10 CHEAP HOTEL HACKS That Will Save You Money!

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, Travago, 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 Kanapali 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 advanced 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.