When my wife and I were trying to decide what we wanted to do for Spring Break this year, it didn't take very long for us to decide on Nashville. In case you aren't familiar, Spring Break is a time in March/April when public schools and colleges take a week off. Many students and staff travel during this time.
Since @mrsbozz and I both work for a public school district, we generally take advantage of this time to take a small trip. With things being closed down due to Covid, we haven't done much travelling lately. That has us more eager than ever to get out and about!
The first time we visited Nashville we flew and ran into all kinds of issues. From that point on it was decided we would drive when visiting Nashville from now on. The second time we drove and the 9 hour drive honestly wasn't too bad. I am not even dreading that so much this year.
What has been a headache is finding a hotel.
I jumped over to Travala so I could take advantage of the benefits I have being a platinum member of that site. I also opened up an aggregator site like Kayak just so I could compare prices.
I was a little disappointed to see that the prices on Travala for most hotels were a good $70 to $100 more per night for the same location. Sure, I get a discount and a kickback for each booking I make, but at right around 5%, that doesn't even come close to covering the extra I have to pay. Even if it was a wash, that still wouldn't be that great of a deal.
I finally found a site that was offering the hotel we have stayed at in the past for $198 a night. That was a pretty unbelievable deal given the fact that everywhere else had that hotel listed at $400 to $450 per night.
I quickly started the process of booking. That's when things really started to go bad...
You see, we are travelling with some friends this year and it is our hope that we can stay at the same location. I was waiting for them to make sure they could get the same rate as us when suddenly the price changed to something like $270 per night.
Ticked off, but realizing that was still a better deal than $400 per night, I decided to start the process of booking with our without our friends. I figured this way I at least have something locked in and I can always cancel the booking if necessary.
I entered all of my information only to find that the room was no longer available.
It refreshed the page only to present me a price of $310 per night. Again, thinking this was still better than $400 a night and not being able to find that good of a price on any of the other sites I checked, I tried to book again.
Same result: "this room is no longer available". It kicked me back again but kept the price the same. I tried a couple more times before it finally raised the price to $370 per night and I said screw it.
To be fair this was through a sight called Traveluro. I don't know if it is common practice for them to pull this kind of bait and switch, but I don't find it amusing at all. It turned what was supposed to be a very relaxing Friday night into a tense evening that left @mrsbozz and I short with each other and not in the best of moods.
I woke up on Saturday morning eager to try again thinking it was a new day and I might have more luck. Sadly, the discounted prices were around $350 per night and the regular prices were $450 to $500 per night.
I got the same results on Saturday morning. No luck at all. I even tried using a incognito window and my VPN in case it was zeroing in on some cookie or my IP address to keep screwing me over.
Sadly all that accomplished was my credit card company putting a hold on my card because I was suddenly trying to make a hotel reservation from St. Louis Missouri instead of Michigan.
It's pretty safe to say that Saturday morning wasn't much more pleasant between @mrsbozz and I. I was clearly frustrated and she was frustrated that she couldn't do anything to help.
It really shouldn't be this hard though should it? Sure we could try to stay in a different place, but we know we like this place, we know we like the location, and we have some other reasons for wanting to stay here as well. I feel like it shouldn't be this hard.
I did a little digging and Google has a cool section of their site called "hotels" or "travel" or something like that. I was able to see a chart with the pricing for our hotel of choice over the past month and it looks like there are definite spikes in the price at certain times. I am going to keep an eye on it an see if I can take advantage of one of the valleys.
If that doesn't work out, I am going to call the hotel directly and see if I can social engineer myself into a better rate.
Finally, if that doesn't work, I will likely just pay the full price for the hotel or end up staying somewhere else.
I saw a quote the other day that said:
>You can make more money but you can't make more time: Travel!
It really spoke to me. I know I spend a lot of time worrying about how much things cost and in doing that the only thing I am really robbing myself of is time.
I am curious though, is this a common occurrence (the whole hotel price thing)? Do you have any tips or tricks? We are about two months out from our trip right now. Should I have started trying to book sooner? Is it better to wait? Is it better to use an aggregator site or just contact the hotel directly? I am a rewards member with this specific hotel chain.
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<center>All pictures taken by myself or @mrsbozz</center>