- These are 10 cheap hotel hacks to save you money in 2024.
Hack number one, know the sweet spot
for booking your hotel in advance
to lock in the lowest rate.
If you are traveling for a major holiday
like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Spring Break,
four to six months in advance is the key time to book.
For life's more flexible vacations,
15 days in advance is the best time to book
if you are mildly flexible on the hotel
or the exact time at which you depart.
If you've ever used a discount travel website
like Booking.com, here's an eye-opener.
Their website prices are actually often higher
than what you'll see on their app.
Let me show you.
As an example, if you were to book
the Paramount Hotel in Times Square,
the website price listed is around $453 for two nights.
Whereas if you use the Booking.com app,
your rate is $408.
You'd save 90 bucks over two nights
by simply switching to the app.
Which brings me to point number two,
a hack to expose those so-called mystery deals
that many of us encounter on Hotwire and Priceline.
That's right, those oh-so-intriguing low-price deals
where you don't receive the actual name of the hotel
until you complete your non-refundable booking.
Let's use Hotwire and the Las Vegas Strip as an example,
and I'll use a June 10th check-in date.
As you can see, I am immediately presented
with many unnamed hotel hot rate secret deals.
Now, when I find a price that intrigues me,
all I have to do is take note
of the mystery hotel's location,
the number of reviews, and the overall score.
Then I open up a new tab, I search the same dates,
and then I filter down to the exact location
and rating of the hot rate deal.
I scroll down a little, and then boom,
the link hotel listed here
has the exact same number of Expedia reviews,
and it's located in precisely the same location.
If you're still not convinced,
here's the mystery hotel's photo,
and here's the exact same photo
listed on the official link hotel page.
And that same trick works just as well with Priceline.
However, for the sake of timing,
I'll include those instructions
in the video description box.
Beyond mystery hotels, if you're really tight on cash
for a particular booking,
I don't recommend using Clearance Travel
as you're offered bottom-of-the-barrel accommodations
once you get to the hotel in many cases.
And what's often an eye-opener to many people,
whether you use Hotwire, trivago,
Hotels.com, or Travelocity,
they're all owned by the Expedia group,
so you can imagine how diverse their deals actually are.
Which brings me to hack number three.
Book your hotel directly,
and then price match that property
against any discount travel website.
You score the best of both worlds.
Marriott will even give you a bonus discount
for finding a better price
as part of their 25% price match guarantee,
which is the same for Hilton.
Hyatt has a 20% price match
or the option of 5,000 World of Hyatt points,
enough for a free night at their most basic properties.
It's important to note the room types
and dates of your stay must be identical
in order for the hotel to approve the price match.
For point four, in the event that you are traveling
for an unfortunate reason like a funeral,
did you know hotels actually offer bereavement rates?
You can simply call a hotel to ask,
and in some cases, the bereavement codes are listed online.
For example, if you were attending a funeral
in Lincoln, Nebraska, you could use code B52
as indicated on the website right here for Marriott,
you update your search,
and the nightly rate drops from 149
to a bereavement rate that's under $100.
Now, obviously, this is just for those times in life
where our travels would unfortunately
fall under that category.
In the number five spot,
Costco members can save a ridiculous amount
of money on travel,
and if you're not using your Costco membership
to its full potential or you're looking to justify its cost,
please allow me to demonstrate.
Let's say you were considering a vacation
at this very high-end Omni Resort in Scottsdale.
Four nights would cost you close to $1,000.
I'm not sure how that's possible
or if this is like Buckingham Palace in disguise,
but just for the purposes of comparison,
let's seek out the Travel tab on the Costco website,
and you'll notice that your rate
is not only $300 less per night for the exact same thing.
Costco even throws in a rental car with their rate,
and that's not to mention the fact
that you can cancel up to eight days in advance
through Costco versus the hotel's strict no-refund policy.
In the number six spot,
here's a hack for Airbnb,
and this one trick could save you a lot of money.
Let's say you wanted to splurge
on a vacation to Indio, California.
Again, I have no idea who could afford
the rate of $11,000 for three nights,
but you're essentially booking your own private resort.
Here's the hack.
Download the screenshot or the image
of the property that you're considering
and upload it to Google,
as you can see on the top right here,
a different booking website
for the exact same property appears,
and you'd be saving $300 just by booking directly
and skipping Airbnb.
Now, let's say the reverse image search
doesn't produce any notable results for you,
and you're contemplating this Airbnb
right here in Miami for August.
Your rate would be a whopping $5,341,
but if you look at this listing,
you can see that it's hosted
by a company called Glam Homes,
and that company name is also burned into all the images.
Now, try searching Glam Homes directly online.
You'll be directed to their own website
where the listing for the same property appears.
Your rate is now $4,652.
Compared to Airbnb, you would be saving around $800
for that stay, which is wild.
