13 tricks to find cheap and on-offer hotels for your next vacation
Do you want to save some money on your next trip by finding cheap hotels?There are always ways to save when booking accommodation, from the oldest negotiation and bidding tactics to the use of online hotel comparators, extensions for your browser, or discount codes.
It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a modest pension to take a route through the most beautiful villages of your community, that you want to go to a luxurious tropical resort, or that you don’t mind looking for alternative accommodations such as an exchange of houses, boats, rental motorhomes, or shared rooms in a hostel.
You can use these tricks to find cheap hotels anywhere and at all times of the year. As always, choosing the low season, going to less popular places, or booking early employment.
Expert travel bloggers and reference websites such as NerdWallet, Skyscanner, and Thritfy Nomads bring their experience and tips to make your next stop at a hotel cheaper.
Compare sites and offers.
Comparison shopping and searching for the greatest hotel offers online will help you save money.
Research is important because prices vary by website and you can find discount coupons, book through the official website, have points, or find a better offer.
Some of the best websites to find cheap hotels are Atrápalo, Kayak, Destinia, Trivago, or Booking. Also available are Rumbo, Last Minute, Expedia, Logitravel, and Momondo.Rastreator, Travelzoo, and Skyscanner can also give you a cable.
Use all the filters at your fingertips on these platforms to find the type of hotel room you are looking for and thus pay as little as possible without losing an iota of comfort.
You must also subscribe to the newsletters of travel agencies to receive alerts and promotions about hotels with special prices. And try different search engines, as they can give different results.
Use a VPN.
VPN Mentor tells how they saved more than $300 in a luxury hotel using the Cyberghost VPN.
It happens that hotels change prices according to your location. For example, it is common for you to pay more by booking the same hotel from the United States than from Latin America. How do you know where you are? because Google scans your cookies, IP address, GPS tracking of your mobile phone, or location through WiFi.
Using a VPN, you can change your location in addition to encrypting your data and protecting your Internet connection. The tricks to taking advantage of the VPN are mainly two: access the web from a country with a lower income than yours or find countries that offer better offers and discounts to local customers.
Don’t forget to be patient and delete your browsing history and cookies before starting to search on those websites. Connect to the VPN and search using incognito mode.
YouTuber Judith Tiral also explains her tricks for booking cheap hotels with a VPN in this video.
Take advantage of last-minute offers.
Most search engines have a specific option to find cheap last-minute hotels, ideal for small getaways or makeshift weekend plans. You just have to test the dates of your stay or resort to that specific option.
Logitravel has a Weekend Desk and last-minute hosting.
HotelTonight, for Android and iOS, partners with over 15,000 hotels in 35 countries.
This software lets you book in 10 seconds, obtain geolocation-based discounts, and save on midweek or surprise vacations.
You will find another alternative on the website Priceline.com, with offers every day for that night published in the morning. Lastminute is another of the most effective search engines for last-minute reservations.
Search for discount codes.
The Internet is full of bargains and juicy discount coupons for hotels that work. Search for these promotional codes on websites such as Radar Coupon, Hoteles.com, Hotel Chollos, Cuopón Hotel, Picodi, Chollo.es, or Chollómetro.
Needless to say, you always have to try them first, since some may not work, have expired, or not be valid for your geographical area.
Look for discount codes for hotels. also in the newsletters of the pages to which you are subscribed, in the media you read, or on social networks and platforms such as YouTube or Instagram, since it is very common for influencers or content prescribers to have affiliate contracts or sponsorships linked to hotel companies.
Take advantage of the free cancellation.
Another tip for saving money on travel is to book several hotels with free cancellation and choose the cheapest offer,how to get cheap hotel rooms resulting in the lowest price.It is recommended to do it three or four months in advance, since the price tends to rise during the last month.
The duration of your stay influences this, so it may compensate you for staying in the same hotel for several nights. Take advantage of offers such as the “X free night,” making sure that the rate is really cheaper and not manipulated to round off the total price.
See alternative accommodations: couchsurfing, wwoofing, nigtswapping, and crewing.
Hotels are not the only accommodation option: vacation rental apartments from platforms such as AirBnB or HomeAway come into play, but there are also other alternatives such as coachsurfing, a trend that has many years behind it and for which you can stay for free on someone else’s couch. how to get cheap hotel rooms The original website of the project has been making economic revenue since 2012, but there are other websites such as Trustroots or Bewelcome.
