Use discounted websites. Trying to find a place to stay can be expensive – especially on holiday weekends. Some great options that I have used are: Travelocity and Hotels.com. Travelocity gives you rooms at discounted rates and sends you deals through your email. Hotels.com allows you to get a night for free after booking 10 nights through them. Your free night is the average of the ten previous nights. If you travel a lot (like us) then Hotels.com would probably be the better option. Free is always better!
Call the hotel before you pay online. So, you have found a hotel you like at a decent rate – before you book, be sure to call the hotel and ask what the price would be to book through them. Ex: If you found a room online with a Queen Size bed at a decent rate, call and state, “I need to book a room with a queen-size bed for (insert dates). Could you tell me how much that would be?” I did this for one of our many trips to St. Louis and was surprised to find that it was significantly lower than the deal I thought I had found online.
Don’t want to stay in a hotel? There are some great options available through VRBO and Airbnb. People list their houses, condos, cottages, etc. to rent at often lower prices than hotels. This is also a great option if you want more privacy on your trips. As a mother of a one-year-old that hates bedtime, this option is appealing because I feel less guilty about her crying in the middle of the night since it is only Mommy and Daddy that she is keeping up.
Take a look at the special packages. Many hotels offer special packages that include tickets to popular events or places in their area. Some even offer packages with restaurant gift cards included. For example, if I wanted to go to St. Louis to watch a Cardinal’s game, there a many hotels there that offer a Cardinals package that bundles the hotel and two tickets for a lesser price than I could get by buying them separately.
