Accomodation is more than likely going to be your biggest expense when travelling so it’s important to get it right. As you will see in this blog post, you can save hundreds if not thousands of dollars booking the exact same accomodation but changing a couple of variables all to do with the dates you travel.
Timing Peak & Off Season:
If you understand which months & which days of the week are the cheapest in a particular city you can score yourself some unreal deals. Hotel pricing can be swayed by a number of things… major events in the city, weekends, holidays, weather, lack of demand… the list goes on. Being flexible with your travel dates in a must if you want to capitalise on low rates.
Finding the cheapest dates for your hotel:
There are a couple of ways to check when is the best time to travel to a particular hotel. The first would be if the website of your hotel has a user friendly calendar view that displays the nightly rate over the course of a month/year. Marriott owned hotels have a great search tool. By searching on the Marriott owned websites they give you the option to view the cost of your ideal length of stay over the course of different days/weeks/months. By having a play around with this tool, you can quickly see the price difference in a 3 night stay at a peak holiday period VS a regular week in the same month.
Below: Calendar View of Marriott Hotel Moana Surfrider in Honolulu
You can see the price for the same room in the same hotel can fluctuate drastically depending on the timing.
Timing the correct week of the month is not exclusive to those major holiday periods such as Christmas and New Year but just about every month has cheap/expensive weeks.
Below: Another example of how every month has peak/off peak weeks.
Using the availability calendar Google offers:
The availability calendar google offers is a fantastic tool to find the cheapest dates to travel. Simply typing in your hotel name into Google and then hitting Check Availability, it will take you to a page where you can see the nightly rates over the course of almost a year. A very easy way to check in a minute or two what the cheapest dates of travel are.
Using Google’s availability calendar to check rates of Conrad Bali
Below we used the calendar to find the best days of the month to stay at the Conrad in Bali. You can see how booking your trip a few days later/earlier can easily end up costing $100+ more for the same trip in the same room.
Always double check weather and local events on the dates of travel prior to booking the cheaper rates
A lot of the time, snagging a lower room rate will work out fine but sometimes significantly cheaper rates can be warranted. Sometimes hotels will offer cheaper rates if they are going under maintenance such as a pool closure or historically it is poor weather etc. Always do some quick homework to see if there is anything obvious that would be causing the difference in price.
Stay tuned to follow this series on getting the best rates on accomodation!
