Last month we were doing some traveling and stayed at a couple of different Days Inn’s and a Sleep Quarters without advance reservations. It’s not a busy time of the year and none of the places we stayed were even close to 50% occupied. I tried to talk the desk clerks into lower rates - after all 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing, but none of them would budge.
Company policy or I just need to push harder?
What’s been your experience?
I wouldn’t expect a clerk to be given the authority. You might ask to talk to his supervisor. If the supervisor says he can’t, then start walking away.
Remember, your strongest negotiating position is with your back to the person selling as you’re heading toward the door.
I asked my brother, who was a clerk at both a Quality Inn and Wingate Inn.
"In many cases, the manager will indeed give you a magic number that you are not to go below when selling rooms, no matter what the occupancy. The fact is that if you sell TOO low to several people, the hotel will start to lose money on cleaning/maintenance of the room.
You’re going to use the pool, eat the free breakfast, have some coffee in the room, maybe make some copies or printouts in the business center…all things included in the rate of your room.
Approach is everything. Front desk employees are bombarded with requests (or flat out demands) for discounts for nearly their entire shift at times. Hontestly at some point in the night, you turn down everyone just to regain a modicum of dignity."
He also says to be sure to tell you that this is “just based on one man’s experience.”
Sorry, I meant Comfort Inn not Quality Inn (he says there’s a “biiiig” difference.)
I am sure that this varies; big chain hotels with regimented procedures might have different rules than small franchises or independent hotels. I used to have a girlfriend who was a desk clerk at a hotel and she had a lot of latitude; I don’t remember if she was given a bottom-line directive. She also said that if a potential guest was rude or nasty, no way would she give him anything but the rack rate.
Often you need to know the magic rate. It helps to ask at reservation time rather than check-in. Ask what their corporate rate is, their “best rate”, AAA, AARP, military, etc.
This is going to be an IMHO-type answer, but what I do is not try to negotiate the rate per se, but but try to find a discount scheme that the clerk is comfortable applying. What I mean is, rather than requiring the clerk to haggle on “how low will you go” I try to get them to check a box that automatically generates a lower rate - I start with student discounts, USAA, Costco, etc. and just about always something will pop up. It may not be the absolute bottom dollar that their manager told them, but it’s usually 2/3 of the general rack rate.
ETA - yeah, like DanBlather said. 
I do software support for a hotel reservation package.
Most of the time the desk clerk isn’t going to have the rights to change the rates.
Also, a large number of hotels are using revenue management packages to set rates. We don’t write that software but I have an idea of how it works. The revenue management software gets a download of the rates and the availability at the property. The rev management software does some math (I don’t know what the math is, we didn’t write it) then spits out the rates that it thinks is going to generate the most revenue and then it sends that info to the hotel. The hotel uses that data for the rate structure. They probably won’t deviate from it.
There are other ways that hotels manage rates as well. In our software the property can set rate hurdles (to get a certain rate, the reservation must meet certain ‘hurdles’, for example length of stay or a number based on total stay/cost) and there are tons of reports for management to use to decide on what the rates should be.
Your best bet is to use a group discount (AARP, AAA) if possible.
Slee
Some of those require proof that you’re entitled to the discount either when you make the reservation or when you check in. Some chains require military or government travel orders or a current ID or a AAA/AARP/student ID card before they’ll extend the discount. But some don’t, or they’ll give you their “best rate” just to avoid the possibility of losing a sale. And often, the military rate isn’t their best rate anyway, it’s just what the government will reimburse the traveler.
Robin
I know a guy who works the desk at a respectable hotel in my city.
It’s a tiny notch below a Holiday Inn (to give you an idea)
He was telling me their off-season rates are $132, but his absolute minimum that he is empowered to sell for is $78.
He sometimes drops his rates he told me, but attitude is everything.
He said if a customer comes in all bossy and demanding, he basically tells them to take a flying leap (but nicely), and if the customers seem geniune and sincere, he will drop the rate depending on his mood.
Ahh to play the role of a God, the feeling of power!
I want to work there one night a month just to experience it, LOL.
I worked at a Best Western when I was in college. Usually, we had no authority to sell for anything below the normal rate. Occasionally, the manager would give us different, lower rates to use when occupancy was low.
Only on a couple of occasions, when we were at very low occupancy, did the manager give us the authority to dicker. He gave us a very low number as a “floor” and told us how to deal–quote the room at $10 off rack, then go down from there.
I often see people frustrated with the clerk at a motel who refuses to dicker. They almost certainly don’t have the authority to do it. Frankly, based on my experiences, I’d say that at least 75% of motel clerks are not intelligent enough to handle that responsibility.
Try calling, even if you are in the parking lot.
Closely related – how much discretion do clerks have about complimentary upgrades? Do some hotels have policies in place dictating upgrades in certain circumsances?
Last time I stayed at the Four Seasons, I got an extremely nice upgrade, totally unasked for. I gave the clerk a generous gratuity after the fact, but was he doing anything besides what the computer told him to?
I have an anecdote in which the hotel clerk should have been given the authority to lower a rate: We’d made reservations at a hotel starting with a Thursday night. Our rate was much lower for Friday through Sunday night because of weekend rates but we knew we’d have to pay weekday rates for that one night (Thursday).
We left home on a Wednesday thinking we’d spend a night en route. Instead, we pushed through, and arrived there in the wee hours of Thursday morning. I phoned the desk from a few miles away and said “We arrived a day early, any chance you can give us the weekend rate just for the remainder of tonight?”. The clerk wouldn’t budge. As a result, they lost all revenue on that room for that night (it was available, and at that point highly unlikely to be rented for any price that night). We were not prepared to pay weekday rates for 5 hours use of the room so we stayed at a motel nearby.
My guess is there was a corporate policy of never lowering the rates upon request.
There is a well known trick in Vegas called the $20 tip upgrade. The clerks at the front cannot lower your reserved rate, but can, if they hotel is not full, upgrade the room. The proper way to go about this is to fold up a $20 bill under your ID or credit card, and when you hand it to the clerk (assuming there are no managers around), say,“Could you check if there are any complimentary upgrades available?” They will feel the money, and if it is availalbe, upgrade you to a larger room, a better view, or even a suite. I’ve only been to Vegas for the WSOP so there werent any rooms to spare anyway, but on fatwallet forums there is a thread dedicated to this procedure with tons of first hand success stories.
I’m unsure of how SDMB looks upon linking to another forum, but go to www.fatwallet.com, then click forums, then “travel deals”, and search for “LAS VEGAS FRONT DESK TIPPING”, or there are now websites devoted to it, such as
www.thetwentydollartrick.com
I’m working the graveyard shift at a Holiday Inn Express while going to college (don’t ever do this, by the way), and this is probably the best advice you can take if you’re trying to get the lowest rate possible.
I don’t have the authority to reduce your rate by a certain dollar amount, but if you’re a cool person or if it’s late and you look exhausted, I’ll discount your rate as much as I possibly can even if you aren’t able to produce the proper identification (AAA/AARP card).
Everybody should be a member of AAA anyway, so always ask for their rate. 
Even better than the $20 tip upgrade is to be a regular. We get up-graded to a mini-suite just about every time we are in Vegas, and that’s for a room we are getting free in the first place!
You could become a platinum member. I’ve just finished living in a hotel since mid-May (no, not fun if you think about it). Corporate travel couldn’t book my last stay at the corporate rate, so I called the hotel directly and they (knowing me) overrode the system. They even do cool things like override the pet fee (which my company won’t reimburse me for).