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  Hotel Strategies

Hotels 101: Get the Best Deal on Your Hotel Room outlined some straightforward strategies for saving money on hotel reservations. If you are willing to invest some additional effort, you can sometimes get an even better deal.

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• Earn additional rewards*Purchasing the points you need for your hotel reservation
• Best rate guarantees
• Paying the lowest net cost, factoring in rewards and promotions
• Other tips

Earning additional rewards for your reservation

With a little extra effort, you can get additional reward points (or cash back), with your hotel reservation (above and beyond the rewards you earn from your travel credit card and the base rewards from the hotel's loyalty program).

• Several websites will give you thousands of frequent flyer miles for making a hotel reservation. Online travel is a competitive business, and these companies differentiate themselves by kicking back part of their commission as frequent flyer miles (or other types of reward points). When you factor in the value of these miles, using these sites can be a better deal than booking a (usually slightly less expensive) room rate on another website (even if you miss out on the hotel's own reward program benefits). Consider Booking with Bonus Mile Booking Sites to Get Thousands of Miles.

When better "mileage back" deals are available, you can expect to get several thousand miles for a typical $100-300 room reservation. If you value the reward points at about 1.5 cents each, it isn't unusual to receive 20-25% back in reward value. But, if a good deal isn't available, you may only receive something like a 100 miles.

Not long ago, these sites often charged significantly higher prices for their hotels rooms. But with recent tests, their room rates usually match (or are only slight more expensive than) the standard "best available rate" available across the web. Sometimes there prices are actually significantly lower. But, you should always compare against rates you can get elsewhere, as you can often find a lower "discounted rate" that saves more money than the miles are worth.

Different sites provide bonus miles on different hotels, and on each site, the number of points you receive differs widely depending on the hotel you book, and sometimes the type of points you choose to receive. As a result, you often want to check multiple sites; and (if you aren't solely focused on earning points with a particular program) try switching between a couple of reward programs to see how many points you can earn.

• Rocketmiles. Rocketmiles is generally the most useful of the sites. They have the widest range of reward options, including support for things like Membership Rewards points, Amazon.com gift cards and Uber credits. And they frequently offer the most reward points for a given hotel.

• Kaligo. For US Hotels, Kaligo usually charges slightly more than the "best available rates", but they sometimes offer more reward points than the other options. Internationally, they often provide the cheapest room rates and the widest selection of hotels. Unfortunately, Kaligo supports the fewest number of US frequent flyer programs, but it does support United and Alaska, as well as a set of useful foreign programs.

• PointsHound. Usually the least attractive option. Room rates are competitive, but they often provide fewer reward points and usually have the smallest selection of hotels. That said, there are plenty of times where they offer a best deal than the other two sites, so they are worth adding to your search. Supports the fewest overall number of frequent flyer programs, but still has generally useful options like Alaska and American.

• If you are booking a room at a chain hotel, you can almost always take advantage of special promotions to earn additional reward points. There is always some sort of promotion available, and you can often stack together multiple promotions to earn even more points. The best single listing of available promotions is available from the Frequent Flyer Bonuses website. .

• 3^rd party travel booking sites sometimes offer special promotions that give you an additional discount on their regular rates. Deals might give you 10% or 15% off any hotel reservation, or up to $50 or $100 back (which can sometime work out to a free hotel night at a less expensive hotel). .


You just need to be careful about the wording of these offers. You'll frequently see offers like "50% off hotel rates", which are just promoting the supposed discounts of their site's existing hotel rates. You are looking for special codes that gives you an additional discount on top of the rates that show up in the regular search results.

• You can usually get additional rewards by taking advantage of a shopping portal. Shopping portals give you bonus rewards when you shop at hundreds of different online merchants. All you need to do, is visit the shopping portal first, and then click on the link to the hotel company or travel site where you want to book. The Shopping Portal gets an “affiliate fee” from the travel site, and kicks-back some of that to you. If you are taking advantage of an already discounted rate, you won’t necessarily get anything back from the Shopping Portal, but you might as well try on every reservation. .

Deciding on the Best Deal, Factoring in Rewards and Promotions

The sophisticated travel booker spends time comparing the net benefits of booking through different websites, based on the room rates, as well as the rewards that they receive, and promotions that they can take advantage of.

• Much of the time it comes down to choosing between booking directly, or using Hotels.com. Is there a great promotion with the hotel’s loyalty program? Do you expect to be able to take advantage of the points you’ll earn from the hotel’s award program anyway? Is there a current booking promotion and/or discount gift card deal from Hotels.com?

• Sometimes, it is worthwhile to book through a different 3^rd party travel site. Hotels.com has the best of the travel site loyalty programs. But perhaps there is a great booking promotion at Orbitz. Or you can take advantage of a lower rate or Best Rate Guarantee at some other website.
• Sometimes you are better off using a specialized site that gives you a bunch of frequent flyer miles for booking a hotel reservation. When you book with Rocketmiles, PointsHound, or Kaligo, you’ll typically get thousands of frequent flyer miles for each hotel reservation. When you factor in the value of these miles, this can be a better deal than booking a slightly less expensive room rate on another website.

Purchasing the points you need for your hotel reservation

Ideally,you would already have hotel points for a free hotel night. But, most people can't continuously maintain substantial point balances in all of the different hotel programs.

