The Art of “On-Line” Hotel Booking

Over the past few years I have become somewhat of an aficionado of on-line hotel booking.

I know I am not alone! I have a large group of primarily female friends who openly admit to spending hours obsessing over the perfect hotel room for the best deal. Searching every possible website, some even going as far as to report on the quality of hotel rooms to certain member-based websites (you know who you are). So what is it about shopping for the perfect room? Is it the desire to get your money’s worth? To ensure that the bathroom is not in the hallway, or the bed isn’t as hard as a board? Or is it merely an issue of controlling every last possible detail of your hard-earned vacation? I believe it is a combination of all of the above. Regardless of the reason, and since I fancy myself a successful and consistent on-line booker, I thought I’d spend a bit of time giving some hints to those newbies among us, especially since many of you will be shopping around for hotels in Banff for our upcoming nuptials.

The first stop I recommend is www.tripadvisor.com. Trip Advisor’s motto is “get the truth, then go.” Well that is exactly what they offer, they are a website that individuals can join, or browse for free and search information on hotels. The website gives ratings on the quality of hotels all over the world, based on member feedback. You can get an idea of what a hotel does or does not offer, many members post real pictures from their trips of the hotel rooms and provide detailed (often scary how much time people have on their hands) accounts of their stay. Not only that, trip advisor also gives you an idea of the average room rate, and provides a search engine based on date, availibilty, and quality of hotel. It has booking links to expedia, hotels.ca, and orbitz along with a few others. I highly recommend checking out any hotel on trip advisor before booking! However, keep in mind that standards vary between individuals so focus on the average score, not on one persons posting if they had a terrible or overly wonderful experience.

So, after carefully and obsessively reading all the feedback onTrip advisor you narrow down a few hotels that suit you! What’s next, well check out the prices of course! I often go to sites like expedia, travelocity, or hotels.ca to see what sort of availability there is and also what prices they are offering. But don’t despair if the prices seem too high, there are still options. The first thing to do, which many people forget, is to go directly to the hotels website, often their prices are slightly cheaper then the larger sites like expedia, not to mention there is no service fee. I recently looked in to booking a hotel in Montreal over the May long weekend. I searched and searched and ended up with an amazing deal on a beautiful hotel in Old Montreal based on a special directly off the hotel website. Often these deals will have certain rules, such as no cancellations etc. But let’s say you have tried all these options and still can’t find a hotel in your price range….what’s next?

The final option, which although slightly risky can be very rewarding. Recently, Levi and I headed down to Boston for a fun weekend getaway with some friends. Well, for some reason Boston was booked solid and we couldn’t find anything for less then 300 to 400 a night. Since we were not too picky about where we stayed within the city, we decided to try out Priceline.com. This website at first glance looks like your typical travel website, where you enter in particulars such as date, general hotel location (downtown, airport etc) and then they give you all available options. BUT what they offer that other sites do not is a special added feature, at the bottom of the page or sometimes in between listings is the following:

BEST DEAL – Name Your Own Price^® and Save up to 50% GO

So using this feature, you basically enter in what class hotel you want, where and when and then YOU list a price that you are willing to pay. I know for Boston, I entered in as low as $25 to see what i could get, unfortunately i didn’t have much luck at the price point with a four-star hotel but you can keep going higher until something works. The catch is, you have to take what they give you, so start with 4-5 star hotels and work your way down. If you have no luck, Start again with 3 star hotels and low price points and work your way up. This is a great last minute option and you can get some pretty amazing deals. We ended up with a BEAUTIFUL hotel room listed on expedia at $450 USD a night, for $199 USD a night right in downtown Boston. Not too shabby!

Anyway, if you are a bit more flexible give it a try, you have nothing to lose and it’s a great shot if you are booking at the last minute.

**** If you do find a good deal, pass on the information through this blog or at least to Levi and I because it would be a lot of fun if everyone stayed at the same hotel.

That’s my little tidbit of knowledge if you have anything to add let me know!

Happy holidays everyone!!!!

Raps on top

Okay, since I can’t remember the last time the Raptors were tied for top spot in their division, I thought I had better document it.

Check it out…man o man is the East ever bad.

Change is inevitable

As sure as the Sam Mitchell will fiddle with the Raptors starting lineup, wedding plans are bound to change. As much as we expected the unexpected, I don’t think we expected EVERYTHING to change.

This past summer we made a special trip out west to scout out venues for the big day. We went to a bunch of hotels in Calgary, checked out a few in Banff, drove all the way to Kelowna BC to see a winery and finally ended our search at the Silver Tip Golf Club in Canmore. As soon as we saw the place and the phenomenal view, we knew that this was the place we wanted to get married. It appeared to fit the bill perfectly. We met with the person in charge of weddings at Silver Tip (her name was Jessie, but I think I’ll give her the name “Yessie”) .

So, since there was a lot of construction going on at Silver Tip, we had a lot of questions and Yessie was very attentive to our concerns and gave us a ton of reassurances about everything. We had questions about the size of our party, where the ceremony would be in case of bad weather, where people could hang out for cocktails…and Yessie had answers for everything. Will this building that is far from finished be ready by next June in case of bad weather for our ceremony? YES! Is this room big enough for possibly up to 200 guests? YES! Can that gawdawful gazebo on the “10th” hole where our outdoor ceremony was to take place be moved? YES! Wow, how sweet, how easy was this wedding planning going to be…we we’re all hooked up…and Yessie had us convinced that Silver Tip was the place for LeviAndNaama- 2007!

Can you guess what happened a few short months after our meeting with Yessie? Yup, sure enough, things changed. When we contacted Silver Tip last month, Yessie had moved on to a new role at the organization and we had a new person in charge (let’s call her Naoway even though I think her real name is Shelly).  Well, after Naama’s first call with Naoway, the once rosey outlook we had with Yessie was quickly darkening.  The indoor option was highly unlikely to be finished in time, there weren’t enough chairs for our outdoor ceremony and new ones wouldn’t arrive in time, there wasn’t enough space in the reception area for dancing after dinner without shifting things around, and on top of all that the costs for everything increased.  As you can imagine, the panic started to set in, albeit a controlled panic, because in reality our wedding was still 7 months away, but we really needed to get the location sorted out asap.

Westjet to the rescue!  Luckily, some last minute deals on flights were available and Naama took it upon herself to jet to Calgary to get this all sorted out.  Within a few days, everything changed, but we think its all for the better.   So the location has changed, its now the beautiful Rimrock Resort in Banff, the date has changed, it’s now a week later -June 24th (coincidentally the same day as Gay Pride and Jenn Kicis’ birthday!).  Nams and I are happy that we are now dealing with seasoned pro’s at the Rimrock and we are hoping there will be no drastic surprises like a Yessie turning into an Naoway.  Little surprises I think we can handle.