You can also sign up for wwoofing, where you will have opportunities to work on organic farms in exchange for free travel around the world, how to get cheap hotel rooms or volunteer through Workaway or Helpstay.
And if your thing is to join a boat crew, you can sleep and travel for free in exchange for tasks and work.Platforms such as Find a Crew, Crewseekers, or Atomvoyages serve this purpose.
Another trend is “nightswapping,” in which nights are exchanged in other homes and you act as a host in your own.
There’s also house sitting, which allows you to take care of other people’s homes in exchange for free lodging.To do this, you can take advantage of pages such as Trusted Housesitters or Housecare, as well as MindMyHouse, which offer jobs working on organic farms in exchange for free travel around the planet.
As you can see, there are trends for traveling and staying for free around the world for all tastes.
Take advantage of Google Travel.
Google Travel allows you to start planning your next trip with the help of the search engine, finding activities to do and offers on flights, hotels, and vacation rentals. Enter dates, explore, and find the cheapest hotels.
Google allows tourism businesses to advertise for free on its platform, allowing users to access a wider range of hotels and prices and have more options to plan each trip.
Stay away from the hotels in the most central and touristic neighborhoods.
Staying in the heart of the city is always more expensive than on the outskirts. You will pay a lot more for the hotels located in the main shopping streets, centralized vending areas, and tourist areas.
He advocates looking for neighborhoods far from mass tourism, quiet residential areas, or simply streets further away from the area of restaurants, how to get cheap hotel rooms pubs, shops, or museums. Worry about finding a good connection with the city’s public transport, and you will save a considerable amount of money.
flexible with reservation days: from Monday to Friday it is cheaper.
It will be easy to find cheap hotels online if you can be flexible with the booking dates. Traditionally, people used to travel on weekends with an additional day, Friday or Monday, which made the price of lodging more expensive.
Book your accommodation from Monday to Friday, especially on central days like Tuesday or Wednesday, to save money. Avoiding high seasons and holidays, such as regional holidays, Easter, or Christmas, will also give your wallet a break.
To save money, book four to six months in advance during peak tourist season
Make the reservation on Sunday or Tuesday.
According to the study that was consulted, here are divided opinions.Until recently, it was thought that Tuesday was a good day to book a cheaper hotel. Another study, entitled “New Heights for Air Travel,” published in 2017 by Expedia and Airlines Reporting Corp (ARC), points to Sunday as the ideal day to buy a ticket.
Kit Viajero recommends that if you are going to travel on the weekend itself, book on Friday night, a time when hotels make up for low occupancy with offers.
Take advantage of your membership (and your credit card).
Since many hotel websites have loyalty programs, registering or making bookings is a straightforward way to receive inexpensive holiday accommodations
The Booking Genius program offers travel credits for hundreds of thousands of rooms. You only need an account, and you are leveling up and obtaining advantages the more you stay. how to get cheap hotel rooms Some of these benefits include discounts on rates, free breakfast, or upgrading to a higher room for the same price.
There are also credit and debit cards, as well as electronic wallets, that offer refunds for first-time users who register or for those travelers who make a certain expense. For example, in India, Amazon Pay and Paytm offer juicy refunds to customers who use them.
The comparator Kelisto states that among the best credit cards with discounts in hotels, how to get cheap hotel rooms Wizink Gold wins, with discounts of between 5% and 40% on the price of the hotel reservation in several chains, including H10 Hotel, Eurostars Hotels, Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, Vinci, and Barceló.
Not all offers can be booked online; use email and phone instead.
Small hotels, pensions, and distant hostels from rural or poorly digitized areas, in remote enclaves without too much coverage or with a more traditional business model, do not allow typical reservations through Booking, Expedia, and similar websites. Others have their own website, where it is usually cheaper to book accommodations than with a platform in between.
Other options are to call or write an email requesting the rates. If you stay numerous nights or have stayed there before, you can bid, offer, or request discounts
Save with the mysterious offers.
Mysterious offers occur when the name of the hotel is only revealed after payment,how to get cheap hotel rooms in exchange for a large discount on regular rates. The price offer is a virtual auction that involves offering your own price at a well-known hotel.
You can get surprise hotel deals through online platforms such as Hotwire and Priceline. Also in Voyage Privé, you can try secret and mysterious getaways with discounts of up to 70%.
