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I'm heading to Vegas to meet a friend for a few days this weekend so I went ahead and booked a room with Expedia. I was thinking about it and decided I would stay a couple of days after my friend leaves to go to some timeshare presentations (heh -- I know, not something that anyone would normally want to do, but I figured it would give me some good writing material for the timeshare trap site and see if the sales agents are using any new techniques in trying to get people to buy) Anyway, I was just going to book an extra two days at the same hotel (Tuscany) but decided to check out their website and see what the difference (if any) was from Expedia. It turns out that they are running a web only promotion that was $7 a day cheaper than the price I had paid on Expedia.
Expedia has a price match guarantee, so I called them up and told them about the price I had found on the Tuscany website. It definitely wasn't a painless process (if you ever have to do it, run all the numbers yourself before hand -- I kept having to let the person know her math was incorrect) In the end, it all got worked out and I was refunded the money, but I also received a $50 coupon toward a future purchase. Since I had already decided I was going to stay a couple extra days, I figured with the coupon I could stay for free (hotels in Vegas during the week are dirt cheap)
So, as I was looking at what was available, there were a a number of options with some 2.5 - 3 star hotels that were in the $25 - $30 a night range. The issue is that they almost all came with resort fees of anywhere from $7 - 17 a night. Then I found South Point -- a 4 star hotel (with good reviews) doing a 72 hour sale with rooms for $40 a night (and no resort fee -- a huge bonus). So I had to make the choice of staying for free (plus whatever resort fee the hotel had) at a decent, yet nothing fancy hotel or pay $40 ($20 a night) after taxes for 2 nights at a 4 star hotel -- and I decided to go for the splurge.
Most of the time I use a hotel only for a place to sleep as I run off to my next destination, but I figured if I was going to have to suffer through the pain of several timeshare presentations, coming back to a really nice room would be nice. Would you have gone for the free rooms or splurged in a similar situation?
Expedia has a price match guarantee, so I called them up and told them about the price I had found on the Tuscany website. It definitely wasn't a painless process (if you ever have to do it, run all the numbers yourself before hand -- I kept having to let the person know her math was incorrect) In the end, it all got worked out and I was refunded the money, but I also received a $50 coupon toward a future purchase. Since I had already decided I was going to stay a couple extra days, I figured with the coupon I could stay for free (hotels in Vegas during the week are dirt cheap)
So, as I was looking at what was available, there were a a number of options with some 2.5 - 3 star hotels that were in the $25 - $30 a night range. The issue is that they almost all came with resort fees of anywhere from $7 - 17 a night. Then I found South Point -- a 4 star hotel (with good reviews) doing a 72 hour sale with rooms for $40 a night (and no resort fee -- a huge bonus). So I had to make the choice of staying for free (plus whatever resort fee the hotel had) at a decent, yet nothing fancy hotel or pay $40 ($20 a night) after taxes for 2 nights at a 4 star hotel -- and I decided to go for the splurge.
Most of the time I use a hotel only for a place to sleep as I run off to my next destination, but I figured if I was going to have to suffer through the pain of several timeshare presentations, coming back to a really nice room would be nice. Would you have gone for the free rooms or splurged in a similar situation?
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