why to book your hotel early | top 5 list

I've frequently been asked the following question:

I'm thinking about booking a hotel stay. Should I book it now — or should I wait to see if the room rate goes down, or a promotion gets introduced, or make sure I won't have to change my dates. What should I do?

My next several blog posts will provide a tutorial on booking hotels. Today's topic: reason # 1 (of 5) on why you should make your booking early.

Reason # 1: it puts a ceiling on your room rate!

The confusion comes from our experience purchasing airline tickets. Unless you buy a full fare F or Y class ticket, you'll pay a hefty fee for canceling or changing your ticket (on most airlines ... thank you, Southwest, for your customer-friendly change policy).

But booking a hotel is nothing like buying a plane ticket. If you book a flexible rate, you have the freedom to revise or cancel your reservation as long you're outside the hotel's cancellation deadline —typically 1 day before arrival at city hotels, longer for resorts.

If you see the room rate go down, I can change your rate with a few keystrokes in my GDS or with a simple phone call to the hotel.

If rates should go up, you've already locked in the lower rate (unless you change your dates).

If a promotion gets introduced, I can get it applied exactly the same way as I would lower your rate.

If you need to change your dates, this is quick and easy for me to do.

P.S. — Never say "please cancel and rebook." That is double the work. The correct terminology is to "revise your existing reservation."


Reason # 2 coming in my next post...

copyright (c) 2016 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. We provide Virtuoso and other Preferred Partner amenities as an affiliate of Brownell Travel. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.