Best Hotel Deals: Secrets Hotels Don't Want You to Know

Let's say that you're one of those people who wants to take a vacation, but isn't sure you can afford it. Even if you travel, the last thing you want to do is pay for a hotel. Even an average hotel is going to cost you a couple hundred dollars. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to get huge discounts on the price of your hotel. Many times, you can stay in a 4 or 5 star hotel for less than a 2 star price.
With the economy the way it is, and tourism down in just about any destination, hotels are more willing than ever before to give discounts. The trick is that you have to find them.
One of the easiest ways to get discounts is to take advantage of unpublished rates. Unpublished rates are rates that you can find on certain websites, but not others. Expedia, for example, has a large amount of unpublished rates for popular destinations. Many times, these rates can be 50% off the regular price of the room. It's a great deal.

But that's not all you can do. It's almost a given that any hotel you come across is going to have unfilled rooms. That's where discounts start. Hotels want to fill up as many rooms as they can, and if they have to offer a discount to do it, then they probably will. Many websites will even allow you to bid on hotel rooms, by asking you how much you're willing to pay, and then sending that to hotels.
I was actually reading an article on MSN that talked about a guy who simply asked for discounts on his hotel room. Believe it or not, he claimed a 40% success rate. For example, he was interested in a room that cost $175 per night. He basically asked for a discount, got a manager involved, and was able to negotiate the cost down to $120. Let's figure he was staying for 5 days, that's a savings of $250 on the total vacation.
And that's one of the things that hotels don't want you to know. Nine times out of ten, there is a way to avoid paying the full price for a room. Especially if you're visiting a popular destination. If you look at a few different hotels, odds are one of them is going to give you a discount. So that begs the question, why would you ever pay full price for a room?

Finding the best place to book: There are a number of websites that will help you find the best hotel deals, but some are better than others. There's actually a list of the three best places to book a hotel room at WorldWidely.com. It's a great article that goes into depth about what certain websites offer that others don't.