Doing some traveling in the New England area. Astonished at the rate increases over the last few years. Have habitually just stopped in and got a room. Now I’m going to have to price shop. What works best for you? Using one of the services like travelocity or kayak OR calling hotel directly OR calling national reservation number? Looking for your experiences. TIA!
I recently went through this looking at places to stay in the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest.
I usually use a complicated system that takes hours to save $20. I can’t help myself.
Anyway, I’ll often use one of the booking sites, plus Google Maps, and just plain web searches to find a list of hotels in the area I want. Then I go to the website for each hotel to get pricing, and I always book through the hotel’s own site. The booking sites will often appear cheaper, but once getting the exact dates and locations, the booking sites are always the same or more than the hotels themselves.
Often all of the hotels from a single chain can be searched on that chain’s website, instead of needing to go to each individual franchise.
Lately I’ve been using mostly Google Maps to search for hotels. It’ll show you the rates at all the hotels in the area you’re looking at, and I usually select one based on a combination of location and price.
I generally prefer booking directly through the hotel’s web site; you usually get the same rate as the travel sites, and if you need to make changes to your reservation its easier if you booked directly with the hotel.
I just used Costco travel for the first time, and was VERY impressed. You get a person on the phone stat, and they know what they are doing. Saved us a bunch of money doing a fancy Fiji vacation.
I go on road trips for a couple of months every year. What works for me is signing up for loyalty programs (Best Western, IHG/Holiday Inn/Choice/Hilton, etc) and having a couple of branded credit cards that give rewards points towards free nights. My preferred brands aren’t the cheapest, but I can usually count on a certain level of comfort and amenities.
If there isn’t a hotel in one of those chains where I want to stay I’ll check for options with a hotel search on Google Maps and look at reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp. Once in awhile I’ll find a decent rate and book a cabin at a KOA or a National or State Park or even a vintage trailer in an RV park.
As your thread title states, prices are up all over…especially during the high season. Rates might be a bit lower in the off season…but in New England I don’t even know if there is an off season. You might as well travel now because I doubt prices are going to be going down any time soon.
February.
Rural New England definitely has an off season. I grew up in Deer Isle and Camden ME, and worked on Martha’s Vineyard for a year. Memorial Day to Labor Day is nuts, then you get the leaf peepers. After that, if you’re not in a ski town, crickets. Like, check to see if the restaurant is actually open before heading out. A lot of Motels are seasonal, too.
February in New England is early mud season, followed by March or middle mud season and then April which can be late mud season or early black fly season.
Currently in Danbury, CT at a Holiday Inn Express. Prior to COVID it was $100. to $115. for an overnight. Tonight’s rack rate is $189.! Hence my search for best approach to lower rates.
Well, there’s always Priceline, Hotels/Booking dot com, HotelTonight etc. My brother uses those websites all the time and is usually able to find deals. What I don’t like about them is sometimes you don’t find out what hotel you’re getting until after you hit the “reserve now” button. For example, you might get a deal in “San Diego” and end up with a hotel that’s actually in Chula Vista.
I’ve always used TripAdvisor. Along with availability, I can get a decent amount of information on the hotel (including what seem to be genuine reviews) and it shows the prices on a number of common reservation sites (like Hotels.com). There usually isn’t much difference in the prices, but sometimes there will be an outlier to take advantage of.
A.k.a. “schlump season.”
I used to use Hotwire quite a bit, just kept to the higher-star properties (since you don’t know what you’re getting until you book). I haven’t actually gone with that for a long time, though - my wife didn’t like rolling the dice and ending up in a boutique hotel (that was very nice, but had tiny rooms).
I’ll usually start my search with Kayak or Trivago to get an idea of prices/availability, but I will always book through the hotel website. Even if prices may look a little better on Travelocity or Expedia or whatever, if you do run into a problem with your booking, the hotel has no incentive to do much for you since your deal wasn’t with them, it was with the aggregator website. Plus, I still have a bunch of Marriott points saved up after my daughter’s wedding reception at a Marriott, so I kind of lean there first.
I absolutely agree with you about how ridiculous hotel rates are these days. I recently saw an article about continuing inflation that had the temerity to say airfares and hotel rates had been “cratering” in contrast to other prices - all I could think if was, where are you getting your airline tickets and hotel bookings, cause they’re not “cratering” anywhere I look!
February is peak ski season, and MA school vacation is typically the 3rd week. Lodging near ski areas is at a premium.
This is what I was gonna drop in to say. And booking directly from the property website makes it easier to utilize these programs.