No matter how long you’ve been traveling, there’s always a good chance you’ll learn something new.
Take hotels, for example. Most people have heard of the common things like how to override electronic thermostat settings, check for bed bugs, and use a pants hanger to help keep your curtains closed.
Some of them sound almost too simple to matter. Well, until you actually need them.
But there are plenty of hints that will make your hotel stay better (and sometimes save it entirely).
Don’t use the safe in your hotel room
Hotels have in-room safes as a way to offer some level of security for your more valuable belongings. But they’re certainly not 100% safe, because even if you made up that code, there are still ways to get into that safe:
If you must leave valuables in your hotel room, this is the type of thing you should use instead.
Access to another restroom
A standard hotel room typically only has one restroom, which is fine if you’re in the room alone. But let’s face it: when you gotta go, you gotta go. And if you’re sharing the room and someone’s in the shower, well, desperate times call for desperate measures.
Most hotels in the U.S. have clean public restrooms on the first floor. Many European hotels have public restrooms on the ground floor as well, making them just as handy in a pinch.
The top floor isn’t always the best floor
Travel bloggers will often tell you that the higher the floor of a hotel you’re on, the better. After all, that view!
Honestly, that might not always be the case.
If you’re at a conference hotel and there’s a conference going on, you may want to consider getting a room on a lower floor. After all, those elevators are going to be in use ALL the time and they’re going to be stopping at a LOT of floors. It’s going to be a lot easier to get off on the 2nd or 3rd floor (or take the stairs) than the 20th or 30th.
If you’re at a casino hotel
Sometimes your travels may bring you to a casino town. Atlantic City. Vegas.
If you’re staying at a casino hotel during peak season (summer and major holidays), and are not a gambler, consider getting a backup room at another property.
One front desk employee at a casino hotel explained that even if you guarantee your room with a credit car, it’s still not as “guaranteed” as you’d hope. Not surprisingly, casino hotels overbook during peak season to ensure they’re as close to 100% occupancy as possible. If the hotel has to choose between walking a verified gambler or a non-gambler, you can probably guess who’s more valuable to the casino.
So having a Plan B – another room that you can cancel last-second – is probably a good idea.
How to cancel your reservation when it’s technically too late to cancel
A lot of travel bloggers have written about this, but it bears repeating.
Each hotel has its own cancellation policy, but many have an absolute deadline. Maybe you can cancel up to 48 hours before your reservation begins. Or 7 days. Or whatever.
But sometimes you wind up having to cancel after that deadline.
Rather than give up your first night’s deposit (or however much you’ve already paid), see if you can change the reservation to a week or two in the future. And then, the next day, cancel the reservation.
It’s sneaky. But it can work.
Confirming a booking with a third party website
The prices that you get with Booking.com, Travelocity, Expedia, etc. often can’t be beat. And although getting the best price is important, it’s questionable if the lower price is worth the hassle you can potentially get because you booked third party.
You’ve probably heard that the hotel can see how you booked. They know when you’ve used Booking.com or whatever. And if they’re overbooked and have to choose between someone who made a reservation directly through them or through a third party, the third party guest is going to get bumped. The third party guest will also get the room next to the elevator, with a view of the air conditioner.
But here’s one you don’t hear about as much. You can make that reservation with Travelocity or whoever, and sometimes the reservation never makes it to the hotel’s roster. And you don’t find out until you arrive, go to check in and the person at the front desk says they don’t have a reservation under that name.
So if you want to make a reservation with a third party, you do you. But maybe call the hotel the next day to make sure your reservation actually made it into the hotel’s system. It’s a two-minute phone call that could save you a whole lot of frustration later.
None of these tips are going to magically get you upgraded to the presidential suite or score you free breakfast for life.
But they’re the kind of “I wish I’d known that sooner” tricks that can make a hotel stay a little less stressful, save you some money or, in a couple of cases, keep a minor problem from turning into a major headache.
The funny thing is, once you hear them, they all make perfect sense.
You just have to hear them first.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
1 comment
We’ve had pretty good luck, with a phone call, getting hotels to cancel a reservation with no charge even when we’ve missed the cutoff for “free” cancellation. We’ll keep in mind, though, the above tip about changing the reservation to a later date and then cancelling. Airlines, hotels and car rentals are much easier to deal with when you’ve booked directly with them. I use booking.com, travelocity and etc. mainly as search engines for price and itinerary, then book directly with the airline, hotel or car rental.