I will never understand hotel pricing strategy. I was in NYC at a medium level hotel, probably around $450/night. I needed to add a day to my stay (on the last day I had booked), went to the front desk, and asked what they could do. The best they could do…$1,000 for the extra night (that night.) No joke. I did not stay there the extra night, and booked a different hotel. Now, I will never stay at that particular hotel again.
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I agree with @BunsenBurner that I don’t want to risk having to have a Plan B - I just want a Plan A that works, lol! I will likely do some looking, make a list of a few that are most convenient for me and then do some calling to see if I can beat any online pricing.
It is definitely true that the days of $99 hotel rooms in decent sized cities/neighborhoods is probably long gone!
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We also book directly with the hotel. We got burned the last time we used one of the discount sites when suddenly our reservation was cancelled and we had no recourse.
In terms of last minute cancellations…my D hit a snow storm coming back from a co-op rotation a few years ago and literally had to take an entirely differently route through different states because of closures and blizzard warnings. She called the hotel directly well after the cancellation period, told them what happened, and not only did they credit back all her money, they helped her find another room along her alternate route. She had booked directly on the hotel website.
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Going east on road trip, our schedule is really tight (and dang, we loose an hour on the first and second day)… so we have rooms reserved. The return trip still has a lot of TBDs, so we’ll likely book a day ahead. Or maybe we’ll even wing it.
Years ago I was able to get cancel on Hampton Inn because pool was closed… and that was part of our weekend plan (as well as Santa’s Workshop). Got another much cheaper hotel nearby. OMG - never again. Doors slamming all night, seemed like drug deals going down. I worried about the car all night. Yes, they did have a pool (and the place had looked fine from the street)… but we ended up not venturing out of the room.
We were going to stay at a hotel but we couldn’t get there from where we were driving because the road washed out. Tried calling them but no reception for a while due to driving through remote roads. Finally called hotel and explained and they kindly canceled, even tho it was past cancelation time (we had booked directly).
Similarly when I made numerous reservations for trip to Europe but had to cancel, was able to cancel and get refunds due to MD note and Icelandic volcano eruption.
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We could not get to our hotel in Dublin Ireland on our trip in 2018 because a snow storm had closed Ireland. H had booked directly with the hotel, but the room was non cancellable. He called the hotel and they happily refunded all of our money.
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We had a smart switch in my H’s office. It stopped working after only a few years and couldn’t be repaired. We ended up replacing it with a regular switch.
New question for road trips: If starting from your home base, do you rent a car when you anticipate adding a lot of miles, or use your own? Friends of ours always rent a car for road trips, saying they would rather add miles and wear/tear to the rental. Plus, it usually assures a slightly newer car. OR, do you prefer the comfort and familiarity of using you own car?
We use our own car for road trips if we are starting from home. Wear and tear to our own car is way less than we’d pay for a rental for an equivalent vehicle.
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We use our own car. I know a few people who rent as they have older cars that they aren’t 100% comfortable driving far from home. Or they have a small car and they need or want more room. Another friend leases and she only gets a certain number of miles so she sometimes rents.
We also use our own, but know some who rent especially if any portion can be expensed as work. We have the opposite upcoming- kids and grands are coming in and I wanted to rent a minivan so we could all fit in one car but DH said no. Sigh….so everywhere we go will require 2 cars.
S and DIL drive S’s car because otherwise it mostly just sits parked as they use a lot of public. transit in NYC abd before that in DC. His car is now probably about 10 years old but pretty low mileage.
When both H and I had cars that were older we sometimes rented a car for a long trip, but that was years ago when car rentals were more affordable then they are now.
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Car rental rates are highly variable and can bounce around up to the date you pick the car up. We rent on Costco website & I keep checking a rebook if price drops. Last time in May, I rented from Alamo on Costco website for $480 for 10 days but when we returned, they only charged $368 because we got low mileage discount. For SFO that was a great rate at the time.
Often times there are corporate discounts that are fabulous. I’m a little disappointed that my husband is retiring because the corporate discount we get for personal use on rentals is fabulous.
we use our own cars
Using Costco to rent cars is amazing. You can cancel at the last second, and book multiple schedules (as long as you remember to cancel!). You can compare prices for a multitude of companies and locations.
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I’ve done both but is a case by case basis. If I can get something of a deal on a rental and I know I’m going to be driving a lot of miles each day my preference would be to rent. If it’s a case where I’m going to drive a lot at the beginning and end of a week (vacation as an example), I’m going to drive my own car.
Generally as long as the car is newer (aka <100K miles) we drive our own. If the newer car isn’t big enough, we might rent. I can think of twice this happened.
First time - both cars >>100K threshold and we were going on vacation with a 15-20 hour drive each way. We rented a minivan which also gave the kids more room than our Explorer.
We rented a minivan to move younger S to college. Otherwise we would have had the trunk of the Sonata and half of the backseat. We might have made it fit, but it was just nicer to rent.