How to Avoid Making Hotel Reservations on Your Road Trip
Many people plan on driving to a particular location for a particular event such as a wedding in order to save money on alternative travel. Use the tips below for getting deals on hotels during your road trip while avoiding the hassles of making reservations at hotels along the way.
Consider reasons you might want to avoid making reservations for hotels along your planned route such as avoiding the inflexibility of having planned reservations that have prescribed arrival and departure times and dates. These reservations can become problematic when your schedule changes or due to variations of driving conditions or your level of fatigue.
Even if you don’t make reservations along the way, you should consider making a reservation at your ultimate destination. By having a place to go when you arrive at your destination instead of having to first locate a hotel, you make sure that you’re where you want to be to have easy access to the place or people you’re visiting and conserve time to spend at your destination doing planned activities.
Plan out your route with realistic expectations for how far you’re going to travel each day and then look online for typical hotel prices in that area. By checking the rates charged for hotels in different areas you might decide to drive a little bit less or a little bit more on any given day so that you’re in an area that charges less for hotel stays.
Don’t go into a hotel where you don’t have a reservation believing that you’ll have to pay more. Sometimes you’ll get better deals by not making a reservation in much the same way that prices online for hotels drop when there are rooms empty or unexpected room cancellations.
You should check out company coupons online ahead of time or using your mobile device to see what’s available for different hotel chains. You can use welcome centers for different regions as a resource because they often have brochures that include hotel coupons.
Before you take your trip or shortly before you stop at a particular location, use your mobile device to determine whether a particular region is the location of a special event that might negatively impact both availability and prices of hotels in the region. Concerts, graduations and sporting events frequently result in hotel room shortages.
If you’re staying in a hotel that is a little more expensive than your budget allotted for, consider other benefits that can offset the increased cost such as receiving a free breakfast.
Keep track of your expenses so that you can accurately determine whether your road trip saved you money (and how much) compared to taking an airline to get to a particular location.
There are a variety of reasons you might not choose to make reservations at hotels along your planned route when you’re taking a road trip. Use the tips above for making your next road trip without making hotel reservations ahead of time.
