For many travellers, booking air tickets and accommodation is usually preceded by hours or even days of research and price comparison. Once the bookings are done, it’s time to catch a breath and just count down the days till the trip. However, sometimes it can be worth the time to keep tabs on accommodation rates periodically in between booking and the travel dates. For my personal travels, by periodically re-checking rates, I’ve been able to save money, score a higher category room at the same rate, or both!
While this notion sounds fairly common sense, not many people I know practice this. The truth is most of us are either too busy with our daily lives to bother, or just too relieved to get the planning and booking stage done that we don’t want to go through the hassle going through booking pages again.
In this post, I’ll talk about what are some of the conditions for this to work, and also share an example of I managed to save some money and get a higher room category for an upcoming stay.
Why and how is it possible to save?
Firstly, for any chance of this to work, your original booking needs to flexible to some extent. A fully flexible rate of course is best, but these are usually pricey and most of us seldom book these for leisure travel because of the pricing. A semi-flexible rate works too. Such rates usually become non-cancellable and non-changeable some time before the check-in date. I’ve seen the period vary anywhere from 3 days to 14 days, depending on the hotel. In any case, there needs to be flexibility to the original booking. Otherwise, there’s no way to make changes.
If you’ve got a flexible or semi-flexible, I’d recommend to go into the hotel’s website or app every few days and take a look at the rates. It’s entirely possible that rates may have fallen, depending the volume of actual forward bookings for the period, and also how it compares to the hotel’s forecasts. If you find a new rate that’s lower, that’s great news.
To be clear, this isn’t some brilliant hack that’s going to save you money every hotel stay, guaranteed. It’s not necessarily even going to be the cheapest deal, when compared with a non-refundable rate typically. But if you’ve got a (semi) flexible rate, there’s no harm spending a minute or two every few days to keep an eye on rates. Sometimes, you may find a sale that results in a lower rate, or simply inventory management bringing rates down. On occasion, you may also find it worthwhile to change to cheaper non-refundable closer in to your travel date when plans are more certain.
Of course if you’re happy to book the cheapest non-refundable, non-changeable rate from get go, that’s perfectly fine too. We all have our own way of planning and booking our travels.
In economics, hotels rooms are considered a perishable product i.e. once the date passes the room can't be sold for that particular night. Therefore, hotels will want to sell as many rooms as possible, at the best possible rate. Typically, it's best to fill rooms sooner by offering lower rates initially. Hotels can then adjust the rate level for a given room type depending how the forward bookings align with their forecast. Poor forward volumes may trigger a rate decrease closer in, and the reverse is true if forward demand is high.
But why not just book closer in?
If I’m going to be checking rates regularly, why not just hold off booking? It’s back to inventory management. Cheapest rates tends to go first. Hotels want to fill rooms sooner, much like airlines with air tickets. Hence why rates are usually cheaper further out. If forward bookings are strong, hotel management will feel confident and want to maximise profit by selling the remaining limited supply of rooms at the highest price possible. Inventory management is why we’ve been conditioned to book early to lock in the supposedly cheapest prices.
Furthermore, if you’re looking at peak travel season like year-end holidays, cherry blossom season in Japan or ski season in Hokkaido, you can bet those rates are only going to one direction – up. For example, for 2023 cherry blossom in Japan, back in June 2022 I booked 3 nights at Conrad Tokyo for JPY140,292. For the same dates, it’s now JPY147,000 and up per night! Admittedly this is a slightly unique situation given it’s the first cherry blossom post-reopening. Nonetheless, it’s clear that in peak travel periods, it’s best to lock in rates early rather than hope for a good deal close in.
An example of how I saved some cash and scored a higher category
At the end of this month, I’ll be heading to Bali. One of the hotels I’ll be staying at is the Apurva Kempinski in Nusa Dua (keep an eye out for that review). I first made the booking back at the start of December 2022. As you’ll see in the screenshot below, I booked a Grand Deluxe Ocean Court Room for a total of just over IDR9.5million (approx. SGD823). It’s a lot to pay for a hotel in Bali, but honestly the hotel looks great. As a GHA Titanium, I’ll almost certainly receive a two-category upgrade to a Cliff Private Pool Junior Suite. Upgrades are subject to availability of course, but when I went into the booking a couple of days ago the hotel had already pre-upgraded me to this category. This rate was a Kempinski 125th Anniversary special, which includes breakfast, 1 free signature drink per guest and 1 sweet treat per room.
This rate was also semi-flexible, with changes or cancellation possible up to 14 days before arrival. I’m checking in on the 29th, so that deadline is 15th Jan. Yesterday – the 14th – knowing that the change deadline was almost due, I went into the hotel’s website to check out the rates. To my surprise and delight, the rates had tumbled quite a bit. While the “125 Anniversary Special” rate was no longer available, they had a similar rate called “Travel Treats” with the same inclusions: breakfast, 1 complimentary signature drink per guest, 1 sweet treat. The rate for the Grand Deluxe Ocean Court Room was just under IDR8.2million (SGD703). That’s a saving of SGD120, or 14.5% discount on my original rate!
Now, I could have rebooked there and then, and save myself SGD120. But I thought to myself, hang on, how much does the category above – Grand Deluxe Lagoon Room – cost now? As it turns out, the rate for the “Travel Treats” package was a shade under IDR9.3million (SGD797). Therefore, even if I went up the Grand Deluxe Lagoon Room, I’d still come out slightly ahead and potentially score a higher category after upgrade. I’ll admit saving SGD120 was very tempting, but I thought the chance for an upgrade to Cliff Junior Private Pool Ocean Suite was worth the extra.
What's the difference between a Cliff Private Pool Junior Suite and a Cliff Private Pool Ocean Junior Suite? The layout and orientation of the rooms are identical, but the Ocean Junior Suites are located on higher floors. Depending on which level the suite is, the view from the "standard" Cliff Junior Suite may be obstructed by the greenery between the main building (where the Cliff Junior Suites are located) and the beach/ocean. The Ocean Junior Suites are set on the highest floors and don't suffer from such issues.
In the end, I booked the Grand Deluxe Lagoon Room. I felt the premium over my existing Grand Deluxe Ocean Court room was worth not having to leave my ocean view fate subject to room availability on the day, once the upgrade was factored in. Plus, even by opting for the Lagoon Room, I was still coming out ahead cost-wise versus my existing booking.
As it turned out, as of this afternoon when my booking hit the cancellation/change deadline, the hotel had pre-upgraded me to a Cliff Private Pool Ocean Junior Suite, as I hoped would happen. My strategy not only saved me a little bit of money, but I ended up with a more desirable room.
Of course now that I’ve hit the change deadline on my booking, I won’t be checking in on rates anymore. After all, while I want to get the best deal all the time, I hate knowing I didn’t get the best possible price.
Another example, during the pandemic, I did a staycation at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore. I initially booked a Club Deluxe Marina room for SGD585++ per night, during their 25th anniversary sale in January 2021. This was a cancellable rate. In their February run of the sale, I managed to change my booking to a Club Premier Suite for SGD580++ per night. Sure it wasn’t much savings, and the February rate was non-refundable, but hey I still saved a tiny bit and got a suite instead.
Conclusion
This is a reminder that if you’ve got a hotel booking with a flexible or semi-flexible rate, it can sometimes pay off to re-check the rates in the hope of finding a better price. It’s not a guarantee, and it doesn’t work in times of high demand obviously. But you might be surprised how much it could save you when that couple of minutes of searching pays off.