When booking hotels, you’ll find a large difference in off-season and peak-season prices. What surprises me is when someone gives a hotel a bad review because it wasn’t worth the price. Excuse me? You’re traveling somewhere everyone within a 100-mile radius is visiting for a weekend getaway, and you’re surprised that a La Quinta is charging double for Friday and Saturday nights than they do for the rest of the year? Really?
Like it or not, that’s how the free market works. If you’re willing to pay $200 for a roadside motel, don’t be surprised that you’re staying somewhere where the only advantage is being close to the beach, waterpark, mountains, or other special events.
Real Examples of Weekend Price Surges
A prime example of this phenomenon is when I look for hotels in New Braunfels, TX. Being the home of Schlitterbahn water park, and with other ways to “toob” on the river, it’s a popular place for families to visit in the summer. So you’d expect hotels to charge more for weekends. For this July, the Wingate By Wyndham charges $170 to $200 for Friday and Saturday nights and just over $100 for the rest of the week.
I guarantee that if you check TripAdvisor in August, there will be reviews from guests complaining that this hotel isn’t worth $200 a night. For a usual night, I’d agree with them.
However, if you’re staying on the weekend and everyone else in the area wants to visit New Braunfels, hotels will charge what the market will bear. And during those times, this is a $200 hotel room.
Of course, you can also stay at the Courtyard by Marriott New Braunfels if you want a better hotel.
However, you’d pay $300+ a night for a run-of-the-mill Courtyard by Marriott room on a summer weekend. It just happens to be right on the river.
Yes, $700 for a Hyatt Place Is Wild—But It Happens
When I mentioned booking a Hyatt Place for $700+ a night, not many believed the price for the hotel in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Having just stayed there, I can agree that there is almost no reason why this hotel should be charging that much for a room. It’s a Hyatt Place which happens to have a great location, but besides that, it’s nothing extraordinary. However, if you look at the weekend rates for next month, prices range from the high $300s to over $500 a night. Which is why Hyatt is moving this hotel from a category 4 to a category 5.
This rule applies to anywhere with a peak season. Key West in the summer. Ski Resorts in the winter. College towns during football season. Hotel prices will be significantly higher than the rest of the year. You’re a victim of the supply/demand curve. Don’t complain that you’re overpaying because so is everyone else, and it’s what the market will bear. You can’t blame a hotel for hiking prices during a popular time or event.
How Hotel Points Can Save You Serious Money
Of course, hotel points can help because I could book the Wingate in New Braunfels for 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points instead of paying $200+. I also booked the Hyatt Place for 18,000 points a night, which was a good value considering the cash prices for hotels in the area.
When will everyone learn that hotels, airlines, rental cars and every other tourist-driven business will set prices at a level that the market will support? When people stop paying, prices go down. As long as the bookings keep rolling in, they won’t budge.
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