While the Great Recession has supposedly ended, the fact remains that many people are struggling to save enough money to buy groceries, let alone pay for a vacation. Consider, ABC News writes that the average American will spend anywhere from $1,180 and up to get away for a few days. If you’re one of the many people across the world struggling to take a vacation because it’s just too expensive, what can you do?
Whether you’re heading to London or Tokyo, two of the most expensive cities in the world, or you want to relax in the U.S. Virgin Islands, one of the most affordable locations, according to Huffington Post, you need to find easy ways to compare hotel prices and save every cent you can. Here are three of the best ways to compare hotel prices and get the wiggle room you need to get away with your friends and family.
Use Hotel Meta-Searches
No doubt, you’ve used online search engines to find affordable hotel rooms. If you have, then you’ve experienced just how frustrating it can be to compare hotel prices from service to service; you’ve got to constantly switch back and forth between windows. CNN News suggests would-be travelers use hotel meta-searches to find affordable hotel reservations. Not only do these sites, like Kayak, allow you to compare hotel prices between all popular hotel websites, but they also give you the opportunity to bundle your hotel with your airfare, a method that can save you almost 20%.
Use Hotel Search Engines Based Elsewhere
Too many travelers assume that the travel websites based in their countries will grant them the best hotels at the best prices anywhere. However, if you want to find the very best prices, wherever you’re going, you need to check foreign-based sites as well. Say, for example, you’re an American looking to head to London. If you use Travelocity, an American travel service, and you use London Town, a London-based travel service, you’ll see that you can save as much as $60 per night for the same hotel by using the latter. This isn’t a rule, but if you’re trying to compare hotel prices and save, this is a good habit to get into.
Contact a Travel Agent
While many believe that travel agents became redundant at the dawn of the Internet Age, the fact is they are still one of the best tools for comparing hotel prices and saving money on your travel arrangements. As Forbes points out, travel agents maintain arrangements with credit card companies, hotels, restaurants, airlines, and many other tourist entities. This arrangement gives travel agents access to deals few others can offer you. As the source suggests, using a travel agent can easily save you $500 on hotels, airfare, and more.
There can be no doubt that fewer people are in the financial position to afford to go away on a vacation than in previous years. If you’re in that group, using these three tips can give you the tools you need to compare hotel prices, save big money, and getaway with the people you love. Get more here: www.holidayinncamden.co.uk
Man, this article was five hundred words of “duh” wasn’t it?