Hey, my pleasure! I've found that tripadvisor.com, by the way, can be a source of unvarnished, often hilarious, true accounts of what these hotels are really like.

Well, Priceline wasn't any cheaper than what I could get the room directly from the hotel website. I forgot that Hotwire doesn't let you choose a specific hotel, just a general area and star rating. Oh well.

I guess? Priceline has an option that lets you name your own price but looks similar to how Hotwire works?