Hotel Hopping (for a Deal)

No matter if I’m traveling for business, pleasure, or the holidays, I always want to get the most for the money!

On the Go

Lately I have been traveling out of town for work more in the past two months than I have in the past five years. When I worked for an international firm, I was on an airplane every 2-3 weeks weeks traveling to and from job sites all over North America. Five years ago, I moved to a California based firm with most of my work in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. The past two months have taken me down to San Diego and L.A. Counties, allowing me to draw on my travel deal hunting skills to stay somewhere nice at a price accounting won’t balk at!

Dealing

Booking

Over the past 10 years, I have honed in on 4 sites that I like to use for getting a deal on my hotel room, whether it is for business or pleasure:

Hotels.com
HotelTonight.com (Use my referral code EVONTHURY to get $25 off your first booking!)
Groupon.com
BestWestern.com

* I always start in Ibotta first to get freebate cashback (referral code: yoylllu)!

When a Deal Isn’t a Deal

Searching for a hotel can be daunting and sometimes what looks like a deal really isn’t once you read the fine print! In order to avoid hotel search fee traps, I use the following search criteria to find my room:

FREE WIFI (as a rule of thumb, I do NOT stay anywhere that charges for WIFI because that is usually a red flag for other unnecessary excessive fees that I should expect to be charged for at checkout)
FREE Parking
FREE (HOT) Breakfast
Pool
Onsite Gym

If I cannot find a hotel that checks all of the boxes above, then I uncheck the free breakfast or parking box to see where I end up. In some cities, like San Diego and New Orleans, overnight parking fees are pretty mjuch standard, so my goal is to look for a hotel that charges less than $30/night for parking. Hotels.com, HotelTonight, Groupon, and Best Western are great about listing parking and resort fees where you can find them on the hotel page. Whenever possible, I try not to book hotels with resort fees, especially with business travel because your client doesn’t want to see that on your expense report.

Hotel Tonight

Postcards American Bistro at The Handlery Hotel - Pizza Dinner $17

Postcards American Bistro at The Handlery Hotel - Coffee and Omelette $20

In order to book my room at the Handlery Hotel in San Diego for $89/night, I had to uncheck the FREE parking and breakfast options from my search. However, I booked this room for $30 less than it was listed on the hotel’s website and on other sites by booking day of with HotelTonight (referral code: EVONTHURY), plus I started my booking in Ibotta (referral code yoylllu) so I received $2.67 cashback on my booking, making my room rate even cheaper!

$148.33 Total for my Stay: