Hotel Negotiation Part II: Finding/Booking your room w/o a discount travel agent.

Part II: Finding and Booking your Hotel Without Using a Discount Travel Agent.

This method takes patience, focus, and either coffee or an otherwise suitable adult beverage. Prepare accordingly.

Starwood has a TON of promos going on continuously for all of their many, many brands. It can be overwhelming to sift through all the deals, so plan on roughly at least 1-3 hours if you are “extremely thrifty and intent on getting the best possible deal you can possibly find”, or, in other words, if you have OCD and pets/children. This method takes patience, focus, and either coffee or an otherwise suitable adult beverage. Their site is really strange to navigate. I recommend entering through one of the following:

www.starwoodhotels.com/aaa
www.starwoodhotels.com/preferredguest

PAY ATTENTION TO THE SCROLLING ADS. These are extra “side” offers that offer anything from free parking to free breakfast. Depending on if it’s a specific AAA deal, you may get to pick two or three free or discounted things.You will see AAA verbiage and ads that offer specific deals for things like free parking , extra % off, and extra Points.

From here, you can either click to explore an ad, or you can enter your desired destination and dates. If you enter Chicago and your desired calendar dates, you will get specific deals for the area. These can also be filtered.

TAKE A MINUTE TO SIGN UP FOR THE TRIPLE UP POINTS PROMO. You can get triple points through December if you stay three nights (must include a Sunday or a Thursday), double if you stay two. You can then adjust your profile to convert those Points back to whatever Airline miles program you like. So effectively, you’re getting bonus points on top of whatever credit card points you’re accumulating, which means more free airfare later for, say, Nationals in Dallas. J

The default is Detail View. It will show a selection of properties. Deals specific to a property location may be accessed by clicking the Hotel Offers link for the specific property.

***AT THIS POINT, START MAKING A NOTE OF THE COUPON CODES YOU NOTICE ON THE VARIOUS PROPERTY PAGES. THEY WILL WORK ON THE OTHER PROPERTIES’ PAGES AS WELL.***

You can also view hotels by location in Map View, or you can view different properties in a grid in Compare Rates.
Filtering for Compare Rates gives a long grid.

If you have your list of Promo Codes handy, you can filter for that option, then plug in your promo code to see what one rate is, swap the code for another code to see what the change is, etc. Sometimes the promo isn’t as good as the standard sale, though, so keep a look out for that.

Some that are working (more or less) across the board:

• SALERATE (expires 21 OCT) –Stay one night for a specific price, stay the next night for 40% off
  
• ZBT—Same as other 40% off, sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t
  
• ZB4 – Buy 1 night, get the 2^nd 40% off
  
• PKA –Complimentary Parking if you have AAA, works at varied properties Downtown
  
• NBR – Stay one night for the regular rate; Stay the next night for the amount that corresponds with your birthday year.
  ***this one is really good, and saved me more than my AAA discount, but depending on what year you were born, it may not. They don’t take the discount (or sales tax) into account till you actually show up at the hotel, though, because they have to verify your ID, so keep that in mind when y you’re comparing prices. If you stay at certain “luxury” properties, this will also vary (base rate, then $100+ your birth year)
  
• AAA – Triple AAA discount (must have a membership number)
  
• AUTOV – Get a certain % off, varies by property. If this doesn’t work, use the Drop-Down List for Automobile Association., but pay attention to room type. This may not work on all screens, particularly if you book and go back to change your rate later (you will need to call to get an adjustment).
  
• AAABFS – Breakfast rate, varies, pay attention to room type

Each property may also have specific rate codes specific to that property only. This is why you need to explore multiple properties.

***Tip: Check out the category of room. If it says “Club Room” for example, this is an upgraded room.***

It’s important to note: There’s both an entry field and a drop-down list associated with discounts. You can use either one or the other. Typically, if you click on an ad for a deal, this will populate for you. The codes are useful to have if you want to tinker and see what your rate would be if you

• Some hotels are also doing 10% off Advance Sales right now. If all else fails, delete the promo rates from the search and see what comes up.
  
• Specific for Chicago: MAKE SURE YOU CHECK TO SEE WHAT THE PARKING RATE IS. Downtown can have parking as expensive as $38/day for SELF PARK; $61/day for Valet. Take this into consideration.

For all of these: Make sure you do the math breakdown on the tax assessed, especially when the rate is different on two different days and they don’t automatically add it up for you. You will need to assess the amount from 5.5% and 6% of the daily rate.

Let’s say that you find a deal for $248, with Day 1 being $169 and Day 2 being $79 (the birthday rate deal). If Day 1 is $169, determine what 5.5 percent of that is($8.75). Then take $169 and determine what 6% of that is ($8.45). Add all of that together and you’ll have your total for Day 1. If you have a rate of $79 on Day 2, assess 5% ($4.35) and 6%($4.74) to get a total of $88.09. Add all of that together and you have $274.84. If you follow that process, you should be able to figure out what your total cost will be (provided you don’t have any extras added to your bill at checkout) even if they don’t provide the total breakdown till check-in.

That’s pretty much it. Good luck!