As a hotel searcher you are your own travel agent. There are two ways you can be successful at being your own agent.  You can be a frequent traveller that books your own hotels by doing a lot of research online or belonging to a travel agent group that allows you better hotel discounts or you can be the average person trying to find a deal.  In any scenario, you are going to be doing the searches for hotels on your own.  You want to make sure that you are finding hotels that work for you in the cities you are going to be staying at.

If you have never been to your travel destination it can be hard to be your own travel agent, but at least you save the commissions right?  Okay, so when you are doing a search for hotels you need to be on top of things.  You need to read all of the reviews associated with the hotel.

You may also want to stick with well known travel chains depending on where you are going.  Most often if you are familiar with a hotel you will not be disappointed in the stay.  You also want to make sure you find out how old the hotel is and when it was last renovated if it is not a newer location.  The location of the hotel is also very important.  After all you don’t want to be in a low rent district where you are worried about your rental car over night.

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A lot more of the websites have been creating combination packages that include hotels, flights, and car rentals in order to get you what looks like a great deal.  Often these deals are going to be worth the combination package price, but you need to be very careful in searching for these deals.  Sometimes you can pick the hotel, and in some cases the package will not allow you to change hotels.  This means that the package may be for the best hotel in the area, where as creating your own package gets you the mid level hotels that are actually affordable.  It is up to you to either take the combo deal or to search out a separate option.

Just keep in mind that you still need to research the combination package as thoroughly as you would just a hotel booking.  Make sure that you compare all of the deals that you can find for price as well as the types of options you have.  It is better to be able to choose the type of hotel in the package than to be stuck with the top level hotel that makes the package unaffordable.  You are your own travel agent in other words.  You can find out what package deals the hotel may offer you directly.  Maybe you have a car rental coupon that chooses the hotel and you can create a deal from that.  There are several ways that you can choose a combination deal based on your different starting points.

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As a hotel searcher you need to compare deals.  You should not just take the first thing that looks great.  You will find that other sites may offer a higher cost deal by a few dollars, but their taxes and fees for using an intermediary site is going to be less.  You see, all sites need to make money from their consumers.  Some of the travel sites have fees that are associated with you booking through them rather than booking through the actual hotel official website.

This means that you may be finding a great deal, but then you are charged more for the fees and you end up losing.

If you compare deals, and of course the fees, you can find yourself the better deal.  It is always best to check the hotel website for their actual cost and then go from there.  You will find that you may be able to book a reservation as a package deal through the hotel website.

In some cases the package deal of the other website for hotel booking may be better because you are getting a better discount.  There are of course many ways to find hotel deals, but it is the amount of research, and of course the comparisons that will lead you to the best deals.  Maybe you are not looking for the best deal, but the best hotel?  There are, of course, ways to compare these hotels as well.  Each hotel is going to be ranked, which will tell you where the best deal lies.

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Hotel deals can be found on the internet if you know where to look.  Don’t forget to read the reviews as well as speak directly with a hotel staff member in order to get the best information.  The deals on hotels can look great to any hotel searcher, but is the information accurate and the deal worth it?  Having asked that let’s look at deals.  You can find deals for as low as 39 pounds, a night if you know where and how to search.  First you can check every single internet site that exists for hotel booking.  What you really want is a site that will offer a description of the hotel, the amenities, and will offer you deals.

You have deals that are related to frequent hotel stays, such as the rewards programs, and then you have general deals that are offered in locations that need more business.  Either way you can take advantage.  For rewards programs they are often free for the basic level.  You can then choose to have platinum or gold packages with hotels if you wish to pay for the coupons and deals.  This works for frequent travellers.

For deals on websites the best time to look is when there is an off season in that area.  Sometimes you can’t choose the dates you travel, but if you can, you will be able to find great deals.  Off season means lower rates at hotels, which means more savings for you and more rooms to choose from.

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There are several places that you can find hotel offers that will make your booking a hotel a little cheaper. First, you can call the hotel directly and ask if they have any specials that are not posted on the website. Often times you will find they have one or two deals that they don’t advertise on the internet, but in other places such as newspapers or their newsletters that are sent out to their email list. If you ask about these deals you can usually save. There are other ways to find deals as well. For instance, Internet sites offer deals. You have several types of internet sites from the actual hotel official site to the ‘let’s make a deal’ sites. You will find that the official hotel site offers deals that they have exclusively for you. They may be deals that need a reward program or you may just find they are trying to drum up a little business at the site, so they have some deals.

You can also go to a travel website that compares deals. These deals are based on the hotels offers, but they are also going to be what the website is bargaining for. In other words the website may offer you a great deal because they have an agreement with the hotel for advertising. Just remember that you need to read the fine print of all hotel deals to make sure you understand the cancellation policy. Often with hotel deals there are different rules.

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Hotels can be good or bad depending on the area they are in and of course how up to date they are.  In Europe and the UK you often don’t have as much trouble with hotels as the US does.  US hotels tend to be a little run down in certain cities, and though there are many to choose from you are not always going to get the best hotel for a bargain.  You need to look at a few things before you book any hotel reservation.

Firstly, how are the stars rated on the website you are looking at?  Is this a website star or any actual star offered by the travel companies such as Frommers?  This will make a big difference in whether you stay at a particular hotel.  You should also consider the reviews.  Some hotels get bad reviews because of the subjectivity of the person staying there.  What is considered okay by you may be a complete disaster to someone else.  So when reading the reviews offered by individuals consider the source and do a little more research.  Does another site offer more reviews of the same or have you found that other sites offer you better reviews of the hotels?  You can also call the hotel and ask questions in order to compare reviews.  This is often the most successful method as you can find the truth between the lines.  There are hundreds of wonderful hotels out there to stay at and just as many deals to be found if you just know how and where to look.

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In our last article we talked about finding deals.  In this article we are also going to talk about finding hotel deals, but with a different twist.  First, hotels have policies for how they determine rates.  The time of year is very important as off peak will have lower rates, due to the fact hotels need to get in customers during that time.  However, you should also know that hotels tend to have deals on the day you want to check in.  Here is how it works.  The hotel has rooms, they need to make money; therefore they want every hotel room to be booked.  During the height of season you may find that hotels are sold out completely.  Keep in mind though that when you look for a deal six months to a month prior to the actual stay you will find that changes occur.  There will be cancellations.  Sometimes there are cancellations three days before and sometimes on the day you are going to be staying.

When a hotel has an empty room or several empty rooms they are going to have a special price for that particular day.  The more rooms that are open the more the discount is going to be.  If there is only one room open that discount is not going to be great.  In fact there may not be a discount at all.  However, the longer a hotel sits on the room the cheaper it is going to get.  This means you can find the best deals when you don’t pre- book.

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