Five Ways You Can Save Money on Hotel Rooms!

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FiveWays you Can Save Money on Hotel rooms!

I love taking road trips, but I try to be frugal about it.  The two most pricey things in road trips are the cost of hotel stays and eating out.  Today I'm going to talk about ways to cut down on the cost of hotel rooms.

1.  Find one or two chains you LOVE and be loyal to them.  For me, I have decided that while I have two chains I love, it's easier to reach rewards with one chain.  While it was tempting to go with the International Hotel Group as they have more of a variety of hotels (including Candlewood Suites which boasts a kitchenette in their rooms, cutting down on food costs for your trip), I opted to be loyal to the Hilton brand of hotels.  (This includes the Hampton Inn.)  Do everything you can to earn reward points for the hotel of your choice.  Sign up for their credit card so you can earn points on every purchase you make, even on groceries.  (Just be sure and pay it off at the end of each month so you aren't carrying a balance.)  Sign up for e-mails.  There have been a number of times I have been able to get extra Hilton points for just filling out a survey or updating my profile information.  While 1,000 points may not be a free night, it certainly helps.


2.  For when you can't stay at your preferred brand of hotel (and unfortunately I don't as often as I would like!) then look around for deals.  This is something I always hate doing because I always take time to read reviews, check the bedbug registry to see if anyone had reported the vermin at each hotel I am considering, and then I can narrow my list of where I might stay.  Check prices through the hotel site itself and through third party places such as Orbitz and hotels.com.  Also, if you are willing to drive a little further, check rates a bit outside your destination.  For instance, if you are going to Niagara Falls, there are many more hotels on the Canadian side, and you can get a better deal.  When my husband and I visited there last year, we decided to drive about 20 minutes into Canada and found a fantastic hotel price in a quaint little town where we had a lovely visit.

3.  Hotels.com offers a great reward program of staying ten times and getting a free night.  The way your free night is figured is they take the average cost of your stay over those ten nights.  My rewards night has been valued between $37 and $45 in the past, so you can see the prices I am able to get on that site. One word of caution, you cannot earn loyalty points from a hotel stay if you book through hotels.com  You have to decide if the cash back from eBates and the free night is worth more than the points you would earn through the rewards program.  I typically use hotels.com for stays that are not with any specific chain.

4.  Before you book on a third party site like hotels.com, go through Rakuten.  One of the things I love about Rakuten (besides the cash back) is when you click through to sites, they list current coupon codes.  To me its an all in one deal site which is a huge time saver to anyone who has their hands full.

 
5.  Join EVERY hotel rewards program you can.  If you love to travel and take weekend getaways, it's worth it to join every hotel rewards program you can.  Sometimes they have special offers just for their members, sometimes they have contests and giveaways where you have to be a member.  It's free to join, and you might be surprised with their rewards.

Weekend getaways can be inexpensive with a little planning.  Also, be sure and check out my post on How To Save Money on Gasoline and reward yourself with an inexpensive getaway!