If you don't have enough points for a free hotel night, rather than paying the cash price for the room, it is sometimes cheaper to purchase the points you would need for an award reservation.

For example, let's imagine that there is a special event, hotel rates are high, and you really want to stay in a particular Hyatt hotel that would cost $220 per night, plus taxes. The hotel is a "Hyatt Category 2" hotel, meaning an award night would require 8,000 Hyatt points, which you don't have. Rather than paying over $250, you could purchase the Hyatt points you need for 2.4 cents each, or a total of $192.

Most of the time, the cost to purchase enough points for a free night is considerably more expensive than just paying the room rate. But, there are plenty of times when buying points is the cheaper option. Whenever rates for your hotel are high, or you are staying in US-based hotel brand in an inexpensive country, it is worth checking to see if you can save money by purchasing the points you need. Get a Discounted Room Rate by Buying the Points for an Award Night.

• Purchasing points is often cheaper than a regular reservation at IHG and Choice hotels, because you purchase points cheaply using the "Cash & Points Trick". By making, and then cancelling, a Cash & Points reservation with these two programs, you can acquire points for considerably less than the normal purchase price. At these lower point acquisition rates, points-based reservations are much more likely to save you money. Get Cheap IHG and Choice Points Using the Cash & Points Trick.
• This includes booking independent luxury hotels that are part of the Preferred Hotels program. These hotels can be booked with Choice points that you acquire with Cash & Points trick. While the cost for acquiring enough points for these hotels will be high, it is often less expensive than their best available rates. Book Independent Luxury Hotels with Choice Points.

• If you have a bunch of Ultimate Rewards points, it can easily be worth using them for Hyatt reservations. In the example above, rather than spending $96, you could have used 4,000 of your Ultimate Rewards points. This is more value per point than you are likely to get through other redemptions (although using your points for business and first class frequent flyer tickets can be even more valuable). Ultimate Rewards Transfer Partners.
• It often works out when points are on sale. Each hotel program sometimes offer promotions where you receive a bonus on points purchases. If there is a sale going on, the cost of points is lower, and it is more likely to be cheaper to buy points than to pay for a regular reservation. Acquiring More Hotel Points When They are On Sale.

Taking advantage of best rate guarantees to get bonus savings

Most hotel chains, and a few hotel booking websites, offer “Best Rate Guarantees” (BRG).

• In many cases, along with matching any lower price you find, the hotel or travel site will give you an added bonus, such as an extra $50 off. These extra discounts are supposed to demonstrate the website’s commitment to offering the lowest available prices, but to you, they are an opportunity to get a discounted room rate.

• If you can find any difference in the prices for a hotel room, you can often take advantage of the best rate guarantee on whichever website has the more expensive price. If they offer a bonus, you’ll get an even better deal than just the lower of the two prices. For example, if you find a rate for a Marriott hotel of $180 on a 3^rd party website, and Marriott is selling the same room for $200, you can take advantage of Marriott's BRG to book the room for only $135 (25%-off the lower rate you found).
• The catch is that the lower rate needs to be a publicly-available rate, which are supposed to be the same on every site; and every other aspect of the reservation needs to be identical. For example, you can’t match a member’s only rate, a “private deal”, a rate where you used a discount code, or a rate you found as part of a package.
• It is hard to find price discrepancies, that would qualify for a Best Rate Guarantee. As a result, we usually don’t recommend actively searching for Best Rate Guarantee opportunities. But, if you run across a price discrepancy while you are shopping, you can get a great deal on your room.

Use Best Rate Guarantees (When you Can) to Get an Additional Discounts on Your Room Rate

Other tips

• You might be eligible for a corporate discount. If you work for a larger company, or are a member of another large organization, you could be eligible for a corporate or group rate. Many companies allow their employees to use their corporate rates or travel portals, even when they are taking a non-work trip. Sometimes you need to use the company booking tool, sometimes you can use a company discount code on the regular website, and sometimes you just need to call in and request your company's rate.

These rates tend to be especially attractive when hotels are charging higher-than-normal prices during periods of peak demand. But at other times, corporate rates can be more expensive, especially if you are willing to take advantage of alternative rates that are non-refundable.

• If you occasionally stay at hotels for longer periods of time, get the Citi Prestige card to take advantage of its "4^th night free" benefit. Citibank will refund the cost of your 4^th night at pretty any hotel you book through their website, up to twice each year. If you tend to make a few longer hotel stays each year for ski trips, beach vacations, family visits, medical care, work, or other reasons, this can be a great way to reduce the cost of your travel.Get Your 4th Night Free with the Citi Prestige Card
• Sometimes, you can pay for your room with discounted gift cards. During sales, you can purchase gift cards for hotel chains (like Hilton) or travel sites (like Hotels.com) at discounted prices, such as 20% off. If you use them to pay for your reservations, you are effectively getting an additional discount on your room. You can often find discounted gift cards by searching eBay or Amazon. Unless you are sure you can use them, we don’t necessarily recommend stocking up on cards. But it is worth a quick search to see if you can find some at the time you are ready to book a specific hotel.

Hotels 101: Get the Best Deal on Your Hotel Room

Consider Booking with Bonus Mile Booking Sites to Get Thousands of Miles

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