Hi there, my friend.
I’m in New York again, making the rounds on another media tour. On Tuesday, I was all over Manhattan, but I spent most of Wednesday in or around Bryant Park. I had a 9 am coffee meeting in the park, a 10 am meeting at a coffee place about a block from the park (with my friends Lindsey and Alicia from The Purse), and then an 11 am interview with the local ABC station in the park.
After a lunch meeting uptown and a brief stop at my hotel, I headed back to the park, found a table and settled in to get some work done. It was a perfect 80-degree day here, so I would have been crazy not to work outside since I had the choice. I mean, look at the view from my table in the park…
I ended up working there for a couple of hours answering emails, prepping for an interview I have today and doing a few other tasks — all while enjoying the fact that it wasn’t 100-plus degrees like it is back home.
It was a good, good day.
$200 saved with a three-minute check-in
When I come to New York, I pretty much always stay in or around Midtown Manhattan. (Bryant Park and Times Square are usually never far away.) However, New York hotel prices can be CRAZY and can vary pretty widely, so my hotel often does, too. For some reason, though, prices were remarkably low on this trip, at least by New York standards. The hotel I’m staying in often goes for twice the rate I initially booked it for or more.
However, I was able to make a good deal even better by taking one quick, three-minute step that literally anyone could do.
Here’s what I did…
Last Thursday, in the last day or so in which I could cancel my room without penalty, I went back to the site where I originally bought the ticket and shopped for a room again. Same days, same locations, same loyalty preferences. Same everything. I just wanted to see if — maybe, just maybe — I might be able to find a better deal at the last minute.
It worked! Exact same hotel, exact same type of room, and exact same dates, all for about $200 less over four nights than I had originally agreed to pay.
I got it simply because I checked to see if the price had changed and acted when it had. Took about three minutes. Hard to beat that hourly rate.
To be clear, this is unusual. I do this before most every trip I take, and it works very rarely. If there are savings, it might only be $10 or $20 over the course of a trip. That’s not nothing, of course, but it may not be enough to spur you to rebook.
Regardless, it is still worth checking every time you travel. It only takes a few minutes, and you never know when those elusive savings will finally appear.
Three things to remember when rebooking
Finding a deal can be an adrenaline rush, right? However, the euphoric feeling that comes with it can lead to carelessness and sloppiness, and those two things can cost you. When you’re talking about travel, those costs can be high.
Here are a few things to keep in mind whether you’re searching for a better deal or you’ve already found one …
Don’t forget to cancel the original booking. Duh! Sounds completely obvious, right? Still, it can be easy to get caught up in the moment, forget to cancel, and end up having to pay for two rooms when you only need one. Honestly, it is something I could see myself doing, so I made 100% certain that I canceled the old booking right after I made the new one.
Understand any fees or extra costs you’ll incur. This won’t always be an issue, but it was in my case. The third-party site that my company uses for travel booking charges a nominal fee for each booking that typically doesn’t get refunded when you cancel. That meant that my savings (ultimately my company’s savings) were about $180 instead of about $200. The move was absolutely still worth making, but if I hadn’t known about that fee ahead of time, it would have been a mildly unpleasant surprise.
Let technology help you. I found my savings the old-school way, but there are tools out there that will help you track hotel prices both before and after you book. I haven’t used one myself, but after looking into them for this post, I almost certainly will in the future. Here’s a review from ThePointsGuy.com on a tool called HotelSlash, which helps with pre- and post-booking price searches. And here’s a pretty extensive look at nine different hotel price trackers from a price-tracking site called RateRanger. If you have used one of these or any other hotel-price tracker, share in the comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Live on NBC News Now this afternoon… hopefully
Today at 1:45 pm ET and 3:45 pm ET, I’m scheduled to be on NBC News Now talking about money. Click below to see what they’re talking about right now, and then come back this afternoon to watch my segment. (Just know that there’s always a chance that I won’t be on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been scheduled to appear on a show only to be bumped because of major breaking news. It happens.)
Until next time!
Matt
Great to see you!