How to book a nice hotel for cheap

I love to travel and I'm a bit of a hotel snob. I blame my sister who went to hospitality school in Switzerland then spent 10 years at The Hyatt Regency -- I didn't know there was such a thing as "turndown service" before her. Like many things, once you get used to the good stuff, it's hard to go back. Having said this, I have a very hard time paying rack rate for a hotel room. We're on a pretty pathetic student budget right now but that's besides the point, really, because why pay $100 for a 3-star hotel when you can pay less for a 4-star?

Priceline
 
You've probably already heard of Priceline but I only found out about it in 2008 when we were living in the UK (where everything is so bloody expensive). It's an American website that lets you "Name Your Own Price": Basically you say: I want a 4-star hotel in this area of this city, I want to spend $60/night, and see if your bid matches a hotel willing to sell off their rooms at that price.

Some people aren't comfortable with the whole mystery hotel thing (you don't know the hotel you're gonna get until your bid goes through) but I'm not too fussed about that. It's mostly big chain hotels who want to get rid of blocks of rooms rather than have them sit there empty but who don't want to explicitly advertise that they are selling them for so cheap.

I've used it at least a dozen times and have got a fairly good deal each time (generally $80 for 4-star hotels and $100 for 5-star in big cities like London, Paris, L.A.). Over New Year's, we booked three nights in San Francisco at the Renaissance Stanford Court in Nob Hill for $99/night (compared to the $350 rack rate on their website). 

CON: The whole bidding process is a hassle and you don't know where you're gonna end up.
PRO: You save quite a bit of money.

Here's the step-by-step from Priceline themselves but you need to know the loophole in order to really score a deal:

1. Go to Priceline.com and click on any of their "Name Your Own Price" links.
2. Fill in the city and the dates you're after, and you'll be taken to a page where they show you a map of the different areas they've split up the city into.
3. Make notes on which areas go up to which star level by selecting each and seeing what gets greyed out.
4. Check the Calendar of Wins on BetterBidding.com to see what other people are getting for similar dates/areas.
5. Normally you can only bid once per day for the same city/dates (so if you think you only have one chance, you'll probably overbid and pay more than you need to). Here is where the loophole comes in: you can re-bid again and again provided that you add a new area each time, so say you want a 5-star hotel in Beverly Hills, you can just add in an area that doesn't have any 5-star hotels (like Culver City), bid again, and repeat until you get what you want. (This is why it works particularly well for bigger cities with lots of zones.)

If you've exhausted your areas, you can always wait 24 hours to re-bid, or start over with your husband's account (it'll need to have a different email address and payment card). Oh if you're flexible enough with dates, you can start fresh that way too. Just remember, once you follow through the steps and you win, you're committed to that hotel, no refunds. This is the British site that taught me how it all works if you want to really get into it. It does get kind of fun actually.

P.S. Yes I know Hotwire (and probably many others) runs a similar show but I boycott them as a matter of principle after a bad experience booking a hotel in Paris for my boss that turned out to be in the sketchy outskirts.

Hotel Tonight

This is a new-ish app that started out of San Francisco (don't they all?) and it lets you book a hotel tonight (hence the name) for a discounted rate (because traditionally if hotels haven't filled their rooms by that afternoon, they're not likely to get that many walk-in's, so they might as well sell off the remaining rooms for whatever they can get). It's sleek, it's easy, it's fast, and it does the trick.

Download the app here and use my referral code "SBA3" to sign up and you'll get a $25 credit which you will be able to use instantly. (NOTE: You can sign up for multiple accounts with different email addresses on different devices and you'll get the $25 credit every time).

CON: You can't book in advance and the savings aren't always that amazing (sometimes only $30).
PRO: You can see what you're getting for your money and they have a nice selection of boutique hotels (as opposed to the more generic chain ones on Priceline). And you can book right up until 2am so feel free to show off your spontaneous side!