How to Book Cheap Hotel Rates

Not all outdoors trips involve camping. Plenty of people travel to Alaska to fish for salmon or to Florida for the scuba diving, for example, and never consider sleeping in a tent. For these outdoors activities, finding cheap hotel rates is even more important than it is for an ordinary tourist. An outdoors traveler needs his room when the fishing season is in or the weather is good, which precludes hin from hunting for offseason bargains.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step 1

Run a wide Internet search and collect the maximum amount of data from online travel agencies so you can make sound comparisons. Start with a travel site such as Kayak, which will search other online travel sites for you.

Step 2

Include as many weekdays as possible in your stay dates when you are searching. Room rates are adjusted on the basis of demand, and weekends are always in demand. Adding weekdays will lower the average rate for your stay.

Step 3

Include options that are a little farther from the the main attractions. For example, if you are exploring one of America or Canada's larger national parks, you will do a lot of driving anyway just to get to the different trail heads, fishing holes and other points of interest. Staying six or seven miles from the park might be considerably cheaper but adds little to your overall driving time.

Step 4

Narrow the list to your cheaper options, then see what those hotels are offering independently of the online travel agencies. The hotel's pricing might have changed since it sold that block of rooms to the online travel agency, so it could be underselling the agency. Either calling the hotel directly or search its site. If you call, politely ask if anything cheaper is available. Hotels are often open to a little haggling.

Step 5

Compare your results to whatever travel packages are available. The hotel rates for a package that includes flight and rental car might be cheaper than what you found. It does little good to save on the hotel room charges if you spend more money on the flight or on events you have no intention of attending, for example.

Article Written By Edwin Thomas

Edwin Thomas has been writing since 1997. His work has appeared in various online publications, including The Black Table, Proboxing-Fans and others. A travel blogger, editor and writer, Thomas has traveled from Argentina to Vietnam in pursuit of stories. He holds a Master of Arts in international affairs from American University.

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