6 Tips and Tools For Booking Hotels

What’s the general process I go through for choosing to pay cash or points for a hotel? And how do I pick a hotel?

Recently, I discussed how I earn hotel points without credit cards, but I wanted to discuss the booking part. Choosing the promotion to go after, the account. Then on the burning side, choosing a hotel, location, etc… There are a few tools, and a few distinct patterns and habits that I have, and you may benefit from them too.

1) Actually write down the nights you need

This isn’t as much a tool as it is a poor use of a spreadsheet, but I use it daily. Although, it’s not as good a tip for everyone, as many people have more points than stays, and don’t need paid stays. But if you do, this is one tip I use to stay organized.

First, map out the requirements. And here I have the IHG Into the Nights, and a Radisson promo as examples:

Then map out the minimum number of nights each one requires. This is the end goal:

This way, when I have a paid night coming up, I can check to see which of the hardest requirements I can meet. If it’s a Holiday Inn internationally, definitely book with Carrie’s IHG. If it’s a Saturday, use my IHG account. If neither, then it can go to my IHG or Radisson free nights.

However, the other thing this sheet does, is allows me to keep track of completed stays. If I’ve already done the IHG free night, I use the Radisson free night.

This might seem tedious, but google drive is super easy. And now when I type, “Into the Nights” in google chrome, it autocompletes to pull up that page. It’s a easy but a small effort to be more organized.

Also, if something isn’t coming together, abandon that promotion. Leave these as options, and prioritize them based on how many paid nights you’ll need. If you only need a few paid nights, just write down your IHG Into the Nights promo.

Don’t start something you won’t finish, as it’s a waste of money, imo.

 

2) Hipmunk’s Hotel Map

I recently wrote about 7 Hotel Locations with Downtown at the Door Front. However, I quickly realized that finding these beautiful locations is not as simple as looking up the hotel on Tripadvisor and seeing the hotel’s location. And I very highly value locations near the sites, as I can work most of the day and take long breaks and be right near a site.

Here’s an example of a hotel location problem and how I solved it:

Merida, Mexico is a beautiful traditional Mexican city. I love it. However, we booked the Holiday Inn. It was only 10,000 points, the cheapest IHG category. But, despite the hotel having a 4/5 star rating on “Location” with TA, the hotel was very far away from downtown.

So what I did first was look up the main sites. Sometimes I just google image search the city and map out where all the beautiful sites are. Or use images on the wikipedia article for a city, as the images are usually properly labelled. In this case, the center is clearly “Plaza Grande”.

Then, I look up the city (Merida) on Hipmunk and use the map to search for a landmark (which uses and matches google maps).

Then I zoom in on Plaza Grande and pick a hotel.

In this case, we were a block away from the main park, and our room over looked a beautiful church and another park. We were a few blocks away from multiple museums and in some of the nearby parks they had concerts, and on the street of our hotel they shut it down one night for dining, crafts and music.

The example of Merida isn’t great because I couldn’t pick a points hotel. Instead I just picked the cheapest one on the Plaza with great wifi reviews. 😀

Combine this skill with Best Rate Guarantees, the paid promotions or best redemptions.

 

3) Maps of Hotel Award Prices

Speaking of best redemptions, let me quick plug our Hotel Complete Maps Page (here).

Pick the hotel you have points with, or could transfer to and sort by category. I’m planning to jaunt through Europe some more in a month and wonder where I can use some of my IHG points.

I go to the Complete Maps page. Then expand the IHG Complete Map. If I’m using points I’ll probably uncheck categories 3-9, so I only show lower category hotels. Here’s my result (red is 10,000 points, teal is 15,000 points):

I zoom and see the Holiday Inn in Krakow is 15,000 points, and so are the ones in Prague. Although, zooming in or cross referencing with the Hipmunk map for Prague I can see that the one in Prague isn’t in downtown, which may be a no go for me.

You can do the same with all the categories and all the hotel chains. Plus, I’ll try to do the PointBreaks list again, when that comes out.

 

4) Kayak brands, Uber quotes, Google Maps Public

I don’t want to make an entire section for every website I’ve ever visited, but I’ll give a few tools I use often when mapping out hotels that require less explanation.

• Kayak.com/hotels – when you search for a city on Kayak, on the left it has a search bar that says “Hotel Name” and you can actually type in the name of a chain and view all the hotels by the company. I.e.: “Starwood”, “Marriott”, “Intercontinental” (the hotel brand and “all brands”), “Carlson”, etc…
  This allows me to quickly compare the cash price for these hotels that I’m looking at with points.
• Uber.com/cities – I use the “Fare Quote” feature to estimate how much a taxi is going to be and if I can get it for under $30, as I can get Free Uber Rides under $30.
  So I can type in “MCO Airport” to “Universal Studios” to see that ride would be about $27+ and therefore completely free.
• Google Maps public transit – Not every city has it but google’s public transit integration is getting better. Type in two points for driving directions, but hit the little bus symbol to show public routes and time estimates. A great tool in some cities.
  However, some cities will only show the subway and not the bus, or the other way around. So if you see a relatively huge number, see if it’s referring to the subway or bus, and then try to check out the other option.

5) Planning Philosophy

For people who need more nights than they can earn points for free; map your stays. I don’t personally book more than a week out usually, but I kind of map out a strategy.

If you’re like me and you travel way more than you can generate points for with signup bonuses, this is for you. And also, as I’ve said before, I generally don’t do hotel credit card bonuses over airlines. As I can cover all my flights with miles or a fraction of the hotel stays I need.

I’ll say that my general strategy is to always pay cash for rooms when there is an interesting promotion to me (like the IHG Into The Nights or the Radisson ones), and the rates are cheap.

So I’m in Cancun and there is a Holiday Inn Express with a AAA rate of $49. I’ll gladly pay. Again, this is not for people who only travel one week a year and already have the points, but people who have more travels than points. Plus, I generally save credit card apps for miles not hotel points.

• Rule: always pay cash when there is a promotion and cheap rates

Another side of things is the redemption side, if there is a great redemption, I always book it.

If there’s a category 1 hotel, or a PointBreaks hotel, or whatever cheap redemption, I will almost always do that. I’m sometimes picky about location and stuff, but in general I save my points.

• Rule: Use points at lower category hotels in good locations. What better use can there be?

The goal is to cover as many nights as cheaply as possible.

 

6) Call for availability

I debated leaving this “tip” out, not because it’s so powerful, but because someone will use this a motivator to call the hotel everytime they are sold out demanding for award availability. So let me disclaimer: Don’t do that! Use this sparingly.

Every now and then I look up a hotel an there’s no availabiliy but I can see plenty of standard rooms. This actually happened to me at the Holiday Inn in Krabi. The hotel is 10,000 points a night but never seems to have award rooms!

In fact, I can’t find any availability until March! What in the world? But here’s what’s weirder…

So I looked at the date in March that has an award night, and it’s a “Superior Room”. That’s the room that has to be available to get award space. BUT, when I check in November it says, “Reward Nights rooms are sold out for one or more of the dates you selected at this hotel” and yet, it has superior rooms available!

Why aren’t they available? I have no idea.

1. So I called IHG to book the award.
2. The agent at first says, “sorry, there’s just no award availability”.
3. I say, “odd, there seem to be plenty of standard rooms, do you think we could call to book?”
4. The agent called the hotel.
5. The hotel opened up a room for her, and booked us a room for 10,000 points.

Awesome. Plus, they upgraded us to a huge corner suite. Although, no idea what I would do with that many beds.

Don’t do this unless you need to, and they actually have plenty of standard rooms.