Negotiating with Hotels

[theduc]

Has anyone on here ever negotiated directly with a hotel? For example I've used Priceline's name your own price tool several times and ended up staying at the same hotel for $55/night (before fees) on 4 different occasions for 2 nights at a time. Of the $55, I would guess that the hotel gets at most around $45/night...

According to the hotel's website; one of the weekends I stayed there their lowest rate was $160/night and the other three weekends were $125/night for the lowest rate. I'm wondering how likely they would be to accept my offer if I were to call the hotel directly and offer say $50/night.

has anyone tried this?

[snafu]

Interesting idea to negotiate directly, but you would need to speak to the manager at the particular outlet. The worst that would happen is they would decline your offer. You can always accept their price offer. In some instances they can give you another perk like free breakfast, free WiFi, free parking or larger rm, better rm location etc. Mostly when you call directly, you are getting their customer service outlet which could even be in a foreign country.
We mostly use HotWire which is a tad cheaper.

[Blessed]

I haven't made a flat offer like you state but I have called and asked for their best rate. Once they tell me I ask if they can do better than that. They typically can if they are not highly booked. You have to look up that particular hotels actual number though and not the 1-800 number.

[NetSkyBlue]

I haven't exactly. On vacation in Baton Rouge we were searching for a hotel by looking at rates on those discount sites. We found one at a national hotel chain, and instead of buying online, we went to the hotel and asked if they could match that rate. They told us no, their room rate was $75 more than that offer, but we were welcome to buy the offer online and wait the 4 hours it would take to clear through their system before they would let us have a room. Since it was 9 or 10 at night, we weren't going to do that. I was very disgruntled about the whole thing.

[Nika]

I haven't exactly. On vacation in Baton Rouge we were searching for a hotel by looking at rates on those discount sites. We found one at a national hotel chain, and instead of buying online, we went to the hotel and asked if they could match that rate. They told us no, their room rate was $75 more than that offer, but we were welcome to buy the offer online and wait the 4 hours it would take to clear through their system before they would let us have a room. Since it was 9 or 10 at night, we weren't going to do that. I was very disgruntled about the whole thing.

That is hotel policy. Most chains do that. They do not want it to be worthwhile for you to wait until the last minute to book. If they lowered the price for unsold rooms "the day of", than they would be training the customer to use this strategy. They would rather loose the money on the unsold room than do that. It makes sense.

[disneysteve]

I haven't really done that, but I would throw out another tip. After you've made a hotel reservation, continue to check the rates periodically. If the rate drops, you can make a new reservation and cancel the first one. A few years ago, I took my wife to NYC for our anniversary and booked a weekend at a luxury hotel. I canceled and rebooked 3 times between the time I first made the reservation and the time we actually traveled, saving over $100/night in the process. So don't assume that the best rate you can get today is the same "best" rate you might get in a week or two or three.