Now, this won't work for every listing,
but it's certainly worth a try.
For point seven, it's a hack
to avoid hotel cancellation fees
that are sometimes very unfair.
Life can throw all sorts of curve balls at you,
and if you need to eliminate a reservation,
for many hotels, your cancellation policy is 24 to 72 hours,
and for some other resorts,
you might be looking at a cancellation policy up to 14 days.
Make sure you've booked directly with a hotel
and not a discount website like Expedia to start,
and then if you find yourself in a difficult situation,
call the front desk directly
and move your stay to a different date
much later down the line.
A few days later, call Central Reservations
and cancel your booking,
provided you're now within the window
for that new adjusted timeframe.
On the opposite end of the spectrum,
if you are desperately trying to book a hotel
that's completely sold out
rather than relentlessly refreshing websites
and checking all the time,
one free hack I rely upon
is a website called openhotelalert.com.
This website will send you a text or notification
the second a room or suite of your choice becomes available,
and this has saved me a lot of time.
Point eight is dedicated to the many people
who've contacted me asking for cheap Vegas hacks.
Let's start with an app endorsed
by many of the major Vegas hotels
where you can score comped rooms
just for playing completely free games on your own time,
which is exactly what I did.
Now for testing purposes,
I played this app for around 20 minutes every day
for a full week,
and I scored two completely free nights at the Mandalay Bay.
My wife and I had an amazing time
as we only had to pay resort fees and tax,
not to mention this would have cost well over $800
if we booked a paid rate directly from the hotel.
Now, if you don't have time to play a game,
a reminder that just for signing up
for those free players cards for either MGM or Caesars,
you will save 15% on a nightly rate,
and that's just for a few seconds of your time.
I also recommend creating a standalone email address
just for situations like these,
as we have seen our share of data breaches in Las Vegas.
For my next point,
in the event your hotel stay is not going particularly well,
most people address their concerns at checkout,
which is a mistake.
From light switches that don't work
to problems with the AC
or dripping faucets and bad shower pressure.
Address your concern when the issue happens
or directly after the fact.
Complaining on Yelp or TripAdvisor
or making a negative social media review
will only get you so far.
Hotels are trained to offer compensation
as the problems happen.
That could include switching your room,
moving you to a bigger suite,
comping a couple of meals.
There are perks to be found,
and that would be my recommendation.
Similar to how you might take a photo
of any scratches on a rental car
for which you weren't responsible
before you drive it off a lot.
I know this sounds crazy,
but if your hotel has a minibar
or paid snack station in your room,
I recommend doing the same thing.
Minibar charges are sometimes applied
to other people's bills due to restocking delays
or sensor issues,
as some minibars will charge you
the second you pick an item up
if you accidentally knock another item over.
Before I get to the bonus section,
here's a hack to save you crazy amounts of cash
on some of the biggest and best suites you'll encounter.
As you may be aware,
many hotels and resorts have owned
or fractionally owned residences
within the hotels themselves.
You can bypass a hotel's website
and pay a fraction of their price
by using reputable third parties like redweek.com,
where you're guaranteed specific rooms and specific views.
Let's say you're considering a vacation to Hawaii
and the Hyatt Vacation Club at Kaanapali Beach in Maui
is a contender.
If I were to punch in the dates on hyatt.com
of May 14th to 18th,
I would be looking at a rate
for a two-bedroom ocean view suite of $956 per night
and my bet is that is available only to locals, which it is.
So your next best non-refundable advance purchase rate
is $1,000 per night.
And again, full prepayment at booking, no refunds allowed.
If I were to use the exact same dates
and punch the property into redweek.com,
I'm looking at $475 per night.
I believe there's also a $90 booking fee,
but I'm still way ahead.
And the cancellation policy is a little bit better
than what I found on Hyatt.
Don't forget, you'll need to create a free account
on redweek.com to browse the search results
and like any hotel booking website,
pay close attention to the cancellation policies.
Now, speaking of great rates, for the bonus section,
you might be one of many travelers
entitled to use a corporate rate
even though you aren't necessarily working
in a so-called corporate office.
For example, let's say you work in retail
or food and beverage.
Not everyone is aware they might be entitled
to their company's pre-negotiated hotel discount
even if you are not in a management position.
There are countless corporate codes
designated for legitimate employees,
and I have a link to them in the video description box.
If you are in fact a legitimate employee,
be prepared to bring a badge or a proof of company email.
And a reminder, loyalty goes a long way.
With three major hotel chains
owning most of the properties we encounter,
Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt have frequent traveler programs
where free bottled water, free Wi-Fi,
and sometimes a free breakfast are all tied
to even the most basic of membership levels.
And there you have it.
If you found this video useful,
please feel free to share it.
Thanks for watching.
I love you.
Bye-bye.